Hello

Your subscription is almost coming to an end. Don’t miss out on the great content on Nation.Africa

Ready to continue your informative journey with us?

Hello

Your premium access has ended, but the best of Nation.Africa is still within reach. Renew now to unlock exclusive stories and in-depth features.

Reclaim your full access. Click below to renew.

Wind of change: How a women’s chama is leading peace efforts in Tiaty

Jeniffer Kibon, a member of the Loboin Women’s Group, during the interview at Tangulbei, Tiaty East, on May 15, 2025.

Photo credit: Florah Koech I Nation Media Group

What you need to know:

  • Once celebrators of cattle raiders, the women now lead efforts promoting education, ending violence, and empowering their communities through entrepreneurship.
  • They have abandoned praise for raiders, choosing peacebuilding, education, and business to combat banditry and transform their community.

Krop Lonyangapat* was among five men sent from Akoret village in Tiaty West to Lomelo in neighbouring Suguta with a special mission to spy on grazing fields.

The assignment, which would take close to a month, is the most difficult and involved monitoring the movement of animals and herders in detail. They could map out the region, including escape routes and dead grounds, which could pave the way for actual raids usually planned for several days to ensure everything goes uninterrupted.

Hundreds of men sanctioned by the community and blessed by ordained elders embarked on a journey to the village, having the requisite information on their targets and where they would flee to after the raid. The raid was successful and they came back home with hundreds of livestock, which they shared equally, after giving some to elders for blessings. As usual, the village was brought to a standstill by dance and song as women praised the ‘heroes’ for being successful and coming back unscathed. They would douse them with water as a sign of bravery.

Metres away was Akoma Losile and three of his friends who had earlier declined to join their peers, seated under a tree as they conversed, unbothered by the ululations. Their peace was, however, interrupted by songs, with the women ridiculing them for being cowards and remaining behind when ‘real men’ went to bring more livestock to the community. To avoid the embarrassment, the four left in a huff, vowing to prove the women wrong through another raid to salvage their status in society.

Akoma’s tribulation is what has pushed many men to engage in banditry to prove their bravery and elevate their status as morans. Jennifer Kibon, from Mukutani on the border of Baringo South and Tiaty East, claims that attacks had escalated in the area for decades and were fuelled by women who praise men for successful raids.

She said women ridicule their sons who opt to go to school rather than join the raids. “Women in far-flung villages are the catalysts. When their sons and husbands go for raids and come back with more cattle, they compose songs to praise them, while those who haven’t come back with anything are ridiculed and seen as lesser men. They don’t encourage their sons to go to school but instead urge them to engage in community raids.”

The move has led to young boys being recruited for banditry instead of schools, while young girls are married off, mostly to old men who exchange them for livestock as bride price, she says.

In a 2022 study by Dr Saul Marigat, titled Managing the Menace of Cattle Rustling and Banditry in the North Rift Kenya: The Role of Pokot Women, after successful cattle rustling expeditions, the Pokot women compose songs and sing in praise of their heroes who bring home stolen cattle. When Pokot men are praised, they feel honoured and steal more, the study says. 

“The singing of praise songs and the dancing dedicated to successful rustlers challenge the other young men to partake in the vice to earn themselves heroic status. The men who fail to bring any stolen cattle to the village, either because they were overwhelmed by the ‘enemy’ or did not go for any raid at all, are not treated with kindness by women. Instead, they compose songs of mockery to ridicule and castigate young men who are branded as cowards,” the study adds.

The young men labelled as cowards for being afraid to face the enemy and take cattle by force feel intimidated and alienated and find it difficult to get brides to marry. The efforts by the ‘cowards’ to redeem themselves would lead to an increase in the quest to steal livestock, leading to protracted raids and counter-raids, says another 2003 study by Watson C titled Pastoral Women as Peacemakers.

In 2015, heightened banditry and stock theft left dozens of people dead, property destroyed and thousands of residents displaced. To reverse the trend, which led to high school dropout rates and underdevelopment, Jennifer and 19 other women formed a group in 2016 to sensitise locals, mostly illiterate, to the importance of peacebuilding and taking children to school to end stock theft that fuels inter-communal feuds.

“Several people in our locality had been killed, courtesy of inter-communal feuds and families impoverished after their livestock – their main source of livelihood – were stolen. We realised that women were fanning the conflicts and we resorted to being agents of change. That instead of praising warriors who go to raid other communities, we sensitise them to the importance of peaceful co-existence and education,” she notes.

“Women had borne the brunt of banditry. Some had been widowed, their children killed or displaced. Some women ended up giving birth in the bush where they had taken refuge. We said that enough is enough and vowed to make a change in ending the vice once and for all.”

To push their agenda, Jennifer says they started leading by example, taking their children to school. Other villagers followed suit. The women registered their group with the social services and named it Loboin, a word for light and new beginning in Pokot. They also agreed each of their 20 members would contribute Sh500 monthly to start a business or for self-support, children’s education and domestic needs.

Through business, they sought to raise funds to support their families rather than solely relying on men. The women’s group started a honey business, processing and selling in Chemolingot, Marigat, Tangulbei, Kabarnet, and Laikipia Nature Conservancy in the neighbouring county. Jennifer says they saved more than Sh200,000.

“This helped us a lot because we no longer migrated from one place to the other, going during the dry seasons in search of water and pasture for our livestock. We focused on the business and our children learnt with minimal interruption. Each of us had taken our children to school to serve as an example to the community and prove that it could transform the area and end archaic practices of stock theft, banditry and female genital mutilation,” she said.

“Instead of singing for warriors who had come back with hundreds of livestock after a successful raid as was the norm in our community, we were now singing a different song…to educate other women on taking their children to school and starting businesses, instead of relying on men.”

Through the initiative, they walked from one village to the other to scout herders to join school. “We could borrow money through table banking, a group-based strategy that helped us save and borrow with low interest. Some women managed to improve their houses from mud-walled to semi-permanent structures. Some ventured into farming, an initiative that improved our lives completely and wooed other women to follow suit and emulate what we were doing.”

With the support of ActionAid, they took more than 300 children to school, including girls who had been married off after undergoing FGM and boys who had become herders. “We rescued hundreds of girls and took them to Tangulbei and Kaptuiya primary schools that served as our rescue centres. We also took a number of boys who had been turned into herders to school.”

All the 20 members of the women’s group have reformed. They go to church, have businesses of their own and have defied taboo against women owning livestock and now have their own, through table banking.

*Name changed to protect the identity of the rustler.