Rank: Elder Joined: 3/18/2011 Posts: 12,069 Location: Kianjokoma
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FRM2011 wrote:Kusadikika wrote:quicksand wrote:Kusadikika wrote:Njung'e wrote:Obi 1 Kanobi wrote:[quote=sanity][quote=hardwood][quote=Kusadikika][quote=hardwood][quote=Kusadikika][quote=simonkabz]
Sorry, for now the govt cannot interfere with the pokots as they are looking for their votes. The mzungu's are too few for their votes to count while the kiuks in Laikipia are already mortgaged to the govt party so they will have to wait till after elections. You are right. Won't be surprised if they are hit mercilessly after the election, moreso if UMK gets back. The Pokot are not Mungiki. The Mungiki were kawaida people who in their later years decided to engage in Mungiki activities. A Pokot in the plains of Baringo or Laikipia does not know any other way of life. The life of herding his cattle, taking it where there is pasture and water and protecting what he has by any means necessary and raiding neighboring communities to get more is HIS LIFE. That is how they know how live, that is how they live. If anybody in government makes any decision to deal with the problem, this is what they must deal with. A people's way of life. In my opinion the most effective way to deal with this would be construct water pans and drill bore holes all over the Pokot territory in West Pokot, Baringo and Laikipia. Taking up arms or engaging KDF would be a grave mistake that would only kick the can down the road. Water pans and boreholes won't regrow pastures burned off by drought. An idealist is one who when his ideas about life collide with reality insists it is reality which must change. A hundred years ago just about everybody in Africa used to run around half naked in leather sarongs, circumcising girls, burning off forests and savannas to cultivate, spearing lions as a rite of passage...among other things. Can't do that anymore. Hey presto! It is the 21st century. It arrived for everyone, including the Pokot, and we all have to hustle along with it. I don't know where you get the idea that these pastoralists are justified to take up arms and mow down the rest of the Kenyans. Since we are all nice modern 21st Century people and we have a capable and modern army with equipment why don't we just kill all of them and get rid of them once and for all? The Pokot do not have newspapers, TV, Radio and internet to cry out to the rest of the world the atrocities that have been committed against their way of life so the only one sided story we have is that they are savages who are mowing down the rest of Kenyans. Drought comes and goes. Water pans and boreholes will mitigate the effects of future droughts not solve the problems of the current drought. 21st century or not my point is that no indigenous Kenyan is more Kenyan than another and for far too long sedentary Kenyans have had nothing but contempt for the pastoralist Kenyans only because they can sit down at their desks and draw up maps and then trick whole populations out of their land. I cannot with any conscience be on the side of Kuki Gallman against the Pokot. Sorry. The government must deal with the Pokot as people and not a nuisance.  You have opted to side with the uncomfortable truth rather than the convenient lie. My respects. Right is right even when nobody is doing it. Wrong is wrong even when everybody is doing it. Conversely, we must not treat pastoralists as if they are more special than the rest of the groups interested in land. Do we really want to have 2 sets of laws? Bear in mind that before the British came our ethnic borders weren't static. The Kiambu(or Kabete) settlement by Kikuyus is very recent. A good number of them have happened after the Brits occupation! For pastoralists it's likely they're still living like in those days of flexible borders
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