How Turkana peacemaker Lochodo stops bloodshed in the North

Malcolm Lochodo believes it is the power of the mouth, not guns, that will prevail in the war on banditry in Northern Kenya.

From mediating local hostage situations to leading a major peace walk from Lodwar to Uasin Gishu last year to raise awareness on peace building, Lochodo says dialogue is the way to silence the guns.

His activities are financed by well wishers, including his wife. “It's my wife who gives me money to do the mediation work because she is employed,” he says.

The 50-year-old humanitarian worker is a volunteer peace ambassador for Turkana, literally putting his life on the line to bridge the deadly divide between bandits from the Turkana and West Pokot communities.

Lochodo narrated to the Star an incident late last year when heavily armed raiders from Turkana ambushed a West Pokot village along the boundary, injuring a boy who was rushed to a local hospital.

Armed raiders from West Pokot in turn laid an ambush, surrounding a Turkana village in retaliation.

But a West Pokot elder reached Lochodo on the phone, telling him about the imminent retaliatory attack. The raiding party demanded their boy returned to them dead or alive.

“The West Pokot men had believed that their child had been killed. So, they just wanted the body and then they would decide what to do next,” he said.

The peace activist requested the raiders to hold the attack and give him an hour to see if he could locate the boy.

“I requested for an hour but they told me that they only had 30 minutes for me before they would launch a bloodbath.”

Lochodo called the county commissioner to find out the whereabouts of the boy and find ways to resolve the crisis.

“The county commissioner stuck to his guns that the boy is in hospital and in police custody because he had been apprehended as a criminal amid the strife. But I asked the commissioner to show me the gun they recovered from him,” Lochodo recalled.

“You don’t have a gun you recovered from the boy, because there is none, and you cannot prove that he was involved in the fracas but you are detaining him. The Pokot raiders are about to launch an assault on a village with mothers and children in a matter of minutes,” Lochodo told the county administrator.

Meanwhile, the Pokot raiders had managed to abduct a boy from the Turkana side as a negotiation chip and to exert maximum pressure, setting warriors from the Turkana side on the rage to attack afresh.

“It was a tense moment for me. I felt I had the duty to prove the trust these people had in me and ensure that our community did not degenerate into a deadly conflict that afternoon,” he said.

Eventually, the county commissioner released the hospitalised Pokot boy to Lochodo who then drove to Lami Nyeusi area where an emissary of the waiting raiding party was.

They received the boy and released the Turkana boy they had taken hostage.

“I felt a huge relief, like air rushing out of a deflating balloon,” he said.

Lochodo is experienced. He is a seasoned humanitarian worker who has served in conflict zones in Darfur in Sudan, South Sudan and Somalia.

“I have worked with Oxfam and Save the Child, among others, as a humanitarian worker for over 15 years and this is where I honed my skills,” he said.

He not only acquired skills in peace building but also learned the brutality of war and the deplorable conditions armed conflict visits upon communities.

“No one ever wins a war or armed conflict. Starting it is always the easy part but no one gets control over it to stop it. So, we have to work hard to forestall it,” he said.

“What I saw in places like Somalia, South Sudan and Sudan among other places is not what I hope for here. I’m a Turkana and I would not want to see our communities live in tents, lose loved ones and properties to communal hostilities.”

Lochodo is a preacher and says he finds refreshment from his private time with God.

The satisfaction he gets from his dangerous work is when “the boys from the two communities come together to play soccer and intermingle, when the members of the communities find something common to do together peacefully.That is a priceless sight for me.”