In the heart of Samburu

In the first glimmers of the Kenyan morning light, Bilinda Straight wakes to a familiar scene: a home that another woman has built out of local wood, wild sisal and cow hides. Somewhere nearby, she hears a comforting melody of crackling firewood, women preparing tea and livestock stirring. For the past 32 years, Straight has embraced the daily rhythm of working with the Samburu people — accompanying women to fetch water, listening to songs in the evening, watching her children play alongside Samburu children and their livestock. What began as research has expanded into a lifelong bond, rooted in dedication, collaboration and an unwavering commitment to the people she now considers family.

Straight, professor of anthropology in the School of Environment, Geography and Sustainability, has spent her career working within Samburu communities, traditionally semi-nomadic pastoralists in northern Kenya. Beginning in 1989, her work covers various topics, from religion and warfare to climate change and health, but the string that ties it all together is the deep respect, love and community she’s found throughout her career.

 “I’ve been going to Samburu since I was 28 — I'm 60,” Straight says. “I love being with people that, for me, are part of my life. I identify this as part of my community, which may not sound like a very professional stance, but it’s unavoidable.

A WRITER’S JOURNEY 

Straight’s intention wasn’t always to be an anthropologist, but a writer. 

“My first written work was at the age of six,” she says. “And I was composing songs before I could read, little songs that were probably nonsense. But I went from that into literacy and writing.” 

Straight graduated with a bachelor’s in English literature and women’s studies from Lake Erie College. Still on the path to becoming a creative writer, Straight dipped into anthropology to travel and gain more experience for her creative writing. 

“The way I saw it throughout my entire childhood, my young adulthood and even through college, was that I was going to be a writer,” she says. “The idea of anthropology as a way to get away from myself and find other things to write about turned into me being devoted to anthropology — it carried me away.” 

While creative writing was still important to her — she eventually earned an M.F.A. in it from WMU — her career pivoted toward anthropology, culminating in a Ph.D. from the University of Michigan

In terms of the Samburu, this path wasn’t particularly linear either. In grad school, she was interested in the impacts of Christianity and religious conversion on Indigenous peoples. Based on master 's-level research, she had intended to study the Maasai, an Indigenous tribe in Tanzania. Yet as challenges arose, she shifted her focus to the Samburu — which turned out to be an even better fit. Compared to the Maasai, Samburu had seen less widespread Christian influence at the time of Straight’s work. What started as a change in plans transformed into decades of immersive research, friendships and lifelong commitment.

AN EVOLVING RESEARCH FOCUS 

Straight's dynamic career has covered a range of topics regarding various areas of Samburu life. As her work has evolved, it has followed an organic procession of interests that emerged through time with the Samburu. 

“Some of the most interesting things that have happened to me, in terms of defining my thought, have come from the ground, from Samburu launching into something when I think I’m talking about something else,” she says. “They launch into something that’s really meaningful to them, and it’s like ‘That's important.’ I listen to my research partners.”

 In Straight’s early career, her work focused on “traditional knowledge,” especially how the Samburu viewed personhood and consciousness and how it factored into their afterlife beliefs. “If you had asked me back in 2007 what were the defining things of my career, it would have been material culture, worldview, ideas about culture — that sort of thing,” she reflects. While working on her book, "Miracles and Extraordinary Experience in Northern Kenya," which explores Samburu belief and ideas about personhood, her attention was drawn towards warfare, as violence in the region escalated and directly impacted her Samburu research partners. 

“There’s a lot of facets to the things I’ve done on warfare, but the closest to my heart is on warfare and empathy,” she says. “I was very interested in the emotional lives of warriors.” She continues: “There is a clear understanding of the PTSD that our soldiers get in the United States, but the way in which warfare in Indigenous populations had been covered didn’t examine the lived experience of these warriors, or whether they even experience PTSD.” 

