IN THE SHADOWS OF KILIMANJARO.


I took charge of Alfa Coy operating out Tsavo East National Park in 1994 from the man codenamed Alfa Oscar , but his true name was Paul Ogutu Onyango. He was a big man with a very dark charcoal like complexion and he had a heart made of stone . He was feared in the Kws security setup and was only transferred out of Tsavo when another senior officer was felled by a poachers’ bullet in Meru National Park. He was given only two days to hand over the armory and the office to me before a plane flew him to Meru , but I settled in pretty quickly and comfortably among the team since I have had previous engagements with the field units in Tsavo on daily basis while on assignments in both Tana River and Lamu Districts.

Some times in the early months of 1995, I was instructed by our central command ( OCH ) to pick two sections and head west to Amboseli National Park and that my coordinating instructions would be given later that day from Nairobi. I was given a hint that a senior officer was to join me from the HQ due to the nature of the operation , but I was not prepared when I met Mr. Julius Kimani at the airstrip. I have met the man in several occasions and in the mandatory quarterly security meetings organized by the division, but he has always been at an arms length. He was in the intelligence department headed by the late Capt. Dulloh  but we from the sister department of WPU ( wildlife protection unit ) feared him because he was a serious person who smiled little, and he was in intelligence and we didn’t like that group much. We have always blamed them of giving false reports on bandit and poachers movement but the then DDS ( Deputy Director Security ) had a soft spot for them and we in the WPU have never won an argument when it came to departmental in-fighting.

Mr. Kimani proved to be a very good hearted person and together we formed a formidable team during the duration of the operation which lasted for 26 days. There were security lapses in Amboseli which led to the theft of a vehicle operated by the Amboseli elephant research group and elephant deaths had increased in and out of the protected area.  We were sent in to help the management of the park to restore visitors and stockholders safety and to stop elephant poaching. Patroling amboseli was nothing unusual to me and my men, but the international boundary on the higher slopes of Kilimanjaro was a serious challenge to us due to protocols. Yes, protocol was a new word to us and we felt let down when we were not allowed to follow poachers who killled our elephants in Kenya and disappear into the neighboring Tanzania.

Our first intention was to secure the park, so Kimani advised that we stop vehicle night movement within the park mostly of the local community and the tour drivers who found it good to drink and dine in Oltukai , then take a short hop to Serena for the night, or the daily matatus who spend the whole busy day in the markets and bars of loitokitok and namanga doing their things then drive through the park in the dark hours of the night. We took control of kitirua, meshenani and kilunyet gates and I also blocked the junction between oltukai and Serena lodges to control drunk tour drivers.  In two days, order was restored in the park though the local Masai could not read the logic behind the move, but the tour drivers got the cue, and mutual understanding between them and us prevailed.

Elephant poaching was our next move and Kimani had done his homework while we were restoring confidence among the stakeholders, and he promptly gave me names of the culprits though arresting them proved hard to us due to boarder protocols. We were losing elephants in the kitendent area all the way to murtot on the slopes of Kilimanjaro, so we sat down together and agreed that I had to go into the neighborhood in disguise to arrest the situation.  Four of my Masai speaking rangers walked into Longido village in TZ clad in their traditional attire and lured the main poacher , a man named Tirana Lalangoi out of his village and he was also coaxed into producing a 458 sport hunting riffle but he had already sold the tusks . He was convicted in the loitokitok law courts and sent to jail for some years.

I am a muzzle man, and I walk in and out of situations with guns blazing, but Kimani gave me another tactical print on intelligence which I had earlier ignored totally, not because it was not available to me , but I simply shut it off due to departmental malice . Shakespeare called it malice domestic . It was a game of cards between us, but now , in old age, I regret and sympathize with me and my kin in WPU in the mistrust and suspicion that we manifested within the Division. Jonny Kim might not be in uniform again, but his wisdom and his kind heart will be available to some of us for ever.

COMMUNITY SOCIAL RESPONSOIBILITY

The Kenya wildlife service mandate is entrenched in the constitution of Kenya to protect and conserve flora and fauna on behalf of the people of the republic of Kenya and to ensure the safety and security of all visitors to the nations protected areas . Wildlife thrived in community lands outside the national parks but poachers could still enter the protected areas with assistance from bad elements within the communities, so we found it acceptable to work with the locals in information gathering and in return we took care of the community interests. We were always conscious to the fact that our excursions out side of the protected areas were risky so we tried not to detour far off the line , and it was a very thin line for sure, because security is nothing more than taking risks and there was no way we could be confined within the park boundaries waiting for poachers to come. 

