Ndeffo was a calm laid-out village in Njoro Division, Nakuru. The villagers were farmers who grew crops in addition to rearing sheep, goats, cows and donkeys. It was situated on the fringes of a big forest called Mau ranges in the Rift Valley. The farms in the village were lush, covered by green foliage and healthy trees.  Clear-watered brooks run in each valley with several thundering rapids and small water falls making a sight to behold.

A network of winding paths provided connecting farm roads with a shopping centre named Ndeffo situated at the edge of the forest next to the tarmac road. This tarmac road led all the way to Mau Narok from Njoro and Nakuru.

Mau ranges were 6-8 kilometers away from the tarmac road but further in some parts. The distance was covered by trees all the way to the foot of the mountain then up to the top. 

I was a young lad growing up in this village. I attended the nearby Mutarakwa primary school where my mother was a teacher. I was in lower classes that ended at one leaving the rest of the day free for me and the boys. I was always in the company of several fun-seeking boys whose lives revolved in attending school in the morning hours and grazing animals in the afternoon.

The Mau forest was both exciting and fearsome. There were wild berries and guinea fowl egg-hunting expeditions. Boys of my age were not allowed to venture in alone. Apart from small wild animals like gazelles, dik-diks, hare, antelopes and hyrax, the forest had few life-threatening wild animals.

In some parts however, trees were very huge with intertwining canopies that hardly allowed light through. These parts were ever dark and fearsome. We called the section ‘dark Forest’ and only a few people ever ventured there. The only sounds in the dark forest were made by cicadas and the breezy whistling of wind through the trees. However, what did excite most was the fear-some silence, the fear of the unknown and the shadows.

Deep in the forest were Ndorobo families but were rather hard to spot. Rumor had it that they lived on milk from elephants and meat from buffaloes thus they were real warriors. It was also said that they lived in such harmony and rhythm with the forest and wild animals that their lives merged together.

Maasai Manyattas were also seen but rarely. One had to move on the higher side towards Likia and Mau Narok direction to come across the Maasais.

Women from my community would get loads of firewood from the forest especially on Saturdays. They always went in large groups accompanied by some men. They made use of the braches left behind by loggers who operated sawmills nearby. Builders from the farms also fetched poles, droppers and lianas from the forest. 

In some sections within the forest, settlement schemes like Likia, Sururu, Teret, sinendet Ndoinet and Barget were still occupied by farmers. The government had introduced schemes earlier on to farmers who were to take care of the young tree seedlings. After the trees matured, some farmers were allocated alternative land but some chose to remain. 

It’s within this time, around 1987 that a feared Nakuru DC called John Anguka came riding a helicopter, a loud speaker blaring tense announcement;

“All farmers in Teret, Likia and Sururu have been ordered to leave the forest in three days time!”

The helicopter kept cycling the area, repeating the same information and building tension. The news was received with bated breath. 

All families living in the forests started packing in a rush. There was near panic. From as far as Enosupukia, Ndoinet, Gongogeri and Njokerio in Egerton (Mwigito) all humanity living in the forest started packing in a rush. 

Within the first two days, loads of people with bundles of belongings and livestock streamed out from the forests.  Big luggage accompanied them on donkey backs, tractor trailers, donkey carts, carried on people’s backs, hand-held and the rest packed in wheelbarrows and handcarts. The exodus resembled the one made by the Israelites heading to Canaan.

Those who had places to go left but majority packed in nearby centers, sort refuge in friendly homesteads, churches and surrounding areas owned by kindly neighbors. Ndeffo village was flooded with loads of households on transit, confused livestock and many strange faces, beggars begging for a-house-to-spend-the-night and hungry children littered the place. The situation was made worse due to congestion in places where the visitors could be allowed to occupy. Scarcity of food, water, health care and desperation made living extremely difficult for the visitors.

