Sign up for free

Newsletters

Once a month
get new photos
and expert tips.

Photography
Main Photo Galleries Wallpapers Photo of the Day Photographers Photo Tips Buy Prints

Rendille Woman, Kenya, 1998

Western relief agencies' boxes and sacks sheath a traditional Rendille shelter in a Kenyan town. In the 1970s the camel-herding Rendille tribe began feeling pressures from the United Nations and the Kenyan government to settle and enter a cash economy. In the wake of severe drought and famine, thousands of Rendille flocked to relief camps and became largely dependent upon mission agency handouts.

(Text adapted from "Vanishing Cultures," August 1999, National Geographic magazine)

(Photograph shot on assignment for, but not published in, "Vanishing Cultures," August 1999, National Geographic magazine)

Photograph by Maria Stenzel