 There were no mobile phones then and we had to reach out to informers out there , so we had to sneak out to meet them in the mosques, churches, market places and at miraa joints. There were two assurances that we banked on every time we pursued poachers outside protected areas; one was that we relied on what we called "hot pursuit " which was imprinted in the law and it cleared us to pursue poachers when they leave the park and find refuge in the community areas after committing a crime , and the second one was that we had a silent understanding with the police that we could do the job but we had to hand over the case files and the exhibits to them and they would prosecute. Cute.

Elephant movements into Tana river District was seasonal and we had to follow them deep into Baridi areas near Assa or drive to Haroresa forest near Wayu village just to see and count them as expected on normal routines .  It was therefore a relieve to us when the then senior warden who was based in Lamu ( Patrick Hamilton) gave us unwritten orders that we should stop highway robberies between Garsen and Lamu forthwith and that we should treat buses as our elephants .

This was police work and they used to board buses while escorting them but the bandits were bold enough in stopping the vehicles and rob them in broad day light every day as they wished. They could stop a whole convoy and rob each and every passenger individually before sending them off with messages of dire consequences to the police , mostly of death if they dared interfere with their operations. The security forces had reasons to believe in the threats for many a times escorts were shot dead in the presence of the people they were escorting. 

There was total relieve from both the security forces and the public when we announced our intention to join the Frey. The year was 1994.

We did not board the buses as the Police did , for we knew all the ambush spots on the highway, so we got in early into these spots and laid in wait for the bandits to lead in their pray.  We ambushed the hot spots of Lagga Bunna, Lango la simba and Nyangoro bridges on our first stint and we managed to captured 8 bandits that single day. We took them by total surprise and we were ruthless in execution . Well what would one expect? They were not trained soldiers and they had no discipline so they murdered people with impunity. They knew that the local police and the police reservists feared them, so they did not clear their sites before mounting ambushes, so we watched them from our covers as they came in and they just stood in strategic points while they waited for their team members manning the makeshift road blocks to lead in the buses to them. 

We could not wait for the passengers to alight from the buses for fear of hitting them, so we picked out the bandits as they rushed to welcome the vehicles and this took them completely by surprise as very few of them saw their assailants and only one or two of them remembered to release some wild shots with no clear aim. All three ambushes that we mounted were successful that first day and we had no injuries on our side , but again we knew, that the people we were hunting would not give in easily and that things were only getting muck.

Every vehicle was expected to assemble at the police road block at Kanagoni in Kilifi District on the Malindi- Garsen road and they would be escorted by police to the Garsen- Lamu junction were they would all wait for other traffic before being allowed to cross the Idsowe bridge in minjila at noon every day in a convoy. Ambush teams would be in position by first light on the possible ambush sites and a chase car commanded by an officer would ride in the convoy to help keep us on radio contact and also to help us monitor movements. In most days the senior warden would fly over the convoy all the way to Witu town . 

On one fateful day, I was in Idasa Godana ranch to check on some reports and the senior warden was on patrol in dondori and mboni forest so the platoon comander  in-charge of our Mukowe team , assistant warden 111 Mr. Paul kipkoech Rerei, was leading the convoy. It was a normal hot and humid day with a typical coast weather and the escort team was in an old four gear Toyota land cruiser we nicknamed " Nine Nine ", it had no top and on this particular day the wind shield had to be raised to stop dust from the convoy from getting into the men's eyes . 

The ride from Minjila was smooth and all vehicles stopped briefly in Witu for refreshments but some buses that were already full of passages did not stop but continued the race towards mokowe. 10 miles out of Witu, the first three buses were stopped and directed towards the small road leading to Kipini village where every passenger was robbed of all belongings including watches. Some were beaten with no particular provocation and to cap it all some women were molested and abused then forced to go naked into the buses. The message given to all was to tell KWS to get out of the escort duties or passengers Would die next time round.

