Facing South, Peace Missions in Turkana

There has been bloodshed, many lives have been lost along the Pokot/ turkana boarder, many schools have been closed down due to invasion by communities along the border line, in this case Turkana and Pokot.

A lot has been reported on cattle rustling and killings, just this month alone hundreds of lives have been reported, others shot while looking after their livestock, others while attending their small firms and even innocent travelers along Kitale- Lodwar Road. Another incident occurred at the notorious Kasarani plains adjacent to Lomelo settlements where a Kenya Police vehicle transporting KCSE national exams to Kapedo was attacked, the officers shot and the vehicle burnt to ashes.

In November 2013 bandits from Pokot held hostage GSU officers providing security at Lorogon Village which is adjacent to Turkwel Gorge. About 300 armed youth could even allow even the helicopter of the Rift Valley police boss to land to handle the disputes, they almost brought it down.

Among many other, killings along this boarder line have been rampant. Even as this is happening our leaders have never been united to defend our people, we do not have to wake up and plan warfare, we cannot fight, kill and cattle rustle the whole of our life. We need peace, we need to trade with our neighbors, we need to intermarry amongst ourselves, and among other things we will forever share the boarders and therefore need to accept this fact and try manage the situation at hand. We need peace

Although as much as Turkana has been doing peace meetings and more specifically the Lokiriama Peace Accord, we have always concentrated our efforts towards making peace with the neighbors bordering us at the west and North, nothing tangible as ever been geared towards south turkana; maybe the intervention need to be changed or something!

Monies have been allocated by National and County Governments. Many NGOs working in Turkana County have put more efforts and even funds on peace initiatives. They have worked in some areas and not in others especially along the South and East boarder line. But little efforts have been geared towards the south and east, and therefore little results have been realized, in fact none.

It is time we go south and do more peace initiatives; we have seen ourselves going to Moroto in Uganda, Ileret, Kapoeta in Sudan, Nadapal, Omurate in Ethiopia, we have made peace with these neighbors from the said regions, we should therefore put more emphasis on peace initiatives with our neighbors in Pokot.

However it can also be that in the small way we are influencing peace, that we are not using better interventions, we might have failed in some methods and therefore might need to change and use other avenues. I know and the whole world knows Turkana people love peace; we have always initiated these processes, the reason why people here live harmoniously and work with people from other tribes.

Finally, our heritage needs protection from consequences that come with insecurity, we will lose our dignity as a peace loving people if we engage ourselves in wars and cattle rustling, we will chase away potential investors who have in the recent past been surveying, we will close schools along the borders and our war against illiteracy would have failed a great deal, our small scale farming activities in such areas as Katilu, Nakwamoru in Turkana South, Morulem, elelea and katilia in urkana East. Our food basket will drop immensely and people will die of hunger.

Peace is the foundation of development; we won’t expect to lose our ground on establishing a resilient Turkana County in the future.