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Paper short abstract:

Rivers embody multiple realities at any one time and the spaces they move through can be classed as liminal. Rivers are conduits for One Health issues: in this liminal space the river can be a creator and a destroyer, a cleanser and polluter. This paper explores a Kenyan river using ethnography.

Paper long abstract:

The rivers which flow through Ongata Rongai, Kenya, traverse different environments and contains multiple states of being along their course: urban, peri-urban, rural and national reserve. Many different activities happen within this space: subsistence and commercial farming, livestock keeping, hotels, shops, businesses, factories, domestic life, tourism, washing, laundry, fishing and swimming. Different people live and work in these spaces too: rich and poor, indigenous and migrant. There are multiple implications for One Health within this liminal context along the river - liminal in the sense that the space between the river and the land is fluid, mutable and fluctuating depending on the season, and contains multiple realities: the river can be life-giving, life-taking; cleansing and polluting; creating and destroying. It can provide water to farms; it can wash away crops and land. It can quench the thirst of humans and livestock; it can poison and cause sickness. Drawing on the stories of people living and working alongside the Mbagathi and Kandisi Rivers, I explore what a journey through this liminal space tells us about urban and rural lives, how these interact and intersect and how this affects the health of humans, livestock and wildlife living in this liminal zone. By utilising multiple voices and media to narrate the life of the river, as well as walking as ethnographic practice, I aim to shed light on the meanings and practices influencing One Health at the heart of these riparian communities, which are currently sparse in existing literature.