Though Kenya's polling stations officially opened at 6 am this morning, voters were already queuing two hours prior to the start of voting. Pictured - the Moi Avenue Primary polling centre in Nairobi where one of the longest queues has been reported. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI , Mar 4 2013 (IPS)

On Monday, Mar. 4, Betty Amollo was one of the millions of Kenyans who turned out in large numbers to cast her ballot in the country’s first general election since the 2007 disputed polls left almost 1,200 people dead and displaced 600,000 in the resultant inter-ethnic violence.

Though polling stations officially opened at 6 am this morning, voters were already queuing two hours prior to the start of voting. Amollo was one of them.

“I was in the queue at 4 am, but I voted only at 11 am. There were some technical hitches with the biometric voter registration system, which kept going on and off,” Amollo told IPS.

The blaring sounds of vuvuzelas (plastic blow horns) resounded across urban centres in this East African nation as enthusiastic voters roused fellow Kenyans from their sleep early Monday. Virtually all businesses across the country remained closed, except for the few restaurants that remained open to serve the voters.

Long queues of registered voters snaked around the usually busy Nairobi streets. Many had to patiently wait for hours as the biometric voter registration system, which identifies registered voters through reliable fingerprint and facial technology, experienced technical glitches in some areas.

“The long queues remind me of the 2002 general elections when we voted overwhelmingly for change. In a landslide, we ousted Moi’s 24-year-long presidential regime,” said Amollo, who was voting in Kibera, Nairobi. She was referring to former President Daniel Arap Moi’s largely dictatorial rule from 1978 to 2002.

If the queues of voters are anything to go by, it is clear that Kenyans are voting to ensure a decisive victory in this election, according to political analyst Peter Otondo.

“Based on the long queues witnessed today, it is obvious that Kenyans are gunning for a decisive win to avoid a repeat of the past (where everyone did not vote),” he told IPS.

Four million registered voters did not turn up to vote in the 2007 elections, the now-defunct Electoral Commission of Kenya said at the time.

According to the 2007 electoral rules, the candidate with the highest number of votes was declared president.

“The 2007 absentee voters were largely blamed for the disputed presidential poll results since the (winning) margin was too small,” Otondo said.

In 2007, current Prime Minister Raila Odinga ran for the presidency and was defeated by current outgoing President Mwai Kibaki by a mere two percent of the vote.

But the rules have changed for this election. In order for a candidate to be declared president, he or she is required to win 50 percent plus one vote of the overall votes cast. In addition, the candidate is also required to win 25 percent of the vote in the majority of Kenya’s counties.

In this election Odinga is also running for the presidency and his current main rival is deputy Prime Minister Uhuru Kenyatta, a man wanted by the International Criminal Court for war crimes. Kenyatta, a Kikuyu, has been accused of funding retaliatory attacks on the Kalenjin and Lou communities.

On Monday, the country’s Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission (IEBC) extended voting past 5 pm in areas that experienced technical hitches with the new biometric voter registration systems.

A woman at the Moi Avenue Primary School voting station in Nairobi has her left index finger marked with indelible ink by an IEBC officer, to show that she has voted. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

Voting was also extended in the Coast Province, where it is alleged that the Mombasa Republican Council (MRC), a secessionist group, intimidated voters. Suspected MRC members killed nine people in separate incidents in the region, including police officers and a presiding officer at Chumani tallying centre in Kilifi North Constituency, on Mar. 3, according to Coast provincial police officer Aggrey Adoli.

But these isolated incidents did not deter people from voting. While by the end of voting on Monday, the IEBC estimated that 70 percent of the country’s 14 million registered voters had turned out, adding that the figure could be higher as many polling stations had extended their hours.

Joyce Nyambura, a registered voter in Kiambu County, Central Province, was optimistic that Kenyans would not only vote peacefully but would accept the outcome of the election.

Nyambura lost her market stall business in Mombasa, Coast Province in 2007, at the height of the post-election violence. She has since relocated to Central Province, where she is struggling to rebuild her life.

“I escaped death and serious spinal injury after I tripped and fell (in the riots), and was trampled on by people fleeing for their lives,” she told IPS.

But she said that she felt that this election would be peaceful because “Kenyans learnt in pain, we all lost last time.”

