Memories and scars of forced eviction and the struggle for land rights

Sompet Ngusilo squinted through the rain-streaked window in her rental house in Ologirgirai town, her gaze fixed on a particular spot across the valley.

To her, the spot in Sasimwani, part of the Maasai Mau forest, holds critical memories over eight decades.

The memories, she says, are like scars as she remembers November 2, 2023, the day the government demolished their houses and evicted her together with several other members of the Ogiek indigenous community.

"It still hurts. It is hard living in a cramped rental house with my grandchildren when I had a home where I lived, the same land where I raised their fathers and mothers," Ngusilo narrates, bitter sighs escaping her lips.

The Sasimwani case of evictions of the Ogiek is not new. It is one of the many emotive yet unresolved cases where Indigenous communities blame the Kenya government for what they term forceful evictions from their ancestral lands. 

The government, on the other hand, blames the indigenous communities for what it terms as illegal encroachment and maintains that evictions pave the way for conservation.

Although Indigenous peoples’ land rights have been a subject of concern for both affected communities and the government over the years, nothing has been achieved in redressing the injustices since independence.

The issues have continued to attract a lot of public interest, culminating in litigation and the setting up of various commissions to hear and try to resolve indigenous land ownership claims by indigenous and minority communities.

Landmark litigation cases include a 2017 judgment by the African Court of Human and Peoples Rights in Arusha, Tanzania.

The court delivered a verdict that upheld the rights of the Ogiek community over their ancestral land in the Mau. But in July 2020, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, some Ogiek were evicted and rendered homeless by the Kenya Forest Service (KFS).

Similarly, in May 2020, the Environment and Land Court delivered a judgement in which it dismissed two consolidated petitions where the Sengwer indigenous community had challenged the government on their forceful and illegal eviction from Embobut forest in Cherangany hills, Western Kenya, contending that it is their ancestral land.

The applicants acting on their behalf and as representatives of the Sengwer Community were granted a conservatory order in 2021, pending the hearing and determination of the appeal.

But just like the Ogiek, the Sengwer community was also evicted at the height of the pandemic. The recent evictions, the community says, are part of the historical injustices.

“We have been evicted countless times and it hurts knowing that there is no political goodwill to solve our case,” Nguliso says.

While Ngusilo is among many elderly Indigenous women who say that their dignity has been stripped, miles away in Embobut forest, Emily Chepkoech* from the Sengwer community, feels that while forceful evictions against indigenous communities have had negative impacts on their members, women and girls are the hardest hit.

"When young girls become homeless, they become vulnerable and are taken advantage of. Most of them end up in early marriages and end up not achieving their dreams," Chepkoech says.

When The Standard visited Embobut forest in April, the government had issued an eviction notice.

The eviction notice ‘Operation order Imarisha Msitu Embobut' outlined that the Sengwer and Marakwet sub-tribes had trooped back to the glades and started subdividing into individual ownership.

Chepkoech, like many other women, were thrown into confusion. To them, an eviction notice meant it would be forceful and had to look for refuge for their children, livestock and property.

"It is not easy. Sometimes we wonder when these cases will be solved so that we can have a home," she says.

And while the communities have borne the brunt of unresolved land issues, the women say that evictions have shattered their dreams and stunted their professional advancement.

"When you are a woman from a minority community, competing for opportunities and even resources is tough. It is worse but even terrible when you are a woman living with disability," Judy Nagol, an Ogiek woman living with a disability says.

She says that during the times of evictions, persons living with disability are often dependent on others to survive yet the people they are looking up to are also vulnerable.

"It is worse when you can not run, or cannot even see where you are going. This issue should just be resolved so that we can also live in peace like other Kenyans," she adds.

The Director Nyang'ori Ohenjo of Center for Minority Rights Development (CEMIRIDE) says that the indigenous communities across the country have always been easily dispossessed of their lands, mainly because laws initially favoured individual title-holding rather than communal titles.

He says women, children and persons with disabilities from the communities are in far worse situations due to inaccessibility to land, resulting in poor healthcare, poor education and generally low standards of living.

"When people are evicted forcefully, women and disabled are forced to stay with the children. While energetic men can easily get manual jobs to ease the situation, these groups are dependent on others to survive because they are restricted by many factors," Ohenjo adds.

Access to health, food, clean water and education, he notes, remains the biggest challenge to indigenous communities.

"In most cases, schools are burnt down alongside their houses. They are not allowed to access their farms to get food and get into forests to get their traditional medicine," he reveals.

Such cases, he observes, have seen not only the Ogiek and Sengwer communities but also many other indigenous and minority communities suffer heavily from mental health cases.

