NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Forest Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial Kenya, 1940-1990s
A DISSERTATION
SUBMITTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL IN PARTIAL FULFILMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS
for the degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
Field of History
By
Alphonse Omondi Otieno
EVANSTON, ILLINOIS
December 2008
2
© Copyright by Otieno, Alphonse Omondi 2008 All Rights reserved.
3 ABSTRACT
Forest Politics in Colonial and Postcolonial Kenya, 1940-1990s
Alphonse Omondi Otieno
In the period 1940-1990s, the Kenyan forestry policy evolved from an emphasis on preservation to a combination of programs which embodied both rural Africans’ interests and practices and state interests in environmental issues. Using four cases from the western Kenya region, this dissertation explains how and why this shift took place. It examines the significance of local processes in the form of struggles over preserved rural landscapes in the shift of the policy. The struggles were manifested in contests and negotiations between officials and rural people from the affected areas. Through these contests and negotiations, compromises that led to the preservation of the landscapes materialized. The compromises allowed rural Africans’ interests and uses of the landscapes to insinuate themselves into the preservation policy reshaping it in the process in different contexts. Despite the compromises, contests against the preservation continued due to its restrictive effects on local ways of using the landscapes. Rural Africans made persistent claims for usufruct and ownership rights to the preserved landscapes which compelled government officials in some cases to give back substantial acres of the preserved forests to the claimants and in other cases to allow regulated uses of the forests. These official responses incorporated local ways of using the landscapes into conventional agendas for the forest preservation. To expand forests in rural areas in the face of such incessant claims for land, the government adopted social forestry and agroforestry programs that aimed at integrating forests, crops, livestock, and people. The programs appropriated certain local land-and tree-use practices which transformed the forestry policy into a mixture of local uses of landscapes and 4 conventional discourses on forests. The constitution of the forestry policy was thus more complex than the high modernist model used for environmental policies generally.
5 ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
So many people contributed to this dissertation in many valuable ways. I will not be able to mention them all in name here, but I would like to acknowledge the guidance and generous support I received from my advisor, Professor David Schoenbrun. He was always available and ready to help whenever I needed it. His incisive questions pushed me to think critically and clearly about this work. Many a times did I face dead-ends, but the ton of literature he suggested at such moments opened up new questions and perspectives that always propelled me forward beyond what had initially seemed insurmountable. In times of crises, when I thought I would not make it, he was always there to offer encouragement and insights. Without any doubt, his objective was to push me to excellence, to mould me into a good scholar. If I have not reached his expectations, the blame squarely falls on me. He did all he could and he did it best. I am exceedingly grateful.
My committee members, Professor Jonathon Glassman, Professor Josef Barton, and
Professor Karen Tranberg Hansen were extremely helpful. I thank them for their reading and critical suggestions that provided me with new perspectives. Without them this dissertation would not have been possible.
The financial assistance that I received from a number of institutions at Northwestern
University enabled me to travel to Kenya for research. The Graduate School offered me the
Graduate Research Grant. The Program of African Studies granted me Hans E. Panofsky Pre-
Dissertation and Guyer-Virmani Awards. I also received Graduate Student Summer Research
Travel Grant from the Roberta Buffett Center for International and Comparative Studies. During my fieldwork, I was able to meet my daily expenses from the teaching assistantship that the
History Department offered me. I am extremely grateful. 6 I deeply thank Professor Benjamin Frommer and Professor Edward Muir of the History
Department who always intervened when I had nothing to fall back on in terms of finances.
Three times they offered me teaching opportunities that provided me with atleast some income to meet my expenses as I labored daily on this dissertation. David Easterbrook, the curator of the
Melville J. Herskovits Library of African Studies, Northwestern University, offered me a summer job that kept me going financially as I corrected this dissertation.
During my research, the staff at the Kenya National Archives, Nairobi, worked hard daily to ensure that I received the materials I needed. I express my gratitude to them. I also thank the men and women who generously spared their precious time to allow me to interview them. The valuable information they provided contributed immensely to this dissertation.
My friends and colleagues, Professor Evan Mwangi, Rita Wilkenfeld, Pamela Khanakwa,
Chrysanthus Gwellem, Dr. Patricia Ogendengbe, Eunice Uchechi Ukaegbu, Sam Obiero, Gabriel
Odando, and Dr. Joseph Oyugi offered a social space where I could sometimes go to escape the rigors of dissertation writing. The many moments I spent with them left me rejuvenated and motivated to plough back into my work. I cannot imagine how I would have fared without them.
My family was always supportive and encouraging. I believe it was their constant prayer that saw me through the hurdles I faced during this project.
Last but not least, without the strength that God provided whenever I felt weakened I would not have made it this far. My humble thanks to the Great One, Nyasaye Obong’o
Nyakalaga, who moved with me throughout this arduous process.
7 DEDICATION
To my family. In loving memory of my sister, Justin Akinyi who departed so early.
8 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………3
Acknowledgment……………………………………………………………………………….5
Dedication………………………………………………………………………………………7
List of maps and pictures……………………………………………………………………….9
Chapter One: Introduction: Contested and negotiated forestry………………………………………………………………10
Chapter Two: A place to live: African perceptions and uses of landscapes in the western Kenya Region before forest preservation …………………………………………………………………………………….50
Chapter Three: Alienating landscapes: Forestry policy in Western Kenya 1940-1963……………………………………………….....95
Chapter Four: Continuity and change: The forestry policy at the local and national levels, 1963-1980……………………………….157
Chapter Five: Taking forestry back to the People: Agroforestry and Social forestry policies, 1980-1990s………………………………………...190
Chapter Six: Conclusion………………………………………………………………………..222
Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………………233
9 LIST OF MAPS AND PICTURES
Maps Map 1: The western Kenya Region 27 Map 2: European settlements around Chepalungu forest area 64 Map 3: Western Kenya forest reserves 100 Map 4 Chepalungu, Sotik and Trans-Mara 102 Pictures Picture 1 : Chepalungu Forest Reserve and spaces cleared for settlement, 2005 71 Picture 2: Honey hunting, an old practice that is still common in Chepalungu, 2005 72 Picture 3: Part of Maragoli hill, 2005 81 Picture 4: Kakamega forest, 2005 92
10 Chapter One
Introduction: Contested and negotiated forestry
In the late 1980s the Kenyan government, working with non-governmental agencies, adopted social forestry programs in the country that aimed at taking forestry back to the people. Forestry before then was influenced primarily by commercial, as well as ecological interests, later articulated in a conservationist tone, which in essence emphasized macroeconomic significance of forests. The shift to social forestry emerged as part of a long history of struggles over rural landscapes between their residents, government officials, and later, agents of non-governmental organizations in different parts of the country, beginning in the colonial period. The struggles began when colonial officials embarked on the policy for forest preservation, turning portions of rural landscapes into forest reserves, areas which local people had owned and used since pre- colonial times. They had cultivated crops and grazed stock within cleared spaces, hunted wild animals within scattered bush, collected wood fuel, herbal medicine, as well as building materials from forests. They also had utilized specific trees and spaces within the landscapes for religious purposes. These landscapes, thus, were of both material and symbolic significance to their African users. Their alienation through the forestry policy that restricted local uses generated intense struggles between rural residents and colonial officials, which persisted into the period after independence.
The changes that occurred as the result of the policy have been inexpressibly daunting to most present elderly people who remember old uses of the landscapes with nostalgia and great sense of loss. During interviews, they expressed extreme concern about social and ecological changes that have occurred since the beginning of the policy process. For example, Magana, an elderly man from Maragoli hill, in the western Kenya region, lamented loss of important 11 indigenous trees from the hill, some of which were considered sacred and of wild animals and birds which he and his peers used to hunt, grasses which they used for thatching houses, herbal medicine they used to treat various illnesses, reeds they used for making doors, not to mention his kin who died or migrated in the course of this history. 1 Despite his lamentations, Magana does not just look backward to the past; he looks to the future, pondering how future generations will survive amidst these changes, which have already created conditions of lack in Maragoli.
