MY EARLY EXPERIENCE

The wardens under the WCMD[ Wildlife Conservation management department] were workhorses who controlled all budgets in parks and stations and they had knowledge on road building , bridge construction, camp setting and all that one would need to start, run and manage a protected area. The park warden was the procurement officer, the AIE sole holder and the accounting officer. Jack of all trades they were , and to say the truth ,  my dream to be a game warden was  given a new life in  1978 when I met a Mr. Wanyama who was then the warden in charge of Samburu Game reserve , when I worked as a translator during a national population census exercises . Those years the game wardens gave permits to government officers at the local administrative level to kill wildlife during national celebrations like Kenyatta day and Madaraka day for consumption.

The new security outfit was not getting the required financial support from the game wardens in combating wildlife crimes , but the DDS ( Deputy Director Security ) had some cards hidden under his sleeve in that for the first time the security operational funds were to be managed by the new incoming company commanders. This was unheard of, and as expected the idea was met by great resistance by the untouchable park managers. I remember when I needed to service my official vehicle when I was the company commander for ‘c’ company in 1993 and the warden Mt. Elgon a Mr. Ndomasi delayed the servicing for two weeks claiming that the bay was full and it was only through the intervention of a Mr. Wamithi who was the operations commander at the OCH [ Operation Centre Headquarters] that I was advised to take the vehicle to a local garage in Kitale town.  I was relieved to learn that I was not the only one who was having problems with the Game wardens and that almost all of my course mates were being pushed to the fences after funds for security operations were forcefully deducted from the park and handed over to us.  Most of us had to carry this large sums of money in our cars which turned to be our offices due to the work load, so we bought briefcases with combination locks where we kept the cash and they were kept at the luggage compartment behind the seats in the cabins of our vehicles till we eventually opened up bank accounts. I was the only one who knew the secret combination but my deputy had express orders to break the lock in case  of the unthinkable, like if I happen to be at the receiving end of a bandits fore sight mark. 

On one other occasion, one of the patrol land cruiser had an accident in the park during a mud slide and I was advised to take it to a panel beater in town but I did not know the drills, so I requested our intelligence officer Mr. Dominic Wambua who was conversant with the trade to help and I only came in during payment , but eventually it turned out that the payment receipts were inflated and an investigator was flown in from Nairobi. The officer concerned was grilled for days but when I was requested to explain my stand, I exonerated him from the allegations when I honestly said that I did not have a clue on what was going on and that the only thing that mattered to me was that the vehicle was repaired and it was on patrol.

In-fighting within the  security department did not play out in the open, but it existed all the same. There were two senior wardens under the DDS who were in charge of the WPU, ( wildlife protection unit ) and the CLIC, (intelligence) and both of these senior officers were from the nomadic tribes of the north. Our intelligence  brothers collected information and in many cases they never bothered to sieve through them as they should, and they wrote long radio messages on poachers movement and gang sightings then they would disappear from the radar such that we could not get clarifications on issues they raised . They insisted that their work was to collect and disseminate information and that we had no business asking questions. We were foot soldiers whose sole duty was to track down poachers. 

We tried to make our boss see through our concerns, and we urged him to instruct the intelligence people to give us intelligent reports and not information,  but he would hear none of this , and this hurt us bad, because we knew where his heart was, and we also knew that he was once a foot soldier . But he was extensively protective towards the clic team and he had a soft spot for them. I was branded a rebel in the department because I asked questions, and I remember one time during a quarterly security meeting when it was said that I was encouraging rifts between the two sister units, yet all I was asking for was a little accountability from the others.  I remember giving an example of looking for a  coin in a water pond. I requested that we in the field only wanted to be given some extra directions as to what side of the pond to start with, how deep the pond was and maybe if we would need extra tools for the job. 

The Intelligence team always gave us an exact number on members of a gang, the types of guns they carried and sometimes the amount of ammunition held by each individual, but they have always refused to lead us or give us pinpoint information on bandit hide outs. The strained relationships were not exposed to the surface within the department due to the fear that the information could reach our boss but the truth is that at times we could not see eye to eye for months in the field apart from exchanging the radio messages written to OCH and copied to the field commanders. At times we could refuse to follow their leads, and we would take opposite directions, and in most instances we succeed on hits, but woo unto us if anything happened on the direction they gave.  I later learned that the infighting was not localized to us alone at the service, but to every other security outfit including the GSU , and that encouraged us a little.

When I wrote the article on the Sarara Massacre, where eleven elephants were killed by poachers, I failed to mention the fact that I almost got sacked when I submitted the final report on the operation, highlighting what really happened, what we did wrong, and lessons learned. I drafted a situation report every evening giving relevant information on what we encountered during each day, state of the personnel, our intention the next day and what we expected others to do outside the danger " D " area. 

