Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga is logging the miles, traveling from continent to continent promoting Kenya, and its s0-called economic and human rights “development”. He was at Harvard last month, as detailed below (Sept. 19th) and this past Friday in Stockholm. The excellent and informative website Diaspora Kenya, has picked up on KARE’s questions to Odinga while speaking at Harvard, and added its own, sharp comments and queries on the Samburu, human rights and democracy. Please see what Diaspora Kenya has to say:

“Open letter to Prime Minister Raila Odinga during his visit to Sweden on October 23rd 2009″:

http://diasporakenyan.se/2009/10/20/re-open-letter-to-prime-raila-odinga-during-his-visit-to-sweden-on-october-23rd-2009/

“Three questions to PM Raila on his visit to Stockholm”:

http://diasporakenyan.se/2009/10/22/three-questions-to-pm-raila-on-his-visit-to-stockholm/

And do you know what continent Odinga visited between North America and Europe? Asia: specifically China, in order firm up Kenya’s ties with the country. As the Kenyan Daily Nation put it on 10/17/09, “Kenya looks to the orient to grow economy.” Odinga said his choice was China or Qatar for building a road to export oil.

http://www.nation.co.ke/business/news/-/1006/673482/-/if9uvbz/-/index.html

Last month the Samburu people of Losesia lost 3000 heads of cattle atop the loss of friends and relatives themselves. I just heard that some of those cattle have been found at a cattle market: 14 to be exact. No, it doesn’t replace the lives of brothers and others lost (See September 17th and 23rd for some wrenching accounts) but retrieving those cows is a hope, a piece of happiness amidst the fear and gloom. They have been brought back to the small, local town and soon will be re-united with their owners.

Go to the top of this page/blog and you will see how it feels to have your cattle torn from you. The women weeping are watching, last March, as the Kenyan police rounded up their cows, loaded them on lorries and drove away, forever. Cows are more than the Samburu’s bank account and food, they give you standing in society, are cherished, cosseted and sung over. Cattle are needed for weddings, to pay for university and more. They provide pleasure and sustenance in the present and hope for the future. 

For a few, a small portion of normality has just returned home. And that is something to give thanks for.

[Below is a letter to the organization, GenocideWatch, which Dr. Stephen Katz wrote last month. I corresponded with him and asked if I could post it on the Save Samburu blog. He revised it slightly to clarify and emphasize his point that the government should remember that tourism are what bring money into Kenya. Since he wrote this, the Kenyan government has excitedly announced its plans to drill for oil in Samburu territory. I fear that tourism and oil will be on a collision course.

Roxanne]

 
Dear Genocide Watch, 

 

I am a professor in Canada who has worked in East Africa in the past, particularly with the Samburu people of Kenya.  The Samburu are a peaceful pastoralist group who manage, with their brilliant ecological skills, to subsist on a cattle economy in the dry regions of the Rift Valley in northern Kenya.  Samburu guides are also invaluable resources to Kenyan tourist enterprises. Indeed, the Samburu have innovated ways of life that are models of how wildlife preservation and human habitation can and should co-exist in Kenya. 

During the past year there have been several life-threatening developments that have occurred in Samburu country:

a) A persistent and serious drought, which means no rain for pasture, which means no milk production for cows and no food for the Samburu, and about which little assistance has been provided. 

b) Massive and violent cattle raids carried out by Borana and Somali raiders, who have automatic weapons and have been hauling away Samburu cattle by the thousands in trucks into Somalia (presumably to be sold to middle-eastern buyers).  This would be the equivalent of a terrorist group coming into a typical N. American community and stealing all the money, food, medicines and valuables and leaving the residents to die. 

c) The complete collapse of state or police protection of the Samburu and, with each attack, increasing evidence that some of the police and those in authority are actually colluding with the raiders or possibly benefiting from the raids.  Medical response to the Samburu have been non-existent, both in terms of treating those wounded in the attacks and those dying of malnutrition.  Children have been abducted and killed deliberately by the raiders to terrorize the Samburu.

All this adds up to genocide in the opinion of the observers in Kenya, my colleagues and the reports by the Samburu themselves.  They are being systematically killed off and possibly caught in the web of international politics between Kenya, Somalia and the Western world.  Some of us have worked to contribute money and contact members of both the Kenyan and Canadian governments, but the more international voices that can be heard to oppose the destruction of the Samburu, the better. 

