THE COW swayed slightly, then sank to the sandy ground as the two Masai herdsmen looked on helplessly. Laying aside their spears and cloaks, they tried to pull it up but its legs buckled.
The two men walked away across the parched floor of the lake-bed towards their village, leaving the animal to its inevitable fate.
"What's the use taking it with us if it's going to die anyway before the rains come?" asks Ntoros Leraria. "There is no grass for the cows to eat and every day they get weaker. We have already lost many animals."
A hundred yards away, under a grove of thorn trees, a dozen or more cattle corpses lay scattered. Perched atop one carcass, two Marabou storks were busy extracting its entrails with their sword-like beaks. The shifting wind carried the stench of rotting flesh. In the distance a towering dust-devil spiralled across the wilderness, drunkenly changing its course before heading for the hills.
It was late in the afternoon but still the sun beat down mercilessly out of a clear blue sky. To the Masai pastoralists of Kajiado district in southern Kenya, this is one of the worst droughts in recent memory. There have been three successive seasons of rain failure. Unable to find sustenance in the scorched grasslands, their cattle are dying of hunger. In some areas, hundreds of corpses litter the roadside. Even monkeys, zebras and antelope are being found dead in the bush.
"We have not even reached the end of the drought," says Joel Sayanka, senior chief in Magadi, a town perched on the edge of a huge lake 30 miles from the Tanzanian border. "Already most of the young animals have died and now the pregnant ones are falling down because they can't carry the weight. We expect that half or more of the animals could have died by the time the rains come this month."
Worst affected are the northern and eastern parts of Kenya. So serious is the situation that at the end of January, the government declared a drought emergency and revoked controversial laws. The duty on commercial imports of maize has been lifted and relief supplies have been distributed to the needy areas.
"We got a little maize from the government," says Rakua Ole Timayio, a herdsman who has already lost 80 of his 100 cows, "and we were able to exchange some hides for cattle feed. But the situation is very bad. Now the children and the old ones are starting to get sick."
Critics say the government could have done more to avoid the worst ravages of the drought. With forward planning, reserve stocks of food and seeds could have been built up. In recent years, however, the government has been exporting its surplus maize instead of stockpiling it.
It is less obvious, however, what strategies might safeguard the Masai and other pastoralists. Population growth and land settlement place increasing pressures on the nomadic way of life.
"This is the worst year I remember," says Tenke Ole Kurrutari, an elder at Nkaramai, a manyatta [Masai settlement] near Magadi. "Many cows have died and we have had to move the others to a place far from here. You see we are very thin, we are hungry too, but what are we to do? We don't know anything apart from our life with cattle."
Senior chief Sayanka believes his people are too reliant on cattle and must be persuaded to diversify. He says that once the rains come he will hold a baraza (or public meeting) at which he will explain the need for investment in businesses other than cattle trading.
"I myself mean to set an example by selling off some of my herd," he says. He is a young man who wears a shirt and trousers in favour of the traditional Masai lengths of brightly coloured cloth. "We must educate the next generation to understand there is more to life than cattle".
His are bold thoughts. Many will baulk at his suggestions, but the Masai may have to compromise if they are to preserve anything of their ancient culture.