Early the third day, those who had hesitated to vacate the forests received the surprise of a lifetime. Policemen, forest reservists and administration police raided their houses early the following morning and set them on fire. Every other building within Likia Forest, Teret was razed down; from the chief’s office, schools, dispensary, homesteads all the way to several churches.

From our homes in Ndeffo, we could see the billowing smoke and fire angrily curling out from the treetops that took days to end. That marked the beginning of the Mau Forest fires of destruction.

It took a long time for life to return to normal in our village. The visitors had made the village acknowledge scarcity in water, food, space, land and firewood. Mutarakwa School accommodated most children from the displaced families which resulted to over-crowding and more work-load for the existing staff teachers. Eventually, all displaced

People got places to live in. Neighboring school accommodated the remaining children. There was relative calm.

It did not last long. 

In two years time dating 1990, the forest started getting invaded by a new crop of creepy inhabitants apart from the Ogiek and the Maasai. They sneaked in at night, building little shacks in which they lived in while working in the forests. In a period of 5 years, the sneaky visitors had spread out, taken positions which they marked and fenced. The demarcation was done within the trees. Within a short period of time, loggers were invited to start work, cutting down the trees and logging them. Tractors with compete saw-milling outfit mounted on their backs started arrived in large numbers. The rest were armed with power saws and a fleet of lorries to ferry the logs to their milling factories.

It was like the scramble for Africa! The more the loggers arrived, the more the rush and near free-for-all as business people scrambled to take positions in the most favorable,  biggest demarcated pieces of forest land.

The new inhabitants thus became landlords, tenants and tree owners. They hurriedly subdivided any other free potion of land and made easy work of selling the trees to the loggers with the tractors.

The business of selling, cutting, logging and milling wood became a boom. Groaning tractors, whining power saws and grating wood made a karaoke of noises in the forest. Large Lorries and trailers became a common sight in Ndeffo centre and the surrounding areas. They were either waiting to be loaded with timber or in the process of being loaded. Those who could not wait for the tractors and millers to work on the logs ferried them raw and wholesomely.

The new inhabitants of the forest would set the trees on fire to eliminate the branches and unwanted parts. Pine trees are very flammable. They fueled the fires into unimaginable levels. Some days, whole night skies were turned bright and glowering! From as far away as the village of Ndeffo, one could see well at night without using a TORCH! The new owners of the forest were only interested in selling tree trunks to the loggers. The rest went up in flames!

The business of selling trees was bountiful! Ndeffo sprouted into a major business centre. Boutiques, butcheries, bars, dingy video showrooms, endless fake electronics like cheap radios, crappy chan’gaa, busaa and other illicit brew dens, grubby hotels and endless ‘Sportsman’ shops mushroomed with abandon.

Money was in plenty! With the boom also came a crowd of harlots, vagabonds and gawks idling and patrolling the brew dens. 

Workforce was needed in plenty! Loaders were needed for loading timber into Lorries. Others were needed for loading logs into the milling unit, cooks were needed for cooking whatever food and beverages, water peddlers and those who ferried sawdust away from the milling machines were required in plenty. Youths in Ndeffo thus had a source of readily available income provided they were willing to work. Young men from as far as Naishi and Rare were there to make an extra shilling too.             

People from my community had thus taken this readily available employment with both hands.                                                                                                                                                                                 Tyre centers were opened for repairs for the increased traffic, cobblers made a killing mending shoes, tailors worked their fingers out mending torn clothes and one-stop food kiosks became familiar spots. 

The new owners of the forest had lots of money to spend. Unfortunately, they had very few ideas on how to spend the money wisely apart from alcohol. They plundered most of it swallowing their favorite brew busaa and the rest on shady deals. The economic boom had brought with it a click of crooks and swindlers who made easy work of conning the new forest owners’ off loads of money.

From gambling, miracle performances, magic to witchdoctors, the place became another centre for money laundering and deceit. Some clever leeches had discovered that the new forest owners were easy targets for exploitation. Having little or no formal education, being innocent to the civilized world, it was easy day for the shrewd and the conniving battalion which had made its representation in plenty.

