Surviving Drought And Development by Elliot Fratkin

Author:Elliot Fratkin [Fratkin, Elliot]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Social Science, Anthropology, General
ISBN: 9780205269976
Google: 7DN1AAAAMAAJ
Publisher: Allyn and Bacon
Published: 1998-01-15T03:47:51+00:00

Rederito's mission attracted volunteers from Italy including health workers and ecologiste, journalists and artists. The mission had an atmosphere of a utopian collective rather than a Catholic church. Redento was willing to experiment and try any program he felt would aid his project. He opened a community store to sell maizemeal, shoes, cloths, and beads at low cost (transportation paid by the church); he developed a mobile dispensary to make visits to distant settlements to bring sick Rendille to the Laisamis hospital.

Redento also established a Korr Committee consisting of a married man and woman from each local Rendille settlement who met twice a month to discuss mission projects including food distribution, water development, and interactions with the local Marsabit government. The committee radically departed from traditional "men only" discussions in Rendille, but the men accepted this as a form particular to the mission, if not necessarily one to repeat at home. Redento also trained 57 Rendille youth, teens who had completed several years of school, and who were placed as "catechists" in various Rendille settlements to preach the gospel and oversee distribution of relief foods.

Although Redento's methods were experimental and unorthodox compared to the scrubbed order and disciplined hierarchy of other Catholic missions, Redento's main business was nevertheless church business—the winning of converts to the Catholic faith. Redento baptized 250 Rendille, several of whom were selected to visit Pope Paul VI in Rome as part of a Kenyan delegation, creating an international press opportunity utilized by the Catholic Church and Redento himself.

Despite his good intentions and refreshing style of missionary work, Redento made little contribution to helping Rendille improve their livelihood or feed themselves. Although he installed an excellent network of catechists in the outlying settlements, Redento instituted no programs that would provide veterinary treatment of livestock, human vaccinations or other preventative medicines to children or pregnant mothers, or vocational education in livestock production to stock managers and owners. Despite the trucks owned and the roads constructed, there were no attempts to help Rendille market their livestock or form economic cooperatives, even though educated Rendille working in the mission stores urged the church to engage in this work.

Furthermore, despite his good intention, Redento had the same patronizing attitude towards Rendille that many other foreign missionaries held. Redento once told me,

"The Rendille are very primitive, they are really children. They look for today, for they have to eat. They are easy to 'get,' but they are easy to lose as well. The Boran are hard to get, but once you get them, they stick. They are much more individualistic than the Rendille."

Despite their easiness to "get," all was not smooth between Redento and the Rendille. In particular there were large struggles around Redento's control of the famine relief distribution. Many Rendille and Ariaal, particularly those from settlements not in Redento's orbit, accused Redento of hoarding famine-foods for his "own" Rendille. In fact, Redento had an ongoing arrangement with the overburdened Marsabit District relief personnel to use his truck and petrol to help distribute bags of maize, soy, and red beans stored in Marsabit town to Rendille at Korr.

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