And to all those tourists who are interested in visiting or returning to Kenya, please remember that the vitality, beauty and uniqueness of the game reserves and traditional cultures which give you such pleasure and vision are largely based on the economies, ecologies and arts of life of Kenyan pastoralists, like the Samburu.  Your tourist dollars should be going to a state that maintains and celebrates such peoples, rather than looks the other way as they are being destroyed. 

Dr. Stephen Katz, Trent University, Canada.

Since July, when the attacks on the Samburu started heating up again, I have also been part of a small group here in Malden, Massachusetts planning a community cookout for today, October 18th. What’s that got to do with the Samburu far away in Northern Kenya? Well, the group is called Malden Grassroots and the cookout also included a Justice Fair, where local organizations told others about the work they do.

This morning I baked six loaves of bread to be served with the halal/kosher hotdogs and hamburgers and other foods.   I had homemade Samburu pieces laid out on an orange cloth atop the church’s grand piano. They came over to look, to listen, to talk, to be concerned… and to bring a little of the Samburu into their own homes and lives. 

And you know what? People cared. About 150 people came to the local church and crowded inside to share food (it may have been planned as a cookout, but today it decided to snow!!!).  And in return, the residents of Malden, Chelsea, Medford and other small communities here just outside Boston willingly contributed. Those funds will go directly to the Samburu of northern Kenya.

It’s that simple. It’s that easy to connect. Justice is about sharing the resources we have with everyone in our community. The grassroots which we fed and cultivated here today in Malden, Massachusetts spread wide and deep, as far as the dry and dusty plains of Samburu in northern Kenya. When we care, we find that we are all part of one community and we welcome each other into our lives.

Roxanne

p.s. And I especially want to thank Dominica…she’s helped me with my knitting and enjoyed my shortbread and today she tirelessly helped me sort, layout, admire and wonder at all the pieces the Samburu made.  And then she packed the beads up and lugged the big container out to the car with me.

And our task to prevent the genocide of the Samburu people has suddenly become much clearer and much, much harder.   

The Kenyan English-language newspaper, The Daily Nation, reported today that “Kenya begins drilling for oil in two weeks.”  And guess where?  Yes, in the Samburu lands, specifically at Boghal near Isiolo. 

The article did, however, name one major, non-Kenyan party involved in this search for black gold: the China National Off Shore Oil Corporation. China, which in the past year has been driving a highway through Samburu lands and towns; China, whose government has been entwining itself in African affairs for the past decade.

We have been worried since last March, when police fired on Samburu from the sky and drove away their cattle, that oil lay behind that betrayal of trust.

I want to be wrong. I want a peaceful Samburu, grass springing from the earth but nothing else. If the rains come, the grass will too, but now we have a much bigger fight on our hands.

Save Samburu!

To read the news for yourself, go to

http://www.nation.co.ke/business/news/-/1006/671428/-/ifb9nsz/-/index.html

The Kenyan media persistently portray the massive cattle thefts and loss of human life as the result of singular, random tribal raids. As the friend of Dominic describes below, the violence is systematic and planned. Below is more information on the human aftershocks of the September 7th massacre at Losesia. The use of high-powered weaponry, an orchestrated system of livestock removal, the hands of members of Kenya’s government (plus proxies, the mercenary Oromo Liberation Front) and the sophisticated feeding of misinformation on the Samburu to the unquestioning Kenyan national media: these elements have been seen before with other attacks. The planned, coordinated nature of these “cattle raids” and the wreakage of human lives left behind are marks of genocide.
‘WHAT REALLY HAPPEN IN LOSESIA MASSACRE.
The day I went to Losesia was on Sunday 7th, it was all sorrows, hopelessness as people flock Archer’s Post looking after lost children. It’s one of the biggest raids ever done by the Borana [another tribe in the area] in recent times. I went straight down having heard that my two brothers were last seen before cows were driven away by OLF (Oromo Liberation Front) and Boranas with no whereabouts of my little brothers who were dispersed by bullets as they awake from sleep. Some run away without clothes. It was a well planned raid — my brother was telling me it was ‘jeshi (Army) as it worked under different departments. 

