WEIRD WITU
" I don't think I can handle the vulgar anymore" my evidently annoyed camera man Robert Gichira tells me silently as the saloon car we are in finally come to a stop in front of a Swahili style bungalow just beside the main road
This is Witu, the first urban center you meet when you enter Lamu county after a long trip by road....and I mean really bad road....some 300 km from Mombasa
" Hapa sasa.....simamisha hapo (stop here)...lakini chukua picha kama umejificha usitoke nje...watashtukia...(roll your camera inside the car first... be careful we dont want to be noticed) the bulky and loud Arab man sitting on the front passenger seat of our salon car announces.
"Now that is Mohammed Odeh's house. That is where he settled before and after the 1998 US Embassy Bomb Blast" he points to us
Odeh an Alqaeda operative and Jordanian citizen is today serving a life imprisonment in the US for his involvement in the 1998 Bomb blast
Ahmed Bakhswein. Through out my profession as a journalist I do not think I have ever met any one with so much information about intel on terror more than this loud Kenyan Arab. This had made him a marked man by those who felt he was "selling" them to the FBI , CIA and Kenya's ATPU.
The only problem we had with him...no let me make that clear ....the only problem my cameraman "Gichboy" had with him was that he would never finish a sentence without some vulgar word ....a swearing here ...swearing there..but .that was Bakshwein for you.
I was trailing terror suspect Fazul Abdullah Mohammed the Comorian for a TV series "On the Footsteps of Fazul" who turned out to be one of the most elusive of Alqaeda operatives in East Africa and the leader of the Alqaeda East Africa cell.That series took me to Mombasa where hehad a hideout at the upscale Tudor estate, Witu , Mpeketoni, Siyu in the beautifiul Pate Island where he lived a double life as a Madrasah teacher starting a football club among the Bajunis, marring a local girl Amina and spreading the Salafi ideology and Mogadishu in the volatile Somalia where he finally met his death under a hail of gunfire from Somali armed forces( some say Kenyan Special forces) at the Afgoy junction
Bakshwein had all the info about Fazul... he was a spy for the US and Kenya security ..something that cost him his life one day last January when an identified man on a motorbike stopped headed to a SUV Bakshwein wasin and shot him point blank on his head killing him in cold blood on the streets of Malindi...his hometown
It was interesting to know where Odeh had lived .....this man together with Fazul was among the masterminds of the 1998 US Embassy bomb blast that killed more than 200 people.
Why had Odeh a Jordanian Engineer chosen to marry a local Bajuni and settle in Witu?
Witu is a remote slow town not much welcoming after some long tough road trip. I dont know if its just me or all travellers but the feeling one gets when you arrive in Witu is a bit weird. As you drive along the one dusty street town every residents eye is on you....a skinny Arab man is brave enough to come to our vehicle to beg for a shilling...some crazy youth appears on one of my trips with a tree log on his shoulder ..on it written with some white chock "NTV"it is supposed to be a camera ...I remember it was on the Muslim Idd Day...he had a maize cob all seeds removed and a stick put through it on one end ...that was his microphone...Said told me his dream was to be come a tv reporter like me.
Its a town of mixed ethnic groups...Bajuni, Orma, Arabs, Mijikenda and a number of people from "Bara" or upcountry
I hope am not being unfair in my judgement but my first impression of Witu (apparently the first time I learnt about this town was in my history classes...it had to be fought for by three different powers) is one lazy town....but later I may have changed my mind when time and again women and sometimes men would sometime bombard you with foodstuff they are hawking
"Labania ...labania..labania" they would shout selling the sweets made of wheat flour and milk that Lamu, Kismayu and all other Bajun towns stretching from Kenya to the Bajun Aljazeera or Bajun Islands in Somalia is known for . Witu offers the last chance to buy labania for people back home incase you forgot to do so on your stay in Lamu Island
Then there is this talk that this town will never develop because of its famed witchcraft.No further details.
Its a town with a history of conflict...once part of the Germany colony ( I always asked my self what the hell Germans , British and The Sultan of Zanzibar fought over this small town !)
