Stranded up North: A journalist's tale covering drought stricken Northern Kenya

Standard Group journalists push the vehicle after it lost the front grill due to the rough terrain from Isiolo town to Merti. [Wiberforce Okwiri, Standard]

A late afternoon phone call from my news editor, informing me that I had been selected to join the crew covering the drought in Northern Kenya found me in the middle of a crucial meeting in Nairobi’s CBD.

Across the table at a city hotel sat an important but rather cagey news source who had evaded at least four previous appointments for a television interview. After weeks of back-and-forth characterised by several missed calls and postponements, we had finally almost locked it in. 

But clearly fate had other plans.

The only day he was available to appear on camera happened to be the very same day we were scheduled to depart for Northern Kenya.

For a fleeting moment, I considered turning down the trip north. After all, I had invested significant time and effort chasing that interview. But judging from the editor’s tone and tenor, it was apparent that this deployment had been sanctioned at the highest editorial level, essentially to mean there was no turning back.

I complied, and now, in an ironic twist, I became the one postponing the very interview I had pursued for weeks on end. And such can be the newsroom paradox where what you think is the story of the moment can quickly be eclipsed by a new story you must chase, and priorities shift without warning.

I was tasked with leading a team of five: Josphat Thiong’o (Print reporter), Cosmas Mwongela (Videographer), Wilberforce Okwiri (Photographer), and our driver, Daniel Oduor. A seasoned crew laden with experience covering hardship areas, but as you’ll find out later in this story, none of us was fully prepared for what truly awaited us. The North had its own script.

Standard Group journalists were covered in dust after the vehicle they were travelling in developed mechanical problems due to the rough terrain from Isiolo town to Merti. [Wiberforce Okwiri, Standard]

Together, we were to execute a week-long assignment covering the drought crisis in some of the hardest-hit counties.

As is the tradition for such assignments, we embarked on the usual preliminaries. Risk assessment forms were filled out and discussed extensively, hotels booked, security and emergency contacts established, and fixers identified.

I recall my videographer, Mwongela, checking and rechecking his cameras in the camera room as if his life depended on it. After all, he’s the same person who once told me of a story about how one of his colleagues deployed all the way to Somalia came back with cinematic clean shots but no audio. I can’t count the number of mic checks he subjected me to that final evening before travel. Everything and anything needed to be in perfect order.

Head of TV Jacinta Kiraguri and the man in charge of company security, Tom Kipyegon, constantly called just to be sure we were fully set.

The newsroom had staggered journalists across the northern region; there were at least two other crews covering Mandera, Turkana, Garissa, and parts of the Coast. We were assigned Isiolo, Marsabit, and Samburu, counties among the worst affected by the drought.

From a general sense the plan looked clear, logistics well spelt out and the team was ready.

But as we would soon discover, the journey north can put on edge and test even the most prepared.

Our first stop was Isiolo, where our fixer, Jilo Buke, was already waiting.

Jilo, an industrious workaholic, wasted no time upon our arrival. We found him having already arranged interviews with locals and county officials over the drought situation. Even before knowing where exactly we would spend the night in Isiolo town our cameras were already rolling after our four-and-a-half-hour journey from the city. We barely had time to stretch our legs.

In Isiolo, we spent the entire day traversing mostly Kula Mawe and Garbatulla areas, documenting the worsening humanitarian situation that had started to capture everyone’s attention.

We witnessed firsthand images of human suffering across the dry landscape. We documented faces of despair that carried the quiet exhaustion of negotiating survival one day at a time, as livestock carcasses were starting to build up.

The next day, we ventured deeper into Merti, over 200 kilometers away on a rough road, and this is where we properly encountered the true taste of the terrain.

The road, if one can call it that, was split throughout like slices of bread drying in the sun, the uneven surface triggering relentless vibrations inside the vehicle, sometimes even leading into deep ridges. It quickly reminded us of Gregory Macharia of the Kenya Red Cross Society (KRCS), whom our senior colleague Kipkoech Tanui, the organisation’s Head of Communications, had linked us with earlier. Macharia had warned us plainly that the road conditions would reduce our speed to about 40 to 50 kilometres per hour — if we were lucky. He was right.

Standard Group journalists were forced to light a fire to scare away wild animals after they got stranded due to the rough terrain from Isiolo town to Merti. [Wiberforce Okwiri, Standard] 

The journey was no walk in the park and at some point along the way, our vehicle lost its front grill. Where exactly it dropped off, only God knows. 

After hours of crawling through the punishing terrain, we finally arrived in Merti. Word later filtered through the grapevine that someone had spotted a stray grill by the roadside. To this day, we are still following leads on its whereabouts. We have never recovered it.

But I digress.

In Merti, our coverage led us to schools bearing the brunt of the drought. We visited Badan Raro Primary School and Lakole Primary School, where the crisis was written plainly on young faces. Attendance had already started thinning as water and food supplies started dissipating. It was tough filming the weary eyes of innocent children amid rising cases of malnutrition, scrambling for lunch under the school feeding program that was already near its deathbed, according to teachers.

In fact, at Lakole, the last time there was some semblance of learning was in May last year. Since then the school has been abandoned and learners have had to be moved to neighbouring schools with the KRCS already warning that the school feeding program would only last until the end of February for most schools in the region.

There was so much to cover in Isiolo, but our itinerary indicated that it was time to move to the next county -Marsabit.

The decision to travel to Marsabit using the little-used Yamicha route was explored by the team more widely, and there was consensus that we try this route. That decision would later come back to haunt us.

Obviously, we had the option of returning to Isiolo on the rough road we had already encountered and then using the safer tarmac road to our destination. But for reasons only God knows, and perhaps driven by the urgency of our assignment, we chose what was presented as a shortcut - a decision that would ultimately prove far longer and far more difficult than expected.