This time around Kenyans are not keen to provoke violence, according to Jennifer Riria, the head of Tuvuke, an initiative for a peaceful and fair electoral process in Kenya.

“Civic education has borne fruit, and Kenyans are embracing a peaceful approach to the elections. There is more awareness that the election is just an event, and there is life beyond it,” she told IPS.

Still, Kenya’s security agencies were not leaving anything to chance. Police patrols were intensified, especially in areas that were most affected by the 2007-2008 post-election violence.

In Nairobi, armed police officers were a common sight throughout the day.

“Over 99,000 security personnel are already manning the more than 33,400 polling stations, to monitor incidents of election offences,” the chair of the IEBC, Isaack Hassan, told IPS.

The National Elections Centre, where national tallying is taking place for the presidential race, is also under a heavy security presence.

In the 2007 election thousands converged in and outside the tallying centre, where the results were being counted by hand. What should have been an orderly and transparent forum to announce results quickly deteriorated into a shouting match between electoral officials and political party agents at the time.

The situation is significantly different in this election, as the IEBC has adopted new technology to count the votes.

“The IEBC has also embraced electronic streaming of results, which has improved transparency and accountability in this election,” statistician Charles Onyango told IPS.

But whatever the outcome, Dominic Mango, a security guard at Brinks Security Company in Nairobi, was sure it would be a peaceful one. He told IPS: “This is a competition and whoever wins will reflect a win for all Kenyans.”

Oloo Janak, a media analyst and chairman of the Kenya Correspondents Association, told IPS that the media was still provoking emotions and favouring certain political interests. Credit: Miriam Gathigah/IPS

By Miriam Gathigah
NAIROBI , Feb 19 2013 (IPS)

With Kenyans set to go to the polls in just over two weeks, on Mar. 4, civil society has been closely monitoring the media’s coverage of the political campaigns in this East African nation – and they have found them wanting.

According to some political activists, the Kenyan media have been magnifying political conflict and hate speech in their reporting in ways reminiscent the disputed 2007 presidential election that ended in riots and politically motivated ethnic disputes, leaving around 1,200 people dead and displacing 600,000.

“When a politician attacks another politician verbally, and it becomes headline news, there will be counter verbal attacks – just as was the case in the last general elections,” Dinah Mukami, a human rights advocate and political activist consulting for local lobby group Bunge la Wananchi, told IPS.

Talking to IPS, Peter Otondo, a political analyst, agreed that that the media overall had been highly polarised during the 2007 general elections.

Prime Minister Raila Odinga accused the press of contributing to popular rhetoric that turned 41 out of the country’s 42 ethnic groups against one, the Kikuyu, significantly fanning tensions and violence at the time.

In a case in point, radio broadcast journalist Joshua Sang is currently awaiting trial at the International Criminal Court (ICC), where he’s accused of crimes against humanity, for having used his broadcasts to spread hate speech, including calls to displace members of particular ethnic groups and incitement of violence.

This year it is the case once again. “You can tell based on the headlines – often provocative and in favour of certain politicians -that the airwaves are not impartial,” Mukami said. “Neither are the political experts whose comments they seek.”

Father Gabriel Dolan, a columnist with the Saturday Nation, and a prominent human rights activist here, told IPS that he takes issue with media houses that continued to publish columnists who are known to work for politicians.

“The public doesn’t know that these so-called experts are consultants for politicians and tend to take their insights as gospel truth.

“If a writer is part of a campaign team, it is wrong for them to use the media to advance positions that favour the politicians they are beholden to,” he said.

“Journalists are receiving stipends from politicians in order to cover them favourably and to malign their opponents,” Oloo Janak, a media analyst and chairman of the Kenya Correspondents Association, told IPS.

Currently, there are over 20 TV stations and 120 radio stations in the country, Janak said. “Some of these media houses are owned by politicians, and others by businessmen beholden to certain politicians.”

Some politicians went so far as to pay callers to promote their campaigns during call-in sessions on radio and TV, he said.

“Working in cahoots with unethical journalists, these callers are given a lot of airtime and they are often very extreme in their views,” the media analyst added.

