In my nine months of fieldwork in Baragoi, I visited 14 locations in Nyiro and Baragoi Divisions of Samburu North sub County (Baragoi). In the initial stages I spent time having very informal discussions with Catholic priests and catechists at the Baragoi Parish on drivers of pastoralists violence among the Samburu and Turkana. From these discussions, I learnt of the variety of proximate and latent causes of violence between the Samburu and Turkana. For instance proliferation of small arms and light weapons was always blamed but the priests also pointed at land as an underlying factor in these conflicts. Further in my initial weeks I ventured into Baragoi town just to observe peoples ways of life. Initially everyone was very skeptical about my presence. I started with meeting local chiefs and with the help of my research assistant Boniface and the local priest. I started asking very informal questions about the origins of Samburu and Turkana of Baragoi. These historical questions’ enabled me to gain the confidence of my
19 respondents. Through the chiefs I was referred to elders from the Samburu and Turkana, most of these elders in their late 70s and 80s were usually found just outside the manyatta’s having a nap.
In my discussions with the elders, it was clear that there has been a historical contention between the Samburu and Turkana on which community arrived in Baragoi first. The Samburu insisted on Baragoi being Samburu land and therefore ‘indigenous’ to them. They used the term Nkopang, meaning owners of the land in Kisamburu. The Turkana elders maintained that their forefathers were the ‘original’ inhabitants of Baragoi. Through participant observation, I was able to decipher the social positioning of elders in Samburu and Turkana societies. In these societies, elders sit under specific trees. Normally some would be sleeping while others sitting. Here they share the ‘news’ about previous day happenings in their manyattas. Most of these involve issues of security and grazing patterns of livestock. Under these trees, every elder carries with them a long knife and a spear. While the knife can be used for cutting meat, the spear especially among the Turkana is used very ceremoniously and it is a symbol of authority.
20 Outside the manyattas I also noticed the milking stock being grazed by younger boys and girls armed with bows, arrows and whistles. My enquiries revealed that the whistles were meant to alert male members of the older age-sets (the retired warriors) who were often seated under another tree or in one of the huts in the manyatta of the sighting of ‘enemy’ morans. Herding of milking camels, goats and cows by younger boys and girls indicates the division of labour in Samburu and Turkana societies. While older boys Lchekuuti 9 accompany the morans to grazing fields, the younger children are socialized into their future roles as herds-boys by grazing milking stock around the manyattas. Women can also be seen milking cows, goats and camels and nursing the newly born livestock or building or repairing manyattas. As part of the Catholic Diocese Maralal team on peacebuilding and alternative livelihoods among the Samburu and Turkana, I visited many villages where I interviewed retired chiefs, chiefs, KPRs, morans, retired police officers, politicians, women group leaders, catechists and other persons of interest through purposive sampling. I conducted interviews largely centered on history of violence among the Samburu and Turkana communities and actors in pastoralists’ violence.
I visited Baragoi Police Station and Baragoi Administration Police Headquarters to introduce myself to the police chiefs of Samburu North sub-County. This was important as I was researching on sensitive security issues and that required the support, cooperation and participation of the police. At Baragoi Police Station, I met and interacted with the police officers including the Officer Commanding Police Station (OCS). In our informal discussions with police officers, I realized that they were more willing to discuss the events of the Baragoi massacre. I gained their perspectives on how the massacre was organised, how the morans from both sides were mobilized and the roles played by political leaders in organisation of violence. From the police I was also able to observe their response to incidences of violence. In one such case, there was a report by Samburu elders that a severed head of a dog had been found on the Baragoi-South Horr highway near Ngoriche hills. The severed head was placed on the Samburu side of the road and the head of the dog faced a path leading to Bendera village of the Samburu. As per the Samburu complainants this severed head of a dog was part of Turkana witchcraft that was done to ‘prepare the path of raiders’. The Samburu therefore required police action in
21 dealing with ‘likely planned Turkana raid’. The case of the severed head of a dog exemplifies that violence has meaning. The cultural interpretation of this act of witchcraft as a message of impending violence shows that pastoralists’ violence cannot be simplified as mere cattle raids due to scarcity of resources. The placement of the severed head of a dog on a path leading to a Samburu village shows the communicative role of violence (Ferguson and Whitehead 1992). The severing of the head of the dog is a symbolic gesture of the impending severity of the violence directed against the enemy. At the same time, the placement of the severed head on a path leading to Samburu village symbolically communicates well in advance the imminence of war. Association of dog sacrifice and its direction towards the enemy was also found by Knighton (2007: 476) among the Karamojong which is interpreted as a curse against enemies.
