[1] Lamphear (1988) noted that chronological reckonings based on the Turkana age-set system suggested a date in the late eighteenth or early nineteenth centuries.
[5] The various narratives, records and reports thus point to a long dry period starting about 1800 seemingly peaking with an intensely arid time during the mid-1830s.
[6] There are a number of oral traditions from various communities across much of southern Africa that point to the region having experienced declining rainfall levels from about 1800 to about 1830.
The traveler often meets with houses and farms that have been deserted by their owners on account of a permanent failure in the supply of water which they once enjoyed.
Other Chemwalin were forced to abandon their highland abodes and fled eastwards where they ran into even drier conditions and a great many died.