I learnt later that it is the expansive Witu Forest and its precious timber products that made Witu so very important to alien powers and a source of ivory too from the roaming elephants . The forest stretches to link with Boni Forest and into Somalia's Ras Kamboni and beyond...a perfect camouflage for underground militants, highway bandits, shiftas and now the Somali militant group Alshabaab
And thats why Bakshwein the loud Super Big spy had brought us here. This expert on the region's security would tell you how this part of the country has for years been a safe haven for the so called "terrorists" with little or no detection from the authorities fighting the so called war on terror in Kenya
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An Akorino woman wearing the trademark pleated skirt and a white head scarf is riding on a bicycle along the way greeting those she passes by in Kikuyu language...... a group of men and women are headed for their farm....our car drives along as the geographical features suddenly seem to have changed.... its greener ....and there are endless farms of Maize and other plants...cashewnuts....coconut ...it all looked coast but for the people ....they all seem to be speaking Kikuyu .....they were actually Kikuyus I learnt
This was Kibaoni we were just branching into the small trading center from Mkunumbi where i had met the familiy and home of Famau Mohammed Famau the 2010 kIkambala bombing suicide bomber trained by Fazul himself ..... we were now headed for Mpeketoni .....the scenario becomes even more and more Central kenya like....tractors parked under trees ...You would be understood to believe you were some where in Kiambu....it could be anywhere in Central kikuyu
A sizeable growing town I would say...some time back in 2011. The Mpeketoni market town summarises the population of this area. that was once a Bajun and Orma settlement who some had to flee the on off attacks by Somali Shifta bandits demanding that North Eastern Kenya become part of Somalia back in the 60s and 70s
The market rich with fresh farm products....mangoes...sukuma wiki...tomatoes....potatoes ...cow peas ...cabbage....endlss
Different radios compete for audience...all tuned to Kikuyu stations....I would once twice forget i was in Nairobi....in some market in Uthiru or Kangemi. There were stores selling farm machinery and fertilizers ......but this was Lamu mainland
But i could also see the indigenous Bajunis mostly near the Mpeketoni Bus Terminal..though outnumbered i could still hear the golden voice of Bajuns best ever singer Prof Mohammed Juma Bhallo in a Swahili restaurant where i was having a late lunch compete for audience with the Benga beats of Joseph Kamaru. If you ask me the two tribes seem to get along well..
I must have got a culture shock when i heard a kikuyu lady speaking fluently in the Bajun dialect and her use of Swahili phrases and proverbs was just unbelievable. But of course this was all the home she knew. Her family like many here are third generation of landless Kikuyus settled here by the Jomo Kenyatta government back in the 60s and 70s
A local told me some have intermarried with the indigenous and some have even embraced |Islam the religion of the Bajunis
And when i asked what the name Mpeketoni means....I was always given several versions...one local told me when Kenyatta( the dad) arrived here after a long trip from Nairobi via Mombasa took found relief in seating under a particular tree near the entry in to the town from Witu....he must have felt so comfortable under its shade considering the extreme heat of the coast...it goes that he asked about the name of the tree and he was told Mpeketo.....hence Mpeketoni.....the wood of the tree is known to make some traditional porridge mixer...long stick on one end the user turns it round between his palm...on the other end is a zigzagged circle pattern that does the mixing. The spot where Kenyatta sat is still preserved by the local administration to date
But i learnt later in Lamu Island that there may be some animosity brewing between the Bajunis and Kikuyus...and land was at the center of it all.
