A personal and tragic encounter with Turkana pastoralists from the Omo Delta on the Ethiopian border, motivated us into funding construction of a fishing boat, thus enabling them an alternative livelihood as people caught in violence over grazing lands.
While filming in the extreme north of Kenya at the border with Ethiopia and Sudan, Michel Laplace-Toulouse, (Mwitu na Watu trustee) filmed a Turkana community who had been displaced from their grazing lands due to tribal clashes. Over several days the film crew became friends with the Turkana village. Some weeks later we read in the newspaper that 13 people were killed by the Merille tribe from Ethiopia http://www.nation.co.ke/News/Kenya+protests+Turkana+killings/-/1056/1216072/-/jqtjhaz/-/index.html . Amongst them was one of the women we had filmed. MnW immediately organised a collection of funds to help out the family and 120,000- Kenya Shillings were raised. The Area Chief, Daniel Lochomin, and Father Cosmas, the local respected Catholic Priest, assisted in building a boat to allow the family to start a business fishing on Lake Turkana.
Nairobi 2011