Guerilla warfare against Moi: Forest life was no walk in the park

A guerilla fighter. [iStock Images] In the 1990s there was talk of a guerilla force being trained in Uganda to overthrow the Moi regime. Turns out it was not hot air. Oduor Ong'wen, then smarting from detention and wary of a second arrest and another stint in the coolers, fled to the neighbouring country for training in guerilla warfare. Told in detail for the first time, Ong'wen reveals life in the forest was not for the lily-livered It was about 6 o'clock in the morning when the convoy of military trucks came to a final stop. We disembarked from the trucks, now dressed in brand-new military fatigues. I cannot vividly remember what my expectations were about this exercise but I was not impressed. A short skinny guy appeared from one of the trucks parked about 20 metres ahead. He was just skin and bones, this man whom we came to develop a great liking for. His name was Kanyamozi. A hard face as if he was unconcerned about everything that was happening in this world, including us. He asked for the group leader and I stepped forward. He led me ahead to where his other colleagues, who were to be our instructors, stood-all having alighted from the truck at the front. There were seven trucks and three Land Rover Santana vans. The first and last trucks were lead and escort squads. The second truck carried the instructors who were going to train us for the duration of our being fashioned into combatants. We had been in the third truck while the fourth and fifth trucks had carried provisions- bags of maize flour, beans, salt and cooking utensils. The sixth truck had the tools and implements we would need for the entire duration of our training like machetes, spades, picks, and hoes as well as the firearms and ammunition that would be used for training. Kanyamozi took me to the Commandant. Afande James. Afande James, interrogated me for less than three minutes then told me to command a team to unload the provisions from the trucks. Command? This was not my kind of language. All the same, I went and told the group that we had been requested to unload the food trucks. "It's not a request, it's a command!" one of the instructors shouted authoritatively or with an authoritarian tone, should I say? As I climbed onto one of the trucks loaded with foodstuffs, I was once again summoned. This time, I was led to the only person in civilian dress. He had travelled in one of the Land Rover vehicles with a driver and two bodyguards. He very closely resembled Brigadier Jim Muhwezi. At first, I thought he was Jim. But he was slightly shorter and plumper. I almost asked him if he was Jim's brother. But we were forbidden from asking personal questions. He, too, did not ask about me- not even my name. He pulled me aside. Out of anybody's earshot. He told me that this was the end of his journey. He was travelling back. He continued. "This is your new home," he began. "Guerrilla life is tough. It's even tougher for a trainer guerrilla. But after a short while, you'll get used to it. You will actually enjoy it. But that will take some time. You are from now on in the hands of the instructor under the overall command of Afande James. These instructors are carefully selected. They are among the best in our ranks. They are not from the same unit but picked from different units. Some of them are meeting each other for the first time. I am confident that they will do a good job in turning you into soldiers." He checked his pockets, pulled out a piece of paper, and after studying for three or so minutes, returned it and resumed his engagement with me. He was the rank of either a colonel or lieutenant colonel since I heard the instructors refer to him as colonel on his subsequent visits. Colonel told me that none of the instructors knew who we were and where we were from. "The operative word here is concealment," he said and continued "Concealment is going to be an important part of your vocabulary throughout the training and after. You remember how we travelled here? We travel the country in the middle of the night. Do you know where you are? It is part of the concealment. Your group has to internalise this and practise it all the time. It is the key to survival in the world of guerrillas. From this moment you are not Kenyans. You are South Africans. This is what I have told your instructors. So, good luck, South African soldiers!" The colonel concluded and asked me to go with him to address the rest of the group. Warfare training in the Ugandan forest was not for the lily-livered. [IStock] Colonel and I moved to the place where the rest of the group was unloading the provisions. He dismissed the four instructors supervising the task and asked every member of our group to gather. He gave a short address. The colonel told the group that he had already briefed me on what was expected and would now return. It was as if the group knew who he was. With a few words of encouragement laced with tacit threats, he was about to say goodbye when all of a sudden, he picked onabsentee and asked him where his home was. "Bombo!" was Absentee's answer. With a smile, Colonel asked Absentee where Bombo was. No