1. I consulted parts of the National Archives of Kenya at the Seely Library, Cambridge, and the Wesleyan Methodist Missionary Society (London) Archives (WMMSA), and the Christian Aid Archives (CA, first deposit [I] 1985, second deposit [II] 1990) at the library of the School of Oriental and African Studies. I also consulted the archives of the Catholic Mission Development Office (MDO) in Garba Tulla. Interviews with Boorana who lived through that period of history were conducted during periods of fieldwork in the Waso area (1987-88, 1990, and 1992). Those interviews have been arranged for all research purposes as Garba Tulla Historical Texts (GTHT) following Lamphear, J., “Aspects of “becoming Turkana:” Interactions and Assimilation Between Maa- and Ateker-speakers” in Spear, T. and Waller, R., eds., Being Maasai: Ethnicity and identity in East Africa (London, 1993), 101Google Scholar, and N. Sobania, “Defeat and Dispersal: the Laikipiak and Their Neighbours at the End of the Nineteenth Century” in ibid., 107. Fieldwork was possible by the generous support of the Society of the Divine Word (SVD), and an Additional Fieldwork Award from the School of Oriental and African Studies.

2. Paul Baxter not only brought this incident to my attention some years ago, but also wrote down his own memories of meetings and conversations with the two officials and their families in various written communications, e.g., PB/20/4/95. Gufu Oba, a Boorana himself, allowed me to have a section of an interview he conducted with former Senior Chief Hajji Wario Guracha of Moyale on 1 January 1994 in Moyale itself, GO/23/7/95. David Anderson and Richard Waller made helpful comments to this paper when I presented it at the workshop “Biography in Eastern African Historical Writing,” conducted in Oxford, on 6-7 July 1995. Finally, a grant from the School of Philosophy and Anthropology of the University of St. Andrews allowed me to attend that event. I express gratitude to all of them.

3. On the different spellings of this word see Aguilar, M.I., “The Role of the sarki Dance in Waso Boorana/Somali Symbiosis and Conflict,” Anthropos, 88 (1993), 184.Google Scholar

4. For a fuller historical account of the Waso Boorana prior to Kenya's independence, see Aguilar, M.I., “Current Religious Practices and Generational Patterns Among the Waso Boorana of Garba Tulla, Kenya,” (Ph.D., University of London, 1993), 15–25Google Scholar; idem., “Role,” 184-86; idem., “The Eagle Talks to a Kallu”: Waso Boorana Ritual Perceptions of Ethiopia” in H.G. Marcus, ed., New Trends in Ethiopian Studies II (Lawrenceville, N.J., 1994), 758-59; idem., “Expanding the Concept of Oromia: the Waso Boorana case,” The Oromo Commentary V (1995/1), 17-18; Aguilar, M.I. and de Aguilar, L. Birch, Women's Organizing Abilities: Two Case Studies in Kenya and Malawi (Washington, 1993)Google Scholar; Dahl, G., Suffering Grass: Subsistence and Society of Waso Borana (Stockholm, 1979), 190–200Google Scholar; Hogg, R., “The Social and Economic Organization of the Boran of Isiolo District, Kenya” (Ph.D., University of Manchester, 1981), 22–45Google Scholar; idem., “The New Pastoralism: Poverty and Dependency in Northern Kenya,” Africa, 56 (1986), 319-22; idem., “The Politics of Changing Property Among Isiolo Boran Pastoralists in Northern Kenya” in P.T.W. Baxter and R. Hogg, eds., Property, Poverty and People: Changing Rights in Property and Problems in Pastoral Development (Manchester, 1990), 20-21.

5. According to statistics for 1962, the population of the N.F.D. was: Somali, 46%; Half-Somali, 16%; Boorana-Gabbra-Sakuye, 22%; Rendille, 9%; Riverine Tribes, 4%; Orma, 2%; and Turkana, 1%. In Isiolo District the breakdown is: Boorana, 71%; Somali, 19%; and Turkana, 10%. See, “Kenya: Report of the Northern Frontier District Commission” (London, 1962), Appendix C, 34.

