My 2 cents over the saga:
Baada ya kutimuliwa Tanzania alienda Kenya akajitwalia ardhi ya kimila ya Wamasai Nguruman village. Morani wa huko wakaungana wakamtimua! Narok na Kajiado counties wanamjua sana.
Ndo maana ukiangalia vizuri kuna hidden forces huyu Mzungu anatumika na existing airlines maana kama madai anayo dhidi ya Kenya pia ya kati Tshs 20-40 bln na KQ haijawahi kukamatwa. It's time nasi tu-retaliate. Serikali ijaribu kuangalia SAA imeshiriki vp kwenye hili!
Pili JPM anapaswa achague kati ya kujenga uchumi na kupigania yasiyomhusu. Aache kujifanya hero kuanza ku-champion causes zisizomhusu. Juzi kapewa uenyekiti wa SADC the first thing katangaza vita kuikomboa Zimbabwe dhidi ya sanctions zilizotokana na agenda ya land reforms (actually land reposition from white farmers)!
Trump na EU wanamuangalia maana wanamjua sababu ya Xenophobia attacks (inequalities) na nini kinafuata baada ya attacks dhidi ya African foreigners at the big apple (SA) where their main interests r na its implications baada ya Zimbabwe kufanikiwa! Asipokuwa makini SGR itagota Dodoma na Stigler's project haitaisha.
Mimi binafsi siwezi shangaa ikigundulika huyu Hermanus Steyn anakuwa financed na EU au SAA au KQ. Au hata muungano wao. As an advice to JPM, plse stay focused SGR, Uganda pipeline (where Total an EU company) plus Nyerere hydropower should be accomplished. Ur main agenda at SADC should be at enhance trade international politics is not ur pill.
Soma hii..
TUE NOV 25 20:39:17 EAT 2014
Morans share spoils of Nguruman as investor seeks Sh800 million
Maasai morans patrol the expansive Nguruman Ranch earlier this month. PHOTO | JEFF ANGOTE | NATION MEDIA GROUP
By JOHN NJAGI
More by this Author
IN SUMMARY
- A two-hour drive through endless jungle later, we arrived at the main gate of Nguruman Ranch, and our guides stepped out to talk to the Maasai guards.
- A few tense moments later, we were ushered in through a small opening carved on the side of the main gate, which has since been barricaded with tree branches.
- Immediately inside, the destruction jumped at us like a panther in the wild; burnt houses, littered compounds, bonfires on the airstrip, and empty drums standing erect on the runway, probably to deter any kamikaze pilot on a suicide mission from landing there.
When, on the morning of Saturday, November 1, Patrick Sironka received a call from home that his father’s cows were on the verge of starvation because of lack of water and pasture, he knew he had to leave college immediately and travel home to attend to the matter.
He had to be in solidarity with his clan and community because there was an “enemy” in the community who would not allow his father’s herd to access the only water point in his Nguruman village of Narok County.
The village had become a battle zone days earlier after morans invaded a piece of land belonging to a White rancher, accusing him of being impolite and stingy with pasture yet their cattle were starving.
The morans, having exhausted the pasture outside the ranch, had decided that their cows might as well graze in the private property, to which the owner had said no.
BOILING WITH MILITANCY
That had angered them and raised their ethnic passions, and the rancher had, in the space of a few days, ceased being a neighbour to become an “outsider” who was squatting on “community land”. Boiling with militancy, the morans had torn through the fence and invaded the ranch.
Sironka, a second-year student at the Kenya Medical Training Institute in Nairobi, wanted join the hundreds who had made victory whoops and salutes after tearing down the fence, and when we met him inside the ranch a few days ago, he told us he had no plans of going back to the city until the small matter of whether he and his people have the right to graze their cows in Nguruman is settled.
His resolve is the resolve of many others here, most of whom have camped inside the 300,000-acre piece of land, nestled strategically on the greener stretch of undulating plains near the northern tip of the Kenyan border with Tanzania.
Here, Hermanus Philipus Steyn, a South African investor, had found a life, but the tiff with his neighbours forced him to flee his multi-million shilling investment.
After acquiring the land, Steyn had spent years transforming it into a tourist haven, complete with nature trails, swimming pools, exquisite cottages, modern bars in the jungle stocked with the choicest of imported drinks, and the like.
He had also built a small, private airstrip for his plane, and perhaps to cater to the privacy and convenience needs of his high-end clientele.
Camped inside property
All that is now no more. In their rage, the morans burnt down the cottages and looted the establishment before setting their own version of a military base in the ranch. When we visited Nguruman two weeks ago, we found about 200 morans camped inside the property, all ready for battle with poisoned arrows, bows and spears.
Every day since they moved here, the young morans slaughter a few goats from their herds and light fires on the airstrip to roast them before sharing the meal with the rest. A few make the short trek to their manyattas and wives in the evening, but the majority have basically deserted their families to fight for what they believe is their communal right.
In the neighbouring village of Shompole, signs of the spoils are littered all over; one moran has allocated himself Steyn’s open-roof jeep, another one the investor’s rugged 4X4, another has gone for the expensive liquor, while yet another one is enjoying the spoils of the rancher’s expansive pawpaw and banana farm.
On our way to the ranch from Magadi town, through a stretch of slightly motorable road and 70 kilometres of jungle, we came across a group of morans hovering around a cream Toyota Land Cruiser.
We asked them what was wrong and they informed us they had developed a mechanical problem. After letting us through, they changed their minds and started chasing us, their arms flailing in the air as they chanted an ominous war song.
Our driver, sensing we could be cornered in the lawless jungle should we attempt to speed off, brought the car to a halt. And then our guides, two Maasai we had picked up on our way here, asked us to remain calm.
About 10 morans surrounded the car, but the guides told them something in Maa and they cooled down, almost instantly adopting a friendly mien.
“Our car has a problem,” one of them explained, trying to see whether we could help. “The engine keeps shutting down. I think it has a fuel intake problem. As you can see, this is a jungle tour jeep, but we do not intend to keep it for long. Maybe just drive around for a few days, then sell it off. We are thinking of driving it to Burundi and disposing of it before it breaks down completely.”
The car belongs to the rancher, and, probably in their quest to enjoy the windfall that has come with their acquisition of his property, all they do is drive around all day, sort of like local tourists on a sightseeing safari.
“Your car seems to be having an electrical problem,” our driver told them after helping jump-start the off-roader. “You may need to have that checked.”
Having bought their trust with our motoring advice, they said they would allow us into the ranch for photos. No one else, they said, had been allowed inside since they took over the property.
A two-hour drive through endless jungle later, we arrived at the main gate of Nguruman Ranch, and our guides stepped out to talk to the Maasai guards.
A few tense moments later, we were ushered in through a small opening carved on the side of the main gate, which has since been barricaded with tree branches.
Immediately inside, the destruction jumped at us like a panther in the wild; burnt houses, littered compounds, bonfires on the airstrip, and empty drums standing erect on the runway, probably to deter any kamikaze pilot on a suicide mission from landing there.
We were about to walk the small distance to the main property when someone shouted at us to stop. We looked back and saw another group of menacing morans, their weapons at the ready, and we sensed something was not right. They had changed their minds; we would not, after all, have an unguided tour of the property.
https://mobile.nation.co.ke/lifesty...950774-2535030-format-xhtml-c5baxt/index.html
