By AMOS KAREITHI
The dreaded summon was irresistibly wrapped in a package the prophet could not ignore and the sugar coating lowered his guard and tricked his spiritual ladder.
The trip from Kericho to Lumbwa station (now known as Kipkelion) was spectacular, pleasurable and unforgettable, although the aged seer would have loved riding on his white horse to befit his status of a paramount chief and the ultimate military commander and spiritual leader.
However on this occasion, he had to do with the ox cart: after all one should not look a gift horse in the mouth plus, the cart was less bumpy than the white horse gifted to him by the colonialists.
Ordinarily, the old seer was past the age of being excited. He was a battle hardened military commander who had also steered his community past many storms, and natural calamities using his hereditary powers.
The message had been unambiguous and required Kipchomber arap Koilegen to travel to Kipkelion to meet the Nyanza PC. At the time, Kericho and the larger part of Rift Valley were under the dominion of the PC.
That the meeting was taking place so far away from the PC’s office in Kisumu reinforced its importance. To ensure that Koilegen travelled in utmost comfort, an American missionary, Hotchkiss donated his oxcart to the paramount chief to report at Kipkelion on January 7, 1914.
It was a pleasant surprise when Koilegen, on dismounting from the cart, saw his two brothers, Kimng’etich arap Boisio and Sin’goei arap Kibuigut who had also been invited separately. Koilegen was of a rare stock. He occupied a prominent place in the daily life of the Nandi and Kipsigis just as his ancestors had done since the Ilakipiak Wars that took place between the 1860s and 1880s. He owed his office to the ingenious scheming that had seen the Nandi prevail upon a woman who had been widowed following the intra Maasai skirmishes flee from her motherland in Uasin Gishu with her two sons, Kobogoi and Barsabatwo.
The three refugees who were later assimilated into the Talai clan were of royal descent and possessed hereditary powers of foretelling the future, a rare talent the Nandis were looking for to ward off their superior neighbours. The two sons, who were closely monitored by the Nandi, came of age and Kobigoi finally married and sired Kimnyolei arap Turgat, who was automatically elevated to esteemed position of Orkoiyot.
Wilson Kipng’eno Cheborgei, 70, explains how Koboigoi found favour among the Nandi and ultimately raised his own family. His son, Kimnyolei arap Turgat assumed mystic powers and was revered. Arap Turgat was elevated into position of Orkoiyot, the equivalent of a Maasai Oloibon or prophet, and doubled as a military tactician, a prophet, medicine man as well as a political figurehead.
Cheborgei, whose grandfather served as a minister in the Orkoiyot’s Cabinet, explains that the institution was so powerful that ordinary people had to approach him through intermediaries. "The Orkoiyot was the supreme spiritual and military leader. No raid would be conducted or war waged without his express authority and blessing. Arap Turgat was a powerful man who was assisted by a council of elders to lead the Nandis," he adds.
Arap Turgat was however assassinated in 1890 after some warriors defied his guidance not to mount a cattle raid but later accused him for being ineffective after they were massacred. Before his death, Arap Turgat had passed on his prophetic powers to his sons, Kiptonui arap Boisio, Kibuigut arap Singo’ei, Kipchomber Arap Koilegen and Kiitalel arap Samoei.
It was in honouring his father’s death wish that Koilegen migrated from their home in Samitui village at the western edge of Nandi Escarpment to South Rift and settled in Nandi, among the Kipsigis.
Pastor Reuben Koech, 67, recalls his grandfather regaling him with stories of how Kipchomber expanded the Nandi territory after spearheading successful cattle raids. Although he had used his prophetic powers to predict outcomes of many successful cattle raids, his advice was once ignored by warriors who attacked the Kisii at Manga escarpment. "The humiliation was so total that nearly all the warriors were wiped out.
Natural appointee
Never in the past had the community been handed such a beating. They could not blame Arap Koilegeni for he had warned them against this," Pastor Koech explains. By the time Britain declared Kenya a protectorate and started appointing its own administrators, Koilegen was already an established leader and was, according to Joseph Sigilai, a natural appointee for the post of a paramount chief in 1903.
