Pastoral identities - Memories, memorials, and imaginations in the postcoloniality of East Africa

Over the years a group of pastoralists in Eastern Kenya, the Waso Boorana, have successfully managed to negotiate their cultural identity within the political changes that have occurred in Kenya. Through the use of memory and the celebration of memorials, they have managed to provide flexible symbolic structures as to reimagine their identity and ethnicity. This paper explores such ethnographic paradigm of pastoral resilience through metaphors related to the symbolism and poetics of cultural diacritics and pastoral diaeresis.