His concern is not to recreate the past, but rather to continue with the struggle to secure physical and cultural spaces for posterity, which is currently under threat from the forestry policy ramifications. Such concerns were expressed not just in Maragoli, but in other places where portions of landscapes were transformed into forest reserves. The struggles over the landscapes significantly shaped the forestry policy process.
This dissertation is about linkages between the struggles over rural landscapes and shifts in the Kenyan forestry policy in the period 1940-1990s. My objective is to understand why and how the forestry policy evolved from an emphasis on preservation to a combination of programs responsive to both rural Africans’ interests and practices and state interests in environmental issues. This problem requires us to go back to the early colonial period in order to establish how
Africans used the landscapes and why they used them the way they did. Unraveling the uses and what underlay them will allow us to get at perceptions which not only shaped African responses to the policy, but also played a significant role in the reconfiguration of the policy over time. The problem also requires us to explore why colonial officials embarked on the process of preserving portions of landscapes in particular areas in rural parts of Kenya. The effort is significant because it unravels motivations that shaped forest preservation in its early stages of implementation in
1 Interviews with Magana in Maragoli, 2005. 12 different areas. It also reveals changes that occurred with time in official discourses underlying
the policy. The problem also demands an inquiry into why colonial officials managed to preserve
the landscapes, how the process impacted the policy as well as local communities, and how rural
residents adapted. Preservation was a culmination of struggles between officials and rural
African residents, struggles which continued beyond the colonial period. How and why did the
struggles reshape the forestry policy locally and nationally during and after the colonial period?
To unravel the process behind the shifts of the policy, this dissertation focuses on
particular cases, examining linkages between processes of landscape preservation and shifts in
the forestry policy over time. I focus on four cases in the western Kenya region which include
Chepalungu, Kakamega, Kisian, and Maragoli. This region is suitable for such a study because
of perceptions which colonial officials had of its environment during their initial encounter.
Colonial officials generally perceived the environment as largely unforested. 2 The few forests
that they saw in areas, such as Chepalungu and Kakamega, had seemed to them to be on the
verge of disappearing because of ways in which Africans used them.
Colonial administrators perceived the landscapes within the context of prevailing
conventions about Africa as primeval, a place close to the natural state, where one could
experience wilderness. As Roderick Nash shows, the concept wilderness had been used in
Europe to refer to untamed, pristine, or un-urbanized landscapes. It was through such images that
Africa’s environment in general was perceived in Europe.3 But the landscapes which colonial
officials encountered in the western Kenya region on the contrary had appeared corrupted by
human use and that to them was a sign of degradation which they blamed on Africans. The
2 Kenya National Archives (KNA), HT/9/1, H. M. Gardner’s, Conservator of Forests, letter to the PC, Nyanza, July 1, 1941.
3 See Roderick Nash. 1967. Wilderness and the American Mind . New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. 13 perceptions led colonial officials to focus on the region through forestry and other environmental policies. Such perceptions made this region, among others, such as the arid lands in northeastern parts of Kenya, a major target for the afforestation and forest preservation policy that colonial officials attempted to implement in the colony. The perceptions influenced discourse on forestry and government officials’ responses to local claims for rights to lands under forest reserves into the postcolonial period.
Despite the significance of the region in the development of environmental policy in
Kenya in general, it has surprisingly been ignored by environmental historians. Available studies on the history of environmental policy in Kenya have focused on other areas such as the Rift
Valley. An example of such studies is David Anderson’s work that captures politics over conservation, development, and local livestock farming practices in Baringo in the colonial period.4 To my knowledge, parts of Western Kenya have only featured recently in Osaak
Olumwullah’s work on the history of disease, biomedicine, and society in the colonial period. 5
This work focuses on Abanyole of Emuhaya division, Vihiga district, which is in western Kenya.
Thus, this region still stands largely ignored by historians interested in historical interactions between Africans and their environment in the colonial and postcolonial period.
By focusing on the forestry policy process, this dissertation explores entanglements between official discourses and practices on forestry and African relations to rural landscapes.
Studying this process is significant because it not only untangles material and conceptual matters about the landscapes that rural African users and outside claimants struggled over, negotiating
4 David Anderson. 2002. Eroding the Commons: The Politics of Ecology in Baringo Kenya, 1890-1963. Athens: Ohio University Press.
5 See Osaak Olumwullah. 2002. Disease in the Colonial State: Medicine, Society and Social Change among the AbaNyole of Western Kenya . Westport: Greenwood Press.
14 and contesting with each other as individuals and collectivities. It also unravels why they struggled over these things and how the struggles transformed not just African perceptions and practices, but also the policy. The struggles over these things are what shaped the policy at different times. Also, by unraveling overlaps as well as conflicts that characterized the process, this dissertation contributes towards reassessment of forestry policy, in particular, and environmental policies, in general, in Kenya and in Africa as a whole.6 In this case, it contributes towards efforts in Africa to create policies relevant to local sociocultural as well as ecological conditions by identifying areas of conflicts inimical to the process, and areas of convergence, which can be used as references in contextualizing the policies within local practices to ensure their long term sustainability.
Contextualizing forestry
Studying forestry during and after the colonial period intersects environmental history with colonial and postcolonial processes. It unravels complexity of colonial process through struggles between colonial officials and rural Africans over rural landscapes. Forestry in practice and discourse constituted an arena in which Africans and colonial officials closely and intensely interacted with each other. Through it Africans experienced the brunt of colonialism and colonial officials engaged with Africans, their cultures and economies. Studying forestry also allows one to examine continuity of struggles over landscapes and their implications for African communities, environment, as well as the government beyond the colonial period. In this case, I use an environmental history approach to explore colonial process and question assumptions about its policy legacies in post-independence Kenya.
6 Appeal for this reassessment has been made in David Anderson et al. 1990. Conservation in Africa: Peoples, policies, and practices. Cambridge University Press. 15 In accomplishing this objective, work on colonialism as well as interactions between
policies, people and environment in colonial and postcolonial Africa proved invaluable. Earlier
research, written within the context of nationalist perspective focusing on political dimension of
colonialism has emphasized the coercive or dominating nature of colonial rule and its disruptive
impacts on African societies, as well as environments. Africans, according to this scholarship,
invariably responded to the colonial process through resistance. 7 Colonialism appears in this
context as a process characterized only by government domination and African resistance.
Colonial policies appear in general as dominating, imposed from the top on Africans who
invariably resisted. This asymmetry is assumed to continue essentially into the postcolonial
period because of the assumption that the postcolonial government in essence emerged as an
inheritance of the colonial system. 8
Scholarship on policies in colonial and postcolonial Africa written from this perspective
has extensively explored factors that contributed to failure of the policies. Based on its top down
perspective, this scholarship has emphasized the divide between policy initiatives and local
7 The domination – resistance paradigm prevailed in the African nationalist scholarship which emerged in the 1960s and 1970s. This approach was reflected in work such as Terence Ranger. 1967. Revolt in Southern Rhodesia 1896- 97: A Study in African Resistance. Evanston: Northwestern University Press; John Iliffe. 1969. Tanganyika under German Rule, 1905-1912 . Cambridge University Press; Michael Crowder. 1971. Western African Resistance: The Military Response to Colonial Occupation . New York: African Publishing Corporation. Resistance has continued to dominate studies on Africa, social science and history. It is true that resistance as part of African history is alive as Ranger observes in his article, Ranger. 1971. “The New Historiography in Dar es Salaam: An answer. African Affairs , vol. 70, no. 278, pp. 50-61. But, focus on it alone obscures other heterogeneous dynamics that have collided and entangled with each other over time, constituting African histories in the process.