I mentioned that we wanted intelligence teams to monitor all access roads in and out of the area including all the small villages that dotted the highway between Sere olipi and Marsabit. But all this requests were ignored and I pointed this out in my final submissions. This almost sent me home were it not for Dr Richard Leakey and some senior officers who had seen the report earlier. The final report was forwarded to the Director by my then senior warden in Meru National Park, a Mr Daniel Kilonzo who was less than six months old on the job  and he was summoned to HQ to explain why he should not be sacked for forwarding a malicious report from a junior officer. He was advised to come and force me to write an apology letter for castigating a sister unit and that I was to be charged for being a bad boy.  

As expected, I refused to apologize and was ordered to report to the big mans' office in twelve hours and by the time I was being marched into his office, word had spread that I was being sent home for standing up to the DDS.  I was lucky though, for the Director knew what was happening and that he had intentionally forwarded the report to the  team so that he could personally witness and confirm the White House injustices within the department. ( the security HQ was housed at a building we called the White House ). My reputation as a rebel was written all over me. I might have escaped the sacking , but that was due to the excellent work I did as a company commander and the fact that I was among the few who found pleasure being with the patrol teams in the fields rather than issuing orders from an office desk.

 I remained the black sheep of the department and believe you me, the worst was still to come when I went flying against the wishes of the security team and i obtained my PPL (private pilot license). The almighty God works in mysterious ways and as fate would have it,  my flying was completely ignored by my security department for three years, until a man named Nehemiah Rotich came in as the Director of the service and when he heard my story, he instructed the Air wing to give me a plane, and I finally wore the wings. Tough luck it was for me for the security department soon transferred me to the air wing  claiming that they wanted commanders and not pilots to lead their unit and Mr. Mbogua who was my senior warden in Tsavo West was made to write the decisive letter that ended my sun shine years in security department. They have however relied on me during poaching crisis when i joined park management in 2008 and that explains my constant transfers to hot beds of Mt. Kenya and the Tsavo between 2010 to 2017.

 In many instances I have reflected back on those early days and I have almost all the time concluded that we, the cadet officers were deployed at the right time to lead a very willing and disciplined ranger force. Most of our days were spent in the bush doing what we knew best and only went to the shopping centers and towns for little admins and supplies. We were total strangers to towns, in fact we feared them to the point where we were always bunched together in small groups. But the local maids loved us, for we were generous on tips. We occasionally picked fights with other friendly forces, mostly the police who simply loathed our simple and carefree style. The police were used to seeing the old game department rangers whose sails were long deflated but not these vibrant, free spending , smartly dressed youths who spoke very little Kiswahili and nothing of English. How we loved picking fights with the police , and I remember one time when I took a full armed section into a police station to free two of my notorious trouble shooters from the cells.

We were young, we had good allowances and we wanted to dominate others. We were full of confidence and we believed that a little mischief was good for us all. The truth was we needed to release work pressure from the field routines , thus the mischief.  We could only afford this errands for two days in a row before we trooped back to our niches in high spirits and would talk about our misgivings until  the end of the month, and we tried not to visit the same town for the next two months or more. We were a very contented lot and an envy to other security forces, and  we instilled fear into the hearts of poachers , and wildlife was safe in and out of the protected areas.

THE MAREMBO INCIDENT

We were building a fence around the air strip near our camp within the Tana River Primate Reserve to stop the Orma livestock and people from traversing the air strip. We have had scares in the past when planes bringing  in our supplies land  at the strip and we  were also preparing to receive our Director; Dr. David Western who was expected to kick off repatriation of the local Pokomo community members who were being relocated from the reserve to Kipini area in Lamu. There was too much pressure exerted on the primates environment by the locals and the government was given a grant by GEF [ Germany fund] to buy 5 acre plots for each family. Fence materials were delivered from nairobi and i was required to purchase ballast for the works to start, so Iwas picked by plane from the new air strip and flown to Wilson.

The truck I was to use was still being repaired at the central workshop and the directors visit was scheduled to start in a weeks time so I was given one of the newly acquired four ton canter truck to transport some ballast to help kick start the fence line. It was a Toyota Dyna , white in color For it was yet To be painted with the KWS green,  so we filled it with the pebbles and started the 1000 plus kilometers ride to Baomo in Tana river district.                    We were four in the vehicle ; the driver named Gele, ranger Ngorongoro who was coming to the platoon on transfer , the mason and Me, and we were all crammed in to the small cabin and it took us more than 13 hours from Nairobi to Malindi were we rested while waiting for our escort. We left Malindi some times past mid night and proceeded with the escort team trailing us but we were heavy so they would drive past us then wait for us ahead, then we would pass them and they pass us again and we continued like this till morning found us some  miles out of Garsen town. We stopped beside the road for a short rest and the rangers chose to drive in to the town for breakfast while we in the truck continued on our slow pace.