According to a Human Rights Watch report titled “High Stakes: Political Violence and the 2013 Elections in Kenya,” in 2012 and early this year “inter-communal clashes in parts of Kenya have claimed more than 477 lives and displaced about 118,000 people. Many of these incidents have been linked to pre-election manoeuvring as local politicians mobilise support.”

Meanwhile, a peace initiative called Tuvuke, Swahili for “Let’s Cross Over”, has been trying to educate the media on its role in the elections since 2012.

Hundreds of journalists, particularly in regions that experienced violence following the 2007 election, have since undergone training on how to remain objective and impartial throughout the electioneering period, Odhiambo Orlale, a media expert with Tuvuke, said.

But even the country’s top politicians and contenders for the presidential post have been involved in hateful and bitter exchanges.

The emotive issues of land ownership and pending cases at the ICC have also been brought up.

The country’s current vice-prime minister, and strong presidential candidate, Uhuru Kenyatta, is due to stand trial in the ICC for crimes against humanity and his contribution to the 2007/8 post-election violence – he is alleged to have funded retaliatory attacks. His running mate, William Ruto, also faces similar charges at the court.

Odinga, a front-runner in the race for the presidency, has used this to discredit his opponents and his emotive political campaigns have been widely covered by the media here.

“With the issue of land being such an emotive one in this country, these remarks can only flair tension,” Mukami said.

Ibrahim Oruko, a parliamentary reporter with the local Star newspaper told IPS that objective reporting was necessary in a country where politicians mobilise along ethnic lines.

“We are facing a serious challenge for we still see ourselves as Luo’s or Luhya’s first, prejudices that we take to political rallies and they influence how we tell stories,” he said.

“The main problem isn’t in the stories we cover, but that we are so embedded in our ethnic and political prejudices. We cannot be part of the stories we tell and still claim to be impartial.”

The Media Council of Kenya, the media regulatory body, which has released guidelines on election reporting, said that cases of biased media reporting have been filed with the council.

In an environment where journalists have come under fire for perceived exaggerated reporting and distortion of facts, the role of journalists in peace building is also under scrutiny.

“We can only keep that peace by remaining blind to ethnic prejudices, social class and political affiliations,” Oruko said.

Hosea Nailel (5039), Julius Muriuki, (5103) and Peter Chesang (5106) joined over 2,000 participants in Nakuru Town in a race that aimed to bridge ethnic divisions ahead of this country’s March 2013 elections. Credit: Peter Wahwai/IPS

By Peter Wahwai
RIFT VALLEY, Kenya , Dec 21 2012 (IPS)

Runners Hosea Nailel and Julius Muriuki, who are from Kenya’s rival ethnic Kalenjin and Kikuyu communities respectively, met during a half marathon when they broke away from the pack and remained in the leading group. 

They shared water during the race and tried to outdo each other at various sections of the last stretch. They did not talk; they only tried to outrun each other.

Having met for the first time at the newly-inaugurated Menengai Half Marathon in Nakuru Town, Rift Valley Province in November, Nailel and Muriuki have become friends and want to become training partners.

It is particularly poignant in a country where the Kalenjin and Kikuyu communities from the Rift Valley Province have been involved in deadly ethnic clashes almost every election year since 1992. The worst of it was in the 2007-2008 post-election violence, in which over 1,300 people were killed, 3,000 women were raped and more than 600,000 people were displaced, according to a report by the government-appointed Commission of Inquiry into Post-Election Violence.

Nakuru County in Rift Valley Province was considered a political hotbed during the 2007-2008 election violence. And tensions are flaring in the country again ahead of the 2013 polls. This month the investment group Old Mutual Kenya said that ethnicity would also play a role in the upcoming elections.Recently inter-ethnic violence has flared in this East African nation over competition for resources.

On Sep. 9, 38 people were killed in revenge attacks in the Tana River Delta district of Kenya’s Coast Province. The deceased include eight children, five women, 16 men, and nine police officers.

In August four people were killed in a separate incident in Muradellow village in Mandera North, in North Eastern Province. Police said that the conflict occurred at a water point where herders had taken their animals.

In March, 22 people were killed in Mandera, in North Eastern Province. More than 1,500 people fled their homes as a result of the violence, which occurred in El Golicha village, close to Kenya’s border with Somalia.

But ethnic differences mean little to the two talented runners.

