Where the living and dead fight for land

Peter Thatiah and Harold AyodoThanks to a ballooning population and lack of requisite laws, the line between real estate and gravesite is fast disappearing. Today, no one knows for sure whether the house they are living in, the school they take their children to or the hospital they visit is not on a gravesite. When news was published in the media last year about the gravesite that was cleared in Nkubu town and the bodies exhumed to make way for a market, many people in the area thought this was a new way to annoy them. Shockingly, some of the bodies exhumed were not yet decomposed.This was just an example of how far Kenyans are ready to go to quench their thirst for land. But while the action outraged the residents of Nkubu, this has become the norm rather than the exception in many parts of the country. It seems no parts of the country have been spared the campaign to drive out the dead in the name of creating land for real estate. Since early 1950s, when there was plenty of land in many areas, turning gravesites into real estate has not been a big deal in Kenya. By the time land demarcation exercises started in 1954, Kenya already boasted of many gravesites across the country. Whether by a stroke of ignorance or just sheer greed for land, the fact is that many of these gravesites were turned into real estate immediately, paving way for latter land prospectors to emulate them with abandon. An example is the land on which Machakos Teachers Training College was built in 1958. It was only in 2006 that the college administration realised that the college was built on a gravesite when workers digging around started bumping on one skeleton after the other. Everyone was horrified by the development, attracting the attention of the National Museums of Kenya and provincial administration. Unmarked gravesIndeed, as it later emerged, the site where the college is built was owned by the Prisons Department in the 1940s. The department’s gravesite was where the college stands today. When the college was built no one bothered to exhume the bodies. It did not matter that there was plenty of land in the adjacent areas either.In 2006 media reports confirmed that there were shocking number of incidences of bumping into skeletons whenever someone dug a pit at the prestigious Nyeri Golf Club. After the National Museums came in, it turned out that where the golf club stands today was the location where the colonial administration used to execute Mau Mau renegades in the 1950s. The place is scene to unknown number of mass graves.With many mass graves unmarked today across the country, especially those dug during the colonial times, there are real fears that many places in this country qualify as mass graves. Instructively, Kenyan communities viewed land as a cultural rather than an economic resource. Land also held deep religious connotations where taboos were expressly laid out. Building on a gravesite, except perhaps where witches were concerned, was absolutely out of the question. But it seemed even where taboos dictated so, crossing the barrier in the race to build housing estates and other amenities has not been a deterrence.In Embu, the Government Medical Training Centre is not only next to a mortuary, but it is also on top of a former gravesite. According to an officer who did not want to be named, the Embu MTC was built on an Islamic gravesite with the full knowledge of the contractors and the Government administration. A resident who knew the area from the 1950s says the gravesite was almost full when the college complex was put on top of it.Until 2001, there existed a gravesite next to Kisumu Polytechnic in Kisumu town. But that was before a private developer came in and discovered that there was an acute shortage of housing in the area. Today, the former gravesite is dotted with housing apartments where the middleclass of Kisumu jostle for space. The estate is aptly called Polyview, or better still Kaburini Estate. According to a former resident, some of the tenants moved out after realising their houses were on a gravesite. But new tenants move in as soon as they move out. The Municipality of Kisumu says the area was a public cemetery before it was degazetted, partitioned into 169 plots and allotted to individuals in 1999.The decision to transform it into a residential area was arrived at a full council meeting at the Town Hall in Kisumu. Most of the initial buyers who hurriedly disposed off their plots at throwaway prices today regret their acts.Cultural beliefsThe Director of Housing in the municipality, Patrick Nyamita says owners sold their one-eighth acre plots at Sh40,000 seven years ago but today their value is Sh800,000.Seasoned real estate agents say selling the plots to prospective developers was a nightmare following cultural beliefs amongst the natives."Private developers later bought the plots from individuals who benefited from allocations by the council," says Nyamita.Ounga Commercial Agencies Director, Eric Ounga says prospective investors in real estate initially avoided property in the area like the plague."Taboos and several other cultural beliefs kept clients away from the plots eight years ago…getting a plot there today is impossible," Ounga says.According to Luo culture and traditions, ancestors maintain links with their living relatives.Tales of ghosts doing the rounds before tenants occupied the first constructed houses caused a lot of fears among the locals.Prices of plots increased steadily over the past five years due to demand."Buyers brushed aside cultural beliefs after the first two private developers constructed homes and moved in with their families," Ounga says.Nyamita says private developers who wanted to cash in on the shortage of houses in the lakeside town erected flats on the once revered plots.What is surprising is the fact that not even people whose kin were buried in the former colonial cemetery have raised any complaints. "We (council) have not received complaints from people on interfering with their interred kith and kin as it was a public land under control of the municipality," he says.There was a construction explosion in 2004 when investors scrambled for property whose prices had skyrocketed more than ten fold as traditional beliefs took the back seat."More developers rushed for plots after tenants scrambled for units in the first constructed flats that charged low rents," Ounga explains.Rising demands for housesRent for the three bed-roomed houses that cost less than Sh10,000 per month a few years ago today go over Sh18,000 due to rising demand. Vivian Akumu who moved into a house in the area three years ago says she paid Sh13,5000 rent until she moved out recently."I paid Sh13,500 and the rent increased by Sh1,000 after I moved out…it was a nice house but I got a better one," Akumu says.Akumu says she heard tales of ghosts in the houses but did not see anything strange in the course of her stay."Those tales were there but nothing strange ever happened…I did not even hear of complaints from my neighbours," Akumu says.She moved into the house because she was attracted to its modern architectural design and availability of tap water, which is scarce in Kisumu.Property experts attribute the influx of high-rise residential houses in the area to its proximity to basic services and utilities.According to a publication on population for Vision 2030, the population of Kenya is set to double by then. Housing problems are also expected to double, thus increasing the chances of developers encroaching into more gravesites.

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