I dosed off as soon as we started again and I had to raise the window Because i needed to lean my head on the glass and i must have slept for when i was woken up by the ranger and cries of the mason, I saw the MAREMBO sign post which is normally more than 20 kilometers from the Garsen - Hola junction. I did not have to ask why my group was exited for two shoots fired in succession rant the calm morning and a tall light skinned youth came out of the bushes to my left and Started running along the slow moving truck. I could see his face clearly for he was less than 80 meters from the road and his head and part of his face was covered by a blue scarf . He was carrying a G3 rifle and he was not shooting directly at the truck but in front of us which was a polite way of  asking us to stop. We had no intention of doing stopping as requested and the driver needed not be told that we were not armed and that we should never be at the mercy of high way bandits, more so now that I was on board , yes I was on board and every highway robber and bandit in the Tana River and Lamu Districts would love to have my heart for lunch. He changed gears and the nose of the truck pitched up and started gaining momentum gradually and this must have stunned  the man who was trying to stop us for he came to a sudden stop and started taking aimed shots at us.

KWS had officially joined the police in fighting highway hijackers and it was only three weeks since the Witu ambush where the driver of our escort team was killed , and here i was on a lonely road not knowing where my escort team was while seeing death in the form of a young, G3 welding, not so handsome bandit firing shots at our vehicle. In normal circumstances I would gladly have welcomed such opportunity to engage a much sought after contact with a lone bandit but I was not armed, not even with a pistol which had never left my side since I graduated from manyani field training school in July 1992. It was not that I forgot packing my side plate, no, but I flew to Wilson and I knew that I was to board public transport, and experience has taught me that commuters on public transport don't welcome such wares and we have witnessed people literary jump out of moving vehicles when they know that you are carrying one, mistaking us for car jackers.

I felt naked, totally helpless but curiously I was not afraid  and I  turned in my seat to watch the man shooting at us till we were out of range and i could just imagine the dejection and utter disbelieve written all over him. We stopped to examine the vehicle when we were 10 miles from the ambush site and we found four bullet holes in the canvas which must have been stopped by the pebbles we were transporting for they did not reach us in the cabin. We resumed our journey to camp with no more incidents and waited for the escort team to arrive and when they came half an hour later they reported that they had stopped at exactly the same position where we were shoot at after they smelled gun powder in the still morning air and the same guy who shot at us appeared from the bushes but he despaired when he saw the rangers. We dispatched two sections to search for the bandits and their foot prints led the team to their hide out 5 miles from the main road. 

They were not found that day, but word soon spread out that the white truck shot at belonged to KWS and that I was actually in it and this caused panic in the district and emissaries were sent by the local leaders to assure us that the people concerned would be identified and brought to us. The gun which was used during the ambush was surrendered to us in a weeks time and the owner was arrested soon after. The local community was fed up with banditry and their resilience was evident when they handed over the man responsible for the ambush. This was a big achievement to our efforts in wildlife conservation in the region and it was prove that we in KWS were a major partner in security  and that our direct and mutual approach to issues concerning the communities was accepted and appreciated by them.

The service was not impressed by my actions of not Carrying a sidearm , and I received a stern warning letter from the Deputy Director Security ( DDS ) to the effect that I will be charged the  next time I endangered my live . I felt loved , and touched by his affection , and I promised me never to leave my tools of trade behind again. This was the service at its best. The HQ cared for our well being and our welfare was awesome. We in turn did our bit and more and we exceeded expectations. We were happy and we loved and enjoyed our work.

Kakamega Forest Reserve.

Kakamega forest is a National Reserve which is managed by the Kenya Wildlife Service. In 1993 I was requested to send in men to arrest charcoal merchants who had invaded the forest.The warden in-charge of the reserve  had only three rangers and he lacked transport. We had never been there before so two rangers from the reserve joined our patrol. Back then there were no roads in the reserve, so we packed our back packs with dry ration which would last us for three days. 
All other self belongings were packed into the vehicles which then were driven and parked in the park head quarters. We were twelve in total and we walked slowly for in most places we had to cut our way through in the forest thicket.  I have led patrols before in Mt Elgon forest for many years but it was totally difficult to walk in the kakamega forest as there were no big game which could open up paths. 
So we were forced to use machetes to clear paths and this took almost all our time. We managed to cover only five kilometers that first day before it rained and we were forced to make camp.

We were used to ants, but the kakamega ants were big and were everywhere. They did not bite but they got into our nerves for they found their way to our food, our clothing and eventually into our eureka tents. They were quite a nuisance , and though they were running away from the tormenting rain , they had no business coming to us.we expected them to go climb trees. 
We had a sleepless night and we could not light fires due to rain, so we covered our bodies with the tents and prayed for the sunrise which took long to appear. We could not make tea that morning but we took biscuits and gulped them down with water then we started from where we left the previous evening. 
By midday we came to the only river that cuts across the reserve and it took us time to find a place to cross it for it was swollen and had no bridges. We found a huge tree that had fallen across the river and two men had to clear the branches and make some foot holds before we eventually trooped over it to the opposite bank. 
30 minutes after crossing the river, we smelled smoke and we heard someone singing, so we stopped and sent in two rangers on Reece missions . It took them one full hour but they established that there were two camps and they saw only six people who were very relaxed for they were sure that no security men have ever reached these depths before.
 We consulted and it was agreed that due to lack of sleep the previous night, we could not guarantee the safety of the prisoners during the night so we chose to enjoy our sleep and do the rest in the morning. So we let them be, and we slept without posting sentries for the first time in many moons.

