A Conversation with a Maragoli Hills Indigenous Person Leading The Fight For Conservation
A Conversation with a Maragoli Hills Indigenous Person Leading The Fight For Conservation
In Maragoli Hills Forest, The Issue of Land Rights is Negligible, But The Specter of a Forceful Eviction Looms Large, For Some.
When Mr. Caleb Adembesa Malongo saw media images of displaced and distressed members of the Ogiek community, who have lived in and around the Mau Forest for centuries, he got worried that the government would one day forcefully evict his community from the Maragoli Hills Forest.
“What came to my mind was that now we are next. The government will evict us. Where will we go?” said Mr. Malongo.
He was born in 1958 in Idabwongo, one of the three villages within Maragoli Forest. The other villages are Muguva and Lodonyi.
The three villages occupy about 66 hectares of the forest and have been designated by the government as trust land. That means that the land is not owned by the community but by the Kenya Forest Service.
Although I haven’t seen official data on the number of indigenous people in the forest, a 2019 count, according to Mr. Malongo, revealed 600 homesteads within the trust land.
“We have lived here for centuries. In the past, our population was small, but it has grown over the years. That’s why you’re seeing encroachment of the hills,” said Mr. Malongo.
By the hills being encroached, Mr. Malongo meant that the trustees to his ancestral land were bound to inhabit areas beyond the trust land in the future.
For now, the government and its partners are busy trying to rehabilitate the water tower. But there is little to no mention of the plight of indigenous people who call the forest home. And that’s what worries Mr. Malongo.
I met him in Egago village before we embarked on a short journey. We passed by a few homesteads, then a church. Soon, l was hit by an invigorating cool breeze. We had landed in the forest.
“After the destruction, gullies started to form. Now that we are rehabilitating the forest, there’s an improvement,” Mr. Malongo told me as we stopped to sit on a continuous line of stones closely packed together to form a gabion.
Around us were thin, short guava trees scattered among newly planted indigenous trees on the rugged landscape. A short distance away, people were tending to their farms in a few homesteads dotted within the rolling hills of the forest. It was a fascinating view.
“This area was rehabilitated by members of the Egago conservation group,” said Mr. Malongo.
Since 2017, he’s been the chairman of the Maragoli Hills Community Forest Association (CFA), an organization leading conservation efforts in the expansive hills. It comprises 14 groups drawn from the indigenous people and the community from around the forest. Their work is primarily to provide seedlings, plant the trees, and then carry out weeding and gabion-making when called upon.
The Forest’s Prime Days
Mr. Malongo recalled growing up in a lush landscape. At the time, 32 streams meandered under an endless canopy of indigenous trees, shrubs, and wild fruits.
Hunger was far from his community as the land yielded enough food. So fertile was the forest’s soil that fertilizers were never used. Rain would come from all directions, he said.
Even though people coexisted harmoniously with nature, one thing disturbed the peace and deeply worries the community today, given that its return is eminent - human-wildlife conflict.
It was not unusual for forest dwellers to run into trouble with their wild counterparts. First off, monkeys would destroy their crops. But in 1990, one incident did irreversible damage to the collective psychology of Mr. Malongo’s community. He remembered, in graphic detail, how hyenas killed someone before eating the body in Gilwatsi, one of the villages adjacent to the forest.
“We used to walk about the forest with wooden clubs for safety, and we would be in our houses by 6 pm because dangerous animals would be roaming outside... Leopards would eat our calves and goats. We used to sleep with our dogs in the house,” Mr. Malongo said and burst into laughter.
I was laughing too until he interjected as if to correct himself: “For someone enlightened, someone who went to school like me, l cannot hate a tree. For anyone to hate a tree, they must be cursed.”
He had a reason to be proud of his education. It’s not something he acquired easily. For starters, it was not free, but his family was poor. There was no school within the forest, so he would walk several kilometers to Inavi Primarily School in a neighboring village, where he graduated in 1974.
Having done well, he was to join a boarding school for his secondary education where he would pay sh450 per year, but again, he couldn't because of poverty. He joined his dad in Nairobi, where he attended a day school instead. The fee was sh.50 per year.
Mr. Malongo said the rates of innumeracy and illiteracy increased in his community due to the poor infrastructure. He contended that he would not have acquired any education if his dad had not worked in Nairobi.
The Forest Receives Recognition and a Revamp To Its Demise
As Mr. Malongo transitioned in his studies, the forest underwent its share of transformative developments. By the time he graduated from high school in 1978, the government established a primary school in his village - Kisingilo.
Before that, the colonial regime recognized the forest as government property in 1957. This followed a gazette notice issued by Governor Sir Evelyn Baring on behalf of Queen Elizabeth II.
Then, in 1962, the colonial government launched a forceful forest rehabilitation. New species of trees, particularly pines, were added to the hills despite opposition from the indigenous people and the community.