8 Mahmood Mamdani. 1996. Citizen and Subject: Contemporary Africa and the Legacy of Late Colonialism . Princeton: Princeton University Press. Mamdani develops a model of colonialism and its legacies in tropical Africa and South Africa. He argues that the rigidity or despotism characteristic of systems of colonial rule continued to shape despotism in postcolonial Africa. James Giblin. 1992. The Politics of Environmental Control in Northeastern Tanzania, 1840-1940 . Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Giblin in his introduction to this book makes the case that Tanzanian government policy for ujamaa villagization (socialism) in essence manifested legacies of colonial rule, its administrative practices and constricted perceptions of rural economy and environment. He argues that ujamaa was a return to colonial policies. Although he provides evidence for the colonial legacies, his focus on continuity obscures change that the policy constituted in view of most Tanzanians.
16 contexts as the major factor that essentially contributed to frequent failure of policies in
Africa. 9 According to this view, because of the high modernist nature of the policy initiatives as
well as their inherent failure to take into account local social and ecological contexts, they
frequently encountered resistance from local people which led to deflection of policy projects
and entrenchment of state control in local areas. David Anderson has highlighted the propensity
of the policies to exclude local people and their socio-ecological contexts, a characteristic that
made social control their practical code. 10 In the same vein, but from a slightly different
approach, James Scott has argued that such policy projects produced within imperial and
authoritarian contexts are instruments for social engineering that simplify complex social and
environmental contexts in order to make them legible in the eyes of the state for control. 11 Scott
argues that, as the result of their high modernist nature, these policies always encounter
resistance from local people, contributing to their frequent failure. Comparing such a policy
process to a machine, James Ferguson, has emphasized how policy projects in Lesotho, as
planned interventions, produced unintended outcomes that expanded state power in local areas.12
Ferguson argues that:
In this perspective, the “development” apparatus in Lesotho is not a machine for eliminating poverty that is incidentally involved with the state bureaucracy; it is a machine for reinforcing and expanding the exercise of bureaucratic state power, which incidentally takes poverty as its entry—
9 See David Anderson, Conservation in Africa.
10 Anderson, Conservation in Africa .
11 James Scott. 1998. Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed . New Haven, Yale University Press.
12 James Ferguson. 1990. The Anti-politics Machine: Development, depoliticization, and bureaucratic power in Lesotho. Cambridge University Press. p. 255.
17 launching an intervention that may have no effect on the poverty but does have other concrete effects. 13
The unintended consequences, he argues, resulted from unacknowledged local contexts and resistance from local Africans against these policies.
As recent research has shown, this is a simplified view of actual colonial and postcolonial policy process, for officials at times negotiated with rural Africans whose interactions with the policies varied even at individual levels. Africans opposed and simultaneously internalized different aspects of the colonial systems, thus, their adaptations exceeded resistance. Recent scholarship has attempted to go beyond the divides emphasized by the earlier work by unraveling the complexities characteristic of the colonial process and its implication for policy. It has gone beyond resistance to address nuanced interactions that existed between rural Africans and officials. Most of it has adeptly shown how rural Africans adapted to colonial policies, selectively appropriating practices of the colonial rule and incorporating them within their daily local practices. Nancy Rose Hunt provides an example of this nuanced approach. She departs from the colonial encounter paradigm by focusing on African middle men and women whose work in medicine and healing in many ways instantiated the hybrid colonial world. 14 Jacob
Tropp has attempted to move beyond colonial binaries by focusing on linkages between
negotiations over access to forest resources and colonial relationship that emerged in Transkei in
early colonial South Africa. 15 Tamara Giles-Vernick has also moved away from the binaries by
13 Ferguson, The Anti-politics Machine , p. 255.
14 Nancy Rose Hunt. 1999. Colonial Lexicon of Birth Ritual, Medicalization, and Mobility in the Congo. Durham & London: Duke University Press.
15 Jacob Tropp. 2006. Natures of Colonial Change: Environmental Relations in the Making of the Transkei . Ohio University Press. 18 showing how Mpiemu in Central Africa appropriated certain aspects of colonial and
postcolonial policies on forests, which contributed to change in their knowledge and uses on
environment.16
Drawing on this work, this dissertation argues that complex social interactions exceeding
what has been portrayed in the earlier scholarship characterized the forestry policy process. The
process exceeded imposition of high modernist policy projects, resistance by local people, and
the collapse of projects. The process was messy, unfolding in contests, negotiations, and
compromises among rural Africans, state officials, and later representatives of non-governmental
organizations in different temporal and spatial contexts. Rural Africans and these outsiders
contested and negotiated with each other and among themselves over rights to landscapes, as
well as over ways of utilizing them, processes which over time contributed not only to conflicts
but also to overlaps between state discourses on forestry and African practices on landscapes as
Africans insisted to make claims over the landscapes, while at the same time appropriating
certain aspects of the official forestry. In the face of these struggles, state officials chose, in some
cases, to remain recalcitrant, and in others, to adapt aspects of the policy to rural African
land/forest use practices. Rural African users of the landscapes in some cases opposed the policy
projects outright, compelling colonial officials to abandon the projects. Yet, focusing on that
thread alone, that is, discontinuation of the policy, as some scholars have done, leads to the
failure to capture the whole story, for rural Africans also conflicted among themselves and
appropriated elements of official utilization of landscapes for their own interests. 17 Furthermore,
16 Tamara Giles-Vernick. 2002. Cutting the Vines of the Past: Environmental Histories of the Central African Rain Forest . University Press of Virginia.
17 Scott, Seeing Like a State . 19 the collapse of such a local project did not virtually mark an end to the policy process locally, regionally, and nationally. For based on their local experiences, during such cases, state officials in the colonial and postcolonial government reconfigured systems of discourse as well as practices characterizing the policy beyond the local context to fit prevailing regional and national circumstances.
Rather than focusing on failure or collapse of the policies, this dissertation uses such cases of discontinuity as well as continuity to untangle shifts in the forestry policy in the context of local contests and negotiations between African subjects and state officials over landscapes during and after the colonial period. Available scholarship has ignored this area, focusing mostly on how Africans in local contexts adapted to policy processes. But available evidence from western Kenya has shown that state officials in the colonial and postcolonial period also adapted to the processes in various ways. Their adaptations wavered between compromises with local claimants of the landscapes, outright recalcitrance against local claims for preserved landscapes, pragmatic and conceptual accommodation of local land use practices into the policy. Thus, the extant literature’s focus on local adaptations obscures what happened in turn at the policy level in terms of changes in the policy content, as well as its underlying systems of discourse. Driven by the objective to show that African peasants were not just mere reactionaries, or if not, passive masses resisting “development” projects, this literature, at different levels, capture African ability to adapt to changes which resulted from implementation of the policies.
The literature grew out of the debate started by Helge Kjekshus’ classic work that portrayed Africans in the precolonial period as actors, not captives of environment, a view quite 20 in contrast to how they were portrayed by most colonial historians.18 According to Kjekshus,
these Africans through rational mechanisms were able to maintain an environment free of
trypanosomiases or sleeping sickness. But, as the result of colonialism, this system of
environmental control they had developed collapsed. Yet, answers to questions on how Africans
adapted locally to political changes and resulting ecological transformation as well as how
colonial officials responded in turn remained unclear. A group of historians, including James
Giblin picked up the former part of the questions later but based on different local contexts. 19
These scholars demonstrated rural initiatives as well as innovations in the face of local
environmental changes, arguing that rural Africans were able to adapt locally to such
circumstances. The scholars did this, however, with a lens focused only on Africans, a logical
result of their objective to show rural Africans’ initiative and innovativeness amidst local
ecological changes.
