Pokot, Turkana and neighbours gather for yet another meeting but still there is no peace

Pokot youth in Chemoril, Tiaty listen to their chief

NAIROBI: Its quarter to noon in Chemoril, East Pokot, and the shadows are growing short as the sun stands still overhead, pounding mercilessly.

A herd of well-fed goats charge from the bushes and make a beeline for a water pan juxtaposed between two others.

The cows, we are told, are grazing in the nearby Mondi Hill where the grass is, literally, greener.

On the other side of the water-pan, two girls of lower primary school age are taking a bath. And under the cover of overgrown cacti, a teenage warrior is naked. He, too, is splashing himself with water.

Also close by, eight-year-old Kamadewa Kolimuny is clutching a bow and arrow.

Beside him, teens Yopor Lokuta, Lemuyana Lomurolong and Ludumukwan Nanyang’a stand supported by their grazing sticks, surveying the area.

They are resplendent in their bright yellow and orange colours, fully adorned with necklaces, earrings, arm-bands and sharp-edge rings. These rings, I learn, are excellent nail clippers.

I do not know if I got their names right because none can write or read. Getting them to pronounce the names has been such a task that I do not see the need to torture them with the spellings.

“We only have one school around here, Chemoril Primary School, but it closes when these water pans dry up. Afterwards, it becomes hard to convince the pupils to go back to school,” remarks assistant chief Evelyn Kapkoyo, the first woman administrator in the area.

The three water sources, we learn, were dug during Martha Karua’s days as Water and Irrigation minister in the Narc Government. They have not been de-silted since.

Under the acacia trees, men and women are taking up positions. A side-meeting comprising elderly men is assembling as women belt out welcome songs. A National Cohesion and Integration Commission-sponsored peace and reconciliation team is visiting.

The Pokots are impatient. They long to tell their story, a story that is predictably laced with huge doses of victimhood at the mercy of Tugen, Ilchamus, Turkana and Samburu neighbours. But they have to be assured in the side-meeting that this mission is no ordinary talk-shop mission.

Rev Peter Chemaswet, the NCIC team leader, emerges from the mini-meeting all smiles, just as retired chief Kapkoyo, an on-the-ground facilitator, is rounding up women and youths into the main meeting area. The peace forum is about to begin.

Mzee Lochullo, a grey-haired man wearing an oversize blazer with a sharp tear on its back, takes over to bless the meeting as bored-looking men take their places on their traditional stools.

He breaks into a barely audible incantation.   Men only, women are quiet, respond in uniform deep bass monosyllabic chant-backs. It goes on and on until the old man screams, “Srill srill...” and they halt their chants: “Seh seh seh”.

Acting District Officer of Mondi Division Robert Kanyakira takes over. He has been acting for six years, neither being confirmed to the position nor sent a boss.

He sets the tone for the meeting by waxing lyrical about age-old complaints: “Our pleas are constant as the northern star. All these people want are roads, water, schools and power, and they will take off. But no one remembers the Pokot.”

SUFFER TWICE

The administrator blames the media for inciting local groups and thereby contributing the the conflict.

“This is the only water we have in this area and the dams are about to dry. Soon, our people will start moving more than 100 kilometres away to Kiserian in search of water, or 40 kilometres to Kapedo. In both places, area communities are waiting for them. The result is conflict.”

Tukong’ Ng’olekou rises to emphasise the eternal complaint: The Pokots in Baringo have been neglected and forsaken by both governments, their Tugen hosts and their neighbours.

“We are people like any other but we have been left in our natural state. We remain in the state of our creation. We suffer twice. We suffer as a people and we suffer when we see our livestock suffer. Under the sun, there’s no respite for a Pokot. He’s assailed from all directions,” Ng’olekou says.

He is from the troubled Nadome area. He has grown weary of the Pokot-Turkana feuds there. He is so fired up that he removes his weather-beaten hat to demonstrate how Pokots have become the subject of ridicule in the area because only they do not have Kenya Police Reservists or guns.

“They ridicule us. They laugh at us because we are like orphans. They target us because they know we have no fall back. And then the raids are rolled over and blamed on us. When the Tugens block the roads in Loruk, the Pokots are blamed,” he laments.

Speaker after speaker, the story is the same. The Turkanas began it all; they ride on firepower. The Tugens overreact even to small incidents. The Ilchamus take things too seriously, even small riverbank fights.

Chepkolel Francis, the only woman to speak at the meeting, raises a ceaseless plea, more like the Biblical Rachel: “Look at these women. Most of them are very young but they look old because of a poor diet.

“Wako nusu nusu. They neither look very old nor young. What did they do to deserve to be born in such a neglected place?”

She says scorpion and snake bites are wreaking havoc on their children. They either die before they get to Nginyang’ or on their referral to the hospital in Kabarnet.

She, like the many speakers before her, says she is tired of countless peace initiatives.

The women of Chemoril attest they have never seen their women representative since the election time. They feel slighted as they thought she would champion their cause.

IMPROVE PROSPECTS

The song is simple. Pokots are crying for schools, water, roads and health facilities. They feel these would improve prospects for peace in their area. They are not trading development for peace. They are demanding for what is rightfully theirs.

But Chemaswet was not going to let them have their cake and eat it. He made it plain to them: “We cannot bring you peace. We only came to remind you about peace. We are not talking about peace to trees. You can see they are keeping their peace.”

After all the talk in Chemoril, we boarded our cars and left for the Paka/Kadingding areas in the outlying mountains on a similar mission.

As the dust rises behind our speeding vehicles, the morans dash to pick the water bottles left behind as we add to the statistics of those who have visited the area on a peace mission.