Massacre in Kenya

She didn’t stand a chance. Carrying underarm the small goat she was hoping to trade, Akiru could only join the other traders as they were rounded up in a small village along Ethiopia’s border with Kenya. The following morning she was one of twenty Kenyans carried away in bin bags by Catholic missionaries in a tractor. She was shot at close range.

Her twenty companions joined a total of 40 killed on a day of unforeseen and unprecedented violence between the northern Kenyan Turkana people and the southern Ethiopian Merille. What started with the unprovoked murder of two Turkana fishermen exploded through a spiral of revenge into the massacre of these unarmed traders just hours later.

Like the rest of the Turkana dead, Akiru was from Todonyang, a small village turned refugee camp just a few kilometres from the border. The people of Todonyang are no strangers to suffering since conflict flared up with the Merille during a severe drought in 2009. Both communities rely heavily on keeping goats and when grass became scarce, conflict arose over the remaining patches, which happened to be on Turkana land. Merille attacks, taking animals and land, would kill several Turkana each month. On top of this, HIV prevalence is 25% among the 500 or so herdsmen and fishermen in Todonyang and police, stationed nearby to protect against conflict with the Merille, had brought the problems of drugs, alcohol and prostitution to the village. A proud nomadic people, the Turkana had been forced by the trouble with the Merille to seek safety in numbers, gathering at Todonyang.

In recent months, however, real hope had been building. Efforts at peace talks sponsored by Steven Ochieng, a Catholic priest, seemed to be paying off as Turkana and Merille started tentatively to visit each others villages to trade. There hadn’t been violence for months. A new school had just been built to teach Turkana and Merille children together. For Akiru, the opportunity to trade with her former enemies presented a real chance to break out of poverty. As the wife of a fisherman, Akiru and her family of 6 would have earned around £300 per year; even the smallest amount of extra income would make a substantial difference to this young family’s meagre earnings.

But the Turkana and Merille were still a desperately poor people living from day to day, and endemic poverty can lead to panicked, short term decision making. Last Tuesday morning, while Akiru set out for the Merille village, a group of young Merille men left that same village for the shores of Lake Turkana. It is not certain what motivated them, but the prospect of returning as war heroes, as young men everywhere fantasise, was likely one of them. They ambushed a group of Turkana fishermen, killing two of them. When word spread to Todonyang, five unarmed Merille traders were killed in cold blood.

There is a terrible inevitability about the conflict. Desperate poverty is entrenched by corrupt government. The failure to provide decent schools and law enforcement is leading to murder over mere grazing land. Poverty and the threat of violence devalue life for both Turkana and Merille. As Yeats said, “too long a sacrifice makes a stone of the heart”. Akiru reached the Merille village just minutes before the news of the murder in Todonyang reached there too. Not knowing the Merille language, she probably didn’t know what was happening when she was taken away from the village with the other Turkana.

But even had she spoken their language, the wheel had been long set in turn, leading to an unarmed mother, goat in hand, dying for tradition and a patch of grass. She didn’t stand a chance.