Taking a nuanced perspective, Tamara Giles-Vernick took this approach one step further
to show how Mpiemu in Sangha basin, in Central African Republic, transformed doli , a system
of environmental knowledge and practices, by selectively appropriating myriad aspects of both
colonial and postcolonial governmental ways of utilizing forests. 20 The appropriations
represented Mpiemu’s adaptations to new forest use practices, as much as their contests for
forest spaces that the colonial and postcolonial government policies prevented them from using.
How contests and negotiations for landscapes among rural Africans, state officials, and
18 Helge Kjekshus. 1999. Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History: The Case of Tanganyika 1850-1950 . London: James Currey.
19 Gregory Maddox et al. 1996. Custodians of the Land: Ecology and Culture in the History of Tanzania . London: James Currey.
20 Tamara Giles-Vernick, Cutting the Vines of the Past .
21 international agencies reconfigured the forestry policy practices, structures and underlying discourses, however, needs attention, and it is on this area that, based on the western Kenya cases, this dissertation makes a departure from the extant literature on environmental policy process.
But this dissertation not only departs from the asymmetrical view of the policy process, it also contributes to the available significant work on Africans’ adaptations to local consequences of rural development policies. In this case, instead of focusing only on adaptations, this dissertation pushes the debate further into ways in which different residents of the preserved landscapes struggled to stake their rights to the landscapes and their long term ways of utilizing them in the face of restrictions from the forestry policy. Facing restrictions from the forestry policy, the residents struggled to secure these two aspects of their relations to the landscapes. To interpret these processes, I draw on two types of literature. The first set deals with African struggles over access to local resources in the context of colonial and postcolonial government policies. An example is Sarah Berry’s work that focuses on rural African farmers’ investment on social networks to maintain and expand their access to productive resources within the context of agrarian policy during and after the colonial period. 21 Such valuable networks include descent groups, ancient lineages, villages, traditional ritual communities, religious and ritual associations of recent origins, patronage networks, political parties, and co-operatives. 22
From the four western Kenyan cases, individuals and groups formed social networks to bargain and contest for rights over preserved landscapes. Resident landowners formed co- operative societies to fight for ownership and management rights over the preserved landscapes,
21 Sara Berry. 1993. No Condition is Permanent: The Social Dynamics of Agrarian Change in Sub-Saharan Africa . The University of Wisconsin Press.
22 Berry, No Condition is Permanent , p. 17. 22 laborers collectively bargained with colonial officials for rights to land within forests, chiefs and councilors used their membership in existing local government councils to negotiate with colonial officials over their subjects’ claims on land and to petition against the preservation. But whereas the cases from central province of Kenya and cocoa farming areas of Ghana and Nigeria that Berry’s study focuses on show the significance of the networks as channels of access to productive resources, the western Kenya cases demonstrate the value of such networks as platforms from which rural Africans struggled for rights over the preserved lands.
The second set of literature that I draw on focuses on continuities of African traditions into the modern world and their significance in influencing modern discoures.22 For example,
Steven Feireman has shown how long term cultural continuities were deployed by peasant intellectuals in Shambaa, Tanzania, to rework conjunctural political actions aimed at healing the land (kuzifya shi ). He notes, in this regard, that “It is peasants who draw upon a rich variety of past forms of political language; it is peasants who create new political discourse.” 23 While
Feireman attributes such role to a select group whom he refers to as “peasant intellectuals,” the deployment of past traditions was a common phenomenon among rural Africans as the case of western Kenya shows. Furthermore, it was not past traditions or past languages alone that
Africans drew from to maintain continuity in their relations to environment, but a conjuncture of factors such as claims to landscapes based on past rights, government institutions, and official discourses and practices on forests. This dissertation contributes to these ongoing debates by unraveling multiple ways through which rural Africans in particular areas struggled to secure
22 See David Schoenbrun. 2006. “Conjuring the Modern in Africa: Durability and Ruptures in Histories of Public Healing between the Great Lakes of East Africa .” In American Historical Review, vol. 111, no. 5; Jan Vansina. 1990. Paths in the Rainforests: Toward a History of Political Tradition in Equatorial Africa. Madison: Wisconsin; Stephen Feierman. 1990. Peasant Intellectuals: Anthropology and History in Tanzania . Madison: Wisconsin.
23 Steven Feierman, Peasant Intellectuals , p.3.
23 land rights as well as long term land and forest use practices restricted by the forestry policy during and after the colonial period. It shows how Africans seized on traditions that defined rights to landscapes in conjunction with legal structures, scientific research findings, forestry policy discourses, as well as principles of private land tenure to secure not only their individual and collective rights to landscape, but also long term ways of using the landscapes for historical and material interests. These past rights and practices, as well as their underlying discourses, were significant as materials that were injected into forestry programs as rural Africans, state officials, and non-governmental agencies’ representatives at different times negotiated over rights to, and ways of using, local landscapes. In this case, I draw from scholars such as Thomas
Spear who has cast doubt on the common assumption held by scholars that colonialists invented traditions, customs, and ethnicity in Africa because of the power they possessed relative to
Africans.24 He argues that these processes resulted from interactive exchanges between colonialists and Africans. He states: “Colonial policy, then, derived less from a coherent ruling strategy or the consent of the governed than from ongoing negotiations and compromises with
Africans and among themselves [colonialists]. Colonialism might be mutually constitutive, but it was also a ‘working misunderstanding.’”25
Misunderstanding essentially underlay struggles over resources that characterized the colonial world. In Western Kenya, misunderstanding occurred at different levels over different issues. There were misunderstandings between colonial officials and rural Africans over land use and rights and systems of control over them. The misunderstandings shaped significantly
24 Thomas Spear. 2003. "Neo-Traditionalism and the Limits of Invention in British Colonial Africa." Journal of African History , 40, p. 26.
25 Spear, “Neo-Traditionalism and the Limits of Invention in British Colonial Africa,” p. 26.
24 colonial officials’ choice of areas for preservation. Colonial officials proposed Kisian and
Maragoli hills because they appeared to them unused, while in reality the hills served multiple purposes to their residents. They also proposed to preserve Kakamega and Chepalungu forests to protect them from further degradation, a view developed within a context that ignored history and culture shaping the way the Kipsigis and Isukha viewed and used the forests.
Furthermore, colonial officials assumed that the hills and forests were under communal rights controlled by village elders and chiefs. As a result, for purposes of legitimization, they incorporated the leaders into implementation and management of the preservation. The leaders, however, did not simply represent colonial administration on land matters and in the struggles that arose from the preservation. But their actions embodied a combination of self, colonial, and popular interests which shaped the mixed roles they played in the struggles. They negotiated and compromised with colonial officials and land owners and at times took positions that conflicted with both colonial officials’ and land owners’ interests. While colonial officials worked with the leaders based on the assumption that communal rights was the prevailing mode of land ownership, in reality individual rights to land existed alongside the communal system.26 Land rights were claimed by individuals and households based on myriad factors, including descent, lineage, and actual use. The threat that preservation posed to these rights to forests and hills contributed to the struggles between colonial officials and rural Africans who claimed ownership rights to the landcapes earmarked for preservation.
Misunderstandings also occurred among colonial officials and rural Africans as well.
Forestry, agricultural, and veterinary officials and provincial and district commissioners contested over strategies to be adopted for the policy. They also contested over who was to have
26 Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject . 25 control of the preserved landscapes. Rural Africans conflicted among themselves as they adopted different positions relative to the preservation policy. Some of them negotiated and compromised with colonial officials, chiefs, and elders, while others contested the policy. Those who lived within the areas earmarked for preservation mostly opposed the policy despite compromises reached between colonial officials and other residents who also claimed rights to the areas to be preserved but lived away from them.
