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Kipkoech Tanui
The mission to prove the Kanu Government was lying when it said it was not hiding deposed Somali leader Siad Barre was secret, stealthy and risky. Torture by the Special Branch and retribution by Kanu bigwigs awaited journalists who set out to do so.
The year was 1991 and Barre's ruinous and villainous rule had come to a violent end after 22 years during which he turned his country into the mouth of Hell.
The blast of bombs, mortar shells and machine-gun fire was as 'normal' as the odd blare of car horns in Nairobi. Many had fled, including MPs and dead bodies lay uncollected. Bullets ricochet off the walls of people's homes.
Acting on a tip off by a good member of the public, as police like to say, that Barre was a guest of State hidden at the Safari Park Hotel, two great Kenyan journalists went to work. They reasoned there was no way Barre, cooped up thus, would resist the temptation to open a window, enjoy the breeze and see the world closing in on him. So they sweet-talked a waiter and parked near his room. All the while, there were security agents idling everywhere.
After hours of waiting, suffocating in the afternoon heat and disguising their work, a shadow lingered behind the curtain. Seconds later, with the window partially open, the face of the man who had turned his country into the 'Graveyard of Aid' was out.
The photojournalists quickly took their pictures and raced off with the precious possession — a roll of film security agents would have crushed underfoot. (No digital cameras in those days.)
When the story hit the streets, headlined 'Siad Barre in Kenya', retired President Moi called the chairman of the defunct Organisation of African Unity Maj-Gen Ibrahim Babangida of Nigeria.
All Is Vanity
Nigeria opened up its arms to the deposed dictator and his relatives and they were soon on a plane to a miserable life in exile, which ended after his house was robbed several times. Like Zaire's Mobutu Sese Seko, who ran and stole from his country as if it were his roadside kiosk, Barre died in exile a miserable man. Their lives bring to mind the tragic wisdom of King Solomon's Biblical adage in the book of Ecclesiastes: "Vanity of vanities, says the Teacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity."
After the war, I was in Somalia on official assignment and what appalled me, first, was that there were more people with guns than with walking sticks. To go anywhere our team had to hire a rag-tag armed escort crew in a fighting vehicle called a 'technical'.
Hotels had sandbags stacked in empty window frames, leaving only space for ventilation and a glimpse devastation all around. The gap served another purpose: If you could handle a gun, the hotel gladly supplied one, so that you could help repulse attackers. All you had to do was to push the barrel out and shoot.
There were no police officers, no banking facilities and no taxation or revenue collectors. If you bought a new car, all the doors had to be unscrewed and used as scrap. At the numerous checkpoints manned by more shriveled youths, they had to see how many people were inside the vehicle and what you were carrying from a distance. Else they would poke numerous holes through your body with their rusty guns long after you were dead.
In Somaliland, we were allowed into the office of late President Mohammed Egal in Hargeissa after the UN official we were with agreed in advance he would address him as 'Mr President'. He argued it was a minor concession because in his country, Switzerland, even the girl guides and boys scouts had presidents.
When we entered Egal's office, where he was puffing pipe tobacco behind a desk, the President asked our nationalities. I said Kenyan and he nodded with what I thought was delight. My companion said he was Egyptian. Egal immediately went into a tirade.
"I do not want any Egyptians in my office,'' he blurted, pulling open a drawer in his desk. "The last time I went there they did not recognise me as President. There was no guard of honour, no red carpet and no motorcade!"
For a fleeting moment, I was terrified he was going to draw out a gun. Turned out he was going for more tobacco!
That was 12 years ago and the bloodbath is on. Now the blood-flow is turning in our direction — the land of Hos Maina, the Kenyan photographer who was tied to a truck and dragged to his death in Mogadishu.
The worst is that Somalia has not even reached its lowest moment. But its 'bug' is spreading fast and we in Kenya have just started sneezing and suffering a running nose. When the symptoms begin, it is time to swallow the curative pill however bitter.
It matters not the after-taste or the side-effects. It is a matter of life and death.
The writer is The Standard's Managing Editor, Daily
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