The vehicles that stopped in Witu were not aware of the hijacking and they streamed past the ambush spot in full speed and were not interfered with until the KWS escort vehicle came into view, then all hell broke loose. Eight AK 47's loosened up , all of them spitting  automatic fire directed on the open ranger cruiser. The bandits were on both sides of the road and they would have razed down the entire unit had they respected the rules of setting up ambushes, but they were not a disciplined lot, so they rushed the oncoming car. They started shooting while they were still more than 300 meters away and by the time they came to the effective shooting range, their magazines were empty and they stopped to reload, but by that time the escort vehicle was in their midst and tables were over turning. 

The escort commander was seated in the front seat next to the driver and when he realized that they were under fire, he instructed the driver not to go off the road but to drive straight into the oncoming volley and by doing that he saved his men, for he did not expose their flanks , and he narrowed  the angle of attack. The bandits did not expect this move, so most panicked and started running to the nearby bushes, but by that time the vehicle  had stopped  and the rangers were jumping out as in a drill, rolled on the hard Tarmac in union and as commanded by their officer, pushed safety catches into the singles position and picked out the now retreating bandits one by one until there was nothing left to shoot at. 

Many of the vehicles they were escorting zoomed past the action zone without stopping and many passengers were injured by the flying lead but luckily none was fatal. It was these vehicles that got into mokowe village and reported that the entire KWS escort team has been massacred . This is how the message was transmitted to us via our VHF car radios by one of our stations and three sections reached the scene within an hour after receiving the report.

All the six rangers and the officer in the escort unit were safe, but they were covered by bruises and cuts they sustained while rolling on the Tarmac.  Their ranger driver  ( Abdi Kobe ) was not lucky for he must have been hit by one of the rounds that killed the engine of their vehicle  and he died trying to slow down the car, for he was found dead in his seat with his right foot on the break pedal. 
He was discovered when a ranger was sent to the car to pick the first aid box after the Firefight and this stopped the rangers from pursuing the bandits into the bush. We found them sitting around their vehicle with dejection written all over their faces and after attending to their injuries using the few understocked first aid boxes in our possession. The GSU team based in Nyangoro joined us and we cleared a kilometer radius on both sides of the highway before we took our injured team for treatment in mokowe.

This particular engagement  proved to be very costly to organized highway robberies in lamu and garsen but we continued responded to isolated incidents in the coming weeks but peace eventually reigned in both districts. We continued to serve our partners and stakeholders through the CSR initiative and wildlife was assured of space within the community lands.

The whole company led by our company commander Mr. Samuel Ndiku assembled in Mukowe the following day to see off the convoy which took our departed colleague to his final resting place , were we presented arms, gave him our final salute and prayed to the Gods of his people to grant him easy passage to the next life. That was one of the many rangers I lost to poachers and bandits during my active years in service , but this has never discouraged us , rather it gave us more resolve , more energy , and the urge to pursue wildlife poachers . We took a solemn oath to protect and conserve both flora and fauna and we did not mind doing a little more for our partners, for these is our creed , and soldiers have died for less.

 Paul Kipkoech Arap Rere, better known as “ baba moi” is now the SOPPS { staff officer operations} incharge of Eastern comand.

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THE YEAR OF EL NIÑO

The rains got us by surprise as they were not due until mid march, but again it was a welcome relieve to both wildlife and to the barren land. The Tsavo East National Park was completely dry and the only green leaf was not fit for consumption by animal, insect or bird. The wells of Roka on the Tiva river were dry and every living, water drinking animal was concentrated on the Kijito wind pump near the ranger post in Ndiandasa. We had a full platoon of rangers stationed here who patrolled the Tiva river all the way to the Kokani bridge on the Garsen/Hola road, and they had fly camps on the Umbi and Mkomwe hills and they also maintained a two-man reporting outpost in the Orma community centers of Kone and Assa. The Gallana river which was 50 miles south of the Tiva was at its lowest and water level was below the surface at some sandy stretches and the most vulnerable within the wildlife species were the old and the young, and they died every day on the long, lonely paths between feeds and water.