We were up before sunrise and found occupants of the first camp still asleep. The three were roped together and tied to a tree where we posted two rangers to guard them then we proceeded to the second camp which was a kilometer away. The paths between the two camps were well used meaning that they have been there for a long time and this was confirmed by the explanation given to us by the occupants of the second camp.
We heard them shout to each other in loud voices which told us that they were not in the same place. One man was seated near a burning tree while smoking a joint.We could not see the second man for he was in the bush probably fertilizing the forest floor , so we waited until he emerged still trying to tie his worn out belt.
 The guy in the bush was explaining to the one seated at the fire that they were sure to harvest three bags of charcoal every day for the next three months from the burning tree. We later realized that they had cut down a mature Elgon Tick tree whose trunk took six of us to circle while holding hands.  It was quite a shame to see a monster of a tree like that being felled for charcoal. Elgon Tick tree has some of the very hard timber in the world and it must have been there for over a hundred years.

The two men we arrested refused to tell us where the third member had gone, so we ambushed the camp and waited for him to come. We waited for more than three hours and when he finally came he took us by surprise , for he refused to surrender and attacked the rangers with the machete he was carrying. 
The man rushed the armed men while welding the sharp weapon above his head and did not heed the warning shots fired at his feet. 
The rangers shouted at him to stop but he kept on coming giving us creeps and hints that he was possessed.He tried to cut off the head of the lead ranger but he ended up cutting the FN rifle the ranger was using to block the  blow. 
The rest of the group , me included , did not wait to see who the man would try to behead next,  so  we all raised our weapons and opened up on him. He stood there shaking for a whole minute , gazing at us with his mouth wide open in disbelieve. I failed to see his eyes for there were bullet holes all over his head and by the time I called for a cease fire, his own mother would never have recognized him. He was quite a site, and he was in a mess, I felt sorry for him.

We dosed the fire and destroyed the kilns, then forced the guys we arrested to dig a shallow grave and bury their dead before we tied them to each other and marched them towards kakamega town. 
It took us two hours to reach the town and we booked them at the police station where we recorded statements on the  dead man. The police were amused when they saw the rifle cut and warned us never to try and arrest such people .  
They told us that the weed they smoke was not the normal one , and they always mix it  with other additives . Well,  he met his match that day and though we might have cut short his supply here on earth, he might as well get plenty more where he was heading to , but of course that also depended on where he was destined for.

We patrolled the forest for a whole week but never managed to arrest any more timber poachers, for  word had gone out that the Kenya Wildlife Service rangers were in town and not the Normal game department rangers from the kakamega station they were used to, and whom lacked muscle. 

We took a different route out on our way back and we went through Bungoma to Malakisi where we zeroed our weapons at the police range grounds before checking into the Cheptais wonder land for active engagement .

Nakwamoru incident. South Turkana National Reserve. 1993

 Charley coy, had its head quarters in Cholim on the slopes of Mt Elgon, which was 27 kilometers from Kitale town, but it had platoons based in Kaberua on the western side of the mountain taking care of the new Mt Elgon district to cheptais, and the whole of Kapsokwony.  The second platoon was based at Sarmash which was at the boarder of Turkana and Pokot , but was latter moved to Lobokat. There are two National Reserves here; the South Turkana National Reserve  which starts at the Wei Wei river near Kainuk, to the Kerio river as its eastern boundary. The second is the Nasalot National Reserve which is found between the Wei Wei river and the Turkwel river which emanates from the now Turkwel hydro electric dam. 
The platoon also takes care of the Rimoi and the Kamnarok National Reserve towards the south. There has ever been a resident herd of elephants numbering 200 between these two reserves which are threatened by the ever increasing population of people migrating from the high mountains raising from both sides of the reserve.

South Turkana is surrounded by the Loturuk mountains and the Kailangon hills to the east, and has pure plains of Kaadengoi ,and Kaakong which are teemed with all types of wildlife during the rainy season before they take refuge at the towering mountains during the dry spell. 

Two incidence took place here during my tour of duty ; one was the Nakuamoru killings , and the weiwei poachers. 

Reports were received from the local people that an elephant was killed near the Nakuamoru rock, and the reserve Warden who was based at Sarmash decided to take his own PAC ( problem animal control unit ) without informing the WPD ( wildlife protection department ) rangers based at Lobokat to arrest the situation. It is important to note that PAC rangers are trained to deal with human wildlife conflict , but the WPD group are more conversant in security management and are more equipped to handle security complexities . The warden took four rangers and visited the scene where they found many people cutting away meat of the dead elephant, and for reasons best known to them, they opened up fire on the group and killed two of them on the spot. 
They were then led to where the tusks were hidden and they decided to arrest the two people who took them to the loot. The team then proceeded to Lobokat to report their success and recorded it in the OB, ( observation book ) and they wrote a radio message to be transmitted to Nairobi as required, then proceeded to Lodwar police station to commence prosecution.

