Kenya’s Wild North

In April the Kenya Tourism Board organised a tour of northern Kenya and the vast Suguta valley was an instant hit with the lucky few went, what with the soaring temperatures, breath-taking views, and a bit of danger.

That element of danger was proven just a few kilometres to Baragoi on the Maralal-Loiyangalani road when a group of young men suddenly appeared from behind trees and rocks, ready to attack the convoy.

Driver Daniel Kyalo of GameTrackers Tours and Safaris stopped his 4x4 to salute them, but he was ignored.

A reporter tried to speak to one of the young men, but he went mute when one of the youths pointed an AK-47 rifle at him.

“Ni sisi (it is us),” Rufus, another driver who has plied this road for more than two decades, intervened. However, it took the intercession of elders — who must have been watching the encounter from afar — for the young men to leave the tourists alone.

Welcome to Baragoi, the Waterloo of the Kenya Police Service. It is here that bandits shot dead close to 50 police officers last week and injured many others. Some are still missing.

The officers were pursuing Turkana rustlers to recover cattle they had stolen from the Samburu.

In this part of Kenya, raids and counter-raids are part of the violent pastoralist economy, as is clear in a letter being circulated online from a Nairobi lawyer to a senior government official. It claims that the Turkana recently lost hundreds of camels to Samburu raiders.

Although the elders exercise the authority here, gun-toting young men own Suguta Valley.

The strategic passage from Maralal to Loiyangalani is among the most dangerous terrains in Kenya. There is hardly any safe place in Suguta Valley, where much of Baragoi lies.  Nearly all police units that have been deployed in the area have at one time or another suffered casualties.

You reach this place after a treacherous journey. There are no flights and you will be lucky if you get a matatu any time before 2pm headed to Baragoi, or past that time when leaving Baragoi.

Baragoi trading centre is located along the Nyahururu-Rumuruti-Maralal-Baragoi-Loiyangalani road.  The tarmac ends at Rumuruti and from there you will have to risk getting stuck in the mud when it rains and contending with potholes and dust in the dry season. Not to mention the bandits.

From Maralal, you drive up the Polo escarpment and then down to Morijo, a small trading centre in Baragoi District that is one of the highest points of the Rift Valley escarpment.

From Morijo, you descend to Marit and then to Baragoi, areas that are part of Suguta Valley.

The stretch of road that slices through Baragoi separates the rival Turkana and Samburu. Baragoi sits 37 kilometres north of Marit.

This is a blistering, dusty and unforgiving land. The only river that flows through the town is dry most of the year. Its waters tumble down from the Samburu Hills and Ndoto Mountains.

 Baragoi is the last stop for matatus and for any movement farther, you will have to rely on lorries or vehicles belonging to missionaries. It also marks the end of the forbidding Elbarta plains.

Baragoi is believed to have been first settled in the 1930s and boasts storey buildings, lodgings, eateries, and numerous beer houses to service its thriving livestock trade merchants, particularly the Turkana and the Samburu.

Most of the businesses here are owned by other communities as the pastoralists prefer pastoralism. The trading centre marks the invisible boundary between Samburu and Turkana grazing lands.

In the town’s livestock market, you meet old men in ostrich plume head gear playing the popular game of mbau while waiting to sell or buy livestock.

Other than earning a living from livestock, a number of the well-off residents made their money as peacekeepers in the 900-strong Kenyan contingent in the former Yugoslavia in 1994.  This is why there is a Bosnia Wines and Spirits tavern in this trading centre.

Business is brisk in the town. You can eat at Zaire Hotel, Flora Hotel, al-Mukaram, or Wid-Wid Hotel, establishments mostly owned by Somali business people.

Despite growing business, violence and banditry lurk and numerous peace initiatives in the region are yet to succeed.

“I am in Baragoi in the Northern part of Kenya. Being a war zone, Baragoi shares some similarities with the Democratic Republic of Congo, where I run a mission.

The difference is that in Baragoi, there are no mineral resources like in Congo. Since 1996, cattle rustling between the Samburu, Turkana, and Pokot tribes have affected the Baragoi area,” Fr Daniel Lorunguiya, a Kenyan Consolata missionary who works in the DRC, once wrote.

“This has caused a lot of suffering among the people: deaths, increased number of orphaned children, poverty, rise in school dropouts, increased number of (teenage) mothers, increased number of displaced people, and spread of contagious diseases due to overcrowding of people in one area,” he further writes.

In January, residents of Bendera village in Baragoi Division of Samburu North District complained that the Rapid Deployment Unit of the Kenya Police Service used excessive force during a disarmament mission in response to the killing of policeman Lesas Pendasin and a Standard Seven pupil.

Constable Pendasin was killed outside Baragoi town while on patrol following an upsurge in banditry in the area.

“On the night of December 21, 2011, bandits came into town and shot in the air. We believe they wanted to steal livestock,” district officer David Kitheka told the Nation early this year.

He said that a week later, on December 28, Turkana and Samburu raiders exchanged fire during the day in the town, killing a Samburu herdsboy, 16-year-old Nkilei Lekupuny.

They also drove away his 43 sheep and goats. Constable Pendasin was shot the next day.

Politician Peter Lengees once told Parliament that between 1996 and 1997, Baragoi and Nyiro divisions lost more than 25,000 head of cattle, 1,000 goats and sheep, 6,000 donkeys, 5,000 camels, and a number of human lives to rustling.

In the book The Rough Guide to Kenya 7, Richard Trillo writes that “once in the Suguta Valley, stolen cattle are difficult to retrieve due to the valley’s exceptionally high temperature (up to 60C), lack of water, and the rough terrain.”

The Suguta Valley is one of the driest, most remote, and hottest places in Kenya. The valley is home to Lake Logipi and is separated from Lake Turkana by the Barrier volcano, Mount Nyiro,  and Losiolo Escarpment to the east and the Namarunu volcano, which extends into the valley from the western wall.

Lake Logipi is home to saline hot springs that discharge on its northern shorelines and at Cathedral Rocks near its southern limit, helping to maintain water at times of extreme aridity.

Mount Nyiro lies east of Suguta Valley and gives a reprieve to the blazing valley with its forest and cooler temperatures.

During the rainy season, water from Suguta River flows northward along the Suguta Valley, periodically forming a temporary lake known as Lake Alablab that joins Lake Logipi.

Getting deep into Suguta Valley is a journey to hell. The farther you venture into the valley, the hotter it becomes. Grass turns into dry prickles and singular lonely trees that look like ghosts and reddish stones replace the soil.

The scenery, though barren, is breathtaking, with volcanic cones, salt lakes, and uneven lava fields.

Driver Kyalo says the place used to be a tourist attraction “but due to insecurity, everything has stopped now.”

The Samburu hide stolen livestock in the steep Mt Nyiro Forest, Pokot raiders seek refuge in the hot, rough, and oxygen-deprived Suguta Valley, while Turkanas use part of the valley or the adjacent Terter and Loshotom jungles.

These are no-go zones for police in this region, where life is a restless search for water and pasture amid rustling.

In this equivalent of what used to be America’s Wild West, youths herd livestock armed with illegally-acquired AK-47 rifles or G-3s, the weapon of choice for Kenya’s security forces.

“We have considered it an important part of the northern Kenya tourism circuit, but insecurity levels are affecting the prospects,” says Walya Wausi, a public relations officer at the Kenya Tourism Board.

On Tuesday, the government deployed the army to contain the rustling menace, which has claimed the biggest single-incident loss of police officers in Kenya’s history.