Hitting all the right notes for peace

For a long time, the Pokot, a pastoralist community living in the Northern Kenya has been associated with cattle rustling activities.

These normally pitting them against the neighbouring Turkana community and the Karamoja community in Uganda.

But deep within this community exists a rich cultural heritage expressed through folklore, song and dance. A culture that had been overshadowed by these rustling activities.

However, one Pokot singing group is determined to change this discourse through song and dance. Going by the name Poghisio self-help group, the choir which is based in Olmoran Ward, Laikipia County says they want to retell the Pokot story in the light of a progressive society aimed at embracing peace and modernity.

Using the Pokot jig, punctuated by traditional outfits such as cow’s hide laced with heavy ornaments, men and women across the age divide have joined hands to ‘strike a conversation’ and extend an olive branch to their perceived enemies and also to bring their rich cultural heritage to the fore.

“It is unfortunate that retrogressive cultural activities like cattle rustling coupled with poor literacy levels have conspired to portray our community in bad light especially among outsiders,” says group leader and lead vocalist Dennis Leman.

The 30-year-old father of two who openly admits that he is a reformed rustler says most of his age group engaged in cattle rustling activities at a very tender age and ended up missing out on formal education or even got killed in the process. It was a desire to change this narrative that made them choose to engage in educational entertainment.

Formed in 2013, the group comprises of men and women across all age brackets from the minority Pokot community living along the porous Laikipia-Baringo border.

Leman says years of tribal clashes and stock theft had deepened animosity among the pastoralists tribe and efforts by outsiders including government to intervene have often failed.

“We realised that change begins with us, and that we had a responsibility not only to break the stereotype but also to teach our youth and future generations how to live in peace with our neighbours,” Leman says.

He continues: “Through this engagement, we have had opportunity to interact with other communities through joint functions such as cultural days and music festivals and at the end of the day, we have realised that we share common values”.

The group’s songs are normally about peace, which they refer to as Kalya in the local dialect.

The team initially is made up of ten members but has since grown to more than 20 members with a focus on mentoring a younger generation of singers. The composition of their songs, though heavily borrowed from folklore, is uned to suit the occasion and their audience, and therefore they have not produced a specific song.

“Most of our folk songs were composed to inspire warriors to go out and bring wealth (read livestock) home. We, however, wanted to change this narrative so we now use the same discourse to encourage our society to embrace peace and adopt other progressive ways of making wealth such as education and business,” he says.

The group, clad in traditional Pokot regalia, performs during functions such as peace keeping meetings, music festivals, funerals and cultural days.

Leman says through song and folklore, the group has exposed community members to the ‘outside world’ and helped it drop cultural practices like female genital mutilation, early marriages and stock theft.