Whoever said Kisumu City is the hotbed of Kenyan politics was not far from the truth.
I personally felt the political heat when the city was a no go zone for motorists trying to enter or leave the lakeside capital of Nyanza region at the height of the 2017 General election pitting President Uhuru Kenyatta of Jubilee Party and Former Prime Minister and Langata MP, Raila Odinga of Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).
The venue for our forum was appropriately called Pand Pieri, which literally means "hide your buttocks." In the heat of the riots that day, that's exactly what we did, literally. The same name, Pand Pieri, had been used for ages with the English translation, Bottoms Up, by a popular night club in downtown Kisumu.
Total anarchy
Opposition youth and goons patrolled the city streets with impunity, armed with crude weapons, used slings to launch "ground to air missiles' in form of stones and burnt tires on the roads.
I was with our driver and female colleague for the two-day training when our fears came to reality. The possibility of a showdown between police and opposition supporters was discussed at length during preparations for the trip, as we looked at the pros and cons of such a risky mission.
It reminded me of my seven years as the Kisumu Bureau Chief for Nation Media Group from 2003, when we faced rowdy opposition supporters in the course of doing our duty. One of the most memorable ones was when a colleague, John Oywa, was threatened with being turned into minced meat for writing articles against their favorite politicians and political party.
The other was when Harrison Oluoch was warned that his typewriter would be reduced to a mangled wreck if he continued to “write bad things about our party leader;” I was also a victim when I covered a rally in Bondo, in Siaya District, the home base of the then Langata Member of Parliament, Raila Odinga, when one of his colleagues, Ochieng Mbeo (Mathare), announced from the podium saying: “I know this Orlale, I am his maternal uncle, but if he continues to write bad things about our party leader, I will ask you to deal with him!”
The most serious threat was when teachers under the then powerful Kenya National Union of Teachers (KNUT) held a series of demonstration along the lakeside city’s main streets. However, Nation editors gave our stories a complete black out.
Most serious threat
I was shocked the following day when some of the teachers stormed the office shouting: “Orlale must go, Orlale must go! Orlale must die,” as their leader stormed into the office and demanded to talk to the Group Managing Editor, Wangethi Mwangi.
Things only cooled when I used my direct line to call my boss and handed the landline to the KNUT boss who poured venom, his anger and frustration at the Chief Editor speaking at the top of his voice for over 10 minutes before storming out as his members cheered him along.
During the 2017 Pand Pieri riots, we had some experience of mob psychology. Two months earlier, we had faced the mayhem when another team from our office on a gender based violence and peace training mission for community policing committee members in neighboring Muhoroni town, also in Kisumu County.
They run into problem with rowdy and irate opposition supporters who supported their leaders to oppose the repeat presidential elections after the Supreme Court had annulled the earlier one.
Our driver and female colleague had arrived at 9am. from Nairobi ready to start the training when out of the blues some rowdy youths stormed in 30 minutes later and stopped the meeting accusing our organization of being used to train officials of the Independent and Electoral Boundaries Commission and Jubilee Party sympathizers.
And before they could defend themselves, another group of youth stormed in and manhandled some of the participants forcing the meeting to come to an abrupt end as people scampered for safety. Our driver was among them; he rushed to the car and sped off as some of the irate youth threatened to set it ablaze.
Female colleague took refuge under a bed
On the other hand, the female colleague, who had the handbag carrying the participant’s allowances; did a 100-meter dash with one of the local organizers of the forum and fled to a nearby church building for refuge and hid under the bed until calm was restored by the police some 30 minutes later, which seemed like an eternity.
By then the shaken driver had resurfaced and linked up with our colleague and they decided to abandon the day’s programme and enter the car and sped off immediately to Nairobi.
Earlier during the planning meeting with our boss, Arthur Okwemba, the volatile environment was discussed and colleagues debated the pros and cons of taking the risk to send a team to the opposition stronghold.
As tough as things were, a decision was made to have a small team travel by road to Kisumu for the final training before the August, 2017 general elections. Once beaten twice shy. Our female colleague who had stared at death in the eye during the chaos in Muhoroni vowed never to visit that region on the eve of a general elections. Her fair skin and Mt. Kenya background betrayed her!
But for the driver and I, who hail from the region and speak Dholuo, we had no excuse. We had no option and were urged to ensure the crucial training programme that had been planned had to proceed no matter the odds.
So when the day came, we drove from Nairobi to our hotel in Milimani area for the focus group discussions across the road at the volatile Pand Pieri informal settlements at a church hall for one and a half day session the following day before departing before the announcement by the Supreme Court on the ruling on the appeal on the presidential elections.
