From: Bob Awuor

Yawa, ere jo-Science olos wachni?

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“Gulley of death” forces villagers to bury kin twice
Published on April 23, 2008, 12:00 am

By Harold Ayodo

Gilbert Okal, 81, gestured angrily at a gaping gulley near his home. Massive soil erosion had disturbed the grave of his son and dumped his remains in a gulley. He knew the skeleton had to be reburied elsewhere.

His family had reburied the remains of other relatives in the past decade.

The five gigantic gulleys “swallowing” farms in lower Nyakach had trodden the land of the dead.

“We get nightmares when we see skeletons of relatives due to soil erosion. Those are people we buried decades ago,” says Okal.

He says residents of North East Nyakach, Nyando, have had to confront archaeologists digging up skeletons.

Villagers on the Kanyamlori-Kapsorok road where gabions have been erected to stop soil erosion in the “gullley of death”.
“Scientists frequent the gulleys to take our relatives’ skeletons. This is against our customs – – you cannot take away a body that has been laid to rest,” he says.

Okal says archaeologists from a public university wanted the skull of his son, which lay open in the famous Katuk Odeyo gulley two years ago.
“I was forced to organise another funeral to rebury his skull, which remained in the gulley after other bones were swept away,” says Okal, one of the oldest residents of Lower Nyakach.

The family hired gravediggers who dug into the deep gulley and performed a simple funeral. It was similar to rituals for others whose bones had suffered the same fate.

You cannot disturb the body of a relative laid to rest, not in Luoland, says Okal. It is a taboo that invites the wrath of the whole tribe.
“Our culture, like others, does not allow giving away bodies for studies unless the person had accepted it when alive,” says Okalo.

Other residents have organised second funerals as the gulley, which scientists have described as an environmental catastrophe, gobbles up everything in its path.

Okal says the Katuk Odeyo gulley, now 20m deep,15m wide and about 40km long, began as a small one. But like a monster, it grew deeper, wider and longer, eating farms and graves in its path.

Minors fall into it, and if they are lucky to survive, it takes hours to pull them out. It is rare to return to the land of the living with no broken bones.

Mr Clement Kotonya, a resident, says:

“The gulley has caused so much pain and suffering that you cannot dismiss those who see it as a curse. Scientists have failed to unravel its mystery.” Villagers in the flood-prone district say they suffer sleepless nights during the rainy season when the gullies, shaped like crater lakes, are on the prowl.

The gulley cuts through the fringes of Kapsorok market in Kericho, bringing down tonnes of silt into Lake Victoria further down.

Katuk Odeyo, in its trail of destruction, has four other siblings, Asao, Oriang’, Mbora and Nyasanja. Together, the gulleys have displaced many families and disrupted farming.

Mrs Millicent Manyalla, a resident of Lower Nyakach, says the speed at which the gulley has destroyed property and carried graves to Lake Victoria is amazing.

“We are disturbed by the destruction especially of the Kericho-Stopamba road that connected Nyanza and Rift Valley provinces,” says Manyalla.

Mrs Grace Outa, a resident of Katuk Odeyo village, points at the gulley that runs through Lower Nyakach. Picture by Jonah Onyango
The gulley that has attracted scientists from across the globe traverses Jimo East Location. Some of its tentacles stretch as far as the slopes of the Kericho Highlands.

There, the shadow of Katuk Odeyo looms into the Kapkirer and Kamng’etuny gullies in Kericho District. The two are fast developing into another environmental disaster.

In his youth, Manyalla says, Kericho was a few hours walk from Nyando. But then the Katuk Odeyo gulley cut off the murram road that connected the two districts.

Okalo says he has lost several cattle, after they fell into the gullies while grazing or when homesteads were gobbled up overnight.

Dr Raphael Kapiyo, an environment lecturer at Maseno University, says the “Gulley of Death” has earned its nickname.

“Villagers in Lower Nyakach have undergone untold suffering due to massive erosion. You can only imagine what they feel about the disturbed graves,” he says.

Okal fears he will have to move his homestead to another location as the gulley approaches his home. When we visited, it was 20m away.

“I was born, raised and lived in this area long before the massive erosion began in 1941 at Thur Gem several kilometres away,” he says. “Most of us do not have land now and have heard nothing from the Government decades after requesting to be allocated land elsewhere.”

At first, elders said the gulley was a curse, but scientists and environmentalists offer no convincing explanation of its invincibility.

The residents say they are entitled to compensation in line with Section 75 of the Constitution unless the Government reclaims the land the gullies have swallowed up.

Section 75 deals with fundamental rights, including the right to life, the right to security, the right to association, the right to own property.

The villagers argue that the Government, having failed to protect them from the rapacious Katuk Odeyo, should resettle them elsewhere and give them some form of compensation.

http://www.eastandard.net/specialreports/?id=1143985288&cid=259

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Date: Wed, 23 Apr 2008 14:28:37 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: KATUK ODEYO: “Gulley of death” forces Nyakach villagers to bury kin twice