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My Family Should Have Disappeared Several Times, But It Didn't

Two orphaned children were separated during a raid and taken into different communities. The boy was taken into Turkana. The girl remained among the Pokot of Baringo. They grew up speaking different languages and living lives neither could have imagined for the other. Years later, they found each other again. This is the story of my grandfather, Chebet Kiptabure, and his sister, Kwadit. It is also the story of how their family survived a separation that could easily have ended the connection between them forever. Chebet and Kwadit were orphaned while they were still young. No one knows exactly when my grandfather was born, although family memory places it sometime between 1910 and 1915. Kwadit was a few years younger. After the death of their parents, the two children were taken in by relatives in Marakwet. They grew up in a time when children were expected to contribute to the survival of the household. School was not part of their lives. Their work was to herd cattle and goa...
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Poems for Peace

Most of what I write here is prose: history, memoir and reflections from the field. But some things are easier to hold in verse. These two poems come from that place. The first is about the force that has driven so much of the violence I have worked against. The second is about how I would like to be remembered. Perversity of Tribalism Tribalism is pervasive. It controls our behavior It overrides reason It makes us feel better than others Violence and wars are tribalism Genocide is tribalism Religious extremism is tribalism Bigotry is tribalism They wipe out other groups To keep our group safe, ’tis madness. In Kenya's land, a tale unfolds Of perversity, a poisonous hold Tribalism grips the nation tight A curse that blinds, a plight The people once united, now divide Along lines of tribe, a deadly tide Their differences, a wedge so wide A chasm that cannot be glossed The air is thick with hatred's stench As tribes turn against each other's trench Their...
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Festo Okonyene: Servant of the Word, Faith and Service

Rev. Festo Okonyene was born in the early years of the twentieth century, and his life would come to embody, more fully than almost any other, the grace-wrought transformation central to the Reformed Church of East Africa’s (RCEA) founding story. He is remembered by the RCEA as one of its earliest evangelists and trainees, a man who stood at the very beginning of what would become one of the most vital Reformed communities on the African continent. He came to that calling without formal schooling, yet he would spend a lifetime championing the church’s education initiatives and literacy programmes, understanding instinctively that a reading congregation was a rooted congregation. Festo Okonyene and his wife in early 2015 Before his encounter with the Gospel, Okonyene worked as a labourer for white settler farmers in colonial Kenya, one among many young men drawn into the agricultural economy of the Uasin Gishu plateau and its surrounding highlands, where European farming enterprise ha...
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The Roots That Made Me

This is a short family portrait to accompany my longer account, "My Family Should Have Disappeared Several Times, But It Didn't" , which tells the full story of how my grandfather and his sister were taken in a raid and how our family survived the separation. There are stories that shape a family long before any of us are born. They are carried quietly through generations, held in memory, in land, in names and in the scars of survival. This is my attempt to honour three people who came before me: my grandfather Chebet Kiptabure, my grandaunt Kwadit and my grandmother Tekwan, whom we called Kokomen. Their stories live in me, and I write them down so they will live in those who come after. The World They Were Born Into In the early decades of the twentieth century, the Kerio Valley was a place where small-scale conflict and cattle raiding were woven into daily life. Families slept in hidden places called tabut , escaping into the escarpment at night to avoid Pokot raide...
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A Seed That Fell to the Ground: The Gospel According to Rose Barmasai

When Jesus said, “Unless a grain of wheat falls to the ground and dies, it remains alone; but if it dies, it produces many seeds,” He was speaking of His own sacrifice. Yet throughout history, God has raised men and women whose lives echo this Gospel truth. Rose Barmasai was one of them. Rose Barmasai in 1998, a year before her death. Twenty-seven years after her tragic death at Chembulet trading center, along the Iten-Eldoret road, her story still stirs the conscience of the church. She died returning from Chemalingot, where she had spent the day mediating between the Pokot and Turkana, two communities locked in cycles of revenge, cattle raids, and generational trauma. Her life ended in the very work she had given herself to: reconciling God’s children. Born in 1957 in Turesia, Keiyo South, Rose grew up in a region where ethnic tensions, political manipulation, and cattle‑raiding violence shaped daily life. She trained as a theologian at a time when few women in the Reformed Churc...
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Rose Barmasai: Peacemaker in Hostile Places, Pioneer for Women in the Church

In the late twentieth century, two kinds of ground were closed to women in the North Rift. One was the pulpit of the Reformed Church of East Africa (RCEA), still firmly rooted in patriarchal tradition. The other was the conflict zones of the Kerio Valley and the wider Rift Valley, where cattle raids, revenge killings and political manipulation had made dialogue seem like weakness. Rose Barmasai walked onto both. This is the story of how she did it, and why the church and the peace community still owe her a debt. Rose Barmasai (1957–1999), theologian, peacemaker and pioneer of women's ministry in the RCEA. A Path Few Women Walked Rose was born in 1957 in Turesia, Keiyo South. She entered theological training at a time when many believed women belonged in the pews, not the pulpit, and she became the first woman theologian in her denomination. Her calling was questioned, her ambitions dismissed, her voice often ignored. She persisted, convinced that God calls both sons and daughters t...
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School Days in Sergoit: Bare Feet, the Disc and the Big Tree

The schoolyard at Sergoit Primary School in the 1980s was always alive with the shuffle of bare feet and the chatter of children arriving from distant villages: Kapnyangi, Chembulet, Kaptuli, Kaplogoi, Chemanywes. Some had walked seven or even ten kilometres, faces flushed from the morning cold, clothes thin against the wind. School in those years was a paradox. It was harsh, poor and often humiliating. It was also where we laughed hardest and first learned to dream. A Hard Beginning My first lesson in school was shame. My shorts, bought hastily by my father, hung loose around my waist. One morning at assembly a boy yanked them down, and laughter erupted like thunder. My face burned. I stayed home for days, convinced that school was a place of humiliation. When I returned, discipline was waiting. Our headteacher, Mr. William Kitur, nicknamed Mistirii , bent boys double and caned them until the tears ran dry. His deputy, Isaiah Omutanyi, carried a cane he had christened Namwendwa , ...
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