There are those to kill, those to cook as others fight, (neibung lkule ng’uron airotoki ndaa, sufurias, lalema, masaa) others are busy loading donkeys with all that people had. As fighting goes on a vehicle (a land rover) arrives with water, foods and lorries [trucks] sent to pick some animals soon followed. They had sophisticated weapons that couldn’t have any resistance from our people. I found my brother with only a (kikoi,) his knife, clothes telephone were taken. He was hopeless: all our cows 120, goats 250, donkeys 12 were taken. Our family was left to await starvation, my education left in jeopardy. 

[One] clan slept in the (mijoni) empty manyatta [house] two days as they had nowhere to go. It was us who picked them. On Monday, followed the KTN (Kenya Television Network) depicting Samburu as Waasi (rebels) and destroyers of Shaba Reserve [a conservation/game reserve]… Prior to the Raid….KTN….was taken for an aerial view of Samburus in Losesia and Naishiamunye, just 12 hours before the raid. Then it was followed by government forces forcefully removing Samburus along the banks of Waso Nyiro just below Archers Post.

It was well planned. The Ministry of Livestock was buying livestock that same week from all districts where our animals went. It was just a day when KMC (Kenya Meat Commission) landed in Isiolo. The scene was so bad as bodies of our two brothers lie, guys I’ve  known all my life and eaten with.  [One particular family] was worst hit…All the dead people, animals in the scene were applied: some said [it] to be (nkurupore) witchcraft.The OLF had killed a big he goat and littered its meat, (manyit) intestines everywhere to symbolize their rituals. It was pathetic and few could face the scene. The people  left  with animals were driving up towards Wamba, at the mercy of devastating drought.’”

[Note: Dominic L.  has given permission to use his name here. It is SaveSamburu blog policy not to use names unless permission has been received. His friend, who wrote the main account above, has not and so is left safely anonymous. The accounts above have been lightly edited for grammar, punctuation and occasional insertion of words/meanings which might otherwise be unfamiliar to the non-Kenyan reader.  Roxanne]

One important piece of news we found out last Sunday at the Cambridge Carnival: Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga is coming to town next Thursday evening, September 24th to speak on democracy in Kenya.

The Institute of Politics at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government has invited  ”His Excellency Raila Amolo Odinga, prime minister, Republic of Kenya” to talk on “Making Democracy Work in Africa – Vision of an African Leader”  The address is 79 JFK Street, just outside Harvard Square in Cambridge. The room number in the building is not mentioned (and the Kennedy School can be a bit of a maze). I’ll try to find out more details and post them here. The forum seems to be free and open to the public.

This past June, when the violence started escalating again, Odinga personally spoke out in support of the Samburu and against the police actions and indifference. KARE wants to greet him, thank him and then ask some pointed questions why the Government of Kenya has turned its back on its Samburu citizens.

Monday update: I spoke earlier this afternoon with a staff person from the John F Kennedy Jr. Forum series, which is sponsoring Raila’s talk at the Kennedy School’s Institute of Politics. More specifics on the location: 79 JFK St. is also known as the Littauer Building. For security reasons when the prime minister speaks, only the main entrance to the building will be open. This is at the corner of JFK St. and Elliot St (a side street), behind the JFK Park, they tell me.

Once inside the building, the main hall way will lead quite easily to the large, central room where the forum will be held. Come early: it is first come, first serve and this is likely to be a popular forum.

Oh, and why is Raila speaking now at Harvard? He is stopping by, apparently, before heading on to New York City and the big United Nations General Assembly which is being held later this week.

The day after the Cambridge Carnival last Sunday, the massacre of Samburu at Naibol happened, an interview was sent to me, and I got those grim pictures of the still living lying in bed at hospital (see the blog two below). It’s been a long week, and I have to confess that I hesitate each time I open my e-mail, wondering if more bad news will have arrived.

Well, nothing arrived tonight: so let me tell you the good news of last Sunday’s Carnival and the news we found out at it. Yes, the Carnival went well! Yes, hundreds of people stopped by the booth, took the “Stop an Emerging African Genocide before it becomes the next Darfur” postcard, which I will also post here for you to see (and admire: my amazingly gifted colleague Jahim Baskerville designed it). Yes, people admired and bought many of the beaded carved pieces Samburu crafted for us to sell for them at the carnival (ooh: I should take pictures of some of the objects left for you to see: they are gorgeous! But that is a project for another day).

