Aidan Hartley Aidan Hartley

When elephants fight, the grass suffers

Aidan Hartley says that the violence in Kenya reflects the failure of the political class: better paid than their European counterparts in a nation where many live on 50p a day

As I write this, the crackle of gunfire is audible from the veranda of our farmhouse. Warriors of the Pokot and Samburu are fighting a mile away. A bushfire engulfs the horizon. I hear the tally in blood so far is three Samburu warriors killed, and the Pokot have rustled 750 cattle.

Today I hope our farm and the people who live here will be spared the violence. They were not on Boxing Day, the eve of Kenya’s elections, when Samburu rustlers armed with AK-47s hit our place and made off with 22 steers. That afternoon the police were unable to respond as they were busy guarding ballot boxes. Our neighbours rushed to help instead, and my friend Charles saved our cattle by bravely charging his car at the raiders in a hail of bullets. The raiders ran for it.

This is the situation just in our little corner of Kenya. After the failed elections of 27 December, men on bicycles brought news from across the Laikipia plains of a nationwide spasm of bloodletting and mayhem. Police were shooting at mobs rioting in support of the opposition leader Raila Odinga. In retaliation for the alleged rigging that returned President Mwai Kibaki to power, pogroms were launched against traders and farmers of the Kikuyu tribe. When the Kikuyu fled the village up the road, food supplies dried up, hunger set in among the mob and rioting flared again.

To cap it all in these apocalyptic times, a local Samburu witchdoctor claimed it was time for his warriors — supporters of Odinga — to advance on the Pokot (who backed Kibaki). He had found a way to turn Pokot bullets into rain — a promise that evidently precipitated today’s clashes.

During the last fortnight a strange, expectant mood has enveloped our farm.

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