A century ago the fierce Maasai warriors were expelled from Nairobi to make way for British colonists. Now the spear-wielding tribesmen are back on the streets of the Kenyan capital, not to make war but to find food for their starving cattle.
Kenya is struggling through its worst drought in living memory. Meadows and grassy plains all over the country have been turned into barren dustbowls by the catastrophic failure of seasonal rains for the third successive year.
The Maasai homelands south of Nairobi have been among the worst affected. Up to 40 per cent of cattle have died, according to a recent survey by a Dutch aid agency, although Maasai elders claim that twice that many have perished.
Faced with the destruction of their only source of income, desperate herders have been driving thousands of animals on to the last available green zone, central Nairobi.
The sight of Maasai warriors, decorated in colourful beads and bearing spears, has become commonplace in one of Africa's largest cities. Their search for grazing sometimes brings herders and their cattle down narrow streets bordered by skyscrapers.
"I suppose there are no traffic lights in the bush," one motorist wryly remarked while stuck in a cattle jam.
City dwellers relaxing in the central Uhuru Park find themselves sharing the grass with hundreds of cattle.
"This is not a good place for us to be," admitted one Maasai herder, Mr Simon Lemel, on a recent Sunday afternoon in the park. "But I's all that's left because of this drought."
Some people have clashed with the country visitors, particularly those who find their neat flowerbeds turned into fodder. But most Kenyans, themselves suffering from stringent water and electricity rationing, are tolerant of the mini-invasion.
"It's tough for everyone these days. Cattle are everything to these people. It's like their life savings," said Mr Peter Muya Mging, a vegetable-stall owner, as he guarded his produce from a passing herd.
Kenya is more usually associated with safaris than starvation, but many of its people are feeling the pinch of hunger.
Some four million are receiving emergency food rations, and as many as one child in four goes hungry in certain villages. One in 10 is severely malnourished, according to the United Nations.
"These communities are on the edge of disaster. Some farmers have planted seeds in recent weeks but they are withering already," said Ms Anne Holmes of Trocaire, which has made a £1 million appeal for Kenya and its drought-stricken neighbours in the Horn of Africa: Somalia, Ethiopia and Eritrea.
Maikona, a small town near the northern border with Ethiopia, is in the heart of one of the worst affected areas. The earth is as hard as rock from the oven-like, heat and "dust devils" - minitornadoes of hot air - spin through the main street.
Up to two-thirds of cattle have died, and herders have driven the remainder into Ethiopia, where there are greener pastures. Man and animal are fighting for survival.
One schoolboy was badly mauled when he tried to defend his donkey from marauding lions with only a spear.
"We're expecting the rains in December. If they don't come, even the little livestock we have will die. We fear the people will be next," said Mr Boru Dalacha of a local Catholic relief agency.
But the likelihood of a full-blown famine is receding. Western aid has been flowing in and the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP) has received pledges for 80 per cent of its $88.5 million relief programme, which runs until the end of December.
However, aid workers say it was a close-run thing. Some countries were slow to respond to appeals from a land with a notorious reputation for corruption.
Pilferage of foreign aid by provincial officials is "arguably the largest scandal of recent years," said one business commentator, Mr Robert Shaw.
Donor concerns about corruption were eventually allayed when a new system, which took responsibility for food distribution away from the government, was introduced.
The hard times are far from over, however. Some areas, particularly Nairobi, are starting to receive regular rain, but others are not.
Next year's maize crop will be down 36 per cent on 1999, itself a bad year.
And regardless of the weather the food crisis is expected to deepen in the pastoral communities which have seen their herds decimated by drought.