It had not rained for many months in Tsavo such that the once yellow grasses had turned brown, then black before they finally withered and were reduced to powder. The nights were cold but we dreaded day break for heat of the day was unbearable to all living things. It was therefore a relief to us all when the clouds gathered, first in slow lazy circles but later into storms which blew in winds preceding the torrential rains. It rained for four days non stop and we were caught off guard for we were not prepared as the Gallana river soared to levels never witnessed before.The seasonal Tiva river extended its width by ten folds and the Ndiandasa patrol base was completely submerged. The quick thinking of an NCO saved the lives of twenty rangers stationed at the camp by sounding a stand-to alert in the middle of the second night and ordering everybody to vacate camp and to cross the Tiva river while they could. They would have been swept away if they had waited for sunrise and they had no vehicle but they managed to walk for 45 miles to their platoon HQ situated in Ithumba. It took them two horrifying days in the relentless rain and the flooded streams on their path.

The northern part of Tsavo East was a wild frontier even to us rangers but we were always prepared for rainy seasons by stocking our supplies such as food stuffs , fuel for both planes and vehicles and other necessities at all patrol bases in anticipation of floods, but this time we were caught napping and totally unprepared . Our only luck was that it was month-end and most rangers were on pay parade in Voi. There was only one crossing on the Galana River near Luggards falls which was treacherous during the rainy season and the few who had tried to cross it never lived to tell their tales. Six of our rangers who refused to listen to reason and attempted to cross the raging flow in the mid 90s have never been found to date and have since been declared missing in action. The only other route to these parts was via Kibwezi through the Kitui road which was very long route but the most sensible alternative.

I was the company commander for the security force in Park and Daniel Woodley was the Park pilot and we took off from Voi airstrip seven days after the onset of the rains, first to try to establish communication with field teams who have been off air since the onset of the rains, and secondly to asses the extent of damage on infrastructure. We were up for a very short period before it started raining again but what we saw deepened our frustrations though we managed to raise Kone and the gallana ranch units who reported that they had flat radio batteries due to lack of sunshine on their solar chargers. We managed to land safely in Voi but we remained anchored for a whole agonizing week full of relentless rain. We were in a hopeless situation and our greatest frustration was that we were totally cut off from ranger bases in the volatile north and the fact that we did not know how they were fairing on. The pilot and i would try to be airborne every time it stopped raining but we would almost all the time turn back to land due to storms. We got a break one day where we flew for a whole hour uninterrupted and we made it to Mfupa ya ndovu, Koito , up to Huri plains then south through Emusaya, grenade valley and into the rhino ranges of Ashaka , Punda milia and the Sobo rock before we sped down to the safety of Voi air strip.

That evening we held an 'O' group with the other security officers and we decided that we had no other open course left to us but to use the Cessna 180 plane to patrol and take care of the protected area. A new 11 kilogram machine gun had previously been introduced to the service but we were shy in using it due to its weight and the ugly fact that the gun was prone to stoppages. We had noticed this set back when the gun was first introduced to us in Manyani during firing tests, but we were silenced by our senior officers who informed us that we had no option of refusing to take the weapon . It was an MG3, chain fed with detachable barrels, a very heavy monster, and the biggest challenge was the fact that we were expected to carry it along as a section support weapon, and the truth that it was shoved down our unwilling throats made it unpopular to the field units. We had to tag along an extra barrel simply because they turned red hot during successive firing such that we had to change them every time one gave the gun a continuous squeeze on the trigger. This was an extra and unacceptable setback that we had to contend with but in time we learned that we could save the barrel from jamming if we gave the trigger short busts of up to ten rounds each. This was the weapon we decided to take along in our plane during patrols and it proved very useful.

Daniel the pilot would have the door removed on the right hand side of the plane, and I was strapped to the back seat behind him holding the machine gun facing the open door. We attached a cord to the butt and secured it to the seat and the tripods were also connected to the foot step outside the plane. The pilot would then fly till he saw cattle herds or any suspicious activity where he would circle and then he would advice me if I was needed to release a volley. Our main aim was to warn the herders and potential poachers that though foot patrols were reduced to minimal due to flooded rivers, we were still in control and that the plane was just as good as a section patrol. This strategy worked very well for us in that we did not find any poached elephant for the entire El Nino period which was over six months.