The HF ( high frequency) radio had a microphone problem thus the rangers failed to dispatch the written message but the company command in Cholim was informed through the VHF radio and this prompted my need to drive more than 200 kilometers to verify and confirm the incident. I got to Lobokat in the night and after repairing the microphone the written message was transmitted and we retired to bed. 
Early the next morning I visited the scene and found the dead elephant , then we were led to the two bodies and we placed them together in a makeshift grave and buried them. We then patrolled the Turkwel basin and went back to meet the OCS (officer commanding station ) at the Kainuk police base and he was shocked to learn that two people were killed by our rangers. We failed to understand the actions of the warden and I had to call him to come and explain his actions. 
We later learned that the officer was advised by his able sergeant to do what they did. They even tried to erase what they had written on the OB and they also destroyed the radio message form they had early written. What they failed to know is that the message had already been transmitted to Nairobi and was latter used against them. The officer and the Sargent were arrested and charged for the murder of the two alleged poachers. The case took one year and the two were latter acquitted for lack of witnesses and evidence.

In the weiwei incident , rangers on patrol came across two people skinning an antelope they had previously killed and they opened fire upon seeing the rangers. The patrol shot back and one of them was gunned down and the other injured but managed to shoot his way through. A Kalashnikov was recovered with 80 rounds of 5.56 mm and this were taken to the Kapenguria police station but the police  refused to keep the gun at their armory claiming that the local community ( Pokot ) would overrun the station looking for the gun. 
We took it to our main armory in Cholim . The next day there were demonstrations in Marich pass by the Pokot claiming that KWS were their enemies and that they should be moved out of their land. They declared that they would shoot every KWS person on site and that grenades should be fired at our vehicles. Such threats are never taken lightly mostly when they are issued by the Pokot .

 I immediately assembled two full sections together and drove straight to Lobokat to reinforce the platoon. I  had five vehicles and a total of 45 men to face the challenge and I wanted to show off my strength , what we call show of might, to see if I could force the community to the table.  
For two days we traversed the entire place, from Tot to Sigor to Lomut , Chesogon and back to Marich pass without interacting with anyone.  At the police road block in Marich pass , I left a message for the senior chief, that the ball was now in his court and that he should plan for us to meet. He requested us to meet the next day at his place.

I took  one section to the meeting but  left them at the police lines and walked alone , without even a pistol to their meeting. You see, I am a nomad just like this people , and I know that stupid courage , and naked boldness , has great impact to them , and it is a pure sign of manliness and everything else associated to courage. I was only a boy to them , light skinned and very slim, and my actions took them by complete surprise , and they gave me the floor to explain things, and this I did very well,  for all those who were facing the other side simply because they disliked me , turn around to look at me,  and those who were laying down as they normally do when they don't like the speaker or the topic, rose up and listened, and when I eventually sat down, they did not talk for a very long time, and when they did , it was only to request me to walk back to my men , and that they would contact me latter. 
 On our way back to Kainuk , we found the man we had injured previously , and his foot had a big gaping hole and that the wound had turned septic and he was dying. We drove him to Kapenguria hospital for treatment then we informed the police. The simple act of taking this man to hospital rather than killing him was passed to all corners of the Pokot lands and it changed their perception towards us over night. 

A delegation of elders was sent to meet us two days latter at Amolem, and our differences and misunderstandings  were solved to date. My gamble bore fruits and the Pokot and the Turkana communities agreed to work with us in developing the two Reserves of Lobokak in Turkana district, and Nasalot in Kapenguria district. The wardens office has since been moved from Sarmash to a site very close to the Kengen Electric Power Company and the Lobokat base now has permanent ranger houses. 

THE SPOILS OF A MOUNTAIN GOD

My first posting was to Mt elgon national park way back in 1992. Elephants and all other wildlife associated with a big forest were found in this park , but it had something else unusual ; tribal clashes. The communities around the park were ripping each others throats and the authorities did not seem to mind it at all. But i had to secure the park from the marauding gangs who had to go right through the park to steal from each other. The Sabaot tribe stole from the Bukusu who were a sub clan of the greater Luhya tribe, and the Wagisu monsters came out of Uganda to help their cousins the Bukusu. The Bukusu did not have guns, but the other two were citizens of both  Kenya and Uganda and they had access to guns and dual citizenship , and they were fearless and merciless . They could kill without blinking.

The forests of Mt Elgon was very thick and hid very many evils , and we needed to get in to the forest to solve some riddles  and in the process crush some beliefs , such as trying to prove that the Wagisu were cannibals. The police department believed in such myths and they refused to take part in any operation planned or even thought off anywhere inside or around the forest. We walked into enemy ambushes plenty of times and we lost personnel, and many people were injured and almost all were direct hits on the buttocks. Don't ask me how that was possible but if you ever get the chance to hike in those forests then maybe you will know why. we took it positively and talked about it jokingly, and made fun of the guys who got hit , and we never ran away from the forest, in fact we could not work anywhere else in a better way. we learned to work in small groups of four men each,  and we were very effective , and deadly. In the park we  had hundreds of refugees driven away from their farms , and they were killed like chicken by the bandits, and we had a duty to protect them. This outfit was first identified as * FERA * and they were fighting the Ugandan government, but their accomplice in Kenya latter became the famous Sabaot land defense force, ( SLDF ). 

