Garissa town in North Eastern region is 366 Kilometres from Nairobi, is notorious for always being in the news for the wrong reasons. It is located 180 Kilometres North-East from Liboi on the porous Kenya-Somalia border that is synonymous with Al-Shabaab, an armed terrorist group based in Somalia, that is seeking to impose strict version of Islamic law in the Horn of African country and beyond.
Somalia has not had peace for over three decades since President Mohammed Siad Barre was overthrown in 1991 and driven out to seek temporary refuge in Kenya before relocating to Nigeria, in West Africa, where he lived and later died and was buried in 1995.
The militants have since taken over and carried out numerous deadly attacks in Somalia and neighbouring countries, including Kenya.
Rise of Al Shabaab
But despite the bad image, I have been privileged to visit the town that borders the Tana River, twice times, in 2016 and 2017. And the drive there was not for the feint hearted from Nairobi through Thika in Kiambu County, Matuu in Machakos County, Mwingi in Kitui County.
By then, I knew very little about the town with exception of titbits from my in law who was a missionary among the unreached tribes there, a priest who runs a school in the town, and a cousin who worked at Garissa hospital as an intern doctor.
It was during my maiden trip working for African Woman and Child Feature Service (AWC), that I saw the largest herd of camels in my life. The scene of hundreds of camels either crossing the road or walking along the Mwingi-Garissa highway at night was like something from the cartoon network and Hollywood science fiction movie.
According to our driver, George Ngesa, who had travelled on the route before, the evening and night drive was the best because of the heat and scorching hot tarmacked roads. Our mission as staff of AWC, a media and gender Non-Governmental Organisation (NGO), was to hold a workshop and training for local journalists and also for members of the civil society on gender based violence and on peace and security issues. By then, the impression was that Garissa was unsafe and that the Al Shabaab terrorist group and its sympathisers were on the prowl.
Biggest pack of Camels
So as I joined my three female colleagues to set foot on the semi-arid region, my heart missed a bit as we left Mwingi and ventured into the very lonely road and bushy terrain for miles on end.
It was midway to our destination that our driver stepped on the emergency breaks forcing some of us who had taken a snooze to wake to avoid ramming into a herd of camels that had emerged from one side of the road and we're determined to cross to the other side. He waited for over 15 minutes until the herder had ensured they were safe and out of harm's way.
We proceeded and arrived at the Garissa bridge road block on River Tana, which is the main and only entrance to the dusty town, which used to be the headquarters of North Eastern Province under the old Constitution.
While at the police checkpoint, the fully armed policemen ordered us to disembark, and then they searched vehicle, asked us who we were and what our mission there was before leaving us to proceed.
Once we were cleared, we drove to Nomads Palace Hotel, by then the biggest and best in the town and region. We checked in and later met the owner of the hotel, Aden Duale, who was also the Garissa Member of Parliament. The MP was glad to meet me having met at the Kenya National Assembly when I used to cover him as a Senior Parliamentary Reporter for Nation Media Group (NMG).
We later had dinner with our local contact person, Abjata Khalif, who doubled as our AWC Media Diversity Centre officer. We then called it a night in our well-furnished rooms that could compete with any two-star hotels in Nairobi. The next day after breakfast, we held out first media training for local journalists, most of who were men, and spoke broken English.
Culture of silence
Some of the main issues that came up were: culture of silence by leaders, public and police over GBV, with Female Genital Mutilation being the worst of them. Others were that GBV cases of defilement, incest, rape, sodomy and sexual assault were under reported because of being considered a taboo in the Somali and Muslim culture; the few cases that were reported to the Chief and the police were later frustrated before they got to court by elders, family members and local elders misusing the alternative disputes resolutions mechanism clause in the 2010 Constitution.
According to the journalists, the elders had set up a parallel court system, called maslah; opposite the Magistrate's Court where they also dispensed what they claimed was justice, contrary to the Constitution which bars them from dealing with criminal cases.
In the afternoon we had time to visit the AWC Media Diversity Centre, supported by Ford Foundation, to boost the capacity and working environment for journalists in Garissa town and the County as a whole. Next to that office was one for Kenya Agricultural Research Institute ((KARI) among others that were opposite the Garissa police station.
The following day, we held media training for members of the civil society, who were mixed, men and women, as we had insisted in our letters of invitation. They also had very interesting issues and concerns. The major ones was feeling frustrated by the strict security restrictions to talk and raise issues on security measures and on human, gender and reproductive rights issues.
