Sondu clashes: Proxy wars between politicians

When we were growing up in the cosmopolitan Muhoroni sugar belt, it did not occur to us that our Kalenjin and Kikuyu neighbours were different from us. We thought we were the same.

Following the skirmishes along the borders of Kericho/Kisumu/Nyamira counties at Sondu, some of us who are children of both worlds did not know where to hide our faces. It’s like a child who finds him/herself between two feuding parents.

The Luo and their Kalenjin brothers are known to coexist peacefully as neighbours until politicians come along to incite them against each other. When we were growing up in the cosmopolitan Muhoroni sugar belt, it did not occur to us that our Kalenjin and Kikuyu neighbours were different from us.

We went dancing together at Boluma, a popular club then; seduced their girls as they seduced ours; shared literally every little thing we had as boys, and called one another brothers.

Actually, a good number of Luo boys went to high schools in the neighbouring Rift Valley as our Kalenjin and Kikuyu boys attended schools in Nyanza. It was a lot of fun mingling with boys of diverse cultures and getting to know them better. As they learnt the Luo language, we too learnt their languages.

Through that socialisation at home and in school, we became better Kenyans. To date, I love my alma mater which is situated in the Rift Valley, and try whenever I can to participate in mentorship and other programmes at the institution.

Some of the friendships we created during our teenage days have persisted to this day. They call us Omera, and we call them Krigit Kityo and Mundu (pronounced Modo).

It is a great feeling to love and to hold dear brothers and sisters from diverse ethnic backgrounds. It is genuine love that we have for one another. Whenever we call ourselves “cane cutters” it rings a bell in the ears of all of us for sugarcane farming was and remains the backbone of the Muhoroni economy.

At our various schools, we enthusiastically embraced and supported one another. My buddy Chris Rotich Soi tells me that at school, fellow students thought of me as very friendly, loving, talkative and full of laughter.

They thought similarly about many other boys from the Luo community. It didn’t occur to us that we were in a Kalenjin dominated school. All we do remember is that we loved the Kalenjin boys, and they loved us back unconditionally.

The Kalenjin boys were polite, friendly, hardworking, non-controversial and supportive of us. Each time we meet at school compound these days, and start reminiscing, the day-long rib-cracking laughter makes me long to be a boy one more time.

That is what I remember about my Kalenjin brothers. The caricaturing of Kalenjin as a violent community is not in my purview; to be honest, I cannot relate to such characterisation of my childhood friends as violent. I enjoyed every single minute that I spent in school among the Kalenjin.

I didn’t even have tuition fees, yet went through school without many worries, courtesy of one Philemon K Arap Rotich aka General, the Principal. He protected poor students like his own children.

In fact, in 2019 when we visited the school for a mentorship programme, the legendary Rotich narrated to us how the Teachers Service Commission deducted his salary to pay for the students he had kept in school without paying school fees. I cried like a baby.

What more can you expect from a people?

That is why every time someone tells me that Kalenjin are this and that, I wonder which Kalenjin they are talking about. The ones I know are super gentlemen; polite and loving to the hilt; supportive and kind.

By the time the Kalenjin/Luo border areas of Sondu, Awasi, Chemelil, Kopere, Songhor, Fort Tenan, Koru and Molem were experiencing their first major ethnic clashes in 1991, my generation had left the nests.

So, we didn’t quite watch the skirmishes from very close quarters. But even then, we didn’t think that the friendships we had nurtured for decades with our Kalenjin brothers were under threat because of the bad manners of politicians. We didn’t even believe that the skirmishes were perpetrated by regular Kalenjin people who we had come to consider as part of our bigger family. When the whole episode reared its ugly head one more time during the electoral cycle of 1997, our antennae were raised.

It was becoming apparent that this whole thing called tribal animosity was fueled by politics and politicians.

In 1991, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga was leading a group of “Young Turks” that was threatening Daniel Moi’s stranglehold on political power.

Jaramogi was Luo while Moi was of Kalenjin extraction. So, the Kalenjin youth must have been made to believe that Jaramogi was angling to take power from their man. Some people say the Kalenjin youth were indoctrinated into taking up machetes and other arms against their Luo neighbours for fear of losing power and privilege.

A similar thing is recurring at a time when Raila Odinga, a prominent Luo politician, is leading a huge onslaught against a regime led by President William Ruto, a Kalenjin.

The latest flare-ups followed Raila-led nationwide demonstrations against the Ruto government. Observers are saying that the Sondu attackers came from the Kalenjin side. It is, therefore, safer to state that it was history repeating itself.