6. Somali nationalism was at that time unique in Africa, due to “the fact that linguistic and cultural unity existed in a colonial territory and did not have to be artificially constructed;” Turton, E.R., “Somali Resistance to Colonial Rule and the Development of Somali Political Activity in Kenya, 1893-1960,” JAH, 13 (1972), 141.CrossRefGoogle Scholar I.M. Lewis has used the term “Pan-Somali ideal” to describe the aims and development of the Somali nationalist movement; Lewis, , “Pan-Africanism and Pan-Somalism,” Journal of Modern African Studies 1 (1963), 147–51.CrossRefGoogle Scholar On the general lines of Somali nationalism see Markakis, J., National and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa (Cambridge, 1987), 51–57.Google Scholar

7. In reality, and as expressed by G.C.M. Onyiuke and M.P. Bogert in their report, “the division of opinion almost exactly corresponds to the division between Moslem and non-Moslem,” “Kenya: Report,” 18 (paragraph 81).

8. Aguilar, M.I., “African Conversion: From a World Religion: Religious Diversification by the Waso Boorana of Kenya,” Africa 65 (1995)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Baxter, P.T.W., “Acceptance and Rejection of Islam Among the Boran of the Northern Frontier District of Kenya” in Lewis, I.M., ed., Islam in Tropical Africa (London, 1966), 233–50.Google ScholarDahl, , Suffering Grass, 26Google Scholar suggests a period between 1922 and 1952 for the change in religious affiliation. During that period Hogg, Richard, “Organization,” 28Google Scholar, suggests that the Boorana “adopted some of the cultural hallmarks of Somali along with Islam in order partly to enhance their image in the eyes of the Colonial Administration, and to established themselves as the equals of Somali who had achieved a special status as near equivalent to Asians.”

9. See for example, Aguilar, , “Role,” 184–90.Google Scholar The photographs of Somali ways of dressing in Buchholzer, J., The Horn of Africa: Travels in British Somaliland (London, 1955), 80, 144Google Scholar, could be pictures of the Waso Boorana, as are those in Reyes-Cortez, M., “Tracing the Lost Path of Waqqa,” Photographic Journal, 134(1994), 102–05Google Scholar; idem., “The Lost Path of Waqqa,” New African, no. 317 (1994), 38-41; and idem., “Drought Without Frontiers: the Waso Booranas of Kenya,” Divine Word Missionaries (spring 1994), 6-9. For pictures of traditional Boorana dressing that is very different from that used in the Waso area, see Baxter, P.T.W., “Boran Age-Sets and Warfare” in Fukui, K. and Turton, D., eds., Warfare among East African Herders (Osaka, 1979), 78, 83, 90, 91.Google Scholar

10. Northern Kenya and the N.F.D. as an administrative region was declared a “closed district” in 1926 and a “special district” in 1934. Special permits were required to visit the region and courts of justice and economic systems of trade were different from the rest of Kenya. This created a region totally different than the rest of Kenya, and people who never had to mix or live with the Africans of Kenya.

11. KNA. GTHT/WP/INT/Abd/Moh/19/5/92/1-3.

12. Relations between the Somali and Boorana were always difficult to understand on the part of the colonial administration because, as pointed out by Turton, “they were far from conforming to a pattern of simple hostility,” Turton, E.R., “The Pastoral Tribes of Northern Kenya, 1800-1916” (Ph.D., University of London, 1970), 278.Google Scholar In the case of the Methodist missionaries, the problem was related to the mobility of the seminomads' getting into the “closed districts;” see Aguilar, “African Conversion;” B.J. Wolfendale, “Extracts from the Annual Reports of the United Methodist Missionary Society Concerning the Meru Mission,” 1912-1962 (WMMSA/SOAS/580/79); and Rev. George Martlew, “The Methodist Church in Kenya: Notes and Recollections” (WMMSA/SOAS/586/236).

13. See Bennett, G., Kenya: A political history. The colonial period (London, 1963)Google Scholar, for details. Bennett, ibid., 182, shows the distribution of the main offices in the 1963 government.

14. Ibid., 160; Castagno, A.A., “The Somali-Kenyan Controversy: Implications for the Future,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 2 (1964), 180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

15. According to Hogg, , “Consequences,” 25Google Scholar, “under police protection an estimated 1500 Boran were evacuated from Wajir to Isiolo District.”

