Forgotten squatters cry for help

They are emaciated, and despite the fact that it is lunch hour, there are no indications they will have any meal.

They sleep on twigs on bare hard ground. Those who might be lucky spread dry hides on their tiny manyattas made of twigs and polythene paper. Normally manyattas are made of cow dung and rafters.

These are the squalid conditions the Samburu in Laipikia East live in.

They are internally displaced persons after eviction from the Karbarak Farm initially owned by retired President Daniel arap Moi.

The eviction is the subject of a case at the Nyeri High Court.

The tiny hovels have no privacy. One can see the outside from the inside making life difficult when it rains.

There is no single school for their children or health centres for their sick. According to them, they throw their dead in the bushes nearby since they have nowhere to bury them.

The Nation team that accompanied officials from Kituo cha Sheria on a fact-finding mission came face-to-face with the horrible conditions the close to 3,000 families are living under at the makeshift camp, adjacent to the Kabarak Farm. The camp has been their home for the last six months.

Women and young children dominate the camp after the men took off to graze their animals or to urban areas to seek jobs.

Ms Nakuro Lemeruni, 30, and a mother of five children, looks twice her age.

“If, indeed, there is anything like problems, then we have faced it all. Only God has kept us going,” she summed up the predicament.

The nearest health centre is in Nanyuki Town, more than 50 kilometres away.

The nearest water source, is a dam, she says. It is about three kilometres away, and they share its water with domestic and wild animals from the various conservancies in the area. As a result, most of them are suffering from numerous waterborne diseases.

“When an animal dies or is killed here, the government comes here in a big way, yet we have not seen any one come to our rescue,” says 59-year-old Jackson Parasian, a father of 23 children from two wives.

They also claim APs manning demand money in return for their animals when they stray back to the farm from where they were evicted.

They showed the Nation a list of names indicating the amount of money they had paid to get back their animals. The squatters particularly accuse the Special Programmes ministry of neglecting them.

They further take exception to the silence by political leaders in the area.

When contacted, the minister, Ms Esther Murugi said no one had brought to the attention of her ministry the plight of the squatters.

She had, however, directed officers in her ministry to work with the Provincial Administration now that the government has scaled up the amount of food for the Laikipia region.

Area MP Mwangi Kiunjuri regretted the situation and appealed to the government to ensure the people are supplied with relief food.

Kituo cha Sheria programme officer Simon Nzioka says they need urgent attention as the majority of them are suffering from typhoid and pneumonia for lack of clean drinking water and good shelter.

Meanwhile, a group of squatters from Laikipia County have appealed to the government to intervene in a dispute over a 485-acre plot of land in the area.

More than 900 squatters say they were evicted from the land in 1989, and any attempts to return are met with resistance from police officers.

“Neither us (squatters) nor the developers are able to settle on the land,” said the chairman of the group Mr Godfrey Wanjohi.

The Kwa Mbuzi squatters claim they were allocated the land in 1963, following the country’s independence by the then Aberdares County Council, presently Laikipia County Council.

However, most institutions that were associated with the land have declared no interest in it, leaving the squatters baffled as to who is behind their woes. To ensure the owners of the land do not succeed in occupying it, the squatters have resisted attempts to take over the land.

At one time, they took away building stones that had been taken there by unknown people.

The squatters, however do not have any documents saying they were given the land through a presidential directive.

“During his development tour of Laikipia in 2006, President Kibaki directed that we be resettled in the land but that is yet to take place,” said Mr Wanjohi, displaying a compact disk containing the president’s speech during the tour.

Claiming they had occupied the land for several years, the squatters now want the government to amicably settle the matter.