We began the journey through Maladanur, Saleti, and Korbesa, but about 50 kilometres in, things started to go wrong at a place called Bulle-Qokota. The vehicle, just like that story in the Bible of some prophet who had displeased God riding on a donkey, refused to proceed forward and completely stalled.

In the middle of nowhere, our vehicle dug into the sand and we screeched to a complete stop.

It was now all hands on deck to try and pull ourselves out of the situation.

But the more we tried, it was as if the sand was responding by growing softer. We kept digging deeper and deeper.

Countless times our driver, Daniel, tightened his grip on the steering wheel trying to manouvre like what experienced northern drivers would do, but it was all in vain. The wheels instead only spunned throwing sand into the air as the engine strained as if resisting an unseen force.

We stepped out to survey our situation and outside there was literally nothing around us-no manyattas, no animals, not even signs of humanity. We, however, kept charging and psyching each other up that we would overcome the challenge.

After several attempts that took us about two hours, including hoisting the car through jacking, the vehicle broke free. We dispatched Jilo and Thiong’o to survey the terrain and advise if it was still realistic to forge ahead, and they came back with a disappointing report. There was no way forward just the same dreadful rocky and dusty plains and so the safest option was to go back. 

As we ventured back we met a group of Somali herders grazing their livestock and asked for directions, but because of the language barrier, we didn’t seem to make much headway. Jilo’s Somali is not as fluent and so we kept moving groping in the dark as we tried to figure out a way out.

Some ten kilometres as we headed in the opposite direction, still in Bulle-Qokota, we came to another stop. We were stuck yet again, and this time even deeper than before. This was around 2:30 pm.

Again, we stepped out and started applying the same tricks we had used before raising the vehicle, piling mounds of stones for the wheels to pass over, and pushing. At that juncture of desperation, it dawned on us that we had packed everything else but not a spade to help us in case of an emergency.

By 4 pm, the sun had begun its slow descent and clearly time was no longer on our side. Some of us started panicking, but we kept the faith. By this time, there was no single trick known to us that we had not tried to pull ourselves out of the sand.

In this part of northern Kenya, darkness can be a point of sheer vulnerability bringing with it wide-ranging security risks.

Our biggest challenge at this point was communication the main networks were flat and dead. We searched desperately for a signal and one of us found only one small patch where a weak connection flickered. We rushed to that spot and immediately started making frantic calls for help.

By around 7 pm, it was total darkness.

For some members of our crew, veterans of too many survival Holywood films imagination began to fill in the gaps left by the darkness.

“We need to light a fire so that should anyone looking for us see this huge fire and come to our rescue. Plus, it can help scare away wild animals,” said Okwiri, the senior-most member of the team.

“But we need to be alive to the fact that the same fire could work against us and attract our enemies. Let’s proceed but with caution,” reasoned Thiong’o.

In this part of northern Kenya, insecurity and banditry remain a constant threat to communities living here.

We gathered what little firewood we could find and lit the fire. For some reason, the flames offered some semblance of comfort that help might come our way.

Hours passed as we watched our firewood run out, and so did our strength.

By 10 pm, exhaustion had settled deeply into our bones, and our little supplies were nearly depleted. Conversations faded at this point as reality started to fully sink in we might spend the night here.

Each of us was completely lost to ourselves listening to distant unfamiliar sounds carried by the night wind.

Then, in an act of quiet desperation, part of our crew made a risky decision. They would walk into the darkness in search of the nearest manyatta.

Some of us, including yours truly, were against this idea. Venturing into nowhere in the name of searching for help. “We are better together, standing together, than scattering,” I remember yelling to everyone. The duo of Jilo and Daniel the driver defied us.

It was already 11 pm, and it was pitch dark. It was a dangerous gamble, but they took it.

They walked nearly four kilometres into the unknown, guided only by instinct and hope.

All this time, we kept cursing why we even allowed them to move out gone and with no way to communicate with them.

I heard some of my colleagues resort to prayer; it was the only thing we could hang on to.

After almost one and a half hours, they finally returned and they were not alone.

“I got relieved. It was too scary to have some of us out there,” said Mwongela.

With them were young men from a nearby manyatta, strangers who had answered a call they did not have to answer.

We didn’t have time to waste. Immediately, we stepped out and, together, tried once more.

The young men from the manyatta came with a brilliant idea which none of us had thought about.

They cleared the soil using their pangas and laid not stones but sticks and shrubs, and then we pushed.

“One, two, three, let’s go!” Jilo guided us every time.

A first, second, and then third trial and this time, the vehicle broke free.

It was a huge sigh of relief. At this point, we were completely beaten and hungry.

Strangers just hours before, the young men offered us shelter in their manyattas for the night. What rare magnanimity. The only meal they could offer us at that point was tea, and we retired in the shacks, where from a distance you could see foxes and hyenas passing by.

We had slept for about three hours when, at around 3 am, officials from the Kenya Red Cross finally located us, tracing our path through tyre marks left behind in the sand. The team, led by Hamisi, had effectively spent the entire night trying to locate us. We had finally made contact with real help. They took us in their vehicle and helped pull us to reasonable safety, then we continued together the journey to Marsabit using a better route that they knew.

As we resumed our journey, we couldn’t help but reflect on that life-threatening moment.

For us, the isolation had only been temporary an interruption in our assignment.

But for the communities in the northern counties, this is actually their life. The isolation is permanent, and that’s their reality.

“I now know why the northerners keep saying they are not part of Kenya,” reflects Thiong’o.

“I have now seen and learnt that news making is not child’s play; sometimes it can get scary,” observed Jilo.