answer was forthcoming. Colonel told us to choose very carefully what lies we elected to peddle around so that we were not caught pants down as he had Absentee. "You are not Kenyans. You are not Ugandans either. I've had a discussion with your leader here and you'll be briefed. Enjoy your adventure." The colonel then made a few steps away from the group and called me. "Here!" he handed me a sealed brown envelope and instructed: "Keep it and open only when you are sure nobody is around, read and then destroy." I put the envelope in my pack, which I had just been given, and returned to the trucks that had been emptied. Everyone was sweating even though it was just about 8 o'clock in the morning. All ten vehicles were driven away in a direction opposite where we had come from. I later learnt that it was deliberate concealment so that they do not form a track. In this bush a road would form in a place where seven 10-tonne lorries and three Land Rovers had passed twice. We waited for close to one hour as our instructors held council. After their deliberations, they announced that we were to move. Summoned all energy Each person was carrying a bag of maize flour or beans. This was over and above the 20-kilogramme soldier pack that each of us had on his back. I tried lifting a sack of maize flour. I broke the wind. I stood erect, summoned all my energy and attempted to lift the sack. I released an even louder sound. I made several attempts with no success. Only sweat and foul air ensued. Before long, I looked like someone who had been rained on. My brand new combat shirt was drenched in my sweat. I looked around. Everybody was trying. Everybody was only succeeding in failing and sweating. The instructors had walked ahead and were shouting profanities at us. "What do you want to do? Do you want to dump the food there? You better carry that foodstuff and follow us, you brats! Hear, if you want to eat, you carry that food you little kabakas, princes, crybabies, good-for-nothing krutus!" Something started to burn inside me. Was I not the leader of this group? How could I stand my group and I being so demeaned? We needed to protest. I made to call the attention of the rest when I saw Richard walk out of a thicket with two poles. He went to Salim, laid the two poles side by side, and they carried their sacks in cooperation one after the other and laid them across the poles. They then put their packs on top of the sacks and lifted the two poles with their loads, each of them holding the ends of the poles-one in each hand. They began marching towards the instructors. Instantly, there was nobody to address and incite to protest. The comrades quickly paired up and followed the example set by Richard and Salim. The march into the brushes was on. Creativity. Innovativeness. Initiative. These, we were later told, are the hallmarks of guerrilla warfare. We all followed Richard's example and were on our way further into the shrubs and thickets. There and then, we had our first lesson as guerrillas- never say anything is impossible. There are always ways around any challenge. As we reached a spot where it was decided that we could set up camp, the shy rays of dawn were beginning to visit the savannah, piercing through the thickets with the usual gentle warmth that precedes a scorching day. It had rained a little the night before. As we marched on, it was as if we were sinking into the ground; it was not muddy, but the soil was squishy with water and dew-soaked grass on clay. When one slipped, one made a pit in the ground. We stopped every 50 or 80 metres. On a little slope of about 200 metres, we would be bogged down at about 150. We barely managed the weight, which kept sliding back; but we busted our scrota trying. We felt partially toughened up. Just a few weeks earlier, I had encouraged every member to read Omar Cabeza's Fire From the Mountain: The Making of a Sandinista. It is the personal story of a student leader (Omar Cabeza) conscripted into a Sandinistas guerrilla training to fight. Now we were living the experience of Cabeza. The instructors were marching in a single file. We, the recruits, were by the loads we were transporting. That was how we distinguished the column of instructors from the recruits. Otherwise, we were dressed in the same fatigues. I watched the column of instructors melt into the thick, seemingly impenetrable bush. I asked Ishmael who was my partner in ferrying the load of foodstuffs and soldier material, whether the instructors expected us to follow them there. It was impassable. But the instructors went one after the other. None was coming back out. And there was that jungle, impassable brush. It was like an elephantine obstacle. I did not expect an answer. I did not get any. Could it be possible these soldiers expected us to march in this impenetrable brush with the loads we had? Impossible, I thought. Then I saw Richard and Ishmael follow into the jungle, impassable brush; then the pair of Hassan and Rama. Ishmael and I followed suit. It was tough going but we pushed on, shoving aside tree branches along the way. The two pairs pair ahead of us-Rama and Hassan; Salim and Richard - had created a sort of passage