16. Schlee, G., Identities on the Move: Clanship and Pastoralism in Northern Kenya (Manchester, 1989), 47.Google Scholar

17. Baxter, P.T.W., “Ethnic Boundaries and Development: Speculations on the Oromo Case” in Kaarsholm, P. and Hultin, J., eds., Inventions and Boundaries: Historical and Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Ethnicity and Nationalism (Røskilde, 1994), 251–52.Google Scholar

18. Schlee, , Identities, 5, 47, 241, 243.Google Scholar The setting of boundaries in 1934 not only had political implications, but meant the ritual isolation of the Waso Boorana and their practical exclusion from a cosmological and ritual system associated with places in southern Ethiopia. As a result, they have incorporated several religious practices that are not related to their traditional Oromo religion or to Islam. See, for example, Aguilar, M.I., “The Eagle as Messenger, Pilgrim and Voice: Divinatory Processes Among the Waso Boorana of Kenya,” Journal of Religion in Africa, 26 (1996).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

19. Before and after independence Kenyan politicians either ignored the problem of the N.D.F. as “tribal” or blamed Somalia for creating an external problem. For example, when Tom Mboya, the Kenya Minister of Justice, addressed a joint meeting of the Royal African Society and the Royal Commonwealth Society in London in 1963, he was asked about the “controversial question of the N.F.D.” He responded: “I do not know why it is referred to as ‘controversial’ because we do not regard it as controversial,” “The future of Kenya,” African Affairs, 63 (1964), 12.Google Scholar J.N. Karanja, The High Commissioner for Kenya, ignored any problem regarding the N.F.D. in addressing the same joint meeting on 7 July 1966. See “Kenya After Independence,” African Affairs, 65 (1966), 289–96.CrossRefGoogle Scholar This could be one of the criticisms to wider political analyses of the relations between the Kenyatta government and Somalia, e.g., Howell, J., “An Analysis of Kenyan Foreign Policy,” Journal of Modern African Studies, 6 (1968), 37–38.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

20. Tonkin, Elizabeth, Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History (Cambridge, 1992), 3.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21. On this point and on the development of the practice of African history see Jewsiewicki, B. and Mudimbe, V.Y., “African's Memories and the Contemporary History of Africa,” History and Theory, 32 (1993 Beiheft), 1–11.CrossRefGoogle Scholar They suggest (ibid., 11) that “in modern societies dominated by the paradigm of progress and modernization…written history is primary. Its legitimacy is intimately tied to that of the politics of the State as a means of establishing a significant relation between the past and the present.

22. Schoenbrun, , “A Past Whose Time Has Come: Historical Context and History in Eastern Africa's Great Lakes,” History and Theory 32 (1993 Beiheft), 32–56.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

23. Cohen, David W., The Combing of History (Chicago, 1994), 247.Google Scholar

24. Cohn, B.S., “History and Anthropology: the State of Play,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 22 (1980), 221.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

25. Ibid., 220.

26. In general, history text books have ignored the fact that the N.F.D. had delegates at the Lancaster House Constitutional Conference, February-April 1962, where the Somali Government demanded the settlement of the N.F.D. question before Kenyan independence, and supported the N.F.D. delegation. See Castagno, , “Somali-Kenyan Controversy,” 176Google Scholar, and Lewis, , “Pan-Africanism,” 156.Google Scholar For example, no mention of any Somali problem appears in Ochieng', W.R., A History of Kenya (London, 1985)Google Scholar, while a brief mention of the Kenya-Somalia dispute after Kenya's independence is made by Orwa, K., “Foreign Policy, 1963-1986” in Ochieng', W.R., ed., A Modern History of Kenya 1895-1980 (London, 1989), 232–33.Google Scholar Other examples of complete silence abound, while only one sentence on the threat of secession by the Somali in the N.D.F. appears in Odhiambo, E.S. Atieno, Ouso, T.I., and Williams, J.F.M., A History of East Africa (London, 1977), 181.Google Scholar

27. See, among others, Hoskyns, C., The Ethiopia-Somali-Kenya Dispute, 1960-1967 (Dar-es-Salaam, 1969)Google Scholar, and Lewis, I.M., A Modern History of Somalia (London, 1980), 166–204.Google Scholar See as well Markakis, J., National and Class Conflict in the Horn of Africa (Cambridge, 1987), 182–91.Google Scholar

28. Maloba, Wunyabari, “Nationalism and Decolonization, 1947-1963,” in Ochieng', , Modern History, 174.Google Scholar

29. Turton, , “Somali Resistance,” 119.Google Scholar

30. See Ibrahim, M.K., “The Checkered History of the Somali in Kenya,” Wajibu, 1 (1992), 15–17.Google Scholar

31. “Foreign policy” in Ochieng', Modern History, 232.

