High bride price fuels rustling

A man keeps watch over his livestock in Napak village, Turkana. CHEBOITE KIGEN | NATION

John Kikukat was just 16 when he first learnt how a cattle raid is organised. He was still an innocent teenager who spent most of his time grazing his father’s cows in Chesegon village on the border of Elgeyo Marakwet and East Pokot.

One of the young men from his village was due to get married, but as happens in most pastoralist communities, the bride price was prohibitive. Among Kikukat’s Pokot, men are required to part with as many as 40 cows and 60 goats in bride price.

With illiteracy at 67 per cent, most East and West Pokot residents place high premium on livestock and marriage. Having livestock is not just a sign of wealth, but can easily get you a wife.

Families with many girls end up with hundreds of livestock when they marry them off.

Single girls come out during market days with red ochre on their heads while young men who want to be noticed wear brightly coloured T-shirts, big, looped earrings, loin cloths, combs on their heads and mirrors on their waists.

The girls that are lucky to attract men command huge bride price. It is in this context that Mr Kikukat, now 43, saw his first cattle raid.

“The groom got nine of his friends and raided Lupitan village and came back with several cows and sheep on the eve of the bride price payment,” he recalls.

“It didn’t seem difficult at all and life went on as usual. No questions were asked, no one came to look for the stolen cattle, and the man got a wife,” he says.

By the time he was 20, Kikukat had already acquired an AK-47 rifle, which he got by bartering five cattle from the family’s herd. It comes naturally in the circumstances, he says.

One of the people we wanted to steal from had a gun hidden by the grass and I didn’t see it

The Pokot, Turkana, Tugen and Marakwet have raided each other for livestock for centuries, with East Pokot being something of a confluence for all these tribes.

So bad is the violence that the Marakwet have resorted to letting their cattle graze on their own for fear of getting killed in an attack.

“This has made them the easiest to steal from,” says Kikukat, who now works as a peace ambassador.

He reveals that during his days as a bandit, they would steal livestock during dry spells because that is when most herders are far away from home seeking pasture. This is when they are most vulnerable, he says, but one day this strategy failed.

“One of the people we wanted to steal from had a gun hidden by the grass and I didn’t see it. As we rushed towards them, I saw one of them reach for something on the ground and my instinct told me to shoot first,” he says. “That was sometime in 2000. I don’t know if he died,” he says.

Kikukat took part in five raids, and while he survived to tell the story, Hoseah Kiplagat’s fellow bandits are all dead. He survived after quitting and going back to school in 1999, three years after firing his first shot and acquiring some of the cows they had stolen.

“The government wanted to kill me for a long time after I refused to hand over my gun during a disarmament drive,” he says.

“I could not even come to this town,” he says referring to Chemolingot, an urban centre north of Baringo that has seen some of the worst violence in recent years.

PEACE PREACHERS

Kikukat and Kiplagat now traverse Baringo, West Pokot, Turkana and Elgeyo Marakwet preaching peace.

Kikukat was even appointed secretary at Nginyang’ Market. Part of his job is to help livestock owners find their stolen livestock at the market. It is not easy unless the animals are branded.

Two days before we arrived, bandits had raided a homestead in Gaagiri and stolen 37 goats and 18 sheep. A search at the market, yielded nothing, yet everyone you talk to insists there is a need for peace. “I don’t want any community to keep on losing their animals. We drink tea together all the time and we are good neighbours,” says Changui Korer, 44.

“I’m a Pokot, but my wife is a Tugen. If we don’t stop fighting, which tribe will my children say they belong to, or whom will they say they hate, since they are a mixture of both?” he poses.