It was not normal for a day to pass without hearing gun fire those days, either friendly or enemy, and there was one particular time that we failed to hear gun shots for a week and we were all uneasy, and i had to call all the teams together and one officer was asked    to shoot in to the air and we cheered and this settled our sugar levels to minimum. Cattle rustling was a daily activity then, where the agriculture development cooperation ( ADC ) grade cows were stolen and later sold like hot buns in neighboring Uganda . The park was used as a conduit for years and we tried to stop it by ambushing all known routes in the forest but the area was too big and the plant called stinging nettles got into our nerves. We eventually took our patrols to the moorland and waited for the cattle that high up and this paid dividends. We completely crashed the rustling rackets and the ADC managers of Transzoia will attest to this, and my men were sold livestock products from these farms at half price for our efforts.

I was born to a nomadic tribe in the northern frontier thus rustling was a normal way of life to us. I lost many family members to cattle rustlers to the extent that death did not scare me any more. Guns were common to my people and  this helped me greatly when i was trying to bond with the teams in Mt Elgon. I fused in very fast with them, and I was grateful , for though it was baptism by fire, it helped prepare me for the rest of my tour as a security warden. 

In the beginning i didn't know enough to be scared. The thing about a bullet is , you cant see them. All you can do is hear them. And until you connect the sound of a bullet with someone dying , you don't have enough sense to duck. That is exactly what kills most people in the early stages of combat. They hear a shot , they stick their head up , and they get killed. until you have actually shot someone or been shot at yourself , it doesn't really sink in. It really sunk into me in Mt elgon. I knew those bullets could kill me , so i kept my head down. and i said *oh my God* . This is real , and i survived.    

THE CHILDREN OF THE RIVER:

In July of 1993, I was transferred out of Mt Elgon National Park to lead one of the platoons of 'Charley Coy ' based at Baomo primate Reserve in Tana River District of Coast Province.  We had Uni-pots for housing and our hands were so full such that we only slept in them twice in a month.




The author and his team while preparing to cross Tana river by canoe to the east bank.



There were elephants in the reserve and some rare monkeys which were not found anywhere else in the country, such as the Tana river red colobus (Procolobus rufomitratus) and the  Tana river mangabey (cercosebus galeritus) .The Reserve was gazetted in 1978  solely to protect these rare species and to stop habitat loss and degradation due to human encroachment and the  rare monkeys occupied a 60km stretch of the lower Tana River from Nkajonja to Mitapani along the mighty Tana river.

Garsen center was the center of bandits who target roads in the district to rob motorists , and it was also the meeting point where every aspiring poacher met the seasoned ones for introduction and recruitment into the trade. Garsen was and still is the place where every poacher from Somalia will come to and recruit idle, readily available youth who would then lead them into the Tsavo National Parks where they believed that ivory could be collected in every river bed and where one could  always shoot down an elephant if he desired the fresh commodity straight from the source.

There were four ethnic tribes in Tana River; the Pokomo people who were fishermen and seasonal farmers whose life entirely depended on the Tana River waters and only planted their farms after floods, and they hunted the hippo,  the crocodile and sometimes they use snares to capture the elusive warthog when it came to the river for a drink and to cool off during the searing heat of the day. These were the people who were responsible for the destruction of the habitat of the endangered monkeys by cutting down trees the monkeys use for food and shelter to make charcoal and clear the under growth to make farms. The other tribes included the Orma , the werdhei , and the infamous Galjahel community who migrated to these parts not very many years ago from Somalia , and they are the link between the Somali poachers and the other tribes. 

The Pokomo villages dotted the western river bank from Hola which they preferred to call Laza, through Kone , emmauss, mikinduni, chalani, lenda, hadamphia, bondeni, duayo , bububu, to wenje just to mention a few. They became a great source of information to us because it was only through them that one could cross the Tana River. They were the river people and they had canoes for fishing and for transport. So we made friends with them and recruited many of them as informers.The other tribes hated them for this,  so we became their keepers and they gave us information on every person who requested their services to cross the river, either armed or not. This helped us in recovery of weapons from the local communities and to keep tab with every gang new or old in the entire Tana River basin.

