Raid rage

Northern Kenya

I sat down to write this next to the skull of a Samburu cattle rustler who recently fell in battle. Nothing remains of him for us to bury today except his cranium, some healthy teeth and an anorak. Hyenas ate the rest. His last moments are recorded by the red ochre war paint smeared across smooth boulders, marking where he crawled on his belly. Here a posse of Pokot tribesmen surrounded him. Nearby rocks and trees are shattered by bullets. Incoming rounds blew the rustler’s head apart. The trail of war paint ends where the earth is stained in the ghostly red outline of a man.

I have had to piece together what occurred in this way because the day it happened I was away from home on my travels. I know now that armed Samburu had raided a Pokot village the previous evening, when they murdered a baby girl and an old man, and drove away a thousand cattle. Overnight, angry Pokot warriors together with police units raced ahead of the rustled stock and prepared an ambush in the valley some distance from our farmstead.

Hell broke loose at breakfast time, which is when my manager phoned me to provide a running commentary for several hours. The rustlers returned fire and scattered. Fighting moved down the valley and on to the farm, continuing for a time outside the garden wall. Over the phone I could hear bullets flying and the occasional bang of a grenade. Some farm staff hid in a big stone water tank on the hill. Others drove our cattle into a dry-stone boma so that they wouldn’t be stolen in the mêlée and hid behind the walls as panicked rustlers ran in all directions.