My fieldwork was often dictated by ‘news’ of violence incidences from time to time. From October 2014 for instance, a new cycle of violence started from a grazing land shoot-out in Ngorishe and spread into Baragoi town. Being based in Baragoi town and living near the Baragoi District hospital, news of shootings in the grazing fields brought high levels of tension in Baragoi town. Periods of violence thus made Baragoi and its environs a landscape of certain uncertainity (Müller-Mahn 2013). In many cases when a Samburu herder was injured or killed, Samburus would quickly troop into the hospital and the Turkana patients would take off, running to the Turkana side for their safety. In my initial discussions with morans from Logetei, Bendera and Ngilai villages, I learnt that these morans knew each other. Most of them grazed together and many had visited each other’s villages at night during raids. It was worthy of note that many of the Turkana morans in their mid-20s had never gone past the Baragoi sub-District Hospital during the day. Going past the hospital was considered unsafe. Similarly, many of the Samburu morans had never ventured beyond Leilei market during the day. In essence my discussions with Turkana and Samburu morans brought to the fore the role of fear of violence in redefining socio- spatial spaces in Baragoi. Areas declared unsafe were often based on past narratives of violence that community members carried from one generation to the other. These narratives of past violence defined Baragoi landscape in terms of safe and unsafe routes, safe and unsafe settlement areas for both the Samburu and Turkana, safe and unsafe markets, safe and unsafe grazing lands.
22 Past narratives of violent events later became a basis for the reproduction of violence through revenge acts.
From my location at the Catholic Parish, I was able to walk to many nearby villages like Mnanda, Bendera, Naling’ang’or, Natiti and Logetei. In Mnanda (a Samburu village) I went with Boniface my assistant and a KPR officer to the boreholes where morans were drawing water for their livestock. The organisation of the tasks of drawing water for animals embodies moran ethos of teamwork, togetherness and brotherhood (Wasamba 2009). To draw water into a drinking trough for cattle, in many cases four morans had to enter the borehole and position themselves at different heights on the walls of the borehole. The one at the lowest end scoops the water with a USAID10 cooking oil container and passes it above him to another until the fourth one pours the water into the trough. Most of this is done while humming. The convinient use of a USAID cooking oil container exemplifies the relief food culture that is entrenched among pastoralists in Northern Kenya. It shows the levels of marginalisation and the ‘distance’ between the state and its citizens in terms of facilitating long term development initiatives. It also shows the existence of ‘ungoverned space’ where Non Governmental Organisations and their international partners fill in the void left by the Kenyan state (Menkhaus 2007; Mkutu and Wandera 2013). Outside the borehole there were armed KPRs providing security to the animals. The guns belonging to the warriors drawing water could be seen in the shade next to the KPRs. In my informal discussions with these morans, I was informed that boreholes were for exclusive use by the respective communities. As the dry season set in, the borehole waters diminished forcing everyone else to compete for use waters from rivers Nasiischo in Nyiro and Langat in Baragoi Divisions respectively. This was partly seen as a contributing factor to conflicts between the Samburu and Turkana.
In Baragoi I also attended church services at the Baragoi Catholic Church. I observed that many of the Turkana and Samburu elites were Catholics. In discussions with the priests, I was informed that many of the local businessmen and politicians were former recipients of education bursaries and scholarships from the Catholic Church. This shows the incapability of many
23 pastoralists’ households to afford basic education but also points at the marginalisation of pastoralists in this region in terms of access to basic amenities such as education and the critical role of the church especially the Catholics in filling this void through scholarships for brilliant pastoralist’s children. At the same time the priests blamed these local leaders of promoting violence among the Turkana and Samburu through incitements and supply of arms. Towards the end of August, I conducted my first focused group discussion with Samburu morans in Bendera village. We discussed their roles in Samburu society and their relationships with Turkana morans. During these discussions we explored moranhood as an institution among the Samburu (Wasamba 2009). It became very clear to me that Samburu society holds morans in high esteem given their role as protectors of the community. We explored their relationships with Samburu elites and other leaders. They mostly valued leaders who supplied them with relief food and arms. This point to the patron-client relationship between these two groups and how it can be exploited by elites to foment raids and other acts of violence based on ethnic identity.
In September 2014 I spent time visiting Turkana villages in Logetei where I interacted with morans and retired morans. We explored the root causes of Samburu-Turkana conflict and the consequences of conflicts on pastoralists’ livelihoods. We further discussed the roles of retired morans among the Turkana. I learnt that every evening, Turkana elders and retired morans sit and review the day in terms of pasture options and security challenges. In these meetings, grazing pasture destinations for the next day are also agreed upon. One morning I was dropped by my colleagues from the Catholic Diocese of Maralal at 7am in Logetei because I wanted to witness how morans organise the security for livestock from the kraals to the grazing fields. I observed that before livestock leave the kraals, a group of armed morans as members of the ‘advance team’ take the lead to survey the route that the shepherds and the back-up team will pass through with the livestock. The herds’ boys usually from about the age of 8 up to 13 are the ones who do the actual herding of livestock. Behind the shepherds are the ‘back-up’ team of morans, equally armed to provide security cover for the herds’ boys and the livestock. In all the Turkana and Samburu villages that I visited, I observed that trenches or ‘mahandaki11’ were dug around cattle kraals. These trenches are the places where warriors spend the night, well
24 positioned to monitor ‘enemy’ movement and strategically placed for shooting of the enemy. This further point to the role of morans as communal force within a fluid security situation. The security infrastructure such as trenches shows the gravity of insecurity between the Samburu and Turkana and the determination of morans to protect livestock which is the base of pastoralists’ households’ survival.