Our data base on poachers was always updated and we hunted them at will. The highway gangs were few thus hard to monitor, but they always came back to Garsen village to chew miraa after every successful robbery and when they were high on the stimulant, they always tell their tales to willing listeners , and we always had friendly ears close by and one or two of them will be picked later that night for questioning , and we would almost all the time recover the guns they used and the goods stolen. An informer will take us to the victims house where we would knock and call the man by his name and tell him that we had a message for him from one of his men , and by the time he recognized us he would certainly cooperate. This became possible after we learned to use some tricks we perfected overtime and it has always worked  when the poacher realizes that we know where he hid his firearm, and at times we also mention the number of ammunition he has. 
This proved to be very effective and word went out that the KWS were only disarming and did not take prisoners such that there was total cooperation and trust in us to the extent that we were called as far as Masalani, Ijara and Bodhei to retrieve the surrendered weapons. We could recover up to 50 assorted rifles per month and the police loved it , for credit always went to them, but that didn't bother us for our wildlife remained safe, and the roads were free of banditry. The locals nicknamed me " Ibren", a name close to the angel Gabriel , whom they believed only visited at night with messages from God.

I was in Tana River for only three months before being transferred to Meru National Park and during that time we managed to recover more than 95 guns from the locals as surrenders, not to mention the many we retrieved from the ambushes we mounted on the two crossing of Hadamphia and Bondeni , and on the Sera and chuma mrefu cutlines. Idassa Godana ranch will always be imprinted in my mind due to the ugly incidents that we encountered there, and the Orma community of mnazini village gave me a farewell party when I was leaving and one of them gave us the following story as a parting shot to me and to welcome the new platoon commander, Mr Abdi Doti. 

 " A long long time ago, there lived a man who was crippled and had no teeth to the extent that his wife did every thing for him. He would crawl to the bushes to relive himself , but he could only eat light foods and he depended on the wife to soften hard foods for him to munch and swallow . His wife was everything to him and he worshiped her for the kindness and dedication she had for him. But as fate has it, one day, the wife got very sick and died. The man was devastated and wept for many days and he cursed all the combined Gods of his people for letting her die and challenged them to also take him for he saw no future without her. Neighbors helped feed him but he refused to eat and opted to die, so the men of his clan came together and tried to convince him to remarry, but he could not believe that any other woman could equal his beloved late wife''.

"Eventually reason got the better part of him and he agreed to remarry, only this time, the wife was from another village and she was an orphan and had never been married. She came to his house with nothing, for she had nothing to offer, but she won his heart in a very short while.  No one has ever loved her, nor has anyone ever relied or looked upon her for kindness, but here she was , in a house she could call her own and a husband who depended on her for everything. She took him without reservations and nursed him like she would never do it again. She gave him everything, and she chewed hard dried meat then dipped them in gee before feeding him. She hunted for wild honey and  smeared all his helpings in the pure sweet jelly. The man saw heaven right at his door step and he proclaimed it to the rest of his brethren loudly . He wondered why his late wife took long to die. He asked God why he had allowed him to suffer that long under the hands of his former wife. He was in love for the first time."

We were told that the meaning of that story is that leaders were different and that each man had his or her way of doing things. Two people are never the same and that my success in Tana River might never be replicated by any other man . It means that the incoming officer would come work with the community and they would never compare his work with mine , and this helped him settle very fast after taking over.

It had taken me three months to win the confidence of the Tana River communities , yet I was not one of them nor could I even speak any of their languages but they learned to trust me, confined their secrets and their fears to me , and I listened , and I did what was expected of me , and they accepted me, and our work was made simple. They were simple societies which were looking for space to survive the harsh life they were subjected to , for they only chose it for lack of an alternative. My future with these people was cast in stone as our trust in each other was tucked deep in our dark hearts. I thank God for leading me to them , and for giving me a honest soul that made me fuse effectively with them. 

This relationship with the Orma community paid off a few years later during my tour of duty in the hostile Lamu District where buses where hijacked every day in broad day light between garsen and lamu and passengers robbed of their belongings with impunity. 

Deliberate attack on enemy camp

"If you give a riddle to a man, and he asks you for the answer , then the dowry paid for his mother was a waste". This is a Nigerian proverb that kept on popping up every time I thought of my then Director , Dr. Richard Leakey.  29 of us were recruited in december1991 and we started the platoon commanders course in manyani in January 1992.  Most of us had worked in different Government ministries, some as teachers, electricians , veterinarians and few came straight from secondary schools. I had worked with the Agriculture ministry, livestock division for six and a half years after graduating with a certificate on range management from AHITI Kabete  ( Animal Health and Industry Training Institute ) in 1984. It took us seven months to complete the course and on graduation Dr Leakey read us the riot act , and it sounded like we were being released in to a tunnel with only one exit, and that the whole world  expected us to stop poaching at all costs , and that it would be a sacrifice to conservation if we got  killed in the act. Dr Leakey was a very hard man to please, and we never asked him for answers. 

I was posted to Meru National park in October 1993 from the Tana Primate Reserve in Baomo where I ran rounds with a platoon of 30 men trying to stop high way robberies between Lamu and Garsen, and Garsen to Hola. A mouth full, but a story for another day. In early November , just one month in to my posting, 11 elephants were killed by poachers in Sarara, and Sir Richard had asked us for a quite Christmas . This was a silent order, but we understood it all the same ; that the good doctor wanted us to silence a gang before Christmas . We have always kept our promise, one way or the other. 