One day, I Lost grip of the gun during flight and it would have fallen off the plane if it were not for the attachment on the butt. It was routine that every evening we met all Park officers at the officers Mess to brief them on the days patrol and to plan for the next day. This always translates to beer drinking. That particular evening we over did the ritual such that we woke with a monster sized hangover and throbbing headache.We took off and headed north as planned and I started shooting as signaled by the serpent holding the controls only that this time my mind and all my reflexes were kind of slow and I completely forgot to give the gun short busts as always and this led to a stoppage. I shouted to the pilot over the engine noise to level the plane so that I could clear the stoppage but the crazy Mzungu kept on circling and my already sleeping mind went into a spin and luckily my unstable mid section gave in to pressure and I released its hot contents through the open door only to be blown right back into the plane. 

The pilot was not aware of the drama behind him until the fumes of stale undigested beer hit him and that forced him to level off before turning to look at my convulsing body leaning over the open door and the machine gun swinging outside the plane, hanging by the single Manila cord attached to the rear seat. It was a sorry sight, a horrifying episode that the crazy pilot who happened to be the son of the legendary Bill Woodley would continue to describe in different versions to every Tom and listening Mary every time he came to the Mess. It took me some minutes to come back to the world of the living and I did not have strength to work on the weapon, but I managed to dragged it into the plane and signaled for the home run. I could hear the dammed pilot chuckling but for the first time since we met some few years earlier, he did not ask questions and we flew without talking till we landed in Voi.

The El Niño lasted a record six months, but it helped change the Tsavo vegetation. We saw a rebirth of some indigenous shrubs which had completely disappeared. We in the security management team devised great ideas back then on wildlife protection such as the formation of the camel patrol team who managed to reach the Orma villages of Waldena , inyali and Kalalani which were deep in the Tana River wilderness and which were the breeding grounds for the elephant poachers of northern Tsavo. This helped to completely stop elephant poaching in the Tsavos. We learned to bond well with our troops during the tough months and the daily evening 'o' group brought us officers closer together.

The months I spent with Capt Dan Woodley ignited in me a burning desire and interest to fly. Finally in 1998 I enrolled at the CMC flying school in Wilson Airport and attained a Private Pilot License (PPL).

THE HEROS OF MNAZINI

Tana River was declared a bandit county and every vehicle including ours had to be escorted by armed personnel every time it moves out of camp . The nearest shopping center from our camp in Baomo was a Pokomo village called Wenje which was five miles away and we had to send in a section to escort our families every time they go shopping. It was very dangerous to the extent that convoys could only stop on clear stretches of a road during breaks and two or more sentries had to be posted while the rest relived themselves in the nearby bushes.


 Our sentries were never allowed to stand upright and we had to clear every road crossing, road bend and seasonal streams (lugga) on foot before crossing. We respected jungle rules and in the process we became one and the same with the Jungle and we lived . Many who failed to abide by this rules were pronounced past tense and they were many. I remember one time in Idasa Godana Ranch which was west of the Tana river primate reserve we came across a platoon of the Kenya Army resting beside the road and I got genuinely concerned by their care free movement and the fact that they were not posting sentries , so i walked up to the CO, ( commanding officer ) and tried to advice him but he brushed me off,  and he blatantly told me to go take care of wildlife and leave human beings to him. He was a major in rank and I was only an assistant warden , so I tugged my pride and walked away. We got word that same day that a lone gun man had ambushed the army platoon and critically injured the same major while he stood on the cabin of their truck. Tough luck it was.

Laga Bunna was a  notorious ambush site preferred by bandits . A wooded bridge balanced strongly across the seasonal river , but the road was really bad for 200 meters on both sides of the bridge such that all vehicles were forced to slow down to a crawling pace and this was ideal for bandits who would appear from the nearby bushes on the road side and sometimes from below the bridge to rob the unsuspecting motorist. One day I was forced to cancel a planned ambush in Nairobi Ranch to respond to a distress satellite call that came to our senior warden in Lamu from a concerned citizen who saw a bunch of rowdy people welding guns aboard a passenger bus and leading it off road into the bushes some place that sounded like the laga Bunna bridge from the description given. 
The vehicle we were using had a carburetor problem but as luck had it, the warden Hola , a Mr Mohamed was on his way to Lamu so we planned to meet and exchange vehicles near the Nyangoro black spot on the lamu/garsen road . The senior warden was already in the air to lead us to the ambush site and he kept calling us on the VHF car radio to establish our location and he almost made us cause an accident when we gave him our location. 

