Hard living in faraway village where guns and cattle mean everything to the local people

In Baringo East — some say Pokot East — next to the Nginyang’ livestock market, there’s a big tree with a wide girth and a wider shade, the Oron tree. It is at this spot that political meetings are held. Under this tree, MPs and senators came face to face with warriors and elders living a tough life in a vicious cycle of ignorance and poverty.

The majority of the villagers in this area inhabited by the Pokot community do not understand Kiswahili. In public meetings, there has to be a translator. They have not gone to school, there are no schools to speak of. They say they feel marginalised: They have no one in the county leadership positions.

If you ask area MP Asman Kamama, in whose Tiaty Constituency the market falls, the problem is a result of a cocktail of issues; years of State neglect, outdated cultural practices and a never-ending conflict. Calling it a cursed land may look extreme, but it is closer to the truth.

“People get killed in their hundreds, but life goes on as if nothing had happened. Nobody bothers,” Kamama told The Standard on Sunday on the sidelines of a peace meeting of the parliamentary committee on National Cohesion and Equal Opportunity.

Every leader in the area, from the retired chief to the Deputy County Commissioner, or from the Member of the County Assembly (MCA) to the MP, know the solution is security, education and jobs... in that order.

The frail-looking retired chief Solomon Kapkoyo is upset that the rest of the country expects civility from a population that is still in the pre-independence era.

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“We’re fighting to keep our animals. We didn’t go to school. Jobs, good jobs even in the county assembly, require papers. We have none. So the youth do what they do best: raid for cattle,” said Kapkoyo.

The raids have made their neighbours to the north, the Tugen, close the road so that the animals the Pokot raiders steal do not get to the market in Nakuru. Lorries ferrying goats, cows and sheep cannot go through Marigat, they have to go round through Tot on the other end.

But when you ask the leaders to pinpoint the suspects, they say “the rotten ones are the drunkards; the government knows them and how to deal with them”. That government sat there and listened. The policemen and their bosses; the administrators; and even the lawmakers.

Kamama is the chairman of the House Committee on Administration and National Security, but when “his people” are always being cited as the “notorious cattle rustlers” it doesn’t gel.

“How can Kamama speak about security elsewhere in the country when his house is on fire?” posed Johnson Sakaja, the chair of the parliamentary team on National Cohesion.

Sakaja and MPs Zipporah Kering (Nandi), Agnes Zani (nominated), Mohammed Elmi (Tarbaj), Henry ole Ndiema (Trans Nzoia), Memusi Kanchorry (Kajiado Central), Isaac Melly (Uasin Gishu) and Grace Kipchoim (Baringo North) know that Kamama is king in that little kingdom in Baringo County.

So when they had a chance to talk to the people directly, they had to remind them that Kamama held sway in Nairobi.

“Kamama is the head of security in Parliament. He handles security for all things and places in this country. Why are you letting him down by fighting? Please stop shaming him,” pleaded Kering.

But to the people in Nginyang’, Loruk and Tiaty, it is not their business to fight insecurity. They need Kenya Police Reservists (KPRs).

“The call for KPRs is now a song. If you don’t send reservists, you’ll be wasting our time,” said the member of Baringo County Assembly Fredrick Kibet. That request has been denied for the last eight years, but with the killings in Kapedo, Nadome and Kasarani in the past year, it appears the government has agreed to budge. The first group is expected in September.

Kipchoim and Melly told the warriors to down their tools so as to get development projects moving. Elmi, who helped drill dams in the region when he was Cabinet Minister for northern Kenya to encourage the pastoralists to shift to farming, was also emphatic that when the guns go silent, the region can get schools and competent teachers.

“Aren’t you ashamed that while the rest of the world is thinking about the stock market, you are here thinking about stock theft?” posed Kipchoim, a Tugen from the neighbouring community.

But when a local politician Omar Kokat and MCA Kibet from Loiyamorock Ward in Tiaty spoke, they said when their people move to look for pasture in the land of the Tugen, they are usually turned away.
“People look at the Pokot as very bad people, but you just need to understand us. Our neighbours have to allow us to graze on their land. We just want the pasture” said Omar, a former Jubilee candidate for the County Assembly. The residents watched as Daniel Kurui, the deputy county commissioner for Baringo East, pleaded with the youth and the elders of the Pokot community to register their guns. It is the government’s way of trying to find out where the illicit guns used to commit crimes are kept, so that when the time for disarmament comes, they have an easy time.

But for Kamama, his people have to be told in no-uncertain terms that the time had come for them to drop their guns or else they will be left behind. It looks impossible, but the optimism is there.

“When I heard that Pokot morans shared a manyatta with their Turkana counterparts, something that was considered abominable a few years ago, I get optimistic that things will change,” said Kamama.