Photo 2: A Samburu from Lkororo age-set demonstrates how firearms are held inside the security trenches
(mihandaki) outside Bendera village in Baragoi, October 2014, Source: Author
In October I spent a lot of time in Marti and Suiyan villages where I also interviewed KPRs, chiefs, Samburu and Turkana morans and police officers. Marti is a unique place in Turkana- Samburu relations because it is the only town where the two communities have nurtured friendly relations. This is evident in the close proximity of their settlements. I was informed that the Turkana and Samburu of Marti signed a pact to share information and to protect each other against raider warriors from other villages. Marti town is such a contrast to Baragoi town; in Baragoi one can observe groups of armed Samburu KPRs when they come to the Turkana side. This shows the uncertainty that these communities face when in ‘enemy’ territory. In Marti the
25 two groups interact more and cases of Samburu and Turkana youth seated together listening to music or playing bao12 is common. In discussions with Samburu morans from Marti sub- location of Suiyan location, I was informed of conflict incidences and their causes. Discussions with Turkana warriors also revealed the role of ex-servicemen some of whom were chiefs in organizing revenge raids.
Towards the end of October I visited Tuum for the first time and spent my first few days with the Chilean priest and nuns from Guatemala and Mexico. The priest having lived among the Samburu in Barsaloi and now in Tuum was conversant in Samburu language and we discussed causes of pastoralists’ violence among the Samburu of Tuum and the Turkana of Kawap and Parkati. In Tuum I also interviewed the Assistant Chief of Ijuuk sub-location as well as the Chief of Tuum. My discussions with these chiefs centered on the most recent Turkana raid that led to the loss of about 80 cattle from Tuum airstrip in March 2013. We further discussed circumstances that lead to revenge raids between the Turkana and Samburu.
I also spent the weeks of early November 2014 in South Horr. In South Horr I wanted to understand how ‘Operation Turkana Out of 199713’ was organised and executed. Here I interviewed a retired moran of mixed parentage from Rendille and Samburu communities. This moran also happened to have participated in the Lomerok raid of 29th October 2012 as well as the Baragoi massacre of 10th November 2012. He outlined how raids are organised among the Samburu. He further highlighted the value of the gun among the Samburu and who receives the gun of a fallen warrior. I also interviewed the chief of Loruko sub-location, an area which was abandoned and its people resettled in South Horr due to heightened Turkana raids. During our discussions at his home, I also noted that he was married to a Turkana woman a rare occurrence given the increased animosity between the Samburu and Turkana of Baragoi. In South Horr, I
12 A traditional African board game originating from the coast of East Africa 13
Operation Turkana Out was a series of organized violence episodes that aimed at evicting the Turkana from South Horr in 1997. It was led by a retired army officer from the Samburu community and it was executed by the torching of Soweto manyatta that was inhabited by the Turkana. The Turkana were later housed by the South Horr Catholic Parish and thereafter relocated by the church among their kin in Loyangalani, Baragoi and Maralal.
26 also had discussions with retired chiefs, and two retired military men who explained how the Samburu started acquiring arms and ammunition in the early 1990s.
In mid-November I returned to Baragoi and organised a focused group discussion with KPRs from Samburu villages of Bendera and Ngilai near Ngilai dispensary. The discussions centered on their job as security agents at the local level and their reasons for engaging in raids and highway banditries. One evening we attended a Samburu wedding dance and visited several other lororas14where I witnessed the security vigil that Samburu morans and retired morans have to put up to protect the livestock. I organised for a similar focused group discussion with KPRs from the Turkana community at Nachola Primary School where issues of the imbalance of firepower between the Samburu and Turkana in terms of arming of KPRs was raised.
November 2014 also saw the start of a new cycle of violence, incidents of killings and revenge attacks continued almost every week making my movement into other villages impossible. I spent the end of November conducting interviews with women and women leaders on their experiences of pastoralists’ violence within Bendera, Ngilai, Logetei, Naling’ang’or and Natiti villages. In these discussions, we recorded narrations of personal losses that pastoralists’ women have experienced. Through these interviews I noted that unlike what I had read in many anthropological materials on the cultural requirement for protection of women, children and the aged during raids, there seemed to be none among the Samburu and Turkana. In the words of Hutchinson (2000) women were literally ‘fair game’ in the violence between the Samburu and Turkana.
The data presented in this thesis was collected from July 2014 to April 2015. Archival data was collected from the Kenya National Archives for a period of one month from July to August 2014. Data from the Kenya National Archives contains documentation of ethnic boundary making by