Nairobi, July 20 -- Every weekend, most Kenyans gather around the fire or in social places to partake in nyama choma. The sizzle of goat meat at roadside joints, the celebration platters in popular clubs and roadside joints, and the diplomacy or business deal conducted over a shared leg of lamb has become our national ritual.

Yet almost no one at the table asks where the animal came from.

The answer is uncomfortable: it walked hundreds of kilometres from the drylands, raised by a herder whose child studies under a tree, whose savings died in the last drought and whose homeland has been treated as an afterthought by every government since the colonial one drew a line around it and called it a 'closed district.' Kenya loves the meat but h...