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Chapter One:
Apulè River: The Cradlelands
Amaese begins his trek at dawn. He awoke long before the women in his hut, and the women are always the first to rise. The journey ahead excites him. He also knows that, by midday, the sun will beat down on him and exhaust his every step.
So in the cool blue light of early morning, he leaves behind his home and other scattered manyata outside of Moroto town. He carries only his stick and his gun. He wears only long, royal blue cloths tied and wrapped around his body like a tunic and over his head like a hood. To the east, the sun opens its eye over the low frontier plains of Kenya, lands of the Turkana, the traditional enemies of the Karimojong. Amaese then winds around the towering Mount Moroto, its peak, known as Imagit, a rising dark mass pointing towards Akuj. In the language of the Karimojong, the word "Akuj" means both "sky" and "God".
This is Amaese’s first venture into the Apulè River valley. Since he was a child, he has heard about the river and how it has long given the Karimojong and their cattle water in times of drought. Amaese also has heard of the sacred tree and the forbidden place where only elders go.
When he arrives at the river, however, he will have little time for sightseeing. The dry season has hit Karamoja, and thousands have taken their herds to Apulè. A relative had sent for him, needing to increase the manpower for watering, grazing and protecting the cattle. He has cattle of his own, but Amaese is just a young father and warrior. He still has much to learn, and he is happy to help his relatives and fellow Karimojong.
As the sun climbs from horizon to sky, Amaese walks for hours and hours over the arid, flat terrain punctuated by a few rocky hills. The earth looks scorched, a white haze of heat over the ubiquitous browned grasses and shrubs. The long hike has tired Amaese. Just like the earth and the cows, he now needs water. He still sweats, and the sweat dries instantly on his ashy, cracked skin. A gentle breeze brings little relief. For a moment, Amaese looks down at his feet moving over the rocks and silty dirt. He wears sandals cut and fashioned from motor vehicle tyres.
His eyes then shift to the descending horizon and a swelling of trees as the land falls into the river valley. The acacia and sycamores look like giants to him, and he has never seen so many trees in his life. Amaese soon takes shelter under one of them.
He rests his head against the wide trunk of a fig tree. His chest surges with deep breaths, as the wind rattles the skeletal branches above, shaking loose its dead leaves. He picks up a leaf that has landed on his leg. Its veins are withered with dryness that stretches from apex to stem. It looks like a roasted chip. Amaese balls it into his fist, hearing it crackle before he tosses the crumbs to the ground. He then spots a path in the distance that leads to a kraal, and he quickly stands and walks towards it.
As they migrate, the Karimojong make semi-permanent homes and cattle pens, both of which are called kraals. Amaese has helped make countless such settlements since he was a boy, and he gives the one along the path only a cursory look as he passes it. A metre-thick outer wall encircles the kraal, and it is made out of thorny brambles and twisting, gnarled sticks and shrubs. Inside, the Karimojong have made several circular huts out of mud and cow dung and with thatched roofs. A cattlepen sits at the kraal’s heart with a similar thorny wall.
At the moment, Amaese does not hear the sounds of cattle or much activity in the kraal. There is only the howling wind. He continues his hike, straining his eyes down the gentle slope towards the riverbed. Then, he sees them: a group of men and women and their cattle tarrying near wooden troughs. They are his relatives, and Amaese excitedly trots down to them.
More than 500 years ago, Amaese’s ancestors first set their eyes on the Apulè River. There is a legend that long ago many of the great Nilotic herders — the Karimojong, the Turkana, the Maasai, the Toposa, the Jie, the Teso, the Pokot and many others — migrated south from Abyssinia, where a population explosion made it more and more difficult for them to find enough water for their cattle. So, over generations and generations, they moved south and many of them eventually settled at Mount Apolon, a plateau where today the Turkana live in present-day Kenya.
As with all nomadic herders, some groups continued on and in many different directions. They found new lands and water sources, and soon their Tower of Babel fell, as one language turned into many different dialects and then the dialects became different languages. Over the years, a people who were once one became many, and some even became enemies, as they lived near each other and fought over the same scarce resources. It is a story that has played itself out time and time again around the globe throughout human history.
The group that would become known as the Karimojong headed west from Mount Apolon and eventually came upon the cool, clean springs that flow during every wet season at Mount Moroto. Later, they descended into the fertile valley near the Apulè River, where at least some water stood even in the dry seasons. So it was there — at Moroto and Apulè — that they settled. The young generations eventually traveled farther and spread out to occupy the lands known as the region of Karamoja today. The word Ngkarimojong actually translates as, "the tired old men who stayed behind."
Over those lands, they conquered the other people who had already been there, and those peoples either died, fled or assimilated into the Karimojong. Thus, many different clans and territorial groups of the Karimojong formed — the primary three subgroups being the Pian, Matheniko and the Bokora. Among all groups, however, every Karimojong celebration, sacrifice and assembly of elders still faces towards Apulè—their cradleland.
When Amaese meets his kin at Apulè, he finds the riverbed dry and hardened. They have dug a 10-metre-deep hole there, and a cascade of five women sit perched on thick sticks wedged into the walls of the shaft. From the bottom, they pass gourd basins full of dark-coloured water over their heads until the topmost woman pours them into the wooden troughs. The cows and bulls press over each other in a flurry just to get a gulp. This is what Amaese has come to do. He has come to join the thousands of Karimojong, many of whom have traveled much farther than him to save their cattle from drought and death.
One of them is Ana Lokutae. She is a mother of three and usually tends to the fields in her home to the north. But now with the fields barren, the maize and sorghum will not grow, so she has come to help with the cattle. She stands at the bottom of the shaft, bent over as she pulls back wet sand and silt. The water seeps up from the hole, and Ana Lokutae immerses the gourd bowl into it, then gently raises it to the next woman above her.
Nearby, Talep Mothing does similar work. He is Amaese’s good friend and kinsman. He lives more than 75 kilometres away, where the dryness became so severe that his cattle would not have survived a week there. It had been he who sent word to Amaese to come to Apulè. Talep has ebony-dark skin and stands over six feet tall. He is wearing only brass and carved wooden ornaments strapped around his muscular arms. He is digging a hole deeper into the riverbed, and he does this carefully to keep the banks from closing over him.
Amaese looks farther down the river, over sand dunes and ridges, where group after group—men, women and children—stand in lines like this towards open pools and into shafts with their cattle huddled above them at the troughs. Apulè is one of the last water sources in such seasons, Amaese reflects. Then, he grabs a gourd from beside a trough and joins his fellow Karimojong to find more water.