We held a separate training for civil society officials on how the media works and how they can use the media for strategic communication to promote their respective organisations and professions.
On the second day, we woke up to a security scare when we were informed that that two rival clans youths had a vicious conflict the previous night over politics and governance issues.
Security scare
The crack unit General Service Unit, riot police and APs had to intervene led by Garissa MP and elders to restore law and order. Thank God only a few people were injured and no one was killed in the clashes.
According to our host, such incidents were not rare. "Here we're always on our toes; we don't know what will happen next!" NEP had previously been classified as a closed district area in the 1960s and ‘70s because of frequent attacks by bandits and attempt by the indigenous Somali community to secede to neighbouring Somalia to join their kinsmen.
During a break after the second day's training, Abjata took us on a tour of down town, which resembled Eastleigh in Nairobi, and the local market and one of the biggest used and new clothes stalls I had ever seen outside Nairobi.
From there, we went on a joy ride to the outskirts of the town on the Garissa-Wajir highway and turned back before the police road block just after the Garissa County Referral Hospital.
According to Abjata, the town as the safest in the country by then because of the heavy security personnel in the town, they included a regional police headquarters, military barracks and the Kenya Anti-Terrorist Police Unit in addition to regular and Administration police officers. We returned to our hotel and departed to Nairobi the following day after early breakfast at 7am.
Fond memories
The next trip to Garissa officially was to train journalists and civil society officials. But was not very eventful; the difference was that a local tycoon had built a five-star hotel, Almond Resort, on the banks of River Tana overlooking Garissa Bridge that was patronized by United Nations, United States, and international NGOs officials heading to or from Somalia.
Other fond memories was of meeting the one of the women we had trained on media’s role in promoting female leaders; she was later elected as the first Women representative (MP) for Garissa County in line with the 2010 Constitution on 2/3 gender rule.
She was in a delegation of some of her relatives in Cape Town, South Africa, in 2016, at a wedding of her nephew, Mohammed, to a Ghanaian-Zimbabwean, whom he had met while studying at Harvard University in the United States if America.
It was fun and humbling to meet fellow Kenyans abroad in a celebratory mood, especially members if the usually closed-in Somali community because of their Muslim religion and conservative traditions and culture on gender, faith and human and women rights issues.
Why Garissa has bad image?
Fast forward to April 2015, Garissa town was in the local and international news for two-days running after Al-Shabaab raided Garissa University College at dawn while some Christian students we're praying and sprayed them and their colleagues with bullets killing over 148 of them on the spot and leaving 79 others with injuries.
That attack by four armed terrorists, was one of the most deadly in the country. Three of them were later convicted and sentenced to death by a Nairobi court, in July, 2019. Al Shabaab spokesman took responsibility and claimed they acted in protested against the 2011 decision by the Kenyan government to send Kenya Defence Forces (KDF) into Southern Somalia under Operation Linda Inchi (Operation defend Our Country) to pursue insurgents after a serious of kidnappings of tourists along the Kenya-Somalia border. One month later, the Kenyan government greed to re-hat its forces under the African Union Mission in Somalia (UNISOM), and are still that Horn of Africa country.
Other attacks claimed by Al-Shabaab are: West Gate Mall in Nairobi, in September 2013, where masked militants seized the ultra-modern complex for 80 hours and killed 67 people in the midday attack which left 167 injured and traumatised; two of the attackers were later in 2020 sentenced to serve 18 and 33 years, respectively by a Nairobi court.
The following year, in November 2014, the armed group hijacked a fully loaded bus in neighbouring Mandera County and singled out 28 non-Muslims on board whom they sprayed with bullets to death.
And the worst was in January 2016, when Al Shabaab surrounded a KDF military base inside Somalia and killed over 100 soldiers. But to date, the Kenyan government has declined to disclose the official number.
In 2019, Al Shabaab struck at 2 Dusit Complex in Nairobi city and left 25 people dead; they included five terrorists. Some 27 people were injured. During the initial invasion, KDF had journalists embedded with soldiers and reported daily live from the frontline
But according to our sources on the ground, some of the live TV news clips were filmed in Garissa and not across the body as the government wanted Kenyans to believe. Next bad News was when River Tana flooded and killed scores of people and their cattle. It also swept many homes and marooned Nomad Hotel and Almond among others destroying property worth millions of shillings.
Fast forward to December, 2021, since our two official trips to Garissa, I have had second thoughts about returning, despite assurance of better security by my friend and colleague, Abjata.
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