During the period of violent social upheaval that marked Rwanda's revolution in 1959 and its independence from colonial rule in 1962, and later, during the 1994 genocide, many Banyarwanda fled the country seeking a safe haven.1 Among those who chose exile were cattle keepers who had tended their herds for generations throughout Rwanda. Some had to leave everything behind. Others—especially those living in the northeastern savanna, then known as Mutara and now as Nyagatare District—did not have to go far; they moved just across the border with their cattle into the nearby Ankole area of southwest Uganda. There, among Banyankole cattle keepers, whose history, culture, and daily practices were similar to theirs, they were able to resume their way of life and receive a degree of comfort from their interaction with other herders.
For the exiles, there was a continuity of landscape: a region of widely spaced, low, rounded...