Going back to Spear’s valuable argument, in this dissertation, I show how colonialism was a mutually constituted process and a product of misunderstandings. The dissertation accomplishes this objective by examining impacts of the preservation on rural Africans and effects of contests and negotiations among rural Africans and colonial officials on the forestry policy. I continue with the same analysis for the postcolonial period.
This dissertation also makes a departure from extant perspectives on motivations behind environmental policies in Africa, in general. Earlier research on this area emphasizes significance of conservationism in formulation and implementation of the policies. 27 For example, William Beinart emphasized the significance of conservationism in environmental and agricultural policies in South Africa. David Anderson and Richard Grove also alluded generally to the role of conservation in environmental policies implemented in various parts of Africa during the colonial period. Recent research has, however, made an effort to question the reification of conservationism as a motivation and has begun to attribute the formulation and
27 Conservation is a term that has been used to refer to the ideology that emphasizes protection of species and habitats, wildlife and wilderness, and improvement of climatic and soil conditions. For literature that has over- emphasized the role of conservationism in state interventions on environment see S. R. Troup. 1940. Colonial Forest Administration . London: Oxford University Press; William Beinart, 1984; David Anderson, Conservation in Africa ; Richard Grove. 1995. Green Imperialism: Colonial expansion, tropical island Edens and the origins of environmentalism 1600-1860 . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; P. W. Logies et al. 1962. Forestry in Kenya: A Historical Account of the Development of Forest Management in the Colony.
26 implementation of the policies to other factors, although it still recognizes the role that
conservation played in influencing state interventions on environment. 28 Thus, following this
effort, as shown, for example, in Ian Phimister’s call for an approach that avoids the tendency to
ascribe policies to single factors, this dissertation situates the forestry policy within localized
contexts to capture varied and contingent motivations behind the policy implementation as well
as its maintenance over time in specific places. From that perspective, this dissertation argues
that processes within these localized contexts, not merely those based on high level ideologies,
had significant influence on the formulation as well as implementation of the forestry policy in
different areas. Capturing such contexts makes it possible to unravel contingency and peculiarity
of motivations, interests, visions, and structures that underlay shifts of the forestry policy, hence
avoiding the practice of generalizing such things under conservationism or state control, factors
which have mostly been emphasized as the underlying motivations behind the policies. Thus, the
approach allows us to recast global ideas on environment through local experiences.
The region, its environment and peoples
Understanding the history of struggles over landscapes in western Kenya and shifts in the
forestry policy requires knowledge of the environment and people of the region. The region has
undergone significant geographic and administrative changes over time. In fact, when the East
African protectorate was established in 1896, a large part of this region formed the Eastern part
of Uganda protectorate. In 1902, however, the region was transferred to the East African
28 David Anderson, Eroding the Commons ; James Fairhead & Melissa Leach. 1996. Misreading the African Landscape: Society and Ecology in a Forest-Savanna Mosaic . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Karen Brown. 2003. “Trees, forests and communities: Some Historiographical Approaches to Environmental History on Africa.” Area , 35, 4, 343-356; Ian Phimister, “Discourse and the Discipline of Historical Context: Conservationism and Ideas about Development in Southern Rhodesia 1930-1950.” In the Journal of Southern African Studies (1986), 12, 263-275. 27 protectorate which later in 1920 became the Kenya colony. The transfer occurred as a result of two major events at the turn of the century. The construction of the Uganda Railway had reached its completion after the line reached Kisumu port in 1902, opening up the region’s economy and environment to wider colonial interests. In the same year, the headquarter of the East African protectorate was transferred from Mombasa to Nairobi. These changes meant that the region could more easily be administered from Nairobi than from Uganda as Hugh Fearn has shown. 29
Map 1: map showing the western Kenya region (Adopted from Fearn, An African Economy )
29 See Hugh Fearn. 1961. An African Economy: A Study of the Economic Development of the Nyanza Province of Kenya, 1903-1953 . London: Oxford University Press. For these administrative changes also see Bethwell Ogot. 1963. “British Administration in the Central Nyanza District of Kenya, 1900-60. The Journal of African History, vol. 4, no. 2.
28 Known earlier as Nandi district, the region later came to be known as Nyanza province, divided into four districts, Central Nyanza, North Nyanza, South Nyanza, and Kericho. After independence, the region was broken up into two provinces, Nyanza and western provinces.
Kericho, formerly a district within the region, was transferred to the Rift Valley province. In this study, however, western Kenya is used to refer to the region encompassing the old Nyanza province.
The general physical conditions of the region are diverse. But within this diversity, there are uniformities within particular areas which have contributed to ecological zones that characterize the region. Much of this variation and unity has resulted from altitude. The region breaks up into three broad ecological zones shaped by variation in altitude. The zones include the lowland in central Nyanza, the plateau in North Nyanza, and the rift where Kericho district lies.
From 3,000 feet at the shores of Lake Victoria, the altitude rises to 6,000 feet in the plateau, north of the lake, and from there to over 7, 000 feet towards the rift zone. 30 The land generally slopes from east to west towards the lakeshore.
Variation in altitude has been a significant factor in this region, influencing rainfall, temperature, and vegetation. The lowland regions receives less amount of rainfall annually, about 30 inches, and the plateau regions receives over 50 inches of rainfall, while in the rift, rainfall tends to vary due to abrupt shifts in altitude, but no areas within this zone receives marginal figures. 31 The altitude ranges from 7, 000 feet in the west and slopes to 5,000 in the
30 See Simeon Hongo Ominde. 1963. “Land and Population in the Western Districts of Nyanza Province, Kenya.” PhD thesis, Makerere University College.
31 Fearn, An African Economy .
29 northwest. 32 The erratic nature of the altitude in the rift zone has contributed to micro-
environments characterized by highlands and low lands that lie at the bottom of the rifts. The
highlands receives substantial amount of rainfall, over 70 inches, compared to the flat areas
which receives about 40 inches annually. The same irregularity of topography occurs in the
transition zone between the lowlands and plateau which is dissected by escarpments such as
Kisian, Maragoli, and Bunyore. The variation in altitude has produced different soil types. Black
clay soil characterizes the lowland areas, and dark red brown soil, as well as brown sandy soils
covers most of the plateau region. 33 In the highland zones, one encounters rich deep reddish soil
highly suitable for agriculture. It was in this area, including Sotik and Kericho where European
settler economy based on cash crop agriculture and cattle ranching were developed during the
colonial period.
These structural variations have significantly shaped vegetation types in the region over
time.34 They have contributed to the vegetation zones that characterize the region. I am not in this case reifying the role of natural factors in shaping landscape, but my aim is to show how variation in physical factors have shaped vegetation which have generally typified the landscape of western Kenya over time. Because of low rainfall, generally, the lowland zone has been characterized by savannah type vegetation—grasses with patches of woody vegetation mostly
Acacia and Euphorbia candelabra species. Gunter Wagner who visited this area in 1930s described it as “a typical African savannah of tropical character, with numerous umbrellas- shaped acacias, euphorbia, aloes, and wild figs, growing some in cluster, some singly, as well as
32 Ian Orchardson. 1961. The Kipisgis . Nairobi: The Eagle Press.
33 Ominde, “Land and Population in the Western Districts of Nyanza Province, Kenya.”
34 For details see Ominde, “Land and Population in the Western Districts of Nyanza Province, Kenya.”
30 an occasional grotesque-looking sausage tree. Picturesquely dotted over the landscape are the
Jaluo kraals, fenced by thorn-bush or euphorbia hedges.” 35 Scholarship produced from surveys done in the area in 1950s shows that even then the area had similar vegetation. 36 The same species still predominate in the area, but there are additions of exotic plantations such as eucalyptus dotting parts of the landscape. Kisian hill lies close to this zone but occupies the transition zone between the lowland and the plateau which features thick bush and grasslands.
