East Africa affects the imagination like few other places on earth. Just north of the Equator, where the Great Rift Valley provides some of the most spectacular scenery in Kenya, lies Samburuland. Isolated and inhospitable, subject to a fierce climate, it is home to a race of proud, tough, semi-nomadic pastoralists. The Samburu, akin to the more visible and better-known Maasai to the south, are traditionalists in a world of change. The rule of the elders, the guidance of an astrologer/sage, the force of custom and--as a last resort--the power of a curse maintain law and order within the tribe.