One hot night We were seated at the "Dar" or roof top of an ancient traditional Arab Swahili home ...three storeys...sipping Kahwa and Halwa overlooking the sea front to catch some breeze on the romantic Lamu Island. A local Lamu Arab told me confidently that they blame the non indigenous of taking much of their ancestral land after many left the mainland due to rising banditry. They had cultivated the land since time inmemorial until the shifta bandits pushed them out
A joke has been told for years that the Bajunis would not be able to farm forested land and asked for assistance from the Kenyatta government in form of tractors. But they got the tractors in form of landless Kikuyus who were settled in the forested Mpeketoni from Central Kenya and Tanzania after losing their fertile lands to the selfish British settlers ....... and succeeded in farming the area ...so goes the folk tale told by the Bajunis. The Bajunis would refer to the KIkuyu as "Witi Mere" a word in kikuyu loosely translated meaning "to apportion oneself something....to get oneself something"
The town was growing at a very fast rate and had become the largest in Lamu County. The Equity bank (now burnt down in the raid and massacre ) offered a sigh of relief ....one could cash some money aftre the long trip or send some money back home to the family before heading to Lamu Island which was our destination...some 34 km away
Mpeketoni fed the whole county and beyond. The ethnic Kikuyu controlled its administration and politics
My mission back in 2011 in this Kikuyu town in the midst of the Swahilis was however to search for "terrorist" links to be precise I was trailing Fazul
On the North west part of Mpeketoni is the largest Jumaa Mosque...large by a small town standard .Bakshwein the Kenyan Arab spy took us to film this mosque that had become a stop over and a temporary home for Fazul and many others so called "terrorists" who many had thought were just on a stop over to Lamu Island like we were ...they were actually on a stop over to the Alqaeda training grounds of Oday some 120 km from here in Somalia near Ras Kamboni. Today it still remains a stop over for Alshabaab fighters entering or headed for Kiunga border town and am not counting out the "White Widow'
These operatives had for long known studied Mpeketoni something that many seem not to get in the wake of the massacre that saw more than 60 people killed by armed militia who the locals identified as Alshabab but the government exonerating the insurgents instead apportioning blame to local politicians and ethnic incitement. Mpeketoni has been well studied by the militants for more than 16 years. And to be precise among the many foreign fighters recruited by Alshabaab are local Bajunis
Remember this? Soon after talk of Lamu port construction and talk of oil discovery in this remote neglected part of Kenya followed a string of kidnappings in Lamu targetting western tourists...may be am just thinking loud
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Three years later ....2014 the night of June 23. I get wind of an attack on Mpeketoni by unknown gunmen. I inform my boss the AA news agency Africa Bureau Chief Ayman Qenawi in Cairo about this breaking news with not much of a line to write about...it was about some minutes past 10pm and I was home bored with the Switzerland Honduras match or some other World Cup match
I managed to get a contact in Mpeketoni after making several calls thanks to a friend I met in Kiunga Lamu when i was headed for Ras Kamboni Somalia to cover the invasion of Kenya in Somalia. Harun gave me the number of his cousin Ali Lali, a resident of Mpeketoni and a headteacher at one of the primary schools there. The bajun headteacher a Ali Lali. doesnt pick my phone after several attempts. I send a text telling him i was a journalist for an international news agency wanting to confirm what i had heard
Lali replies a short text and it showed just how scared he may have been. the text said it was too dangerous to talk on phone and that he will get back to me after things cooled off
I had a story to deliver so i called again. and again......i must have seem stubborn to him...he sends a second text saying there were gunshots and explosions all over Mpeketoni and he was hiding together with his family in their home
After almost four hours we were able to speak on phone after i had broken the news....as we spoke i could here the explosions and gunshots...lali was getting scared on the other end of the phone call...and I felt for him and his family and admitedly felt guilty that am trying to get a story and quotes while he was trying to save his life and that of his two children and wife
It was now clear that gunmen estimated to be around 10 to 50 had raided Mpeketoni....spraying bullets to residents...burning down a police station and several other businesses...hotels..petrol station. the gunmen were waving the white black Khilafa flag associated with Alshabaab as they went from home to home killing more than 49 people...all christian men. Lali was in a panic on the other end of the call
The next day most of the Bajuni and other Muslim families had to flee Mpeketoni as it became clear that Kikuyu Christian youth would retaliate. The Muslims were caught between the militant Somali group and their fellow kenyans
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Now...come to think of it.....I just recalled sometime back this year that a Muhajirin fighter...thats what they call Kenyan Alshabaab...sent me a photo in which he was carrying an AK47 and wearing a camouflage half jacket..the background was a green forest with two three coconuts on sight...not your usual Somalia geography . "Mujahid" as I will call him swore to me that the photo was taken inside Kenya somewhere not very far away from Malindi at the Kenya Coast..."Mujahid" never communicated again though he knew the much interest i had to do a story on that
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Who really may have been behind the Mpeketoni Massacre...I wonder what the late SuperSpy Ahmed Bakshwein would have made of these attacks.... minus the vulgar words of course.
