NAIVASHA, KENYA – Helen Nyongito, 30, has been raising her three children on her own ever since her husband died during the more than 20 years of land conflict between two communities in the Maiella area of Kenya’s Rift Valley.
She says the only memory she has of her late husband is a lone photo she keeps in her wallet. She says the photo strengthens her whenever she hears a scream during the night or when she and her children trek the 100 kilometers, 62 miles, to search for water at Lake Naivasha. She says all their other belongings were stolen during the conflict.
“The fight has affected very many families,” says Nyongito, who is from the Maasai community. “When we hear a scream, everybody runs, leaving whatever they were doing.”
She says that at the height of the land conflict, women were raped, cattle were stolen and children were lost. She says that many children have still not been found.
”We don’t know if they are dead or alive,” she says.
Nyongito says raising her two sons and daughter alone has not been easy in the Maasai community, which views single parents as cursed. As a single mother, she says the community didn’t look out for her family or invite them to social functions, like weddings.
But despite her social isolation, Nyongito’s family recently played a major role in ending the violence and ensuring peace between the two communities when her daughter married a man from the rival Kikuyu community in their home atop a hill during a recent festival. Nyongito says the festival, wedding and other efforts, such as radio programs, have improved relations between the communities as well as her own community’s treatment of her family.
After more than 20 years of land conflict, the Maasai and Kikuyu communities in Maiella are pushing for peace. Despite occasional flares of violence, a recent cultural peace festival complete with a white goat sacrifice and an inter-tribe wedding brought the two groups together in what local leaders call a monumental step toward reconciliation. Community members say they know they have a long way to go but are now committed to achieving peace.
The land dispute that has divided the communities dates back to 1964, when an Italian settler, known only as Roskad, returned to Italy, leaving a large tract of land behind. Some workers, mainly from the Kikuyu community, formed the Ngati Farmers Cooperative to purchase the land, which the Maasai argued had belonged to their ancestors, says Francis M. Kuria, the area chief for both communities. In 2009, a court apportioned 4,287 hectares of the land to the Maasai and 11,713 hectares to the Kikuyu cooperative. But tensions have remained high, occasionally breaking into armed conflict.
John Ole Linde, Maasai community chairman, says the land conflict has generated such hostility between the two groups that it is difficult to even walk in some parts of the area. He says that a landmark divides the two communities and that crossing it leads to fighting.
Kuria says that it has been difficult to mediate between the groups because each accuses him of favoring the other. He says it has been especially difficult to involve women in the peace mediation programs because the Maasai don’t allow women to participate in “baraza,” or council. On the other hand, Adam Abdullahi, an area divisional police officer, says women contribute to violence by inciting their husbands against their neighbors.
Abdullahi says that despite how commonplace violence has become, it is against the law. At the festival, he said that anybody who broke the law would be held accountable. He also said that the police had asked the government to put a police camp near the area so that police could patrol at night.
Abdullahi said the Ministry of Lands had also agreed to send a land surveyor to Maiella to help further subdivide the land among the members of the two communities. Land will also be used for a new school and hospital. Abdullahi called on the communities’ leaders to stop the conflict to allow development to take place.
To promote development, Mujinga Kariuki, area councilor in the local government, stressed the need for funding. He said the area had no schools, roads or markets. He said female children were especially denied education because they were married off young.
Linde commented on the lack of young people in the area in general, as many of them died during the land conflict.
As the division in Maiella has been palpable, the cultural event held earlier this year displayed both communities’ commitment to achieving peace. Although the conflict left few young people in Maiella, dancing and singing women, children and old men lined the rough road to welcome visitors to the festival, which was organized by the Association of Media Women in Kenya, AMWIK, a national organization that promotes gender equality and a partner organization of Global Press Institute.
The two communities slaughtered a white goat as a sign of peace. The leaders of the two communities drank the goat’s blood to indicate that they had taken an oath to maintain peace in the area.
Patrick Munga, the Kikuyu leader, said drinking blood was a serious oath. Breaking the oath may lead to “kirumi,” or a curse that can lead to many deaths. Munga said the land dispute had grown so intense that they would kill anybody from the Maasai community who came to their side of the landmark to let their cattle graze.
The men then roasted the goat’s meat, and the elders blessed it and divided it among themselves and then the rest of the community by age. The men ate the ribs and liver, and the women ate the remaining parts. The communities sang and danced, and the Kikuyu community staged a dance reserved strictly for reconciliation and peace building.
Jane Thuo, AMWIK executive director, says she first discovered the land dispute between the communities during AMWIK’s Peace and Reconciliation Program in Naivasha, one of the towns worst hit by the post-election violence in 2007 and 2008 that left 1,300 Kenyans dead after disputed results led to fighting. Thuo says that since then AMWIK has sponsored radio listening programs to train groups to live in peace. The groups listen to messages that promote peace and discuss them in focus groups.
“Since the radio listening programs came to Maiella, I have witnessed a considerable change within our community,” she says. “They don’t isolate me as before. We visit one another, [and I] am able to talk to them.”
AMWIK has also organized a football, or soccer, team called “Amani,” which means “peace” in Swahili, among the community groups to promote peace. Nyongito says it has been successful. She says her two sons don’t go to school because it is too far and she can’t afford the fees so she hopes they will be able to succeed through football.
Nyongito says that her daughter’s marriage also shows the communities’ commitment to peace. During the cultural event, her daughter, Ongati Olojaide, 18, married a Kikuyu man, Peter Kiarie.
At Nyongito’s house on the top of the hill, women sang with calabash on top of their heads. No one was allowed to see the bride until the groom arrived, covered with the signature Maasai red cloth and his hair painted red. He received milk to drink, signifying his acceptance by the Maasai community.
The groom then entered the bride’s house, where they were blessed and married, symbolizing a union between the Maasai and Kikuyu communities. The cloth was removed from the bride’s hair, which was also painted red, signaling her virginity, Nyongito says. When the couple emerged from the house, the bride was crying because Maasai culture says that she can never return home again.
The couple then walked to the groom’s house in the Kikuyu community, which welcomed the union with singing and clapping. The dowry, more than 100 cows and goats, followed them, and the bride couldn’t enter the groom’s house until more cattle were added. She also couldn’t look back or it is believed her family would die. Although no one was allowed to see the marital bed, it was covered in a white sheet, which the couple would need to show the elders the next day to prove the bride was indeed a virgin and maintain trust between the communities.
Although the Maasai and Kikuyu communities have a long way to go to achieve permanent peace, Nyongito says the cultural event, radio program, football team, land surveying and her daughter’s wedding would help them reconcile.
“It will take us some time to heal, but we are determined,” Nyongito says.