And yes, we met new friends and allies of the Samburu. One woman has been in Samburu as recently as this past March and June and is very aware of the violence and need there. And she passed on to us… that Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga will be speaking at Harvard University, right here in Cambridge, next Thursday evening, September 24th. The day after the Carnival, when I “worked from home” rather than go into my day job at Action for Boston Community Development, I confirmed that he indeed is coming. (Mostly that day, however, I just stared at the wall or at the flowers in my garden in a daze of exhaustion… and then the e-mails on Naibol started coming in.) I’ll post the details on Odinga’s visit.

Back to Carnival news: Umm… no, we didn’t sell as much food as I would have liked, and we baked our hearts out, but with all the big food tents around us selling barbecue, Jamaican food, Korean food, roasted corn, ice-cream and more, our baked goods were tasty, delicious and bought, but not as many as I had hoped would go. Samburu are dying for lack of food and water and we couldn’t fully off-load all of ours. Something is wrong with this picture.

We started setting up the KARE booth at 10:00 am Sunday morning (it took quite a while to get in to the spot they had assigned us). We took down the booth, packed up the extra bread, shortbread and cookies we hadn’t sold or given to our marvelous friends and helpers manning the tables with us, and left — exhausted and in the dark — after 9:00 pm. The city’s trash trucks were moving in as we drove off.

I want to thank so much those who helped out (and baked too) that day, Matt, Jahim, Midori, Meelyn, Libby and her daughter. They are our students, who baked and bagged goodies to sell, because they care. There is Jody, whose husband got into a car accident as she was going off to pick up some supplies for the booth. After some frantic hours at the hospital, he was released and she and her son came back to help us pack up!

And then there is the man who, as we were setting up the booth, asked us who the Samburu were and then put a dollar in the donation tin. He was the first of many who did so. That was our first “take” of the day, and I got tears in my eyes because yes, people care when they hear what is happening to human beings, even when those humans are as far away from the Cambridge/Boston area as Northern Kenya. And when I got in to work on Tuesday, I found an envelope and card awaiting on my desk. It was from my friend and colleague, who tucked in $20. She simply said, “I’m against genocide.”

Thank you, everyone, thank you. You are true Friends of the Samburu.

[Aargh: I can’t get the pictures to upload. I’ll try again later.

[I was asked by Dominic to please get the interview he did on the SaveSamburu blog so that the world might know of the genocide of the Samburu people. At his request, I have lightly edited his piece, mostly adding "a" and "the" and changing the verb tense or clarifying the subject of his sentences. The details, the conclusions, the emotions are his: well, no, the emotions are mine too. This is hell, and the only way it will be stopped is for the world to listen, learn and act.

Roxanne]

THE TEARS AT THE KILLING FIELDS OF SAMBURU:

In the expansive open fields of Losesia, Sanigo sits on a stone overlooking the sunset of orange yellow in the west. Frustration, hunger, deception and grief have consumed him to look someone in 20s even though he is barely 13. Three days ago in a time like this he would have been taking in a cold evening breeze inside their herds while chatting with his elder brother but all this will never be again. Sanigo is among the victims of a barbaric, heinous massacre in Losesia on the seventh of September when marauding Borana Raiders—supported by remnants of OLF (Oromo Liberation Front) a guerrilla  group in Ethiopia who have been rooming in Isiolo North since April with full knowledge of the state, thanks to protection of a powerful politician in the region.

This very morning he lost everything; he saw himself losing his only brother before his eyes – another one in less than a month after another being killed by same raiders in the grazing fields in the same area. It also saw him lose all his source of livelihood, his herds, barely six months after the Kenyan government seized other cattle in so called “security operations.” This morning six people were killed in this field, three of whom are his cousins, while ten others are badly injured (some who are believed to have died on the way to Wamba Mission Hospital some 216km from Losesia). Together with members of his extended family among others…saw their herds numbering 3700 disappearing to an unknown location.

