Samburu Women call Demonstration
I just checked my e-mail while at home recovering from the great but exhausting Cambridge Carnival yesterday, where many, many people came by the KARE booth and found out what has been happening to the Samburu in Kenya. I’ll blog more on that later but I wanted to post the e-mail below.
The Maa women (Maa is the language which the Samburu speak) are holding a demonstration tomorrow, Tuesday the 15th of September to speak out on the killings of Samburu. I’ll post any news I receive on how the demonstration goes.
Samburu women and men are realizing that they must organize and “shout loudly” for the world to hear what is happening. Respect their voices and listen.
This message was recently sent:
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Subject: Demonstration!!
Dear All,
The women …[here] will be holding a demonstration to condemn harassment and killing of MAA community members by KWS rangers. We will all assemble at Bomas of Kenya Junction on 15/09/2009 at 10:30 am. You are all welcomed and help us in fighting for justice of the MAA community.
This follows consequent killings of our cattle herders in the recent past weeks which have gone unnoticed by the government and our leaders. We need to consolidate and have a voice for our people for the people. It is soo painful to loose a brother just like that in a cold blood. Please inform any of your friends or colleague sabout this and let us come up in large numbers to say No to this.
If we don’t protect and stand for ourselves, who will? We need to be brave and value ourselves.
Another massacre has just been done, and this a typical, cynical 32 people were killed including children were killed and 30 goat and 12 cows shot. I am totally absurd that the government is taking sides and the samburu voices are not listened. We are lacking the entire leadership in country and the vulnerable are suffering. We are speaking in deep sadness that has uphold us. The young children were killed. Why is our government just sitting back and enjoying the privileges yet the smaller communities are suffering?
I could confirm from a friend of mine Joseph Lekadaa that these was the massacre of all times,we was on the battle field and could not believe the what he saw bodies were lying every where likes flies.
I am new to meeting and learning about the Samburu and trying to sort out my understandings of the people, the geography and who is who. I heard, via an e-mail forwarded to me by Tina Ramme, that the demonstration was a great success and even covered by several Kenyan TV stations. In my ignorance of language and geography, however, I may have mistaken the Maa women for Samburu women and Kenya Junction as in the Samburu area.
Now I wonder if the Maa women are actually Maasai, “cousins” of the Samburu. My apologies if I have conflated you Samburu and Maasai into a single place and people, but your goodwill to one another is clear. If anyone would like to educate me more, I would welcome the knowledge.
The e-mail ends with “To our Samburu brothers what happened yesterday was very sad and we stand together at this difficult moment and may God rest their soul in peace.” The women refer to the massacre of Samburu and animals on Sept. 14th at Naibol and other places. Now I am going to blog on that. It is painful to write on. I want to publicize positive events that show us a way out of this tragedy.
Roxanne
i could not leave to tear down,i could leave to wheel down for the genocide that being taken on Samburu community,we have been left i mean left out by the government leadership,we have no government i still say the government is not taking any initiative to stop this,Every morning every other evening we are recording new deaths,recording stolen livestock dead or probably stolen.And noways our records confirmations are not from disease it is humans killing other humans the government thinks that it is taking all it could to stop this,But what they have been doing is only coming to the name of putting security measures in place but they end up going back after darkness to reside in town that they receive better treatment.
I am deeply crying, sadness is falling on us every other minute,i could i could not say,we are left we think as i speak it is better to be in the war tone country like Somali, that you truly know we are in war,than being in north Kenya.get my point straight our people are suffering coming from the deeply affected areas of Samburu we think God is punishing us for one reason or the other,the government is turning on us,
I am writing message knowing that many Samburu children,women,men of integrity are lying on hospitals beds not because of sickness,but injuries of bullet.What is not happening?why this plight is not addressed in a national level or international level?We are loosing bright brains,Knowledgeable people true this crime in Humanity, i could what to be taking sides,but i beg for this security issue to be dealt and a having a better resolution.
Our people are deeply affected by drought, tribal clashes, everyone is stressed we have no one representing us in a higher level.
i beg the international community to raise funds to equip this communities through education so that we the vulnerable will have the space to breath and represents our communities to higher level.Small communities such mine are not breaking through the gap.
for this and much more we are looking forward for sympathizer so that we only lobby together seal through unbreakable gap.