Every day, dozens of young men get into buses from different parts of the country and willingly walk into an uncertain future. Banking on nothing but hope and good luck, they disappear into the brown hills of Taita Taveta, trusting that the work of their hands will, at the end, justify their move. Kenya’s mining industry employs thousands of people, at least officially. But those in the sector say the number could be much higher because of the lose regulations around the sector. And these undocumented workers are the ones who bear the harshest of conditions, trying to pry lose earth’s treasures.
People have struck it rich, moving from grass to grace in an instant. While others have toiled for decades, some to their deaths before striking it rich.
“It’s all about luck,” Gabriel Mcharo says. “Some have it, others don’t.”
In the safety of his office in the middle of Voi town, the aura of success that hangs around him makes one think of all the good things that come with the area’s most precious stone, Tsavorite. But outside, in the sweltering heat and inside his ten year off road vehicle, Philip Syengo knows of the darker side of the trade. The plastic dashboard of his vehicle has two holes, small enough to fit a ballpoint pen.
“If I hadn’t moved, they would have taken off my head,” Syengo says.
Late last year, on his way from Mombasa after attending a court case between him and former MP Calist Mwatela, he noticed a car trailing him as he slowed down to get into Voi town. Syengo says he lowered his window.
“The other driver also lowered his window and I could see he was wearing clothes similar to those worn by traffic policemen. I slowed down, they did too. I accelerated and they did too.”
Those following him were in a black Toyota Prado with government plates.
Flagged him down
After losing them at around Kibwezi, he diverted into a police station and waited for them to pass. After some 20 minutes, he says, the Prado sped past. After some 20 minutes he proceeded. But he didn’t get far, at Sultan Hamud, he saw the black car parked by the roadside. Traffic was thin. The man dressed as a policeman complete with a reflector jacket and cap moved almost to the middle of the road and flagged him down.
“They introduced themselves as police officers and asked for my driving licence. A second man ordered me to open the passenger door before he proceeded to get into the passenger side.”
According to Syengo, and a statement that he was later to file in Donholm police station, a third person, a woman, got out of the car and into his. She sat right behind Syengo, who was still on the driver’s seat.
“They told me to proceed towards Nairobi. That is when I realised they might not have been police officers,” he says. He turned the wheel of his car sharply hoping to cause an accident but before he could execute his plan, he felt something cold at the back of his head.
“I knew at once that that was a gun. As I tried to bring the vehicle back to the road, the lady at the back must have thought I was making another attempt at causing an accident. She fired her gun. Twice. Luckily my head had bobbed to the side and the bullets missed me,” Syengo said.
His family too has not been spared the drama that he believes is as a result of him fighting off cartels from Bridges Mining Limited mining concessions.
In 2015, Syengo’s daughter was called by her teachers from a group of friends she was hanging out with as they said their goodbyes for the holidays. School was out.
His father, the teacher said, had sent a couple of friends to pick her up from school and take her home.
Trusting her teacher, she got into a waiting car and headed to what she thought was a quick reunion with her family. Her parents saw her three days later, shaken and confused. All she could say was that she was taken captive by a couple who kept asking her what her address was, and who, apart from her family lived with them.
Then they dropped her off. At the time, the Syengos were living in Donholm. He was already receiving death threats by that time. He read the omens and made a quick decision to move house.
The following day, new occupants moved in. And at around midnight, two gentlemen walked up to the door and asked for him. After being told that the man of the house was not Syengo and he was not in, the two strangers drew out a gun and shot the lady of the house in the head at point blank range. She died on the spot.
In a separate interview, Syengo says he believes that bullet was meant from him. “Those were the thoughts that were going on in my mind when I got picked up off the Mombasa- Nairobi highway. I knew these were people willing to kill,” he says.
As they drove towards Nairobi, they told Syengo that all they wanted was to be taken to Judith Bridges’ house. Bridges is a director of Bridges Exploration Limited that owns the mining concession that Syengo works for. Her husband was brutally murdered in 2009.
By this time, they had already dispossessed Syengo, a licensed firearm holder, of his gun. When they realised they couldn’t get anything off him, they drove him around for hours, and eventually abandoning him in a thicket in Ruai.
Money for freedom
He recorded a statement at Nairobi’s Donholm police station and reported the loss of his firearm. But to date, he says, his life remains in danger.
Syengo believes those fighting for the control of the mines have links with law enforcement agencies. Some of the people who kidnapped him from Voi had been previously arrested. But even after him positively identifying them, they disappeared from the police station.
“I have been told money exchanged hands for their freedom. We got them and took them to Hardy Police Station. The next day they had vanished,” he says.
He believes their luck will not hold for much longer and eventually, the green gold in their mining concessions, such as those that have helped Mcharo turn his life around, will be up for grabs.