“I met Muriuki and several other athletes from Central Kenya at the marathon. I did not know him before, but since then we have been in communication, and we shall meet soon. We plan to train together and compete in a forthcoming half marathon. As athletes we shall use our talent to demonstrate unity,” Nailel, who comes from Eldoret town in North Rift Valley, which also experienced ethnic violence after the country’s 2007 election, told IPS.

Nailel, who placed sixth in the Paris Half Marathon in October, led a squad of runners from North Rift Valley to join over 2,000 participants in Nakuru Town in a race that aimed to bridge ethnic divisions ahead of this country’s March 2013 elections.

“Such races will definitely unite different communities and eventually the nation; Kenyans are known for uniting behind their sportsmen and women,” Nailel said.

Muriuki lives in Nyahururu, a town in Central Province, and is an up-and-coming runner.

“They are great runners,” Muriuki said of Nailel’s team. “They helped me improve my speed, it was a united race and we raced together to the finish line. I am in communication with Nailel and some of the other runners and I look forward to meeting them at the next race,” Muriuki told IPS.

Muriuki had appeared strong throughout the race but Nailel broke away at the finish and clocked 61:02 to win the half marathon with Muriuki coming in fourth. Muriuki was the only runner from Central Province who finished in one of the top 10 positions in the race, while Nailel’s team registered a convincing victory by scooping all the other positions.

Nailel and Muriuki hope that running will help melt the differences of their respective ethnic groups.

“It was very encouraging to see residents of Nakuru Town line up by the sides of the roads to cheer us on as we passed through the streets. We felt encouraged and part of Nakuru despite it being our first time participating in a race in the town,” said Nailel of the majority Kikuyu community in Nakuru Town.

Muriuki agreed: “It was the first time we met with many of these athletes in such large numbers and it would be a great thing that such events continue uniting young people from opposing communities.”

Both he and Nailel talk about finding a suitable place to train together. They think that Nakuru Town, where they met, could be a possible training ground because of its strategic location between their home towns. They also discuss visiting each other regularly.

Their show of unity is encouraging to others.

Athletics Kenya secretary general David Okeyo said that athletics was one of the most practical ways to build unity among communities ahead of the country’s March 2013 elections.

“There are hundreds of upcoming (runners) from different communities who can do more than just run, they can unite communities, if we bring them together like we did in Nakuru,” he told IPS.

Okeyo said that races like these were very important in areas like Nakuru County and the entire Rift Valley Province where the 2007-2008 clashes occurred.

Nakuru North District Commissioner Michael Kagika said that participating in races was a rare opportunity for athletes to use their sporting talents to unite, and to mend their differences.

“The marathon is a major step towards building and sustaining peace among communities living in Nakuru County and Rift Valley Province. It brought different cultures and communities together and it came at a time when Kenya is poised to hold the general election,” Kagika told IPS.

Nancy Mweu, of Pamoja Radio, says she has been able to change the lives of women through her radio programme. Credit: Isaiah Esipisu/IPS

By Isaiah Esipisu
NAIROBI, Mar 12 2012 (IPS)

In a Kibera-bound mini-bus taxi, the driver changes the station just as he turns onto Ngong Road, kilometres away from the Kenyan slum. He tunes into Pamoja Radio 99.9 FM, a local community radio station that broadcasts only in Kibera.

“Wacha tupate ushauri,” the driver tells the passenger next to him in Swahili. Translated it means: “Let’s get some advice.”

“Whenever I tune in to Pamoja Radio, I learn something new, a new life lesson. They discuss family issues that are familiar to most of us, they address issues of unemployment, and mostly advocate for self-employment,” said the mini-bus taxi driver, adding that on the weekend he listened as a local young man explained how he had raised himself out of poverty using a loan from a microfinance institution.

It is mid-morning so local presenter Asmani Maringa is on the air, and the song emanating from the airwaves is one of the most popular Swahili songs in the country called “Umejuaje Kama si Umbea? ” or “How do you know it’s not gossip?”

It is from a music genre called Taarab, which is popular in Kenya and Tanzania.

As the song fades out, Maringa’s voice comes in re-introducing the theme of the day. “In case you have just tuned in, we are discussing peace in families. I want to understand why wives in some parts of the country have been battering their husbands of late,” he announced.

