JOURNEY OF A PEACE WORKER

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...

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...

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...