Decades of trickery and tears caused by colonial agreement

Defence Cabinet Secretary Raychelle Omamo (left) and UK High Commissioner Nicolas Hailey when they signed an agreement at the Defence Ministry in Nairobi on December 9, 2015.[Fidelis Kabunyi, Standard]

Long before Independence, some Kenyans quaked as they talked in hushed tones about the horrors they had gone through at the hands of British troops during the struggle for self-rule. 

Most of these freedom fighters were holed up in chilly forests deep in Mt Kenya, and their expectations were that once they routed their colonisers out of the country, they would easily slip into a new Kenyan military uniform.