Victoria Mørck Madsen
Photojournalist
Ogiek
The Ogiek are one of the smallest of Kenya’s 42 tribes. The Ogiek’s ancestral homeland is Mount Elgon and the Mau Forest situated in the Great Rift Valley, the largest indigenous forest complex in East Africa.
Traditionally the Ogiek lived as hunters, gatherers and beekeepers. They see themselves as protecters of the forest, who in turn provides them with all they need, food, medicine and shelter.
Far from everyone share this outlook. To some, the forest means profit, timber and potential farmland. and there are many conflicting agendas under the canopy. Corrupt forces in the Kenyan government have long gambled with the Mau Forest. For the Ogiek this has meant sudden and violent evictions, the government’s explanation being that the Ogiek were harming the forest.
Teargas, helicopters and gunshots forced the protecters of the forest to surrounding villages where they feel neither welcome nor at home. Where they can observe their neighbours from other tribal backgrounds drag timber and charcoal from a forest that now belongs to anyone wanting to make a quick profit.
“I no longer feel safe in the forest of my ancestors,” says David Kimsoi Nagol, 49.
“Lots of criminals go here and we cannot even trust the Kenya Wildlife Service officers. Sometimes they harrass us when we go to collect honey. When I finally reach my beehives, I often find that the trees they were in have been cut down. It’s a constant reminder that the forest is longer for us”.
Joseph Mako Wuama, 65, will never forget the day his village was razed during the first evictions in 1986.
“We refer to it as “the war” because that’s what it felt like. A war zone. The police burned our houses and raped women and children. They even killed some of our Elders, the most important members of our community. Since that day, the Ogiek have been scattered”.
In 2017, the Ogiek won a case against the Kenyan government in the African Court on Human and People’s Rights in Arusha, Tanzania. The court found that forest protection was not a legitimate reason for banishing the Ogiek from the Mau Forest and that the evictions had not helped protect the forest.
The Ogiek now have an official right to be given their land back, to protect it and pass on their lifestyle, traditions and culture. But so far, the court ruling has not led to any tangible change. The Ogiek still live in their villages from where they can only glimpse the forest beyond their neighbours’ scorched fields.
The illegal logging that threatens the existence of Kenya’s most important forest complex has only increased since the eviction of the Ogiek. Rivers that spring from the Mau Forest have run dry which is an immense problem in the already drought-stricken country. This has made the government realise the gravity of the environmental disaster they have shut their eyes to for years. Various initiatives have been undertaken, but given the widespread corruption that permeates all layers of Kenyan society, their effects are uncertain, as is the future of the Mau Forest and the Ogiek.