The topic, though emotive, leaves smiles on the faces of the passengers of the mini-bus taxi, or Matatu as they are locally called. The subject hit news headlines three weeks ago when a number of men from Nyeri in Central Province were hospitalised after their wives allegedly battered them.

“We use popular music genres to introduce subjects that promote peace among the residents of Kibera slum,” said Adam Hussein, the founder and managing director of Pamoja Radio.

“Apart from the news, all other programmes must have a theme for discussion, with a provision for listeners to contribute through phone calls, Facebook and short message services (SMS),” added the former journalist.

“Pamoja” is a Swahili word meaning “together”. The radio station was founded in 2007 to promote unity among those who live in Kibera and economically empower the youth here through education, information and entertainment.

The station is operated by nine volunteers from Kibera, and broadcasts over a radius of two kilometres.

Internews Network in Kenya, a non-governmental organisation that is dedicated to providing journalism training, has been instrumental in offering free instruction on the broadcast medium to the volunteers.

Following the post-election violence that rocked the country towards the end of 2007, the station had its work cut out for it trying to bring peace and understanding to the area. After incumbent President Mwai Kibaki won the elections, opposition candidate Raila Odinga’s supporters claimed electoral fraud. More than 1,500 people were killed in the resultant violence and over 500,000 displaced.

“Given that Kibera is in the constituency where Odinga comes from, it was one of the most volatile areas where houses were set ablaze, human beings were butchered, and properties were destroyed,” said Hussein.

At the time, the management of Pamoja Radio dedicated most of its airtime to peace messages broadcast in the various local languages represented in Kibera.

“We managed to quell the violence to some extent. We used to invite the most furious residents who were eager to express their opinions to the public through a channel like radio. We promised to give them airtime to do so. But upon arrival at the station, we put them through a short counselling session, after which we convinced them to go on air and preach peace to the rest of the community,” said Hussein.

As a result, Pamoja Radio has since developed programmes and activities geared towards promoting peace at the community and family level.

With support from the United States Agency for International Development, the station also sponsors football tournaments in Kibera “as a means of using sports as a tool to promote unity,” said Hussein.

Apart from sports, the station focuses on issues that affect the day-to-day lives of Kibera residents.

Nancy Mweu hosts a programme called Mwanamke ni Mwangaza, which is Swahili for “a woman is a source of light.” It is a live call-in programme with guests who are renowned members of society, or who have gone through particular experiences that Mweu feels need to be shared with other residents.

“Through real life experiences in the programme, I have been able to convince women that despite their state of poverty, they can still make it in life. That family planning works, and that being HIV-positive does not mean a death sentence,” said Mweu.

Habil Esiroyo Chitwa, a radio repairer in Kibera, is one such listener. He told IPS that until he listened to a programme on HIV in December 2011, he never bothered getting tested for the virus.

“My wife had been tested when she was pregnant, and she had turned out to be negative. But one day, a couple was invited to Pamoja Radio, where we learnt that the man was HIV-positive, while the wife was negative. But they had a kid. This got me thinking and as a result I had to go for the test despite the fact that my wife had tested negative,” said Chitwa.

*This story was produced with the support of UNESCO.

Six-year-old Victor Muruga points to a hole in the bush that he calls his “bedroom”. “I sleep there, under that tree and my mother sleeps under that blanket,” says Muruga.

Muruga is in a jovial mood as he prepares lunch for the family. The bubbly boy, his three-year old brother Ian Kimani and their mother had to initially spend five days in the bush after being transported here to Mumoi farm, enduring the scathing sun and biting cold as they waited for the government and Kenya Red Cross Society to provide them with tents.

Muruga’s family are among the 4,000 Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) affected by Kenya’s 2007/2008 post-election violence who live here on Mumoi farm in Subukia Township, 200 kilometres north west of Nairobi. Four years after the violence, they are yet to be allocated their one-hectare piece of land that the government promised all IDPs.

The families living on Mumoi farm want the 1,2 hectare farm, but the government refuses to buy it for them, saying that they had been relocated there illegally.

“The ministry does not intend to buy that land because it is rocky and unsuitable for farming, and the government was not involved in moving them there,” Permanent Secretary in the Special Programmes Ministry, Andrew Mondo, told IPS.