The patrol team pursued the bandits who killed a government official and abused several women on the Marsabit-Moyale Highway in earnest, and they followed the bandits trail for most of the morning while it was still cool for days can be hot here, very hot indeed, and they needed water, but they had little of the precious liquid and they knew that they had to save what they had. So they sipped from their water bottles when they stopped for short rests between runs, and they came across empty water jerrycans dug from the way side, and they knew that the guys they pursued were veterans and that they had planned their route out well. They had buried water  on the route in intervals of five kilometers apart, which meant that they could walk the whole day without rest if they had to. But they were heavy from the loot they carried so they were slow. On the second day the rangers saw a man seated on a hilly outcrop and he had a binoculars and he was watching the path where the rangers were following.

The patrol team had also spotted our plane, and so did the bandits, for the man they saw with the binoculars was scouting the path and watching the plane at the same time. The team needed food and water, and they knew we had all this in the plane, but contacting the plane would alert the bad guys and that was not acceptable. So they hid in the bushes and we failed to see them for the second day in a row. The man spotted on the rock took time just siting there and this gave the rangers confidence that they must have reached their hide out. So they also waited and watched him till sun set when he eventually came down and disappear  from view. By this time only one man was awake , the team was over exhausted , really hungry and very thirsty . The team leader urged them to move closer to the hide out after dark, for by this time the bandits had started a fire and some were singing. They were home and very comfortable for no security personnel  had reached this parts for years. We were later informed by the inhabitants of Losesia village that the last team of GSU soldiers who ever reached those areas were wiped out by bandits and that two of them have never been seen. Not even their bodies.

The team formed their rear base 500 meters from the hideout and two rangers were picked to go spy the other camp. Took them a while but when they came back their report raised spirits of the whole team. They confirmed that they had the right group and that they were not keeping any sentries, and that they were already going through the loot. The team had two options, to attack at that particular time ,or wait till morning. They discussed options and they all agreed to mix things in the morning. One was because they needed rest and second was they did not fancy night clearance . Soldiers who are not on suicide missions will never vote for night clearances after a contact. So they settled on a deliberate attack, and  men were given duties. 

Two rangers went up the rock as a cut off unit, two groups of two men each were placed meters apart in the center of the area as the killer group and the other two were placed far right on another cut off. They formed a carve like formation, but they decided to sleep at the rear base due to exhaustion. The officer needed to map out the grounds for the attack, so he chose two men and they crawled to within fifty meters of the enemy camp and could have gone further but for the lack of cover. They were too close to the enemy camp that they could see their faces from the glow of the camp fire, and heard them talk about the evil things they did to the women. Some of them came to within reach of the rangers to relief themselves and some to hide the looted goods. The men held their cool and crawled back to the rear base satisfied that they had the right group and that they were to be eliminated without second thoughts.

All units were in place by four o'clock in the morning, and waited for the good morning that took ages to come. They did not have to wait for the sun to rise, because one of the bandits woke up and went in to prayer. Something must have touched him , or the animal instinct in him must have triggered a nerve , for the man started kicking his sleeping companions and tried to reach for his gun, then all hell broke loose , Four G3 rifles in the killer group opened up as one, and the cut off unit on the far right freed their compressed FN magazines in union. The only group who had orders to hold fire was the one on the rocks and they obeyed the order. The noise was satisfying to the shooters but something else to the receivers on the far  end. Three of them managed to raise their heads then met the volley and died without seeing their killers. One of them was shot on the left leg but somehow managed to limp through the flying lead, naked, and was reported the only survivor . The fifth guy was injured but managed to run in to bushes below the big rock outcrop. 

Firing stopped for the men to reload and an order given to hold fire, but one of the rangers on the top of the outcrop shouted position of the injured man and in the process exposed him self and almost paid for it. The injured bandit released a short bust and one round creased the scalp of the ranger , throwing him flat on to his back. One of the rounds also hit the rock where he was laying and debris hit his left eye puncturing the cornea. The team below leveled on the bandit and he must have been hit fifty times, for when we later saw him, he did not have a head, and his upper side looked like a sieve.

The rangers went to clear the scene and the first thing they saw almost spoiled their success ; laying there between two dead  bandits, was a bazooka tube, and it was loaded. A squeeze on the trigger would have spelled doom to the rangers, and there were two spare shells close by. They also recovered three AK47 rifles and all the loot. The team cleared the scene, picked some water and cooked food which the bandits did not need, and moved out of the area for they feared that the gun fire might attract other unwanted evils. By mid day, some rangers were so tired that they could not move, so they took cover in a thicket to rest and three of the strong ones volunteered to walk to the losesia village which was the only known center in the vicinity to seek for help, and this they did , and the chief with his home guards carried water to the team, and that explained the police uniform I saw when we eventually found the gallant men while flying in our spotter plane.

The officer who was leading the team is Dr. Francis Lesilau who is currently a Senior Assistant Director , and the corporal was Lmwate Lenguro who is now a Warden Two and three of the rangers are assistant wardens including  Mr. Lotir who was injured and he lost the eye permanently.