"These evictions are carried out in an inhumane manner. It means there are no follow-up mechanisms like counselling. Such cases have seen many vulnerable women, girls and the elderly succumbing to mental health issues," he adds.

Sarah*, now in her 40s, is one of the many undocumented statistics of Sengwer women whose dream to become a teacher was aborted when her family was evicted years ago from Kaptirbai glade, one of the three glades where they lived in Embobut forest.

"I grew up at Kaptirbai glade where I used to go to school. We were then flushed out of our homes and I dropped out of school. I got married at Kapkok Glade and thought life would improve but it is becoming worse with a tough economy," Sarah says.

Unlike other women from the neighbouring communities who empower themselves financially by engaging in activities like merry-go-rounds, she says it has been tough to sustain such groups as women.

“And now we are only known as women who offer casual labour in other people’s farms because we do not own ours. We can barely raise enough money to afford quality education. We do not know what the future holds for us and our children,” she adds.

A 2020 report on the state of health and education among the minority and Indigenous peoples in Kenya indicates that a low percentage of their performance restricts their access to higher education.

The report notes that most minority and indigenous communities cannot compete in the labour market because of their low academic achievements.

"Their territories have no piped water despite some of them being the water towers that provide water to many Kenyan cities. Access to electricity remains a mirage because of insecure land tenure."

"They can also not compete in the labour market because of their low academic achievement," Kanyinke Sena, the director of the Indigenous People for Africa Coordinating Committee adds in the report.

While many young girls unknowingly get into early marriages as a result, others like Margaret Kisilo, in her early 20s, have to bear the brunt of family responsibilities during evictions.

Although she is a trained teacher who is yet to be employed, Margaret is now supporting her younger siblings after they were evicted from Sasimwani.

"We had to share responsibilities as elder siblings because our parents are now older and have nothing else to offer.  We live in rental houses and cannot even access food in the farms but I have to look for means to raise the siblings," she says.

Margaret says she is however luckier because she has academic certificates that 'might' help her secure employment in the future.

"My worry is the many girls who dropped out of school. There are many young pregnant girls roaming around this town. Sadly, many girls are being sexually exploited because they are desperate to survive," Margaret says.

Albina Cheboi, a nurse from the Sengwer community said that cases of pneumonia among children and the elderly are rampant among evictees. This, she says, is a result of having to survive in the cold as their houses were demolished and properties destroyed.

“Majority of the children and the elderly experience these cases. Sadly, these evictions are often undertaken during the rainy season,” she says.

Albina adds that with unresolved land issues, most Indigenous communities do not put up permanent and warmer residential houses within the lands they claim are their ancestral homes.

“Because of having to start living all over again each time after an eviction, coupled with a lack of resources, most of the homes are makeshift structures that are often cold. Without proper warm clothes, people here become susceptible to extreme cold,” Albina says.

With Indigenous communities banking on legal processes to pave the way for a lasting solution, government officials admit that their land rights case is a 'complicated matter'.

"The matter is complicated because it is a contest between a group of individuals and conservation. The conservation of water towers is a matter of public interest and the government has been trying to balance both issues in a manner that accommodates all, based on facts and interests," Alex Lemarkoko, the Chief Conservator of Forests says.

Lemarkoko admits that the issue is a protracted conflict that has remained for several decades.

"The big question here is who is right and who is wrong. Kenya has a bigger role in conserving the water towers and if we allow uncontrolled activities in the forests they will be depleted," Lemarkoko adds.

However, leaders from indigenous and minority groups argue that the government has not been fair in handling their cases. They say that vulnerable groups like women, girls and the elderly keep suffering if cases are not solved.

The Executive Director for Ogiek People Development Programme(OPDP), Daniel Kobei said that while the indigenous communities have won big in regional courts, non-implementation of court rulings still remains a challenge.

"The challenge is that we are still under the mercy of political goodwill. The legal process of the Ogiek of Mau case is completed but implementation is yet to start," Kobei notes.

He says that the community’s members still have high expectations that they will go back to their ancestral homes.

"Many can no longer afford to pay rent and they just have to go back. The government evicted them but did not offer an alternative place for them to settle," he adds.

Kobei adds that it does not make sense that the government is evicting people who have been conserving these water towers for decades just so it can conserve adding that it is like offering forceful conservation solutions.

The current challenges facing minority and Indigenous groups in Kenya are not only domiciled within the Ogiek and Sengwer communities, many other communities like the Waayu, Sanye and Yaiku communities also face similar challenges.

This reporting was supported by the International Women’s Media Foundation’s Howard G. Buffett Fund for Women Journalists