‘Restoring dignity and promoting peace’ … Salah Abdi Sheikh (third from right) and companions at the beginning of the Walk of Hope. Photograph: Abdimalik Hajir
Wednesday, July 08, 2015
We set off on the morning of 13 June from the town of Garissa in eastern Kenya. At first, our group was hundreds-strong, and included officials from the county and national government, all of us walking together to restore dignity and promote peace in a long-neglected region.
After 11km, only seven walkers remained as people offered their excuses, wished us luck and headed back into a town made infamous when Somali insurgents from al-Shabaab killed 147 people, mainly young students, on a university campus in April.
As I write, those of us who continued the Walk of Hope have covered 500km, heading deep into Kenya’s North Eastern province. Our destination: border point one in Mandera, a town near Kenya’s borders with Ethiopia and Somalia. In all, we planned to cover a gruelling 728km.
In one place, an old man insisted on offering us tea. The borehole there broke in 1978. No one had bothered to repair it
In north-eastern Kenya, the land is flat with sparse vegetation cover. Temperatures soar to 40C during the day and the nights can be cold and windy. Most people living here are ethnic Somalis, as am I.
The idea was to walk every day to the nearest settlement, by whatever means, covering between 15km and 43km. We never planned to sleep in the bush – we feared the snakes and scorpions.
As it turned out, we saw many scorpions on the road and just three snakes. It can be a little disappointing if you build an expectation.
Our choice of food was informed by ease of preparation rather than anything else. None of us felt like competent cooks. We packed a pickup full of tinned tuna, juice, energy drinks, dates and mineral water.The settlements we walked through typically featured a mixture of permanent and semi-permanent houses, a small school, a clinic and a borehole, if the residents were lucky.
The unlucky ones had just a school and maybe a borehole producing saline water. Clinics are a luxury in these places. The economy revolves round livestock: the settlements boom in the rainy season and bust during the dry season.
In one village, an old man insisted on offering us tea. The borehole there had broken in 1978, and nobody had bothered to repair it. I was born that year.
One thing stood out in all the villages we passed through: each had a beautiful little mosque with solar lighting and a booming speaker for the call to prayer. Some settlements had two mosques, competing for attention.
I was exhausted all the time and felt like I was walking on thorns, always inches away from giving up
On average, we walked 30km every day with the aim of finishing the walk in 25 days. That’s a brisk pace, which results in blisters and muscle pains. At 38, I was the oldest walker, an unfit lecturer: I was not a star performer. I was exhausted all the time and felt like I was walking on thorns, always inches away from giving up. My blisters became well known when I posted a picture on Facebook of my swollen feet, and the BBC’s Somali service picked up the story. My blisters are overshadowing my real self, I mused. Red Cross paramedics followed us, ready to deal with our injuries, and sometimes offering massages.
In one settlement, people were bemused by these strange walkers. They had not yet heard about the Walk of Hope. So they grilled us to make sure we were not thugs or hoodlums. Then, they gave us mats and a temporary shed to sleep in. We were welcomed in many settlements with the traditional honour of slaughtering a goat.
The most challenging part of the walk was fasting. Fasting is obligatory for us Muslims during Ramadan, and since the walk is not a necessity we could not excuse ourselves on account of being travellers. We walked at night and rested during the day. This had its challenges: at night, we could not see what was in the bush.
We were not scared of wild animals – the lion is the only dangerous animal in these parts and all we saw were footprints. One night, we happened on a feisty hyena feeding on the carcass of a goat, but we were too tired to be bothered.
Whenever we reached a settlement, we visited the school and the health centre to check on provision there. Non-Somali teachers have refused to work in north-eastern Kenya after several attacks by al-Shabaab on non-Muslim citizens. Health workers were also scared away. We wanted to document the effects of these shortages.
We discovered that schools were terribly understaffed even before the attacks began.
The biggest problem in the many health centres we visited was the complete absence of doctors
In many places, the local community operates the government schools as if they were private institutions: they employ untrained teachers and students pay fees. No standards are enforceable, and the central examination system is a farce since students are not subjected to the same curriculum, teaching materials or teaching hours.
The biggest problem in the many health centres we visited was the complete absence of doctors. The best one can hope for is a nursing officer or a medical officer with a diploma from a medical training college. In Kenya, it seems, doctors are the preserve of city dwellers.
Security was always on our minds. Northern Kenya is often depicted as a wild land where bandits roam. Walking on the road made us vulnerable. We took all threats seriously – we could not be complacent.
One night we were camping in the bush when one of the guys saw a post on Facebook claiming that al-Shabaab wanted to attack the Walk of Hope. We were in the bush, 30km from the nearest settlement. We convinced ourselves that the fellow posting the threat was just seeking “likes” and decided to ignore it. I hardly slept that night, but not because I was scared – a very cold wind was blowing and I thought we would freeze to death, before anyone had a chance to attack us.
Similar posts appeared on the same page the next day. One night while trekking on a dirt road, a vehicle stopped a short distance away and three people jumped out and ran into the bush. We thought, “This is it!” but the attack never came. Nonetheless, we ran for our lives, straining our muscles and blistering our feet. It was the worst night of the walk.
And suddenly, that was the end of my journey: the rest could continue but my feet could no longer take the strain. Egg-sized blisters appeared between my toes, and my feet swelled up. I needed to see a doctor.
The Walk of Hope continues.