The communication between us went like this ; " Charlye oscar from foxtrot Oscar Charlie " , Charlie Oscar was my call sign so I replied , " this is Charlie Oscar go ahead sir" and he asked " what is your Lima Oscar Charlie " and I replied " we are now over the laga Bunna bridge, over" then came the bomb shell from him," utapigwa sasa hivi, get out of the vehicle now". Boy, the driver did not wait for an order to stop, he went for the brakes and we both jumped out at the same time, he landed on the bridge and I was not so luck for i ended up landing on the river bed 2 meters below the wooded bridge.
 The rangers at the back of the vehicle were already out and two of them landed next to me as we rolled into cover expecting to be shot at . We stayed in cover for sometimes till we were sure that we were not in immediate danger then we regrouped and cleared the vicinity before we moved the vehicle away from the bridge into cover, and  only then did we call the senior warden on the radio to inform him of our status and to ask him for further instructions.

We were informed that we should hold ground to await a military chopper from Garissa which was en route to help us capture the bandits and when it finally came we were made to walk below it while it flew above to clear our front. We were used to being dropped by choppers into enemy zones and we would maneuver our way through, but having an armed chopper just above our heads with all the noise, the dust and the presumed armed bandits ahead made things very very unpleasant to us. I could read from the movement of my men that they were also not happy with this arrangement so I gave a stop sign and we all went down together till the chopper was well ahead of us then we retreated to our vehicle and informed the senior warden of our displeasure. We had to wait for the chopper to clear the place and when it finally landed the crew reported that they had not seen a soul. We later learned that we were about five miles from the incident area and that we would have salvaged the situation if we had known the exact location.

On another occasion , we were informed that six armed people were seen crossing River Tana near Mnazini by Orma herdsmen and a section was sent to investigate. One hour later they came into contact and two bandits were injured, one was neutralized and one of our rangers was also critically injured . I sent in two more sections and by midday a spotter plane from Voi had reached the scene and the pilot was leading in the sections for the final sweep when a second ranger was again shot and injured .
My section dropped back to cover the group with the injured ranger and we had to crawl on all fours to get into a better position to actually see where we were being shoot from. Once we located the enemy position, we knew that they had an advantage over us for they were on a raised outcrop in the middle of a clearing and that they had a clear view of all their surroundings. We could not estimate their number for they resorted to firing one weapon at a time and we were pinned down for the better part of the day.
We decided to send in two rangers to approach from the east while the rest of us increased activities on the opposite side to divert their attention,while a third team started taking distracting shots at the bandits making it sound like  we were ready to mount a full offensive on their position. The two volunteer rangers crawled on their bellies for more than 200 meters and because we did not want the bandits to suspect that we had some card under our sleeves,we actually started the final assault where we blasted everything their way including thunder flashes.

They must have panicked then, for they started shooting at our direction with three guns in earnest and this gave us all the time and attention we needed for our two men to get into place. Twenty five agonizing minutes latter we heard two FNs opening up in the eastern side and they sounded so loud such that we all stopped shooting and listened to their pleasant and distinctive clatters, and the screams from the enemy position and then there was total silence.
We all stood up not knowing what else to do and the silence was broken when the two rangers appeared at the hill which was previously commanded  by the bandits for the better part of the day. We all screamed as one and scrambled up the outcrop like a liberated lot. We hugged and carried the two rangers shoulder high like the heroes they were. That day we recovered two AK 47 rifles and a G3. We came to the conclusion that the man in the hole must have been their leader for he had full police uniform including a lanyard and he must have been injured badly and that his men must have been waiting for the darkness to sneak him out. The loyal lot died protecting their leader . A very honorable deed indeed.

Our two heroes were non other than ranger Lenguyayo who is currently in sibiloi national park and the late ranger Kutayon Kuntai. Their bravery saved the day for all of us in the Baomo Platoon and though we had no medals to award them then, our silent prayers, and the constant stares and trumpeting of elephant herds when they pass close to our camp on their way to the mighty Tana River for a dip and drink, would be received by our creator whom we believe is sure to reward them at the end of their tour of duty on earth.