05/09/2022
Excerpt from " The Kipsigis Talai" book;
"STATEMENT
Statement by Daniel Sing’or Sawe born in Gwassi.
My name is Daniel Sing’or Sowe. I was born in the year 1952 in Utati village in Gwassi. My father was named Sowe araap Toing’eny of the Talai clan (animal Totem Lion of the Kapturgat sub--clan). My father’s other name was ‘araap Bungey’ which comes from the fact that he hid from the British after he exile of his father. My mother was named Tabutany neb’araap Toing’eny. My grandfather was Kipchomber araap Koilegen whom the British made chief over the Kipsigis in 1905 only to banish him in January 1914 because he refused to accept the subjugation of his people. He was sent to Fort Hall (presently Murang’a) where he died in 1916. My grandmother was named Tapsirat who was one of Kipchomber’s many wives (I heard he had 9 wives). She was his sixth wife.
My father had three wives, the others being Tapkurgoi and Tabaes. My mother Tabutany was the youngest.
Exile in Gwassi
My father was taken to Gwassi in 1936. Soon after Kipchomber araap Koilegen had been taken to Fort Hall (Muranga) in January 1914, my father ran away to Tinderet to hide in the forests. He was however arrested there in 1934 by four policemen soon after the passing of the ‘Laibon Removal Ordinance’. He was sent to Kiptere where he was placed under house arrest. They also had his cattle and driven to Kiptere. After two years awaiting his fate, he was finally sent to Gwassi to begin his exile. He was part of the second wave of exiles that were sent to Gwassi. He undertook the 100-mile journey down to Lambwe which took slightly less than three weeks on foot. He would never return to Kipsigis land alive.
Life in Gwassi
Being one of the newcomers, he was taken to Lambwe forest. He constructed a hut for himself and for each of his three wives. Life in Lambwe was very difficult. The place was searing hot from the nearby lake and the humidity was unbearable. This was something the highlanders were not used to. There was no water and where it was available, it was certain to be contaminated. Water borne diseases were common and children were especially vulnerable. There were plenty of wild animals – buffalo, lions, leopards and worst of them the snakes which ranged from spitting cobras, mambas, puff udders and pythons. They would enter the house when it was hot and would hide behind our water pot. Many children and adults were killed by snakebites.
Deaths in the Lambwe forest
It was at Lambwe that the first tragedy occurred. One of my father’s wives Tabaes died there in the forest killed by the Sleeping Sickness. She had been bitten by the tse tse fly and got a fever and got increasingly ill she eventually died. Nothing could be done to help her as there were no hospitals anywhere close by. The nearest was at Kisii which was 100 km away. She was buried there by the forest. Another 5 children would die from various causes in quick succession while living there. To save his family he decided to move to a different place – to Utati village. Even in the new land where he moved to, three more children died there almost immediately. My father was totally devastated at so many deaths in his family he wondered what wrong he had done that so many innocent members of his family died. His only mistake was having been born to the Talai clan which had been marked as being dangerous. Although he moved to Utati village to escape the vagaries of life at Lambwe forest, things would however get worse.
Life at Utati village
Utati which was about 15 miles away from Lambwe. It was better than Lambwe in the sense that there wasn’t much tsetse fly. However, snakes were plentiful here which added to the perils. There was also malaria which the plentiful mosquitoes found there. Soon, my step-mother Tapkurgoi died after being taken ill from Malaria. My father only watched as his second wife died and he could do nothing. There were no hospitals nearby and they had been removed from the traditional medicines that they had used to treat the illness back in Kericho.
The deaths of the children
He had barely buried his wife there when another four children died in quick succession. One of the children was bitten by a tick with lodged inside the ear. The ear swelled so badly and by the time it was discovered, the child had grown weak from the tick fever. Attempts to remove the tick were futile and she died after three days.
He could not even marry more wives to replace the ones gone since nobody in Kipsigis country wanted their daughters to go and die in a foreign land. Besides, our herds of livestock had near dwindled drastically because of the trypanasomiasis disease. There would be nothing to pay dowry.
Even as we lived in Gwassi, hunger was another important issue that faced us. There was barely enough food to go around. The dwindling herds of livestock meant that we did not have enough milk to go around the many children at our homestead. We lived on very little and the children were always skinny from malnutrition.
Death of my father
In total I lost 17 siblings to the vagaries of life at Gwassi. My father buried 19 members of his own family there. He was so distressed at so many deaths that he began to exhibit delusionary behaviour. He tried to escape twice but was arrested and returned. All attempts to get a pass even for genuine cases (such as illness) were turned down. Escape from Gwassi was a near impossible feat since you needed to move only in the dead of night and for that you had dangerous wild animals, snakes and other reptiles to deal with. Worst of all were humans. Each person (including some fellow Kalenjins), had been detailed to report any escapees. After twice failing to escape, he was so frustrated and loudly kept wondering what wrong his dead children and wives had done. Towards the end of 1953 he died in what we concluded to be the stress of his circumstances. He was buried at Utati.
Death of my mother
My mother was the last remaining adult in our family. She was left with the single-handed responsibility of raising all the nine surviving children. She had four of her own, three from her senior co-wife and two from her eldest co-wife. She however caught malaria and died in 1955 at Utati leaving us orphaned and destitute. I was not even three years old when my mother died and thereafter life was extremely difficult. In a family of 30 members, 21 died at both Lambwe and Utati not counting those babies that were still born at various stages.
Leaving Gwassi
After the death of my mother, my older siblings who were still children anyway, took care of us. Information left Gwassi so slowly and it took a while before my maternal relatives heard what had happened to us. It would take another four years after my mother had died that my maternal grandmother heard of the death of our mother. She then came for us in 1959. She took three of us and my older brother remained. I was 7 years old. We came to Sondu where we lived for two years before moving to Tinderet in 1964. We moved to my maternal uncle’s place in Cheptonon village in Tinderet where we have lived to this day. My family was scattered all over.
No Education
Because of my father’s death, I could not get any (Western) education since we could not raise the fees. Without employable skills I found no work and only tilled my uncle’s land to survive. I was circumcised in the year 1967 in Tinderet. I got married in 1977. My wife is named Esther Chepketer neb’araap Sawe. We have 8 children.