With increase of altitude and amount of rainfall moving northward, the vegetation changes into patches of dense forests which in some instances break into savannah grasslands. Traveling across the landscape in 1930s, Wagner noted, “Along the water-courses and on the slopes and tops of the isolated hills we encounter also here in the north a dense and varied growth of trees.” 37 As one heads northward, the dense growth constantly gets broken into farms and human settlements and then changes into the dense Kakamega forest lying east of Nandi escarpment. In the rift zone, where Chepalungu lies, one also encounters patches of dense forests which break out into bushland and savanna grasslands.
When colonial officials wrote about these landscapes with their characteristic pockets of dense forest, bushland, and grasslands, they depicted them as degraded. The patches of forests traversing the landscape appeared to them as remnants of past large dense forests which shrunk because of felling, burning, and cultivation by Africans. Describing the landscape, H. M.
Gardner, conservator of forests, wrote in 1941, “what strikes one forcibly is the almost completely deforested condition of the south, central and a great part of the North Kavirondo
35 Gunter Wagner. 1949. The Bantu of Kavirondo . London: Oxford University Press, vol. I, p. 7.
36 Ominde, “Land and Population in the Western Districts of Nyanza Province, Kenya.”
37 Wagner, The Bantu of Kavirondo , vol I, p. 11.
31 [old name for Nyanza] Reserves.” 38 This view was amplified in scholarly writings about the
geography of this region produced 1960 onwards. 39 For example, Simeon Ominde described
landscapes of central and northern parts of the region thus, “It is an intensively humanized
landscape with remnants of the original forest community forming patches over an extensive
area.” 40 Ominde’s statement implies degradation of the landscapes which raises concerns about how people in this region used the landscapes. But the patches of forests in the plateau region and wood lots in the lowland region existed in areas with human settlements, showing that they were not mere remains of past forests, but instead were plantations by people who wanted to create hedges around their homesteads for protection and demarcation.41 For example, Hugh
Fearn, a colonial historian, one of those who have attributed lack of forests in the area to deforestation, describing Luo homesteads observed that, “In Luoland the homestead (consisting of huts for the families, granaries and cattle-bomas) was within a circular ring of protecting euphorbia trees.” 42 In this observation, Fearn’s objective was not to associate trees with human dwelling, but rather to show a common lay out of Luo homesteads. But his observation can be used to show that there were pockets of trees surrounding homesteads in an area that colonial officials and earlier scholars described as degraded, and that these trees were products of human settlement. Oral information also attests that such hedges forming “circular rings” around homes
38 KNA HT/9/1, Gardner’s letter to the provincial commissioner, Nyanza, July 1, 1941.
39 See Ominde, “Land and Population in the Western Districts of Nyanza Province, Kenya.”; Fearn, An African Economy .
40 Ominde, “Land and Population in the Western Districts of Nyanza Province, Kenya.” p. 86.
41 James Fairhead and Melissah Leach provided ecological, oral, and photographic evidence to show that patches of forests in Kissodougou in Guinea were not relics of past forests as colonial officials, contemporary policy makers, and scholars have maintained. Instead, they were planted by Africans who lived in region. The same could be true of the situation in western Kenya region.
42 Fearn, An African Economy, p. 32.
32 were planted by people for demarcation and protection. 43 Thus, the trees that colonial officials, colonial historians and early African scholars viewed as relics of past dense forests were by contrast planted, cultivated, or protected by the Luo for social and ecological reasons. From ethnographic data collected in 1930s, Gunter Wagner shows practices among the Bantu speaking people of North Kavirondo (Nyanza) that helped to protect trees. He notes that:
Large and conspicuous trees and those that marked boundaries between clan territories were formerly under protection of the eligutu [clan head], and could be felled only with his consent. This would be refused if it had become customary to hold meetings in the shade of such trees, or if they were in any way associated with ancestral spirits or otherwise had a magic-religious significance attached to them, such as the omutembe tree ( Erythrina tomentosa ) which was used in connexion with oaths and ordeals. 44
These examples show that people related to landscapes in complex ways and the ecological consequences of their actions were not always degradational. While they cleared portions of landscapes for cultivation, settlement, cattle-herding, woodfuel, creating open areas and bush, they at the same time planted new trees around their homesteads and protected portions of existing woodlots.
Through different economic and cultural activities, inhabitants of the region produced the mosaic landscape. Agriculture, cattle keeping, and hunting were the major economic activities.
The soil and generally reliable rainfall supported cultivation of millet, sorghum, eluisine, and maize. But performance of the crops varied in different areas. Because of good soil and high rainfall, agriculture did well in plateau and highlands in areas such as Kakamega than in the lowlands and low sections of the rift zone where Chepalungu lies which have clay soil, poor in drainage and hard to work on both during dry and rainy seasons. Shifting agriculture played
43 Interview with Mzee Ojwang’ in Kisian, 2005.
44 Gunter Wagner. 1956. The Bantu of Kavirondo . London: Oxford University Press, vol. II, p. 83.
33 some role in such economies, but cattle keeping remained central, for example, in Chepalungu
and parts of Central Nyanza. Fishing in the lakeshore areas supplemented agriculture and cattle
keeping. Also, the forests and bushy vegetation covering parts of the region provided favorable
environments for wild animals and insects which made hunting of game and honey central in
forest and bush lands, such as in Kakamega and Chepalungu.
Different groups of people had already settled in different parts of Western Kenya by the
twentieth century. Detailed histories have been written about migrations and settlement in this
region. Two of the most important are by historians Bethwell Allan Ogot and Gideon Were. 45
The two scholars made a contribution to the understanding of the precolonial history of the
people of western Kenya and they stimulated a rethinking about the use of ethnic group as a
homogenous unit. Ogot focused on clans and lineages as the “operative migrating units.” 46 Were emphasized the complexity of the early history of the Abaluyia groups. He observed that “to most writers the Abaluyia have seemed to be ethnically homogenous—homogenous, that is, in origin. Having rightly perceived them as a people with a common language and culture, some writers have hastily jumped to the conclusion that the Abaluyia have had a common origin and a corporate past.” 47 He then suggested that “The early history of the Abaluyia can only be examined by analyzing the origins of their various clans and sub-tribes within the wider context of inter-tribal movements in Eastern and Western Uganda.” 48 But the scholars’ reliance on oral
45 Bethwell Ogot. 1967. History of the Southern Luo . Nairobi: East African Publishing House; Gideon Were. 1967. A history of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya . Nairobi: East African Publishing House.
46 David Cohen. 1968. “Review: Luo History without Court Chronicles.” The Journal of African History , vol. 9, no. 3, p. 481.
47 Were, A history of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya, p. 59.
48 Were, A history of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya , p. 60.
34 history drawn from elders who reified kinship and descent contributed to narratives which painted clans and lineages as real categories, consequently freezing the highly ideological value of the principles in social reproduction. 49 By contrast, the clans and subethnic groups studied in this dissertation are not viewed as biological races or fixed cultures, but as groups of people with diverse genealogies who over time adopted particular cultures, languages and notions of consanguinity through intermarriages and ideologies of desecent.
The Luo-speaking groups had settled in most parts of Central Nyanza, areas near the shore of lake Victoria and those bordering the plateau region in the north. A branch of Luo speaking people called Jo-Kisumo or Jokowidi had settled in the present-day Kisumu town and its hinterland. 50 Two groups of people identified with Karateng’ and Korando clans, had by the nineteenth century settled in the hinterland, the area north of Kisumu where Kisian escarpment lies. The Avalagoli speaking group, who occupied most of this area before the arrival of the
JoKarateng’ and JoKorando, had earlier moved northwards and settled in Maragoli hills and parts of Vihiga where they presently predominate.51 According to Gideon Were, this movement resulted from hostility the Avalagoli had faced from the Kipsigis, Nandi, and Masai who lived in the nearby regions.52 In Kakamega, Isukha and Idakho predominated. These were collections of people who in the twentieth century considered themselves part of Abaluyia but earlier identified
49 For use of kinship as an ideology for social reproduction see John Lonsdale. 1977. “When did the Gusii (or any other group) become a “Tribe”? Kenya Historical Review , vol. 5, no 1, pp. 123-33.