Mondo says that other government ministries like the Ministries of Land, Agriculture, Water, Roads and Education need to be involved in assessing and endorsing the land, and settling IDPs.

In the country’s 2011/2012 budget allocation, Finance Minister Uhuru Kenyatta set aside 60 million dollars for resettling IDPs. However, the process of resettlement has been characterised by corruption, tribalism and hostility to the IDPs.

Early last year, the government launched an investigation into a missing two million dollars that had been set aside for the resettlement IDPs, which had allegedly been misappropriated by officials in various ministries and even representatives of IDPs.

The 2007/2008 post-election violence displaced over 660,000 people, over half of whom were displaced in the Rift Valley Province. While more than 300,000 families have returned to their farms, and their ethnic homelands in Central, Nyanza and Western Provinces, some have sold the homes they were forced to flee from and bought land elsewhere.

There remain over 15,000 families displaced by the post-election violence awaiting their land settlements in Rift Valley Province, the largest province in Kenya. Each family has an average of five children.

“These are the people we recognise, plus the 5,710 families evacuated from the Mau Forest in 2009 who are camping in three major camps along the forest boundary,” Mondo says.

But the Mumoi farm IDPs refute allegations that they are not victims of the post-election violence and claim that the government wanted to resettle them in Central Province against their will. Naivasha Member of Parliament, John Mututho, then facilitated the relocation of the IDPs to Mumoi farm, claiming that the government had failed to resettle them.

“The government told all IDPs in the country to identify suitable land for themselves and alert the concerned ministry if they find it. That is what we did. We found this land and the seller is willing to sell it to us,” Ibrahim Kihara, spokesperson for IDPs at Mumoi farm, told IPS.

Last week, Mututho petitioned the high court to allow him to resettle IDPs. He has also sued the government for sabotaging the IDPs resettlement exercise.

But not everyone is happy that politicians have become embroiled in the row to resettle IDPs. A group of over 2,000 displaced persons from the country’s largest camp at Mawingu took to the streets early January to protest against being taken advantage of by politicians.

They also condemned Mututho for calling on IDPs to squat on private land.

“Politicians should stop misleading the IDPs, and politicising the resettlement issue to get votes in the forthcoming elections,” Osman Warfa, the Provincial Commissioner for Rift Valley Province, told IPS.

Another politician, Luka Kiagen, a Member of Parliament for Rongai Constituency, in the Rift Valley Province, has been leading a section of elders to complain over the settlement of IDPs in Rongai.

He claims that 10,000 people from the Kikuyu community had settled in Rongai at the expense of the largely Kalenjin community who had been evicted from the Mau Forest.

“People displaced from Mau Forest who are residing along the border have been forgotten in the resettlement programme,” Kigen told IPS.

The government maintains that there was no discrimination in the resettlement exercise.

“Such allegations are unfounded. It is not by choice that members of the Kikuyu community are the largest number of IDPs,” Mondo told IPS.

Non-governmental organisations and civil societies have blamed the government for the continued delay in resettling IDPs.

“The IDPs issue has exposed the intolerance and divisions among communities. The government has not been willing to clear this blot on the face of Kenya. It has failed in upholding the constitution that guarantees security and accommodation for all Kenyans by false promises for four years.

“The government claims that there is no land for relocation. But look at the thousands of acres owned by politicians and lying idle in the country. Can’t they be bought by the government at least to settle the IDPs?” Ndung’u Wainaina, director of the International Center for Policy and Conflict, told IPS.

In December 2011 the government created a task force mandated to fast track the resettlement process. But Peter Kariuki, the coordinator for the IDPs National Network, says that four years down the line this is “too little too late.”

Several years ago, Lakes Kamnarok and Ol Bollosat in Kenya were vibrant water bodies that supported and shaped the ecosystems around them. But today they are shells of their former selves, due to heavy siltation caused by human activities.

A crocodile carcass on Lake Kamnarok. In the distance cows graze on the lake bed. Credit: Peter Kahare

“Siltation is still happening, the lake is drying up and this is threatening Lake Kamnarok and the wildlife with extinction, besides affecting the lives of people around it,” Elijah Chemitei, senior warden in Baringo County, in the Rift Valley Province, told IPS. “Much of it is caused by upstream activities like tree-felling and charcoal-burning, agricultural activities, grazing and sand collection.”