32. See “Kenya: Report,” nn. 65-67; Dahl, , Suffering Grass, 201Google Scholar; Hjørt, A., Savanna Town: Rural Ties and Urban Opportunities in Northern Kenya (Stockholm, 1979), 32–35Google Scholar; and Hogg, , “Consequences,” 46.Google Scholar

33. An extreme example of the outsider's view of history is represented by Chenevix-Trench, C., Men Who Ruled Kenya: The Kenya Administration, 1892-1963 (London, 1993)Google Scholar; cf. review by Youé, C.P. in Journal of African History, 35 (1994), 525–26.CrossRefGoogle ScholarKenya Government, “Emergency in North Eastern Region of Kenya,” Kenya Calling, 28 December 1963Google Scholar, published in Hoskyns, , Dispute, 43.Google Scholar

34. Neil Sobania makes the helpful distinction between “external perception” (by colonial administrators in archival records) and “internal perception” (those recorded in oral tradition); see “Pastoralist Migration and Colonial Policy: a Case Study From Northern Kenya” in Johnson, D.H. and Anderson, D.M., eds., The Ecology of Survival: Case Studies From Northeast African history (London, 1988), 219.Google Scholar

35. A good example of the processes concerning the reconstruction of oral histories as narratives, providing possible different interpretations by the speaker as a narrator, the speaker as part of a past event, and the historian/anthropologist is provided by Chieni, T. and Spencer, P., “The World of Telelia: Reflection of a Maasai Woman in Matapato” in Spear, Thomas and Waller, Richard, eds., Being Maasai: Ethnicity and identity in East Africa (London, 1993), 157–73Google Scholar; and Spencer, P., “Automythologies and the Reconstruction of Ageing” in Okely, J. and Callaway, H., eds., Anthropology and Autobiography (London, 1992), 50–63.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

36. Lonsdale, , “Origins,” 119–20.Google Scholar

37. Surprisingly, Lonsdale, ibid., 119, uses a Leninist vocabulary and appreciation of revolutionary processes in history. Those oral histories considered by Vansina to be “oral traditions” are “not just a source about the past, but a historiology…of the past, an account of how people have interpreted it:” Vansina, Jan, Oral Tradition as History (London, 1985), 196.Google Scholar

38. See for example, Anderson, D.M., “Herder, Settler and Colonial Rule: a History of the Peoples oftheBaringo Plains, Kenya, c. 1890-1940” (Ph.D., Cambridge University, 1982)Google Scholar; Fadiman, J.A., An Oral History of Tribal Warfare: The Meru of Mt. Kenya (Athens, Ohio, 1982)Google Scholar; Sobania, Neil, “The Historical Tradition of the Peoples of the Eastern Lake Turkana Basin, c. 1840-1925” (Ph.D., University of London, 1980)Google Scholar; and Waller, Richard, “The Lords of East Africa: the Maasai in the Mid-Nineteen century, ca. 1840-1885” (Ph.D., Cambridge University, 1978).Google Scholar

39. This took place in 1948, and after the S.Y.L. “had succeeded in recruiting many members from among the Somali police, askaris and boma employees, a mutiny of Somali police in 1947, and the fact that any disturbance by pastoralists outside the towns, where the police forces resided, would be very difficult to control:” Turton, , “Somali Resistance,” 138.Google Scholar

40. For an account of political parties and organizations that emerged at that time see Castagno, , “Somali-Kenyan controversy,” 165–87.Google Scholar

41. Turton, , “Somali Resistance,” 139.Google Scholar

42. Wako Happi eventually left Kenya, and only a few years ago, blind and frail returned to northern Kenya. Jatane Jarso, personal communication, 23 July 1995.

43. I have relied on information collected during my fieldwork in Garba Tulla, and on further comments provided by Paul Baxter and Gordon Hector (formerly DO Wajir), currently retired in Scotland.

44. The word is derived from the Amharic language; see Hogg, , “Politics,” 30Google Scholar; and Schlee, , Identities, 51.Google Scholar

45. Baxter, , “Boran Age-Sets,” 69, 82, and 83.Google Scholar

46. On Waso Boorana women see Aguilar/Birch de Aguilar, Women's Organizing Abilities.

47. Warra, however “refers to blood relations rather than cohabitation” as suggested by Ruda, Gemetchu Megerssa, “Knowledge, Identity and the Colonizing Structure: the Case of the Oromo in East and Northeast Africa” (Ph.D., University of London, 1993), 169.Google Scholar The kallu is the traditional ritual leader of the Boorana, resident in southern Ethiopia; see Knutsson, K.E., Authority and Change: a Study of the Kallu Institution Among the Macha Galla of Ethiopia (Gothenburg, 1967).Google Scholar

