The man-eaters of Juja: Prowling hyenas play deadly games as locals hold onto hope

Sometimes in January 2022, family, friends and relatives gathered for a burial ceremony at Komo village in Thika.

It was a send-off for Joseph Njuguna, a man who had been known to them for decades.

The solemn event was not a typical sendoff ceremony for the 63-year-old man. It was a closed casket affair as nobody was viewing. The grandfather had been reduced to a pile of bones by ravenous hyenas that prowled the outskirts of Thika and Juja.

Njuguna had been grazing not far from the village of Komo sometime in 2017 when he was attacked. His family, however, was forced to wait for five years to bury him.

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That was because soon after the disaster, the family collected his bones, strewn in the semi-forested field and kept them in a secluded house to avoid incurring morgue fees.

Meanwhile, the government had taken his skull for a DNA test and that kept them waiting to establish the identity of the remains. And so Njuguna’s burial had to come after five years.  Despite the long wait, it was a relief to the family.

Without the results of the test, they could not get a burial permit. This meant an eight-year wait after tests confirmed the deceased had been mauled by hyenas. 

The family is yet to receive any compensation.

Njuguna's family is not unique in the hyena menace.  Many families in Nyacaba, Athi and Juja south villages have memories of unforgettable encounters with the marauding food-hunting wild animals.

Since 2017, 12 people from the surrounding villages have been attacked some left with lifetime scars while others have died and others disappeared without a trace. More people have been killed in the larger area beyond the three villages. Authorities on their part have kept promising to tame the deadly animals with little success.

Beatrice Wairimu, 42, is one of the survivors who escaped the jaws of death sometime this year. She was heading home around 8pm.

At first, she had a fleeting thought she had spotted some shadows, but dismissed the looming threat to her life as a wandering dog.

It was the scare of her life when a hyena with menacing jaws pounced on her and mauled her on the left eye.

Neighbours promptly responded to Wairimu's distress calls and rescued her from under the dangerous jaws. The hyena vanished into the darkness leaving her with a bleeding face.

“I was rushed to a nearby medical centre and later to Thika Level Five Hospital where I was treated. I was forced to stop working in the farms where I was a casual labourer because of headaches. This has significantly affected our family income and well-being,” she said.

Another resident, Tiya Moinani is still mourning the sudden loss of his first-born son who was a grade four pupil at Thiririka Primary School.

Dennis Tiya, 10, was attacked by the marauding predators and his dismembered body was recovered in a thicket at Gwa Kigwi village on January 3, 2024.

All that remains of the boy is a photo that the grieving father took using his phone, and one that he dreads looking at. A glance brings memories flooding back and with them an indescribable pain.

“I was forced to relocate my family to our rural village in Oloitoktok in Kajiado County for their safety, despite promises by the government. I am yet to be compensated for the loss of my beloved son,” Moinani told The Standard from his home in Juja.

Moinani said he only received Sh30,000 from the consolation fund of KWS. “The money helped me with funeral preparations and burial of my son. I plead with the government to fast-track the reparation for the loss if it won’t bring back my son,” he said.

Another victim Mary Owino was attacked by a hyena on her left leg. The damage to the leg was so bad doctors had to amputate it. She now depends on her ageing mother and neighbours for basic needs as she can no longer attend casual jobs to earn a living as she used to.

The fear and anger

As families pursue compensation from the government, many villagers continue to suffer from the attacks, further swelling the number of victims still awaiting justice.

After the death of Emmanuel Kamande, on 10, November 2023 and Joyce Wambui two weeks later, Kenya Wildlife Service increased patrols in the villages of Nyacaba, Maraba and Witeithie.

Despite what the agency claims to be a keen eye to safeguard the lives of the residents’ cases are still being reported.

“The situation has become so dire that schools which should be open for early prep and revision are being opened at 8 am. Parents cannot allow their children to walk at dawn for fear of their safety. Schools have to close at 4 pm instead of 5 pm,” Francis Muiruri, a resident of Nyacaba told The Standard.