The new owners of the forest were mostly drunkards. They spent all the easy money from sale of trees drinking and performing immoral acts within the crappy illicit dens. No one was anybody’s wife, son, daughter or husband in those dens. These people were boisterous too. They talked of evicting any other community in the Rift valley province apart from their community. They claimed it was their ancestral land and no other communities should dream of living there. These sentiments brought a very tense mood between the two communities.

The forest dwellers were hardly concerned by the damaged relations. They would pile into the smoky dens with their whole members of kin every evening for a drink. The drinking would spill towards mid-night, milking their pints as if it was the last pint! Illicit brews were their past time! They almost always ended up fighting that easily turned ugly. 

In a short span of five years towards 1998, most trees had been cleared all the way into the foot of the mountain, the valleys and riverbanks. They were now proceeding to the sides of the mountain. Hundreds of lorry-loads had been visiting the place carting away loads of timber. Off-cuts were either thrown away, burned or used to produce charcoal. The shrewd business men were only interested in quality wood.

There were evident powers from top leaders in government. Good roads were hurriedly made within the forest. Electricity power lines followed. Centers like Ndeffo had been without power for a long period of time. My community was astonished as the power lines by-passed them to transverse into the forest to people who still lived in huts!

Charcoal burning made its mark as it made easy work of scavenging for the left-over stumps, branches and off-cuts. It was also a paying job as more and more Lorries came for returns, ferrying bags and bags of charcoal to urban areas. Cyclist also took a share in the charcoal business transporting the commodity to urban towns. They made quite a sight, big gunny bags overshadowing the cyclist as they careered through the roads towards Nukuru town where there was a ready market.

Charcoal-burning is a smoky affair. In a short time, Mau forest became a land of smoke, groaning power saws, dumps of saw dust, stumps and skeletons of trees! The extended family of Columbus monkeys that dwelt in the valleys had long been displaced forcefully.

The rivers which trickled out of the forest like Karare/Samau and Njoro/Ndarugu started becoming seasonal. These two rivers emptied their waters into Lake Nakuru. Several years later, some are but dry riverbeds.

The beautiful breathtaking sights of rolling forest into the landscape became a mirage then disappeared into shadows. The Mau ranges mountain appeared ugly, bare with sharp protrusions from a distance.

At this particular time, Ndeffo centre had attracted a lot of visitors. They were mostly directly or indirectly involved in the new kid in the block, the money-minting wood and timber industry. They came in loads, all interested in dropping more notes in their pockets. With them came endless drunks, vagabonds and people of dubious origins. They stationed themselves strategically to take advantage of the timber boom. Unfortunately, it didn’t last! 

The trees were getting depleted fast. The fearsome dark forest was no more. One could see as far as the foot of the mountain that was about 5 kilometers from Ndeffo centre. The hidden valleys, the mountain sides and far and wide was the scene that prevailed. This expansive land was littered with stumps of trees, tiny shacks, mud huts and smoking debris from trees.

The forest was thus demolished in a short span of 10 years!

The greatest disappointment was yet to hit my community.

The visitors that were now our neighbors were quite strange fellows. They all came from one ethnic front, spoke one language and lived easy lives. They spent most of the tree fortune drinking, buying fake nonsensical electronics and living immoral lives. They got mesmerized by glittering fake ornaments, melody/talking watches and cheap house holds. Small scale hawkers and mali-mali traders had a field day there. 

The new neighbors also emerged as lazy fellows. Farming was not exactly their idea of earning a living. They were good at making and forming bazaars to converse while sharing raw tobacco powder.

Now that the trees were almost done, it was time for the new landowners to prove their worth as landowners. The forest land was very fertile, something my community had envisaged long ago. The tree boom had hardly changed their lifestyles. They still lived in those little traditional huts, still drank their favorite busaa and spend day time loitering, conversing and listening to radio.