As her research on the various aspects of warfare deepened, it began to intersect with areas of health, such as the impact of war on Samburu psychological, emotional and physical health

And it just so happened that when Straight received funding to study this in 2008, she found herself amidst a devastating drought. 

“I personally was on the ground witnessing its impact on people I knew and their livestock,” Straight recalls. “There were carcasses literally littering the roadsides for miles, going up to water points.” 

For people like the Samburu, whose lives are heavily reliant on livestock, the drought’s effects were harrowing. Straight’s research expanded to climate change and health — the current focus of her work. These more recent projects have examined the long-term impacts of drought and environmental stressors through epigenetic analysis. By comparing siblings who were in utero during the drought to those born after, Straight is studying how environmental stressors induced by climate change affect long-term growth, development and resilience.

GIVING BACK 

Throughout Straight’s career, she has remained committed to giving back to the Samburu, an approach that defied academic norms early in her career. 

“In the 90s, human subjects research protocols were super small. Mine, I think was a paragraph,” Straight recalls. “For cultural anthropological research, it was considered to be such a low risk that there wasn’t much thought given to it.”

 Despite important ethical conversations regarding cultural anthropology research protocols not becoming prominent until later, Straight was committed to making an impact beyond just her academic research. One of the first steps she took was offering incentives — something discouraged in the field of cultural anthropology at that point in time. 

“I took a 10-month Fulbright and stretched it into two years by the way I was living. But even with that meager amount, I was able to give small incentives to recognize that I was taking up people’s time,” she says. 

She also prioritized listening to the needs of Samburu through community meetings, asking what she could do to benefit them. 

“One thing that came out very strongly in the remotest area that I worked was they wanted a road to make it easier to bring a mobile clinic,” Straight says. “I couldn’t get a road, but what I did succeed in getting was getting hand tools to build one.” While the road that would eventually lead to a mobile clinic was being hand built, Straight received medical instructions from a nearby Catholic hospital. With her basic training, she held clinic hours — dispensing medications, treating burns, fevers, and sometimes even malaria. 

“I remember I wrote in my journal at some point ‘Could clinic hours possibly start after we have our breakfast?’” she laughs.  

What she didn’t realize was that training Samburu research assistants also created a form of economic empowerment, as many of her former research assistants have since secured local leadership positions. Even after leaving Kenya, she still maintains her connections with the Samburu. In fact, Straight has been considered a member of several Samburu families, which has been deeply meaningful to her. 

“We would stay with several families who had more or less adopted me as their own, and I became known throughout the community as the daughter of that family, which is a part of kinship.” Straight says. “In Samburu, there's a ritual of greetings where you're asked whose daughter you are, both on your mother's and father's side, and they started referring to me as the daughter of that family.” 

Straight nurtures these close bonds even after returning to Kalamazoo — writing letters, sending money to contribute alongside other community members to schools and major hardship events — not because of her role as a researcher, but her role as a community member.

THE ROAD AHEAD 

Looking ahead, Straight is eager to continue her work with the Samburu. As her research continues to evolve, she is hopeful for the next phase of her career as she delves deeper into work with bioscience and public health. Her next step? Returning to Kenya to gather longitudinal data on the children previously studied in 2018 and 2022, further examining the impacts of environmental stressors on development. This time, Straight is especially excited to collaborate with community-based organizations as full-time research partners. These are grassroots efforts across Kenya where local Samburu join as official non-profits to address issues facing their community, such as health, young people’s livelihood needs and environmental risks.

 “I’m just geeked out about the idea that now it’s full on. Not only listening, not only meeting with communities and being driven by that, but formally partnering with an organization in the community,” Straight says. 

While funding for future projects is uncertain due to federal budget cuts, Straight’s commitment to the Samburu remains unwavering. Because for her, it’s not just about research anymore, it’s about returning home. 

“I’m excited about going back into communities with people that I really deeply care about and doing things that might be beneficial to that community, things that they value, things they want, and making a difference in that way,” Straight says.

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