The deaths of Samuel Ng’ang’a, Denis Tiya, Nancy Njoki and Prince Njoroge, two minors and two adults, in the same villages of Juja elicited anger among the residents with KWS blamed for failing to capture the killer animals.

On Sept 5th residents of Nyacaba barricaded the Thika superhighway for nearly two hours to protest the killing, by hyenas, of Prince Njoroge, a PP1 pupil at a local Private primary school.

For two hours the residents caused a traffic snarl-up on both sides of the busy highway that stretched for over five kilometres, leaving travellers, among them secondary school students reporting back for the third term, stranded.

Consequently, Cabinet Secretary for Tourism and Wildlife Rebecca Miano promised more action against the Hyenas. An operation dubbed Ondoa Fisi Phase Two was launched.

“The hyena menace in Juja has reached inadmissible levels. We have all seen what happened and I feel so bad, I have therefore asked KWS to move into the site and offer 24-hour surveillance, mop out the hyenas and take them where they belong so that this becomes a menace of the past in the next few days,” Miano said.

Special teams from KWS's Problematic Areas Management Unit were deployed from Laikipia, Nakuru, and Nairobi, united in their mission to end the spate of hyena attacks.

Under the command of O'Brien Leng'uro, head of the unit at the service, a team of about 50 officers has been patrolling Nyacaba, Athi, Juja Farm, Gwa Kigwe, and Muthara villages day and night, tracking down the deadly predators.

According to Leng'uro, during the day, with the guidance of village elders, the officers have been sealing off abandoned quarries where the animals hide. They have set traps to capture them when they emerge at night.

Where did the hyenas come from?

Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) Senior Assistant Director in charge of the Southern Conservation Area, Joseph Dadacha, the area is traditionally a habitat of hyenas and other wild animals - they have called it home for a long time and despite expanding human activities and population they have remained put.

Dadacha told The Standard that before the area became densely populated, it served as an expansive wildlife dispersal zone stretching from Oldonyo Sabuk National Park to Kapiti plains in Machakos and Amboseli in Kajiado.

"This was once an expansive dispersal area. But with the influx of human settlements, most wildlife was either displaced, killed, or consumed by local communities. Hyenas, however, have managed to survive due to their scavenging and hunting abilities," said Dadacha.

Dadacha said the adaptability of hyenas has allowed them to thrive in Juja, where the Kang'oki dumpsite and waste from nearby poultry farms provide food. 

He added that improper waste disposal, particularly from farms supplying chicken to Nairobi, further supports their survival.

Another factor contributing to the presence of hyenas in the area, according to Dadacha, is the abundance of abandoned quarries left over from the mining of building stones. 

Dadacha noted that under the Wildlife Act, the government is "obligated to compensate victims of wildlife attacks."

"The law provides for compensation of up to five million Kenya shillings in cases of human death and up to three million for injury, depending on the severity. All victims and their families are eligible for this compensation," he said.

While hyena attacks on humans are rare, Dadacha attributed the recent incidents to rabies infections among some of the hyenas.

Tests conducted on hyena carcasses in the area confirmed that the animals had rabies.

The case of compensation for families

In April this year, President William Ruto announced a payment of Sh 960 Million as compensation to families that have suffered injuries, death or damage to food crops and property caused by wildlife.

In the last financial year, the government paid out over Sh 800 million to victims and families of human-wildlife conflict to compensate for death, injury, livestock predation, and damage to food crops.

The Human-Wildlife Conflicts claims have accumulated to about 16,000 claims worth Sh. 4.5 billion across the country. Kenyans await County Wildlife Conservation and Compensation sittings to be held in the respective counties.

The payment is meant to compensate victims and families of wildlife conflict for their losses and enable them to rebuild their lives.