50 For details about Luo migration, see Bethwell Ogot. History of the Southern Luo ; Shadrack Malo. 1953. Dhoudi Mag Central Nyanza . Kampala: Nairobi: The Eagle Press.
51 Were, A history of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya ; John Osogo. 1967. A History of the Baluyia . London: Oxford University Press.
52 Were, A history of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya , p. 75.
35 with varied clans whose languages were not related to the Bantu speaking Luyia groups.53 For example, oral tradition among the Isukha claims that the Abamilonje (one of the largest clan in
Isukha) was founded by a Masai speaking individual who migrated into Kakamega where he met people who identified with Isukha clans from whom he married and received land to live in and cultivate. 54 Through such intermarriages and other interactions, with time these Masai speaking groups were fully integrated into the Isukha ways of life, thus becoming the Isukha who in the twentieth century occupied most of Kakamega town and its hinterland which lie on the edge of the forest.
In the rift parts of Western Kenya, the Kipsigis predominated. Oral tradition has it that the Kipsigis migrated into this area by eighteenth century from an area near Baringo.55 From
there, they moved to their present locations that lie between Central Nyanza plains and Gusii
highlands in the west, Trans-Mara (Masai land) in the south, and Mau forest in the east. This area
included Buret, Sotik, which had been turned into a white settlement by 1930s, as well as Koiwa,
and Chepalungu forest area. Colonial land policy which had created the white settlement in Sotik
also led to demographic changes in the area, especially in Chepalungu where Ogiek, a southern
Nilotic speaking group who lived in the Mau region were forced to move to Chepalungu forest in
the 1930s. Because Chepalungu was predominated by the Kipsigis, the Ogiek who moved here
ended up being marginalized. The group’s marginalized status relative to the Kipsigis continued
through the colonial and postcolonial period.
53 Osogo , A History of the Baluyia ; Were, A history of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya .
54 Osogo, A History of the Baluyia.
55 Orchardson, The Kipisgis . 36 Crafting a history of forestry: sources and methods
A study of struggles over rural landscapes and their impacts on forestry reveals how past local
peoples’ relations to landscapes conflicted and intersected with official forestry over time. These
struggles have thus been invaluable in injecting aspects of past African relations to landscapes
into contemporary forestry and vice versa. Stephen Ellis in his article has emphasized the value
of examining the past in the present as one way that contemporary history can contribute to
understanding the modern world. 56 Reconstructing the process through which the past shapes the
present requires an approach that does not just focus on actions or practices alone, but that also
looks at underlying thoughts and motivations. For, as Ellis argues, the approach is fundamental
to the task of crafting a historical narrative out of available evidence. He notes: “What is proper
to the work of a historian as opposed to that of a natural scientist who is reconstructing, say, the
stages of development of a species of a dinosaur, is the effort to penetrate the thinking of those
who were implicated in the events of the past.” 57 But more importantly, in this case, interweaving past actions and their underlying thoughts is appropriate because forestry in general is an embodiment of perceptions and actual uses of landscapes as much as it is a reflection of discourses frequently used to justify certain forestry practices.
To reconstruct local and regional processes that shaped forestry over time in Kenya, I used oral and archival sources, ethnographic and ecological science data. These sources provided information about past as well as contemporary peoples’ perceptions of, and practices on, landscapes and how they constituted each other. For oral information, I conducted interviews in
Kakamega, Maragoli, Kisian, Chepalungu, and Nairobi over five months in 2005-2006. I
56 Stephen Ellis, “Writing Histories of Contemporary Africa.” Journal of African History , 43, 1, (2002), p. 4.
57 Ellis, “Writing Histories of Contemporary Africa,” p. 3. 37 interviewed women and men between the ages of 30-85. In the rural villages I interviewed both elderly and young people of diverse backgrounds. The elderly informants ranged between
70-85 years old. Born in 1920s, about two thirds of them had obtained some rudimentary education and took jobs later in 1940s as houseboys for white civil servants in major towns.
Others worked as squatters in settlers farms. One informant, a Second World War veteran, served as a forest guard in Chepalungu forest for fifty years. A few of the informants never went outside to look for work, but stayed in their villages, cultivating crops and herding cattle.
From different perspectives, the informants narrated stories about past beliefs and practices on the landscapes in the period before preservation. They remembered the multiple ways in which the landscapes were viewed and used by their residents and how the residents adapted to the preservation policy. Most of them remembered the past uses of the landscapes with great sense of loss. A few, such as the former forest guard, viewed the uses as having been destructive on the environment and expressed support for the preservation policy. They also narrated their varied experiences as a result of the preservation. While a handful of them got employed as forest guards and laborers in the forest reserves, majority suffered loss of land and forest resources which led to economic hardships and the struggles over control of use and ownership of the landscapes during and after the colonial period. The testimonies were significant in understanding change in the preservation policy and these people’s relations to the landscapes, as well as continuity of the relations within changing ecological and economic conditions over time. In other words, their memories offered clues about local experiences in the period before and after colonial officials introduced preservation.
The testimonies of the informants also provided a window onto the local landscapes, which helped in making sense of conditions of the landscapes as seen by local residents before 38 they were alienated into the forest reserves. Because colonial officials used conditions of the landscapes, which appeared to them as disorderly or deforested to justify in part implementation of the policy, knowing African views of the landscapes was significant in correcting misrepresentation of the landscapes by colonial officials, hence allowing a critical evaluation of the colonial officials’ justification of the policy. The knowledge was also significant in identifying ecological changes that occurred after the afforestation and preservation of the landscapes. The ecological changes were significant in affecting local economies. Hence, they influenced how the residents of each of the areas under study adapted to the afforestation and forest preservation.
From the testimonies of young and middle aged men and women in the villages, I obtained information about diverse contemporary local perceptions and uses of the landscapes which reflected residents’ adaptations to modern challenges resulting from the forestry policy.
These informants went through western education, thus, were exposed to modern forestry ideas.
Their views, as well as practices represented bundles of old and modern ways of relating to landscapes. While some appreciated the value of the forest reserves, especially its climatic and scenic significance, others saw the forest reserves as an obstacle to local land use practices. The information they provided, thus, revealed ways in which past local uses of the landscapes have conflicted and meshed with modern forestry.
I also interviewed government officials working in the forestry department who included the chief conservator of forests and his assistant, as well as staff of environmental agencies—
International Center for Research on Agroforestry (ICRAF) and Kenya Forestry Research
Institute (KEFRI). These officials provided information about shifts in the forestry policy in the period after independence that was invaluable in unraveling motivations and processes that 39 influenced post colonial Kenya government to make certain changes in the policy. For
example, they provided information about social forestry and agroforestry and why the two
programs emerged in the 1980s and 1990s in Kenya. The information that I collected from the
officials was also helpful in complementing scanty available archival sources for the period 1970
onwards. This scantiness is the result of the rule that classifies archival documents for recent
years. The rule limited my attempts to investigate matters on the contemporary forestry policy
and its underlying processes.
