All I ever wanted was to teach, but Kapedo has taught me even bigger lessons

President Uhuru Kenyatta addresses Kapedo residents on November 2, 2014. PHOTO | JARED NYATAYA |

What you need to know:

  • While in other schools rules are about tidiness, cleanliness and deadlines, in Kapedo they were giving me rules about what to do in the event gunmen attacked us.
  • Here, people still believe that an eye for an eye is a good concept, and so when a Turkana kills a Pokot, the whole Turkana community must suffer the consequences.
  • At Kapedo Secondary School, we admitted one Pokot student in 2012, but he did not even complete a term at the school. He just woke up one day and vanished.

When I graduated from Masinde Muliro University with a bachelors degree in education, I was eager to get a job as early as possible, just like any other young graduate anywhere in the world. So when the Teachers’ Service Commission advertised contract teacher vacancies in 2009, I was among the first to apply.

But the Kenya National Union of Teachers (Knut) ran to the courts to object the employment of teachers on contract, and that is how I missed employment that year.

In 2010, the courts dropped the union’s case. TSC re-advertised, and I applied again. I attended several interviews around the then Western Province, but I was not successful.

A friend who probably sensed my desperation told me I stood better chances of employment if I went to Lodwar. I said “why not?” I packed my bags and headed to Lodwar.

He was right, because a few weeks later, I joined Kapedo Secondary School to teach biology and chemistry.

The journey there was an eye-opener. I boarded a vehicle from Bungoma town to Eldoret, then from Eldoret to Kabarnet before proceeding to Marigat. From there, life took an interesting, brutal turn.

I boarded a minibus christened “Mossop” at noon for the final leg of the journey to Kapedo, 110 kilometres away via a back-breaking road.

A few hours into the journey, our driver made a call to what I later learnt was an Administration Police officer attached to the Rapid Deployment Unit (RDU).

ARMED ESCORT

He informed the officer that we would get to Chemolingot — a small shopping centre between Marigat and Kapedo — late in the evening, and so we would need armed escort.

At Chemolingot, we were transferred into a police lorry for the rest of the journey. The route was too dangerous for the van, we were informed, and so we endured the night at the back of the lorry, arriving at Kapedo at about 3 am.

After the initial introductions, the students sat me down to give me the rules of the game here. “Rule Number One,” they started, “when you hear gunshots you dive to the ground and lie there until you ascertain where they are being fired from before you run.”

They gave me several other rules, but I was not listening to them anymore. While in other schools rules are about tidiness, cleanliness and deadlines, in Kapedo they were giving me rules about what to do in the event gunmen attacked us.

That’s not what I had bargained for, but I needed a job badly.

The first unique challenge in Kapedo was that there was no mobile phone signal coverage, and so we had to rely on a stray signal that was only found near a river, about 300 metres from the center.

The second challenge was how to respond to gunshots. Two days after I arrived at Kapedo, I went searching for the mobile phone signal when I heard gunshots about 200 metres away, in the direction of Silale Hills.

POKOT SYMPATHISER
Everyone around me dived to the ground, but I, immaculately dressed in a white shirt, just stood there, somehow transfixed. Everyone was signalling me to lie on the ground, but I couldn’t bring myself to.

After what seemed an eternity, I knelt down and lay on the ground, immaculate white shirt, ego, and all.

I had become part of the Kapedo culture, and boy, was it traumatising! Two weeks after I arrived, Pokot raiders attacked a woman as she tended her flock near our school, killing her before driving her herd away.

Immediately, half of Kapedo residents, including some of my students, reached for their guns and pangas and started hunting down Pokots.

I remember successfully pleading with some of my students to let go a Pokot man they wanted to kill.

They later told me I had risked my own life by telling them to let the man be because, in another forum, I would have been labelled a Pokot sympathiser and attacked.

Revenge, brutal revenge, is a way of life in Kapedo. Here, people still believe that an eye for an eye is a good concept, and so when a Turkana kills a Pokot, the whole Turkana community must suffer the consequences.

There are peaceful lulls when we all co-exist, living peacefully as brothers and sisters, but those lulls only last a few weeks and then all the distrust and eye-poking starts all over again.

RAMPANT KILLING
Killing is a way of life here, so rampant that in the few years I have been stationed here, I can’t remember anyone who died of natural causes.

Maybe there are — of course there are — but the figures are so tiny, so small that they are a faint, barely inaudible blip on the death radar.

Other than the dusty, winding roads, the other most dangerous place is the river. Ordinarily, it shouldn’t be, but because it also serves as the community bathroom (few people have bathrooms here), attackers only need to wait for people to show up.

And as sure as clockwork, there will always be someone taking a bath here, buck naked and easy prey for gunmen. The Kenya Police Reservists used to accompany people to the river, but not any more.

I have noticed, also, that the two warring communities — the Pokot and the Turkana — rarely intermarry. A clear, yet invisible, boundary exists between the two that no one dares cross.

They may laugh with one another and share jokes, but once the sun sets, everyone withdraws to his own primitive, tribal, murderous, distrusting cocoon.

They do not even share classrooms. At Kapedo Secondary School, we admitted one Pokot student in 2012, but he did not even complete a term at the school. He just woke up one day and vanished.

On the right, is my recollection of some of the events here. Read on and pray for Kapedo...