THE ADVANCE OF CAPITALISM

"With the stroke of a pen, the last of Kenya's honey hunters may soon be homeless. Since time immemorial, the Ogiek have been Kenya's traditional forest dwellers. They have stalked antelope with homemade bows, made medicine from leaves and trapped bees to produce honey, the golden elixir of the woods. They have struggled to survive the press of modernity, and many times they have been persecuted, driven from their forests and belittled as "dorobo," a word meaning roughly people with no cattle. Somehow, they have always managed to survive. Now, though, the little-known Ogiek, among East Africa's last bona fide hunters and gatherers, face their gravest test yet. The Kenyan government is gearing up to evict tens of thousands of settlers, illegal or not, from the Mau Forest, the Ogiek's ancestral home and a critical water source for this entire country." (New York Times, 15 November) RD