Kenyan elders must resort to a big curse

Kenyan tribe punishes developers with curse
By Nick Wadhams in Nairobi
Last Updated: 2:36am BST 26/10/2007

Elders of the Kikuyu tribe in Kenya are to curse anyone they deem to have desecrated a sacred hill after enduring 20 years of logging, tea planting and the erection of a mobile phone mast.
The Kikuyu, the country's dominant tribe, believe that God uses Karima Hill as a stepping stone on his walk to Mount Kenya each day. Rather than pursuing their grievance through the courts, the elders have gathered this week in a nearby town to plan the curse that will punish the wrongdoers.

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But Kikuyu leaders say the last 20 years have seen Karima Hill devastated by the planting of foreign trees such as eucalyptus and cyprus, which have dried up nearby streams.
The trees are then cut down for use by a local tea company which paid the county council for an 80-acre concession.

(rest of article at this link):
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/10/26/wkenya126.xml

and from this site more about the precious water supply:
http://udongo.org/2007/10/13/ecological-mapping-and-rights
Under the Environmental Management and Coordination Act (Emca), any of the two ministers is allowed to declare any area of land, lake or river a protected zone for the purpose of specific ecological process, natural environment system, natural beauty or certain species of indigenous wildlife or preservation of biological diversity in general. On March 19, the local community’s lawyer wrote to the clerk of Othaya Town Council and Iria-ini Tea Factory threatening to move to court.

The letters, copied to Central Provincial and Nyeri District Environment Committees, wanted the two to immediately stop carrying out any activities on the hill or face legal action.
Kaifa coordinator, Mr Kariuki Thuku, says Karima Hill has nine major streams that used to feed thousands of residents who surround it with water. Eight of them are partly underground with the exception of Gakina whose source is on top of the hill.

The streams Ichamama, Gakina, Ruiria, Maria, Gatheru, Kamuriini, Karunguni, Gaturi and Ihiga-ini are evenly distributed round the hill slopes. Apart from Ichamama, the rest gave dried up due to wanton destruction of the forest.

They started drying up when most of the indigenous trees were replaced by thousands of cedar, eucalyptus and cypress trees. The council has been planting the exotic trees in total disregard of an advice by the Ministry of Water, which called for stopping of planting the trees nearly 20 years ago.

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I must admit I'm totally with the elders on their decision. Bless their hearts you see they have fought this for twenty years and now 8 of the 9 streams are dried up. So something has got to be done and I think they are doing the right thing.

Ironically I have a connection to Kenya from 1974! I was working in a land use planning lab that had a contract with the Kenyan government for some aerial photography. This was in very early days before there was much available in way of satellite images, and before computers were able to process images, so this was mostly done by hand. The graduate student who was paid for doing this was out one day when a bunch of phone calls came in wanting to know what the delay was. I was just an employee who had started there as a student, and was very junior, but since the government was involved I organized all sorts of emergency trips and activities (including my driving to Rochester to get the special film) and cajoling the staff to work on the photos later that day. When the grad student sauntered back a few days later he waved it off as alarm over nothing. But to me, it was a matter of trust, with promises made and commitment dates to be met. I enjoyed working on the Kenya photos those two days (though I didn't enjoy having the crisis dumped in my lap by someone who was getting all the prestige, money and credit, as usual!!) What a "blast from the past" as we used to say in those days lol.