But that was not to be, even the police officers whom we were training were on the edge waiting to be summoned, ready to abandon us and go and wear their riot gear and arm themselves with guns, bullets, teargas and see through shields among others.
24-hour ordeal
The day which had started seemingly well, I even took a dawn walk and 30 minutes swim in the hotel pool to release anxiety and stress, hoping against hope that the predictions of doom would not come true.
The irate opposition supporters had defied the security forces by blocking the roads and engaging them in running battles as teargas and live bullets were fired in the air all day to disperse them.
The usually calm and beautiful city was turned into a war zone as opposition supporters protested along the streets rejecting the declaration of Jubilee Party's presidential candidate as the winner of the repeat election boycotted by the National Super Alliance candidate, Raila Odinga, who was also the Orange Democratic Movement leader.
Tension and chaos had spread all over the city and Nyanza region, a which was opposition stronghold. It had five counties namely Kisumu, Siaya, Homa Bay, Migori, Kisii and Nyamira.
That was a complete contrast to a month earlier on September 30, 2017, after the Supreme Court headed Chief Justice David Maraga, who was President of the Supreme Court, annulled the election of President Uhuru Kenyatta on grounds of gross irregularities.
The jubilant opposition had gone on a frenzy and celebrated wildly and temporarily blocked roads in the region and many parts of the country.
The CJ then directed the IEBC chairman Wafula Chebukati and his team to organize another presidential election within 60 days. But President Kenyatta had accepted the verdict, but with a rider: “We will revisit the judiciary,” as Odinga and his supporters boycotted the fresh polls and instead ‘resisted’ the Jubilee administration.
A combined force of armed crack unit General Service Unit (GSU) paramilitary officers backed by riot police were helpless in restoring law and order as some demonstrators went on a looting spree down town and neighborhood supermarkets, markets, kiosks and shops.
Uhuru’s election nullified
We were blocked in the hotel from 8am until 4pm when security forces eventually repulsed the rioters and removed the burning tires from all entrances to the city. We felt like hostages, we could not dare drive in the office car out of the fortified hotel for fear of rioters setting it ablaze and roughing us up in addition to stealing our mobile phones, expensive camera, laptops and other devices.
The tension had started much earlier. We witnessed it earlier in Ahero, at the police stations, which we believed was the safest place to be. Ahero is a satellite town to Kisumu on the Nairobi-Kisumu highway. We faced a similar political and security crisis while conducting a focus group discussion with Community Policing Committee members led by Beuttah Omanga, and senior police officers who included women in charge of the gender desk. That dark day had coincided with the announcement by Supreme Court judges of results of the presidential appeal case by President Uhuru Kenyatta and his Jubilee Party.
The Ahero OCPD had warned us that his team was on standby whichever way the Supreme Court judges made the ruling, because it would provoke opposition supporters to go on the rampage.
Just as predicted, our meeting came to a sudden end and the cops abandoned the meeting and joined their colleagues on patrol along the Ahero-Kisumu highway. We had to stay put at the police station all afternoon to let the tension and riots to cool down before driving to Kisumu to spend the night in a hotel ready for dawn take off to Nairobi the following day.
Blockade and chaos
The next face-to-face encounter with rowdy and irate rioting opposition supporters was in Pand Pieri where we were forced to stay indoors in our hotel room all day. It was like a scene from live coverage of chaos on the streets of Beirut in Syria or neighboring Mogadishu in Somalia, combined.
Meanwhile, we lost appetite for food, drinks or even to watch videos on our phones and news on television. Even the interest to make phone calls had vanished as our adrenaline levels got higher. No news became good news as we crossed our fingers, prayed and waited for the riots to subside.
The few people we made frantic calls to our boss in Nairobi, the area police boss, and the Bureau Chiefs of Nation Media Group and his counterpart at The Standard Group, and our spouses and siblings in that order to assure them that we were safe, but traumatized. The longer we stayed under siege, the more we felt like hostages in the hotel and the louder the sounds of gun fire and teargas being lobbed at rioters got as the demonstrators responded by hurling insults and sang opposition songs for hours on end.
At 4pm when we were almost giving up hope of travelling back to Nairobi, a senior security officer gave us the greenlight to move saying that the roads had been reopened to traffic and we were free to take the risk to leave the battle-ridden city for Nairobi.
We did not think twice, we loaded our luggage in the car and drove off as fast as we could, flying over the rocks, burnt tires and other obstacles erected on the highway as we zoomed to our comfort zone in the capital city.
We had a safe trip and arrived at midnight without any other ugly incident and heaved a sigh of relief as we entered our respective houses and jumped into bed for a much deserved sleep. Phew, what a trip and ordeal it was.
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