“The people opposed the project because they assumed that having more trees would result in a surge in human-wildlife conflict-related cases,” said Mr. Malongo.
By 1992, having attained self-rule, Kenya had turned 29, one year shy of the age of the new trees. The forest had changed, and so had the region. Vihiga was now a district headed by a District Commissioner (DC). It was a powerful position.
“The trees had matured, and it was reasonable to harvest them, but the approach of the DC was wrong. He came in with police officers and power saws, and they began cutting down the trees. Then, they carried timber away, leaving the community with nothing. Remember, the community had been forcefully mobilized to plant the trees,” lamented Mr. Malongo.
The DC at the time was Mr. Dave Mwangi. It is important to note that while l didn't interview Mr. Mwangi for this story, he has denied allegations of wrongdoing concerning the Maragoli Hills Forest in the past.
The DC’s move, Mr. Malongo said, opened the floodgates to wanton logging and mindless forest vandalism. So angry were the indigenous people and their neighbors that they, too, got into the woods to grab for themselves a share of their sweat - the trees.
Soon, the woodland was being attacked from all sides. The destruction was widespread. Mr. Malongo remembered meeting people in the forest, from as far as Nyanza and Bunyore, felling trees, preparing timber, or burning charcoal.
In three years, the forest and the unsavory wild animals were gone. But most of the intruders stayed put, grabbing plots for cultivation. Most of them planted maize, sorghum, and millet. And they reaped big, given that the soil had been fertile and untouched.
Unfortunately, the joy from large harvests was short-lived. By 1998, the soil had lost much of its nutrients to erosion thanks to the unhindered flow of rainwater through gullies. Mr. Malongo joked that the nutrients benefited the Egyptians because they were washed into Lake Victoria before winding up in the River Nile.
His homeland changed dramatically. It became hotter, and the air was not as fresh as before. Rain became scarce, and most rivers gradually dried up before disappearing. The land was craggy and cracky.
A Ray of Hope For The Forest and Ingenious People
For 12 years, Mr. Malongo and his community were confronted with the harsh reality of a disturbed biodiversity. They resorted to synthetic fertilizers, but to their disappointment, they didn’t compensate for the lost nutrients.
At first, a team from the Kenya Forestry Research Institute, KEFRI, toured the hills and collected some soil for testing. They wanted to know the right tree species for the land. Later, they planted some trees on a demonstration plot covering 6 hectares.
Then, the Vihiga County government, under Governor Wilber Ottichilo’s leadership, joined in, mobilizing locals to plant trees covering 30 acres. The national government was not left behind either, as the Ministry of Energy led planting trees on another 150 hectares of forest land.
Governor Ottichilo’s administration also established an office within the gazetted land. The office houses the Community Forest Association leadership and staff from the Kenya Forest Service and the county government.
As l sat down with Mr. Malongo early in February 2024, almost half of the 461-hectare degraded forest had been reforested, thanks to the county government and its partners.
But as the forest leaves the legacy of destruction behind, Mr. Malongo said that the government would soon be confronted by new challenges - encroachment and, eventually, conflict between the government and his community over the issue.
“There’s a danger that people will invade into forest land. The best thing is to relocate them. While some could be reluctant to relocate, they can still welcome the move after negotiations with the government,” said Mr. Malongo.
He lamented that although the government has in the past given assurances that the trust land belongs to his community, the indigenous people cannot use the property to acquire bank loans or sell it if they want to move elsewhere.
“The people living here have national identity cards, indicating that they are Kenyans. They fully participate in national elections, so their concerns should be looked into,” said Mr. Malongo.
He implored the government to deal with the issue amicably.
“I see a very big difference between the Mau Forest and Maragoli Hills. In Mau, some people grabbed land and fraudulently acquired title deeds. But here, this is our ancestral land... The government should come up with a very good solution to ensure that people are not harassed,” said Mr. Malongo.
I reached out to Dr. Richard Boiyo, the Vihiga County government Chief Officer, Environment, regarding Mr. Malongo's concerns.
He said that while the indigenous people's worries are justified, they will be relocated humanely because the forest will be rendered "inhabitable" to them once it's fully recovered.
"The government is very understanding. They look at the pros and cons before relocating somebody. I do not think the government wants to hurt (the indigenous people)," said Dr. Boiyo.
He urged the indigenous community to continue supporting restoration efforts in the forest, saying that a decision about their fate would be made when "the right time" came.
As Mr. Malongo and l prepared to leave the forest, one of the rivers in the hills continued to splash imposingly, unprovoked and unhindered by his concerns. It was a sign that the forest was clawing back to glory.
“The water table will come up. The soil will regain its fertility,” Mr. Malongo said happily, noting that over 90 percent of the trees planted were indigenous and required less water.
“Do you fear being evicted forcefully?” I asked him. And the hope in his eyes quickly faded.
“Yes!” He answered emphatically.