The hair raising drive to deadly Baragoi area,Kenya

By Alex Kiprotich

Fear rushed out in palpable waves as silence engulfed the occupants of the vehicle. We were three and the only sound that gushed through was that of the vehicle tires hitting rock and pebble.

We were on our own and only God was the protector. We had after all been assured that leaving Maralal at 4am was safe because bandits’ hours have always been daytime — between 8am and 5pm.

Whatever was going through our minds was discernible from the eyes. The driver’s were fixed on the road while stealing glances sideways.

Mine were scanning the horizon and so were those of my colleague Saitoti.

And as I was thinking what could be going through my colleagues’ minds, all of a sudden, a rabbit emerged from the shrubs. In between screeching brakes, our driver, Mengich, probably to ease tension, said it is a sign of good omen.

“If it were a dik dik, it would be a bad omen. There will be no bandits to lay ambush on us,” he said while looking at me, and quickly shifted his eyes back so as not to hit a huge rock in the middle of the road.

Fun in killing

I pretend to agree with him but in real sense, I was in deep thought and whether the journey was necessary risking not only limb and leg but also life. All four people I had talked to about the journey to Baragoi had one message — not safe! One even had the audacity to declare an imminent vacancy in our office if true we were going to make the journey.

The 105km route to Baragoi is bandit country where Samburu, Turkana and Pokot bandits waylay motorists who they rob or just fire at to test their illegal weapons. Two weeks prior to our visit they had struck at motorists 10 times.

Only months ago they stopped a vehicle and robbed the occupants and shot them as only a firing squad would do. It did not matter that the travellers surrendered everything.

“Most times the bandits don’t just rob, they derive fun in killing, especially those who have not used their guns for some time,” a police officer at Maralal’s County Commissioner’s office says when I seek to know what should be the best way of dealing with them should the unfortunate thing happen. That was before we commenced our journey.

Spine-jarring ride

“It is better to hand over everything in your possession if attacked, but you can’t be assured they will spare you,” said the officer.

These thoughts rang through my mind as the driver tried to draw me into his superstitions. I fought off the bad thoughts going through my mind. I tried to recall Sunday school verses from memory, in vain. Nor could I recall any childhood story. The fear was overwhelming.

I resorted to counting animals we came across. By the time I had counted five rabbits, a jackal and two leopards. We were somewhere between Morijjo and Marti areas. It is one of the most dangerous spots on the stretch.

It is the bandits’ popular spot given the terrain. With the rugged and rocky terrain, no driver can do more than 20km an hour. Noticing the driver was going at snail pace, Saitoti, now in a panic mode, called on the driver to just keep moving faster.

And as if it was a conspiracy of a sort, the car radio came alive-picking the only signal — KBC radio.

The song it belted seemed a premonition of what lay ahead.

It was TOK’s footprints song — “Hurry up and come back, was the last thing she said to her son the day his life was taken, she didn’t know he wouldn’t come back he died from the bullet of a gun and now her little boy is gone.”

Luckily, the frequency went off as quickly as it had delivered its message. By then we were approaching Jarda Village, which was wiped out by raiders in 1996 and since then nobody inhabits the place.

A school, church and borehole lay desolate from a distance. Before bandits flattened the manyattas and rode roughshod through the village, Turkanas inhabited the area.

“It was massacre of a scale only compared to what the cattle rustlers did to the police at Suguta Valley last November,” offered Saitoti.

It was approaching daybreak, and still we had not encountered any vehicle or person on the route, testament that marauding bandits rule the region.

This was in contrast with the ride from Rumuruti to Maralal.

Though the road was pathetic, motorists enjoy some of the most incredible scenery. One is treated to herds of zebra running across the rugged road while young shepherds tend livestock.

Occasionally, motorists would stop for short call or just take a break from the spine-jarring ride before taking off again.

But in Baragoi, no vehicle should proceed without police escort and no motorist should make a stop at any spot along the stretch.

Not even the red-robed herders and their livestock can be spotted along the way. The region is unsafe.

Cattle raiders

At Soito Kokoyo, the eye is treated to large swathes of unoccupied land. It is a breathtaking grandeur, but nobody dare occupy the arable land. The lush green fields are used by fleeing cattle raiders for pasture, as they drive their stolen animals towards Suguta Valley.

One is able to see clearly the heights of the rugged Mount Nyiro Forest to the depths of the “valley of death” and the adjacent Terter and Loshotom plains, where police officers were massacred by the cattle raiders.

The raiders have nothing to fear for, for decades, they have successfully driven stolen livestock into the three dreaded regions from which they can neutralise even the most feared squad in the police service.

Even the police deployed following the November massacre just while their time in the camps and do not dare follow the raiders when they strike.

“They are at the camps eating their food rations and we have been left alone,” said Baragoi Chief Thomas Lentoimaga.

After we completed the journey, my colleagues sighed with relief with Saitoti confessing that he called his wife to tell her this could as well be the last phone call.

The road is a distinctive natural death trap. It is the journey people of Maralal and Baragoi have to live  daily — nobody knows for how long because it is only Government that can come to their help.

For now, death lurks around the expansive landscape and stalks them all the time.