Sanigo narrates how heavily armed raiders numbering 500 attacked them from all directions using sophisticated weapons; M16, G3, AK47, hand propelled grenades and short range artilleries…. He tells how he lost his brother before his eyes: It was him that his brother was running to save, after a cow hit by a hand grenade had fallen on Sanigo, only for his brother to fell under hail of bullets from these bloody killers…. the last words he remembers from him is “Save our mother!”

 Despite all this barbarism he has seen and which is still eating him, Sanigo says he is more worried about the imminent starvation of his parents back in Naisunyai, 20km South East of Wamba town. Sanigo says with everything gone; his beloved brothers, their entire herds including those of his relatives he has known all his life, he is not able to face his parents. Her mother cannot speak. A dark cloud of sadness has fallen on their entire manyatta [house]: they see the usual suspect in all this—the state. The Samburu saw themselves forcefully disarmed early this year; their cows seized up; the propaganda in the media against them; the KTN [Kenya Television Network] reports calling them waasi (rebels). Far in the North in Sere Olipi Trading Centre, the same tears are being shade on the killings on these fields.

Before Sanigo finished talking, Lasaru comes in all the way from the far west and before their greetings end he is quickly to start with ‘Nkiyok,’ the Samburu word for “bad news” or signifying death but this now it is not just ‘nkiyok’ but nkiyaa meaning “many deaths.” He is quick to break the bad news, the hell that broke loose in Kanapio-Naibor area of Laikipia [on Sept. 14^th]. He narrates how the black hunts from the west, the Pokot [tribesmen] turned the usually beautiful savannah into a genocide scene, in fact another Wagalla [1984 massacre of Somalis by Kenyan security forces] if not Darfur! 34 people were shot dead on the spot in Nairbor, 80% of them being women and children. More than 50 others were badly injured. Unfortunately the biased Kenya media can only report 21 of them, as others left lying in this killing fields at the mercy of vultures were yet to be counted.

Lasaru’s narration was so emotional that I was not able to follow it; the only thing I remember is that he said he saw an entire Family wiped out. For him he is just in quasi-madness: he has walked over 100km to Oldonyiro to try to escape the calamity he witnessed.

Before I finished typing these lines everything around me looked dark, sad, so hopeless that am not yet sure whether I have well reported the experience of this people but when I learnt of this blog, I knew that I found a window to let the world to know of the Genocide in slow motion in Samburuland.”

[Updated Sept. 20: The Standard, a major, English language newspaper in Kenya, has just interviewed a woman who lost three of her four children in the attack. At least this massacre is getting press coverage. Roxanne]

http://www.standardmedia.co.ke/news/InsidePage.phpid=1144024222&cid=159&

On Monday, September 14th, when I awoke from exhaustion after a day spent telling the Cambridge, Massachusetts community and visitors at its Carnival about the fears, hungers but also hopes of the Samburu community, another massacre took place. Pokot tribesmen this time, so the press is saying, attacked sleeping women and children and animals at Naibol, near Lerata. Over 30 people were killed (Samburu and Pokot when the Samburu fought back) — may I remind you, human beings all.

It has gotten Kenyan and I believe international (BBC) press coverage, although the Kenyan press persists in depicting the incident as a typical, tribal struggle between raiding pastoralists struggling over grazing rights and water in this drought and refuses to address the larger, coordinated nature of these attacks. 

But, from comments made, I believe this is but one attack that took place on Monday. It is hard for me to sort out the names and places. Samburu people, please comment here and tell me what happened. 

Ricky L., who has posted in this blog, has also been to the hospital mortuary in Isiolo, trying bear witness and take pictures of 3 Samburu who died in the Kipsing area. He was refused admittance. He ended the e-mail saying that he can hear gunshots in the Isiolo night and that he has to go to sleep now.

Meanwhile, I am tired too. No, I think that I am sunk in spirit right now. My spirits will rise again, but at the moment I have to show you some of the people who survived the Naibor attack, barely. I have had the pictures since yesterday, Tuesday, but recoiled from looking at them and seeing the reality.  The first is a young boy, shot in the jaw. His picture was attached twice and so I downloaded it twice, watching it spring up on my computer screen unbidden. The question asked today: does anyone know how he can get some medical help?

I don’t know anything more about these people except their humanity

.

I’m sorry, this was a hard blog to write.