“We will fast-track compensation for all victims of human-wildlife conflicts as part of our commitment to people-centric wildlife conservation. The compensation will cater for injuries, deaths, damage to crops and property,” said the President.

The President directed the State Department for Wildlife to prepare payment of the outstanding 7,000 claims made by victims of human-wildlife conflict.

President Ruto also commissioned a digital scheme administration system that will allow the gathering of data on human-wildlife conflict, processing of the cases and compensation as mitigation measures to foster harmonious coexistence between the local communities and wildlife.

Currently, human-wildlife cases processed by the County Wildlife Conservation and Compensation Committees across the country have accumulated to about 16,000 claims worth Sh4.5 billion and are awaiting Ministerial Wildlife Conservation and Compensation Committee sittings to be held in the respective Counties.

TRAPPING THE HYENAS 

In the eyes of TV Reporter Vera Moraa 

We accompanied the KWS unit appointed to trap and capture the marauding Hyenas of Juja during one of their engagement sessions to understand the dynamics of managing the animals that have grown a danger to the area. 

Described by its title Problem Animal Management Unit, the team has been strategically placing traps to initiate hyena captures and mobilize them for translocation and relocation from human-dominated areas.

This operation was carried out within what the service is calling; Second operation, the unit is working with four camps based around the villages of Juja; Athi, Tropical farm, Gwa Kigwi and in Thika West. We were attached to the Tropical farm camp which has had officers patrolling the villages of Muthara, Nyacaba, Witeithie, Juja Farm, Athi and other areas whenever they are called.

Accompanying the team one night in September we drove deep into the troubled Nyacaba village looking for the killer hyenas. After about an hour's drive away from their camp in Tropical Farm, one officer spotted one of the hyenas. It immediately took off perhaps owing to its sharp sense of smell. 

The officers, however, seem to know how to follow the hyena trail. Using fresh hyena droppings, they led us to its hideout and finally, we found its sleeping spot. 

The spot looked fresh to the officers, and so we had hoped the animal could be nearby. We kept moving as we followed the trail that led us to a trap that the officers had set earlier. 

A young hyena was in the trap - ensnared perhaps the reason why the run-away animal was hanging in the vicinity to watch over the young. Around the trap were marks in the earth. The older animal had been digging around the trap in an attempt to free the little one from of the cage- it had not succeeded. 

At this point, the officers were sure the mother hyena could not move further from the trap and so they began to hunt it, even in the darkness. 

Accompanying the team with our cameras, we combed the expanse of the thicket without a trace of the hyena. The long mission was now entering into the night shift.

With KWS wardens, armed to the teeth, we had to brave the cold and chilly night and use the trapped baby hyena as bait for the others. 

In a classic case of sending a thief to catch a thief, the KWS team used pre-recorded cackling sounds of hyenas being played through a Bluetooth speaker, as we waited patiently for hyenas to respond and fall into our trap. 

For more than an hour, we lay in the thickets waiting to spot the hyenas. And when the trick failed, the officers resorted to night binoculars searching through the now dark thicket with the moonlight adding to our sources of light. 

And when the hyenas did not show up, accompanying the team we now had to follow them to the caves in the quarries. There were visible footmarks in the earth an indication they were around. 

Hours past midnight, the baby hyena had to be relocated. 

On our way back to the camp, anxious residents of Nyacaba stopped the car wanting to know if the team had been lucky to catch the hyenas at night. Upon seeing the baby hyena, the joy of the villagers was unmatched at that hour.

A few hours before dawn, the officers struck killing one hyena.   

Strangely the same night, the hyenas struck again attacking a four-year-old. Fortunately, the villagers acted immediately rescuing the boy - the little boy had suffered serious injuries.

That was a sign that the problem of the man-eating hyenas of Thika may not be solved anytime soon.

Between 2017 and 2024 over 18 people have been mauled by the hyenas, 4 seriously injured. KWS says 87 hyenas have been killed and captured in the ongoing second phase of Operation Ondoa Fisi.