Loiyangalani

The guys I met before in Ngurunit recommended to say hello in Loiyangalani and this is where I camp spontaneously at a resort. The town is calm but offers nothing special. It is a boiling pot of all surrounding tribes: Borana, Dassanach, Turkana, Samburu, Gabbra, El Molo, Rendille, Somali. El Molo inhabit just one small bay
north of Loiyangalani! I still do not get how they all interact but at least they settle peacefully around town.

At the lodge I meet Jane from Nairobi who stays here for a week and interviews young girls at school and their parents in order to distribute scholarships for poor pupils. She is fundraising and works in conjunction with aid programs. I learn a lot about how the school system works and also respond with many stories about the German one.

On the street I am randomly asked to marry a girl. But for that I have to bring at least 6 camels into her family! I learn that a camel is worth approximately 120.000 KES which is 900 EUR. Holy banana! Do you remember the pics from Kalacha? For the Gabbra guys it is not uncommon to own a herd of 200-400 camels. They must be millionaires here! But their families have barely anything to eat. How does this work? Apparently this all is just a prestige thing and they rarely sell a camel. For every daughter they can marry away, they aggregate new camels. And in times of severe drought? 90 % of the camels die. Investment in "a better future"? Not of interest. Things here just work differently and we white, snobbish Sesselpupser will never be able to understand. I also learn that the many sheep of the Dassanach north around Ileret are well-adjusted to the hot and dry climate but ... I complained about the wind, right? There is always strong wind here, throughout the whole year. Once these sheep get completely soaked during unusual long and heavy rains and the air cools down a bit, the strong wind just makes them freeze to death over night. All of them.Read more