A walk in the shadow of the valley of death and horror

PHOTO | STEPHEN MUDIARI Mr Julius Lampasia, a resident of Baragoi.

What you need to know:

  • Situated about 500 kilometres North West of Nairobi, the neighbouring Lomeruk village looks like ring worm infections, standing out from far but very amorphous. Here, villagers left as soon as they heard the government had declared war on bandits
  • The valley is like dead quarry, yet it continues to bite at human life. Here, people enter, but hardly return. There is no mobile phone signal, no clear track to escape through and even if you screamed, it would echo on the walls of the valley
  • The only signs of the recent attack are scattered pieces of remains and combat uniforms. A hat and a handkerchief here, a boot there.

Suguta Valley in Kenya’s northern county of Samburu gives a horrible appearance from the sky. It looks like a sick human skin, with rocky hills standing out as wounds.

A dry river bed snakes through these hills, and joins a thorny area over the horizon with no sign of humanity. The midmorning sweltering heat makes you feel like you are passing through a furnace.

Mr Julius Lampasia, 52, a resident sums it up as follows: “To live here, you must be strong. It is hot, no water. We have our neighbours too, with whom we have lived for years fighting. We are forgotten.”

Situated about 500 kilometres North West of Nairobi, the neighbouring Lomeruk village looks like ring worm infections, standing out from far but very amorphous. Here, villagers left as soon as they heard the government had declared war on bandits.

The rustlers felled a group of policemen pursuing them for livestock they had stolen from a Samburu village, some 13 kilometres north east in Baragoi. Now another set of police officers have been left to look for the bodies of their colleagues.

They are combing the valley, being led by the smell of rotting flesh of their departed colleagues, killed in line of duty, six days earlier.

It is difficult for them, but they swore to serve this country, regardless of the dangers involved. Their chopper hovers southwards searching for more bodies.

There is none, but a herd of cattle is spotted driving further through the valley. No human can be spotted though.

The valley is like dead quarry, yet it continues to bite at human life. Here, people enter, but hardly return. There is no mobile phone signal, no clear track to escape through and even if you screamed, it would echo on the walls of the valley.

It has claimed many lives, including those of District Commissioner James Nyandoro, soldiers and now 42 police officers.

The only signs of the recent attack are scattered pieces of remains and combat uniforms. A hat and a handkerchief here, a boot there.

Bodies have been partly feasted upon by wild animals as maggots get their feel. One of the bodies is missing a limb while the other leg looks twisted backwards as though some animal tried to break it off and dash with it.
Another has no head, and it makes it difficult for the rescue team here to identify it.

“I have been here since Monday, am looking for my in-law who was an officer with the Anti-Stock Theft Unit. I still haven’t seen him,” laments Hussein Goso from Marsabit.

But it is their death that might have been painful. Having pursued the more than 300 rustlers making away with the livestock from the manyatta, a member of the rescue team claims, the officers were duped through the valley as their targets rushed with the animals to a hill.

Then they started shooting back while still driving the animals beyond the hill. The officers got overwhelmed and started to retreat. They had been ringed! They fell into another group of bandits who shot those withdrawing.

Here, it is the rule of the jungle where to survive, you have to hold onto that gun, and aim at the target regardless of whether the gun is legal or not. If you can’t, then you have to flee fast. And if you are killed, you become a meal for the scavengers roaming the valley.

“There are wild animals like hyenas which can attack you. But most often they eat the dead,” adds Mr Lampasia, the father of 14. He says he lost two of his sons to rustlers.

The village is like a ghost town, fenced with dry thorny twigs with at least eight gates, each opened and closed with a single cut thorny branch of acacia. The manyatta was occupied by the Turkana, suspected to have masterminded the ambush on police officers.

Each of the gates has a fox hole nearby, where guards might have hidden, ready for war. As you enter, a couple of quails fly away as flames lick away dry dung, perhaps a sure sign that they were livestock keepers.

You have to admire the artistic ability of these people in weaving sticks together for walls, then gluing it with fresh dung.

No one knows how they survived when it rained. The place is flat but their roofs are made from mosquito nets, some from old cartons, and others from woven sticks still.