When Koitalel was killed by the British for resisting colonial occupation, his brother Koilegen had also made a name for himself by waging several military campaigns. "He was appointed paramount chief for Location One, today known as Waldai. They paid him a salary of 50 rupees per month. He was financed for a trip to Mombasa in 1906 with a group of chiefs, " Joseph Sigilai added." Koech added that his relationship with the British was cordial to a point where Sigilai explains the Protectorate awarded him a white horse so that he could administer his people on behalf of the king of England with ease.
The relationship however soured when Koilegen realised that the British were planning to take over all the prime land and in his characteristically wily way started a cold rebellion. In 1914, shortly before he was summoned, Koilegen had started snubbing meetings organised by the colonial DC after realising that he was not a leader of his people but a subject of the British authorities.
He would appear at such meetings late or fail to turn up and when pressed for answers would reply that he had no way of knowing the time or date. It is against this background that summons to appear in Kipkelion on January 1914 were issued.
At Kipkelion after waiting to meet the PC in vain, he and his brothers were finally slapped with orders that made them among the first political detainees. The orders, emanating from the office of the chief secretary in Nairobi and addressed to the acting provincial officer in Kisumu read, "The enclosed deportation warrants are forwarded for your information and necessary action."
"This is to command you Henry Hastings, the acting PC, Nyanza, that you forthwith caused the said Arap Koilegen to be deported to Fort Hall (now Murang’a) and you Robert Willian Lane the PC Central do hereby receive and detain the same Arap Koilegen a politically detained native," read the warrants governor, Henry Belfied issued.
Rainmaker wanted
Koilegen and his brothers were then loaded into a train and ferried to Nairobi where they were locked up at Nairobi prison and later separated and deported to Murang’a (Koilegen) Nyeri, (Arap Boisio) and Meru (Arap Kibuigut). Back in Kericho, a rebellion was fast building after word went round that the prophet had been arrested. To quell the tension, a baraza was held on January 20th 1914 where the Government tried to explain why the Kipchomber and his two brothers had been arrested.
A letter dated April 27, 1914, by the DC of Kericho to the PC, Nyanza sums up tension triggered by the arrest, as the administrator tried to justify the arrest and exonerate his office from any blame. CM Dobb’s, letter to the PC said of Koilegen, "The man was the most undesirable person to have in the district.
The people did not generally like him but were afraid of him and his power of bringing and stopping rain". "The unfortunate thing is that in the year that his deportation was carried out, things like hysteria, locusts and drought should have occurred which to the native mind cannot be regarded as merely a coincidence," read the letter.
Things worsened when 300 women confronted the colonial Government on January 23, 1914, demanding to know who would bring rain now that they had imprisoned Koilegen.
During a public meeting called to arrest the crisis, the acting PC Hastings Harry tried to explain his Government’s treachery in duping the three Laibons to attend a bogus meeting only to arrest them later. He gloated, " I addressed a large meeting of people (January 20) and pointed out that the Laibons were not actual prisoners but had been removed because their advise to the people was bad". Although the Government tried to downplay the incidence, patrols around Sotik were intensified and the acting PC desperately prayed for things to normalise in Kericho.
The Government was however determined that none of the Laibons would ever set foot on Nandi or Kericho soil. While in Murang’a, Koilegen was housed near the prison where he was occasionally allowed visitors.
On July 19, 1916, two years after Koilegen’s arrest and detention, the District Commissioner, Fort Hall, R Weeks sent one of his most memorable letters, happily announcing Koilegen’s death to PC Nyeri. "Sir, I have the honour to inform you that the Lumbwa Laibon, Arap Koilegen deported to this station some years ago died yesterday (July 18, 1916). Would you kindly advise the PC Nyanza accordingly?" he posed.
Ninety six years later, arap Koilegen’s descendants have not known what killed one of Kenya’s first political detainees. Their efforts to trace his final resting place in Murang’a have been fruitless.
The most probable place, the cemetery between the post office and the police station has yielded no answers as there are only a handful of marked graves and scores of tombstones with no epitaphs.
Koilegen’s death echoes the cries of his descendants, the Talai clan, who are still squatters in the land snatched from their forefathers by the colonial Government.
