Alberto Salza - El Molo Renaissance

On the Eastern shores of Lake Turkana, a small population of fishermen of Ethiopian origin, the El Molo, is on the verge of cultural, if not physical, extinction. In the Sunday Times, October 19, 1958, a picture was displayed: it portrayed all the El Molo being isolated by the pastoralists’ invasion (Samburu, Turkana and Rendille). Forty years after the picture, Michael Basili, an eminent member of the community, said: «Today my people have no reason to live. They prefer to lay down and die. They look as possessed by a death wish». Such is the gravity of the loss of one’s own culture, a fact that’s much more serious than the lack of food or schools (the two commodities we are most willing to provide). Today Basili is more optimistic, with a vision of what we could call El Molo Renaissance.

Together with the Gurapau Association (registered in Kenya), Basili launched a vast programme to the rehabilitation of El Molo dignity and culture. With the help of anthropologists and linguists (involved in our project), the El Molo community has already recovered 600 words of its language, lost since the Thirties. They are at work on the syntax. The El Molo material culture is used to draw alphabet cards for primary schools; ancient ceremonies are somehow “restored”, and so are some traditional costumes and arts. To fulfil their programme, the community itself started planning a Poly-functional Centre on the sacred island of Lorian, where the altars of the four main El Molo clans are found.

Alberto Salza works in Africa since years. He's publishing "El Molo Renaissance" at LiberFaber (October 2013), to relate his researches to save El Molo civilisation.
For all information and documents on El Molo project, see www.elmolo-renaissance.com