Kenya land dispute threatening tribes

May 16 2007 at 09:39AM

Members of one of the last hunter-gatherer tribes in East Africa are struggling to survive after returning to their ancestral home due to a Kenyan land dispute.

Thousands of Ogiek people have fled militia attacks from a rival tribe in the Mount Elgon region, near the border with Uganda, in growing violence which has displaced tens of thousands and killed dozens in recent months.

"Mount Elgon has become an eyesore in the country," district commissioner Mohamed Birik Mohamed told AFP in the vast expanse of mountains and deep forest of this volatile area.

More than 66 000 people have been displaced from the Mount Elgon region since December and at least 166 people have been killed, according to the Kenyan Red Cross.

'Because of this tension, we are not sleeping'
"The humanitarian situation is serious in terms of provision of food, supplementary medicines and sanitation," said local Reverend Maritim Rirei.

Disagreements over land have been a source of clashes in recent years across Kenya, with rival tribes fighting pitched battles to control it, and the government accused of favouring certain tribes in the distribution of land.

In the 1960s and 1970s, authorities forced the Ogieks into an area with proper social services, and they left their ancestral home in the Chepkitale forest, near the top of Mount Elgon.

Many moved 50 kilometres down the mountain to the town of Chebuyk, alongside the Soy, a farming tribe from the same clan, and they lived together for many years without ever defining land ownership in the area.

But a government land distribution scheme in August 2006, in which 7 000 people from both tribes requested land that was split into only 1 700 plots, sparked chaos.

A local militia representing the Soy, the Sabaot Land Defence Forces (SDLF), sprung up to protest the scheme.

Last September they intensified attacks on their rival tribe, and since then sporadic clashes have spread to neighbouring regions.

Two thousand Ogiek families have since climbed back up to their former home of Chepkitale to take refuge there.

Chebyuk resembles a ghost town, with abandoned houses and fields, and the remaining Ogiek and even some Soy inhabitants live in fear of the Saboat militia.

"Because of this tension, we are not sleeping," said father of eight Kiriongi Kipsangdiema.

Another resident, 43-year-old Joseph Sanutia, said people could only move around with a police escort.

Two weeks ago, Mosses Yanahndiwa, 22, was wounded in a machete attack by two Soy tribe members outside his nearby village.

"My life is in danger, I always hide," he said.

The leader of the Ogiek community, Johnson Changeiywo, slammed what he called "the genocide practises" of the Saboat militia and said the violence was threatening the Ogiek tribe's very existence.

Survival International, which defends the rights of indigenous peoples, also denounced the "the devastating impact this is having on the Ogiek people", in a letter to Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki in March.

Experts say there are only around 15 000 Ogiek families left, including 5 000 at Mount Elgon, and the rest in the Mau forest, also in western Kenya.

"They require special attention and support from the government, international community and well-wishers due to many years of neglect," Changeiywo told AFP.

Meanwhile, those who have returned to their original land, which became a game reserve in 2000, are no longer welcome.

For now, they have rebuilt mud huts with thatch rooves and set up bee hives, which they use for food, to make beer and welcome visitors.

But the area has no roads, schools or medical centres, apart from a tent set up by humanitarian group Doctors Without Borders.

The Ogiek are also known as the Ndorobo, which means "poor people who have no cattle", derived from the Masaai language.

But after moving to civilisation more than 30 years ago, the tribe members - who now wear Western clothes and have learned how to farm - no longer wish to hunt and gather to survive. It is also now illegal to hunt in the game reserve.

"We don't want to go back to the old days," said 60-year-old tribe member Chebrot Songoro. "Instead of hunting, we'd like to keep cattle and to have some food from the harvests."

But many, like Issac Ndiwa, who points to the place where he was born on the mountain, also guard idealistic hopes of remaining on the land of their ancestors.

source
www.iol.co.za