with the brush all beaten ahead of us. We waded deep into the bush. So this is what it is, liberating the country from the Moi-Kanu mess! Anyway, the instructors led the way and we followed them into the brush and pushed on, deeper and deeper. We got tangled up, my cap was caught, I yanked it, then I tripped and fell down and got all wet. Ishmail almost followed suit. I quickly rose to my feet, cursed and retook hold of the precious poles that were an indispensable aid to our assurance of having food for the foreseeable future. We did not get into a thick forest, but still in the dense bush that was once part of an equatorial forest that had been cleared by human encroachment and was now in the process of regeneration. We had to wade through green, like when one enters the water and goes splashing through. Or like when you walk and go pushing through the wind; here we would go crashing through the green. Tiny threads of blood It took me a while after rising from the fall to notice that my hands were a mess of tiny threads of blood. Not bleeding much, but they were stained. I was wondering how much longer we had to dodge the undergrowth before we arrived at the camp. And whom would we find at the camp? I was now half covered in mud, soaked to the skin, my hands were totally numb and I was hungry. We tramped on through the mud. The load Ishmael and I were carrying was also taking its toll on our strength. As the sun rose higher in the sky, it was growing hotter and more hostile as it poured all its anger on the wannabe guerrillas. We marched in the trackless jungle for about three hours, dodging the vines of the undergrowth and the sagging tree branches. Acacia and other thorn trees pricked once in a while to remind us that the road to people's liberation might be paved with good intentions but not cabro blocks. Occasionally, two lizards would be interrupted from their lovemaking. Often, a flight of birds would be scared from the trees above the shrubs. But we had to march on because we were a people's soldiers. Precisely, we were seeking to be the people's soldiers. How far can you march in three hours? I did a mental calculation of how long it would take to walk from Limuru to Nairobi on the highway. But that was level and our path - as a matter of fact, there was no path- was rough and we were laden with foodstuff and soldier tools. So I figured we must have covered about 25 kilometres. The last meal we had was about 7 o'clock the previous evening. It was usual ugali and beans. It was now about noon. We had covered the journey by night with no sleep, and had now gone for about 16 hours without food; I had no idea, none of us could have guessed what awaited us in Bengazi. Had I known I would have stuffed myself a little more before we set off. I looked ahead, then sideways with the hope of catching a glimpse of some camp or settlement of some kind. All I could see, and constantly felt, was an expanse of scraggly trees, some with tiny leaves and others with broad leaves; and grasses of all kinds, everything green; as green as our military fatigues and packs. Or, put in the right context, our fatigues and packs as green as the jungle we were penetrating. Ishmael asked that we pause the march. "I want to answer a call nature," he said. "Long or short?" I asked Ishmael "Long." We put down the load we were transporting and Ishmail began to move away from where I stood next to the sack of maize flour and our soldier packs. "Where are you going?" asked one of the instructors who had been watching us unnoticed. "For a long call," Ishmail replied. "I see, you are going to shit. Do you know how to do it?" the instructor asked. What kind of a question was that? I wondered to myself. Do these people take us for infants? Ishmail did not respond. "Do you know how to do it?" The instructor asked once again. How?" "Take a machete, dig a hole, poo-poo in that hole, cover it with soil and then with leaves, so there's no trace." "And how do I wipe myself?" Ishmail asked. "With leaves. You wipe yourself with leaves. You take a handful of leaves and you wipe yourself with them." Off Ishmail went, dug a hole and did his thing, then grabbed a couple of leaves, covered his deposit and covered the place with grass so that nobody passing by would notice any human interference. This is how guerrillas were supposed to cover their tracks. Thereafter, we marched for another two minutes and entered deep inside the jungle. Our instructors, who had gone ahead of us, had decided on a site to set up camp. I was disappointed. All along I had the romantic notion of an established camp-a military academy -where we were going to be welcomed like Form One students joining the high school after passing their primary school examinations. The reality dawned on me, as on others, that we had to build 'Bengazi' ourselves - and in the middle of a thick bush isolated from any form of human civilization. Stronger Than Faith: My Journey in the Quest for Justice Genre: Autography Author: Oduor Ong'wen Publisher: Vita Books, 2022 Copyright 2022, Oduor Ong'wen Availability: Distributed by African Books Collective (ABC)

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