The Singing Wells of the Dry Riverbed

“Three hundred cattle in one riverbed and every animal walks to the right well, because it knows the voice.”

A dawn at the hand-dug wells where Samburu families sing their cattle to water — and the elephants wait their turn.

In the last weeks before the rains, the river is sand. The families dig down through it, sometimes five metres, and stand in a human chain passing water up in leather and plastic buckets. Each family has its own song. The cattle know it: a herd will separate from three hundred other animals and come to its own well because it recognises the voices. When the herds have drunk, the family withdraws, and by mid-morning the elephants that have been standing a kilometre off in the bush come in and take the same water. Nobody manages this. It is simply an old arrangement between people and animals over a scarce thing. You will be four guests at most, standing where the elders place you, invited by the family and hosted through a Samburu liaison. This is not a performance and the wells are not dug for you; the invitation exists because the community decided that a small number of outsiders witnessing it, and paying into the water committee, is worth the intrusion.