48. The Sakuye are one of the three groups of Boorana in the Waso area and Isiolo District. The Sakuye “claim descent from Somalia but have for the past 150 years been the allies of the Borana;” see Dahl, , Suffering Grass, 16.Google Scholar While the Boorana Gutu (who consider themselves Boorana proper and constitute the larger group in the Waso area) relate themselves to cattle, the Sakuye have traditionally sustained a camel economy. The third group of Boorana, the Wata, are hunters and gatherers; see Baxter, , “Boran Age-Sets,” 71.Google Scholar

49. The N.F.D. commission, comprising a Nigerian and a Canadian, visited the Northern Province from 22 October to 26 November 1962. One can also presume that they were in Nairobi with the Boorana, Sakuye, and Warta delegation that met with members of the N.F.D. Commission on 21 November 1962 (memorandum 52, Colonial Office).

50. The Itinerary of the Commission” in “Kenya: Report,” 21.

51. 11/46, 11/47, 11/48, 11/49, 11/50 (memoranda of the Colonial Office).

52. “Kenya: Report,” note 44.

53. For example, B.W. Andrzejewski, P.T.W. Baxter, and I.M. Lewis, “Memorandum on the background of the Northern Province of Kenya,” unpublished MS submitted to the British Government in 1962.

54. See, for instance, “A People in Isolation: Statement by the Somalis of the Kenya Northern Frontier District” (March, 1962) in Somali Government, The Somali Republic and African Unity (Mogadishu, 1962), appendix 2, 33-35.Google Scholar

55. GTHT/KOR/f.n./1992,46.

56. Information about the killings appeared in The Observer (PB/20/4/95) and the Kenyan newspapers of that time (Senior Chief Hajji Wario Guracha, GO/23/7/95); also Castagno, , “Somali-Kenyan Controversy,” 180.Google Scholar See Lessing, Pieter, Only Hyenas Laugh (London, 1964), 237.Google Scholar

57. Ibid., 238.

58. Baxter, , “Boran Age-Sets,” 70.Google ScholarLessing, , Hyenas, 238, suggested that such compensation was offered.Google Scholar

59. GO/23/7/95.

60. GTHT/WP/ISL/abd/bal/3/6/92/1.

61. As correctly suggested by Hogg, , “Consequences,” 45Google Scholar, only a few Boorana were incorporated into the police and the army during colonial times.

62. In particular, the Kallu had sent messages to the Boorana in the Waso area concerning their traditions and the fact that traditional leaders should be appointed, while the Oromo in southern and western Ethiopia had expressed their wishes for independence from a centralized Ethiopia; see Baxter, P.T.W., “The Creation and Constitution of Oromo Nationality” in Fukui, K. and Markakis, J., eds., Ethnicity and Conflict in the Horn of Africa (London, 1994), 170.Google Scholar Despite the political outcome of those years, ritual ties between the Boorana and Ethiopia have always been strong; on this see Aguilar, M.I., “Eagle Talks,” 756–72.Google Scholar

63. GTHT/GB/f.n. 1992, 68.

64. However, there was utter confusion about the role of the kallu, since my informant further suggested that anybody who reads the whole Qur'an becomes a kallu. On gada see Legesse, A., Gada: Three Approaches to African Society (New York, 1973)Google Scholar; Baxter, “Boran Age-Sets,” and Hinnant, J., “The Guji: Gada as a Ritual System” in Almagor, U. and Baxter, P.T.W., eds., Age, Generation and Time: Some Features of East African Organization (London, 1978).Google Scholar

65. For example, 5,000 head of cattle were machine-gunned in Isiolo in one day in 1967; see Hjørt, , Savanna Town, 36.Google Scholar A report from Christian Aid in March 1973 stated that “thousands of livestock died or were killed as punitive measures,” CA2/SOAS/A/12/12/2.

66. Hogg has convincingly argued that since the independence of Kenya, and as a result of the creation of “a town-based elite,” “poverty and dependence is becoming a permanent way of life to many pastoralists,” Hogg, , “The New Pastoralism: Poverty and Dependency in Northern Kenya,” Africa 56 (1986), 319–33.CrossRefGoogle Scholar The work of Christian Aid in the area accounts for a state of dependency, e.g., Donald L. Matthews to V.H.K. Littlewood (March 1969), Doris Linde to V.H.K. Littlewood, “Progress Report on Northern Kenya Projects,” and “Boran Rural Training Centre” (all in CA2/SOAS/A/12/5).

67. Hogg, , “Consequences,” 19, 47.Google Scholar

68. GTHT/DHE/f.n./1992, 68.