In the farming department, they failed miserably. In a short duration of time, my enterprising community had made clever entrepreneurship deals with the forest land owners. The forest owners were leasing the land for cultivation! Who else apart from my community to show wholesome interest in leasing these tracks of fertile land! My community knows nothing better than farming. They are known for it. Once they acquired these tracks of land, they worked tirelessly, tilling and transforming the land into chlorophyll-filled farms.

This brought forth a bountiful yield. 

The relationship was still frosty but manageable. Come harvest time and my community was in for a rude shock! On proceeding to harvest the farms, they found new owners in the lands they had leased! The new faces claimed they were the rightful owners of the land plus any other crop growing there!

They declared having not leased their farms whatsoever!

Some of these land owners had been sneaking into the farms and stealing the produce… harvesting almost the entire crop.

My community was flabbergasted beyond words! Was this the neighborliness? 

At this particular time, livestock started disappearing at night only for footsteps to be traced towards the forest-dwellers territory. Police were informed but were reluctant to follow the spoor inside this ‘unmarked territory.’ The trend became a habit. Cows were a special menu for these thieves. Donkeys soon joined the list. It progressed into cases of house breaking and stolen house-holds. 

The relation between the two communities became very frosty. Several clashes had brought a very bad taste to the mouth.

It all started in the water hole that was situated on the edge of the forest next to the tarmac. Though it was situated inside my community’s territory, both communities had been using it in harmony. 

One major conflict brought the cordial relations to a stand-still. All pretenses evaporated and the battle-line was drawn.

War-like young men from the forest-dwellers community congregated and attacked anybody who ventured into the well. Women from my community were assaulted while men were thoroughly beaten. Those coming to fetch water had their donkeys and jerry cans stolen.

Finally, a major tribal clash arose. It lasted for three days. Seven people lost their lives. There was never peace after this.

Seen and unseen conflicts, politicians who fueled ethnicity, internal feuds became full-blown confrontations. 

Ndeffo centre was a hub of business. Shops, posho mills and butcheries were found here. The bad relations ensured there was little or no trading between the two sides. Unfortunately, the forest dwellers had no centre of their own; no posho mills to mill their maize, no transport vehicles, shops, schools or health facilities. Several schools had been started in the forest but had no teachers to teach. They relied on borrowing teachers from my community who were very fearful.

The forest dwellers suffered in silence. At this period, some people and some politicians took into advising them to evict any other neighbor from other communities. They were told they were the real owners of the rift valley. These inciters easily threw the spanners into top gear.  They made the forest dwellers become very dangerous neighbors.

Robbery with violence, cattle rustling, stealing crops in the farms was turning into a polished hobby. 

Unfortunately, my community was made up of farmers who had never been involved in such skirmishes. They could hardly with-stand or with-hold a straight confrontation. The other community was made up of war-like warriors with an assortment of weaponry. Ndeffo centre thus became a dangerous zone. Periodic raids, robbery with violence, rape and murder resorted into fear, underdevelopment and bloodshed. Most shoppers closed their premises or moved to other safer areas.

Our forest neighbors were turning into a curse instead of a blessing.

The final straw was the skirmishes meted after the controversial 2007 general elections. Ndeffo centre was destroyed almost to a point of extinction. Most permanent and semi-permanent buildings were looted, razed down or vandalized.

A kindly European had funded the rehabilitation of the village well near the tarmac road. It was also vandalized. Most people fled from Ndeffo village to other areas with a bit resemblance of peace and sanity. The rest adopted a nomadic life of fleeing at night and coming back during the day.

It was a pain to raise livestock anymore. You had to have them in the move and watch over them during the night. It was a great pain leaving Ndeffo to become a refugee somewhere else. It was even more painful leaving my beloved village for good. For those who could, they left and never dreamed coming back. For those who didn’t have a place to go, they stayed put and soldiered on. The economic boom experienced several years back was no more but history. Ndeffo centre was never rebuilt. The forest land is still farmlands.

This article has been published in other publications and was not written exclusively for Kenya Imagine.
 

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