Lake Kamnarok, in the arid county of Baringo, is the only oxbow lake (a crescent-shaped lake that is formed when a meander of a river is cut off from the main channel) in the country. It used to have the second-largest population of crocodiles in Africa, after Lake Chad.

“The crocodiles at the lake used to be over 30,000 in population; they are now less than 5,000 after many died while others prefer to inhabit the Kerio River that formed the lake. Wild animals at the Rimoi Game Reserve next to the lake are endangered and tourism in general is in jeopardy,” says Chemitai. Roy Kiplagat, a resident in Baringo County, says the displacement of the crocodiles has meant that domestic animals are now in danger of becoming prey.

“This is happening at Kerio Valley through which the Kerio River passes. Crocodiles that have moved out of the river have killed many goats as they drink water,” he says.

Chemitei says that Lake Kamnarok has become increasingly shallow, decreasing in size from 10 square kilometres to two square kilometres. He says people are felling trees, burning charcoal and farming in the nearby indigenous forests. So when it rains the soil is washed down into the lake.

The lake was once a water source for over 500 elephants and over 10 species of other mammals from the adjacent Rimoi Game Reserve. Other animals found around the lake are impalas, bushbucks, warthogs, leopards, buffaloes and an endangered mammal called funkleen.

However, Chemitai says that the number of tourists visiting Rimoi has reduced over the years because of the decreasing numbers of wild animals. And those wild animals that remain have retreated as cows have taken over the area for grazing.

Poaching is another challenge here.

“Poachers enter into the reserve to hunt. Last year we lost many animals to poachers and we are disadvantaged because we lack enough game rangers,” says Chemitai.

Chemitai said the County Council of Baringo, the local authority mandated to control human settlement, was partly to blame as it was reluctant to prevent people from intruding onto the riparian land.

“We are asking people who have encroached into the lake to move out. The County Council of Baringo has failed to control settlement and prevent illegal occupation in the riparian land,” Chemitai told IPS.

Albert Lagat, an environmental conservationist and the head of Esageri Sabatia Environmental Organization, an NGO that plants trees in deforested catchments, says urgent action needs to be taken to save Lake Kamnarok.

He notes that the Ketipborok, Cheplogoi, Oiwo and Chelabei Rivers that flow into Lake Kamnarok have either dried up completely or become seasonal following the destruction of their sources.

“The lake had plenty of water sometime back. Urgent measures like reforesting the forests with indigenous trees, sensitising people to protect the lake and to move out of the land near the lake should be taken,” says Lagat.

He adds that Lake Ol Bollosat, the only lake in Central Province and one of the few highland lakes in the world, has also suffered a similar fate.

A group of 250 families affected by Kenya’s post-election violence, which saw about 600,000 people displaced from their homes after the country’s disputed 2007 elections, have bought land on the shore of the lake where they have now settled.

Their destruction of the nearby Aberdare Forest has caused the rivers that run from the forest into Lake Ol Bollosat to dry up.

Lake Ol Bollosat used to be home to a number of hippopotamuses and up to 200 species of birds, and is the source of water that feeds Thompsons Falls, Kenya’s most scenic waterfall. Standing at 2,360 metres above sea level, the 72-metre waterfall is an important tourist attraction and source of revenue in Nyahururu, one of Kenya’s highest towns.

“This lake has reduced in size from between 5,000 to 10,000 hectares to less than 3, 000 hectares currently in less than three years. Consequently hundreds if not thousands of birds have shifted to other lakes or died, hippos have continued to die with tourists opting to go to other places,” Lagat told IPS.

Lagat says that despite the government’s order over a year ago that people encroaching on Aberdare Forest be moved; nothing has been done. Last year, the Environmental Ministry introduced a policy that directed the cutting down of eucalyptus trees in wetlands and along riverbanks. The trees are blamed for their consumption of huge amounts of water.

“Some people have, however, continue to grow these trees to the detriment of rivers and important catchment areas,” Lagat says.

However, William Kimosop, a game warden at Baringo, says that the Kenya Wildlife Service is working hard to protect these resources and open up the region to tourism.