Kenya: Uneasy Peace in Volatile Kipkelion

6 August 2011
analysis

The story goes that the late Josiah Mwangi (JM) Kariuki and Simeon Nyachae, helped hundreds of Kikuyu and Kisii to buy land and settle in the remote and fertile Mtaragon area of Kamasian division in Kipkelion back in 1968.

And only one year later, the first ever tribal clashes pitting the 'indigenous' Kipsigis community and the the newcomers flared up and had the government not acted fast, Mtaragon would have become the new killing fields after the Aberdares. "A Kipsigis farmer had sold his cows at the Kenya Meat Commission in Athi River but when he got to Kasheen (a town between Kipkelion and Mtaragon), he was robbed; the first robbery to be witnessed in the area. This sparked off the clashes between our people and the newcomers," recalls councillor Rono, who was in class three that year.

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