Where weather and drought forecasting are concerned, people tend to focus on data, science and alerts delivered by smart phones. In the drylands of East Africa, local communities also rely on long-established traditional, indigenous and informal ways to predict weather and other natural changes. They blend these sources and channels to best suit each particular situation. This video illustrates elements of this diverse knowledge ecosystem and how they interact and evolve to deal with complex challenges.
Read the transcript
Tumal Orto – Pastoralist in Marsabit, Kenya
In the pastoral setup, the livestock are their livelihood, their backbone, in all ways of life. Keeping livestock makes you very happy. But all happiness has got challenges. One of them is drought or change of weather patterns, livestock diseases, sudden livestock deaths. Sometimes the rain also come with the disaster. Sometimes the drought brings also disaster.
Voiceover Narration
In pastoral drylands, early warning is not just about weather. It is about reading risk in many forms.
George Tsitati – PhD Student at University of Edinburgh
I research, how pastoralist communities, in the Horn of Africa, anticipate, prepare and respond to climate driven humanitarian crises, majorly drought. Largely, my research focuses on understanding the intersection between Indigenous knowledge and the conventional early warning system. And how they use multiple knowledge to navigate the inherent uncertainty and risk in the region.
Meshack Musyoki – Officer in charge of Marsabit Meteorological Station
The consumers of information, especially in the area of Marsabit, are mainly farmers and pastoralists. And also the government, and also other non-government organizations who support the community here in Marsabit.
Tune Guyo – Pastoralist in Marsabit, Kenya
These seasons can be very difficult, especially for families that have not stored grass or fodder. The drought can kill young calves. To prevent losses, livestock are moved back to the wells and fed stored grass whenever possible.
Abudho Umuro – Traditional weather forecaster (Star reader) in Marsabit, Kenya
This star-reading knowledge is from my ancestral lineage. Right now my father has the knowledge, and I too have inherited the same. The seven glowing stars you can see on this side, we call them Torba. We are usually interested in their visibility. If they are not so clear, we say the rainy season is about to come. but if they appear to be so close, we say there are no rains in the near future.
Guyo Roba – Head of Drylands Development Unit at IGAD Centre for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development (ICPALD)
There are quite a number of knowledge systems that the pastoralists use to triangulate risk factors, read situations and make decisions. They don’t make a decisions irrationally. On a seasonal shift, pastoralists look at three or four different things. One, they look at the biophysical factors. They look at the ecological factors. The ritual slaughter by pastoralists can give opportunity for reading intestines by different people. Even in that intestine reading, people give different interpretation of the same phenomenon.
Tune Guyo – Pastoralist in Marsabit, Kenya
People also receive information through radio broadcasts in the Borana language. Information about whether the coming rains will be short or long, is also available through mobile phones. People gather information from many sources, including the stars, cloud patterns, radio broadcasts, and weather forecasts.
Voiceover Narration
Information comes from many places. What matters is how people compare it, trust it, and use it.
Kennedy Wekesa – Advocacy and Risk Communication Officer at IGAD Climate Prediction & Applications Centre (ICPAC)
This situation room is where science meets decision making. The IGAD region faces some of the world’s most complex climate and disaster risks. This hazards watch is a multi-hazard system. We are able to actually track situations about drought, about floods. We also have the agricultural watch, so the hazards watch provides a common picture of risks across borders, helping countries to act together rather than in isolation.
George Tsitati – PhD Student at University of Edinburgh
One of the key thing that I think is uniquely placed amongst the pastoralists is this idea of having multiple sources of information and drawing from them. It is only us as the external people who still implicitly see the knowledge systems among pastoralists as two systems, but for the pastoralists themselves, they see these information systems as a single container to draw from.
Tumal Orto – Pastoralist in Marsabit, Kenya
About the weather patterns and weather forecasts, we rely traditionally on intestines reading, we rely on astrologers who looks at the stars, but these days, we are getting a little bit upscaled. It’s like now everybody is trying to complement each other, trying to put the information in one basket.
Voiceover Narration
But in practice, information does not travel evenly. Its value depends on trust, language, access, and whether people can make sense of it in time.
Meshack Musyoki – Officer in charge of Marsabit Meteorological Station
The daily forecast is given in English. to have that forecast translated to reach the common citizen, It is quite a challenge. The other thing is, not everybody can access the mass media. If somebody doesn’t get the information, it will be very difficult for that person to apply the knowledge that they don’t know.
Guyo Roba – Head of Drylands Development Unit at IGAD Centre for Pastoral Areas and Livestock Development (ICPALD)
I think credible information depends with the source. First, you need to trust the source. Two, who is the provider of that information. If it is a renowned star-reader, it is a renowned intestines interpreter, that gives 60 to 80 percent confidence on that information. So it is the source, it is the provider of the source, that defines the trust and the utility of that particular information.
Tumal Orto – Pastoralist in Marsabit, Kenya
Sometimes we get full reports on what the intestine-readers, or astrologers or the event calculators say. Then we also listen to the meteorological department. They say this week is going to rain, from the intestine-readers. Then from the weatherman, they say it’s not going to rain. Here is the big conflict. But fortunately these days it’s like they are weighing each other. Sometimes conflict is affecting both the reporters.
Voiceover Narration
The question is not which knowledge counts more. It is how to support better decisions when signals are many and certainty is rare. The answers may lie in explicitly blending the diverse knowledge and information.
Abudho Umuro – Traditional weather forecaster (Star reader) in Marsabit, Kenya
We as specialists in star-reading, We want the scientists to join hands with such people. If they join hands and incorporate their skills, we will forge ahead.
Meshack Musyoki – Officer in charge of Marsabit Meteorological Station
During the participatory scenario planning that is the PSPs, where we engage different stakeholders. We involve the Indigenous traditional knowledge of weather. Most of the time they converge. But when it happens that there is divergence, we go by what the agency gives.
Wario Gamura– Traditional weather forecaster (Intestines Reader) in Marsabit, Kenya
Sometimes we and the Meteorological Department reach the same conclusions. At other times, one may be correct while the other is not. Sometimes both methods agree because they are observing the same conditions created by God.
George Tsitati – PhD Student at University of Edinburgh
Their indigenous knowledge is not a remnant thing of the past. It is an evolving, malleable, adaptable kind of knowledge system. And pastoralists are incorporating new technologies, new information sources, to make decisions.
Voiceover Narration
People have long looked to the stars for inspiration and guidance. Nowadays, satellites in the sky provide data for decisions. On the ground, pastoralists blend these and other knowledge sources, navigating uncertainty and making complex decisions.
The video above draws from PhD research in northern Kenya by George Tsitati. Watch an interview: Pastoralists blend multiple knowledges for anticipatory action in Northern Kenya
Read a policy brief on ‘Blending multiple knowledges for action: Weather and climate information services in pastoralist contexts’