I conducted the interviews in different languages. In the local villages, I used Luo and
Swahili. In Kisian, for example, because most people speak only Luo, I found it appropriate to
use it during the interviews. But in Maragoli, I used both Luo and Swahili. Living close to the
Luo, most Avalagoli in Maragoli speak more than one language. They speak Maragoli, Luo and
Kiswahili fluently. This was an added advantage to me, for informants could easily translate
words and their meanings in both languages and that helped me to explore concepts which would have otherwise been difficult to understand. They could also interpret names of trees and animals from Maragoli into Luo or Swahili and that helped me to know what trees and animals they mentioned during the interviews. It was different in Chepalungu where elderly informants could speak only Kipsigis. In this case, I depended on a local interpreter who could speak both
Swahili and Kipsigis. In Nairobi, I conducted interviews in English and Kiswahili.
Despite the value of oral sources, they had certain limitations which are worth mentioning. Suspicion was a common issue among informants in the rural villages. As an outsider it was not easy at first to win their trust. This attitude occurred because of the way in which these people viewed their past experiences with the landscapes, that is, before and after they were transformed into the forest reserves. A lot of things happened in these areas as the 40 result of the forestry policy, some of them violent. These informants at first had reservations
talking about them. Divulging such information to an outsider was tantamount to jeopardizing
their present and future stake on the contested forest reserves. As a result, they kept such
information with secrecy. For example, Magana, an 85 year old informant from Maragoli hill
declined my initial request for an interview. He argued that to talk about the hill was to expose
himself and his community to the public glare. He compared it to undressing in public. The
underlying reason for this reservation was how he viewed their past experiences before and after
the preservation of the hill and lack of trust toward the government which they had developed
over time as a result of the experiences. This mistrust developed because of constant pressure by
the postcolonial government upon them to move from the hill without any compensation with
which to purchase land elsewhere. Under constant fear of evacuation, they viewed any person
who went there asking questions about the hill with suspicion and their immediate assumption
was that such a person was a spy from the government sent to investigate them to find cause to
justify their removal from the hill.
Because of the mistrust, they would not want any outsider to know the things which
happened on the hill and how they thought about them. For, according to them, how they treated the knowledge before outsiders could either guarantee or jeopardize their future on the hill.
Knowledge of the past is thus meaningful and relevant to the present. As Magana explained, what happened to his family in the past shaped their present conditions and what happens at the present would affect what would happen in the future to his grand children in terms of land rights. Their survival in the present and in the future thus depends on how they treat the knowledge of their past experiences on the hill, for this would affect their present and future rights to the hill. As opposed to professional historians who study the past for the sake of the 41 past, Magana viewed the past and present as inseperable. That conception of history and the accompanying mistrust, as well as apprehension cannot be delinked from the kind of information he provided during the interview which he accepted after I explained to him the relevance of my study and how it might contribute to their struggle to secure and guarantee their rights to the hill.
Periodization was another problem the oral sources posed. Most of the informants had memories of events in the past, but they could not in most cases tell exactly when the events occurred. I thus experienced problems in sequencing events embedded in oral testimonies within the context of those mentioned in archival documents. For most of the events known from oral information were often not mentioned in the archival documents and that limited my effort to accurately periodize them.
In addition to oral sources, this study utilized archival information. The documents consulted included official correspondences, district, provincial and central administration annual reports, policy documents, and departmental reports. The documents were invaluable in showing colonial officials’ perceptions of rural landscapes and their understanding of the process that contributed to physical conditions of the landscape. They viewed the landscape generally as deforested and blamed African land use practices—cultivation, settlement, and herding—for the condition. Most of this information conflicted with claims made in oral testimonies. For example, Kisian escarpment is described in the documents as a bare landscape full of heavy boulders, conditions which the colonial officials attributed to the ways in which the residents used the escarpment. Yet informants of the area testified to the existence of trees on the escarpment, which they used for wood fuel, poles, and as herbal medicine. In this case, colonial officials’ statements might not have re-presented the conditions of the landscapes because their aim was to justify the policy for afforestation on the escarpment. In their reports, the colonial 42 officials, thus, avoided mentioning existing trees. In some cases as in Chepalungu, colonial descriptions, however, gave a sense of how the local landscape looked. Several colonial officials described the landscape as filled with dense forest of cedar surrounded by cleared grasslands and thicketed spaces. These documents also provided information on how colonial officials perceived
African ways of using the landscapes. They blamed local residents for engaging in activities that contributed, in their view, to the degraded condition of the landscape—clearing, burning, stock herding, and ring barking trees for purposes of making bee-hives.
Motivations behind the process of transforming the landscapes into forest reserves also turned up in the documents. In the district and provincial reports and correspondences, local factors that led to the process were unraveled. The documents provide evidence showing that factors of local significance, not conservation, motivated colonial officials to start afforestation and forest preservation in the four areas under study. In addition, the documents were rich in information on the process that characterized the afforestation and forest protection policies.
Official correspondences showed cases of contests, negotiations, and compromises between residents of the areas alienated as forest reserves and state officials. The documents contained local residents’ petitions to the administration against the forest reserves demanding more land for cultivation, settlement, and grazing of stock.
The documents also provided information on the linkages between local struggles over the landscapes and shifts in the forestry policy. Departmental reports and correspondences, first, indicated trajectories of the forestry policy in the period 1940-1990. Over time, the forestry policy shifted from its centralized form formulated in the 1955 to its differentiated nature in the
1980s which emphasized conservation while at the same time incorporating rural residents’ claims for more land rights over forest reserves. Second, they showed claims that residents made 43 over the forest reserves and how officials responded to such claims. These claims were for use and ownership rights over landscapes. Official responses contributed to the shifts that occurred in the policy. Not only did the documents show the connection between struggles over the landscapes and the policy, they also provided evidence for influences from international environmental ideologies on the policy.
Just as oral sources, the archival documents also had their limitations. Written from an outsider’s perspective, most of the documents presented official perspectives on afforestation and forest preservation. African perspectives or voices only turned up from petitions written by those who had some formal education and could therefore present their demands in writing. They constituted the elite class who claimed to represent interests of groups in the villages. But voices of ordinary men and women, those who could not put their grievances or views in writing, were hardly represented in these documents. I, as a result, read the documents against the grain in an attempt to get clues about what they left out or concealed behind the façade of words. In one document, for example, Chief William Mnubi of Maragoli explained in a forest committee meeting held in 1957 to discuss preservation of Maragoli hill that: “the decision to give the landowners a part in the scheme, and the fact that in the end the forest would be left to them, had made his people to agree to the afforestation of the hills.” 58 From this statement, one can raise a number of questions, for example: who are these that chief Mnubi calls his people? Are they the same as, or different from, the landowners that he also mentions in the statement? What is Chief
Mnubi telling us and what is he not telling us and why? In what context did he make this
58 KNA, DC/KMG/2/2/58, J.S. Spears, assistant conservator of forest, Maseno, letter to the provincial commissioner, Nyanza, November 13, 1954.
44 statement? In this case, Chief Mnubi reported to the committee about compromises reached over the preservation and how the compromises managed to draw support from certain residents of Maragoli. But he was evidently silent about contests that landowners continued to make against the policy despite the compromises.
Not only did archival sources fail to capture ordinary African voices, but they were silent on how residents of the areas perceived and used the landscapes earlier before they were transformed into forest reserves. For example, local beliefs about these landscapes did not appear in the documents. Official information about forestry in these areas started emerging only after colonial officials had began to develop interests to turn local landscapes into forest reserves largely around 1930s. Nothing came up in colonial documents about comprehensive African uses of forests in these particular local areas before then.
Ecological science publications also proved invaluable for this study. The publications were produced by researchers who worked with the International Center for Research on
Agroforestry (ICRAF) and Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI). They were mostly significant in understanding factors behind social forestry and agroforestry adopted in the 1980s.
They also provided information about what these programs entailed, how they were implemented, and how local residents responded. These data also provided information that showed connections between these programs and old local forest/land use practices. They provided scientific explanation as to why such practices were adopted into the programs, confirming their rejuvenating effects on the landscape. These practices included intercropping, fallowing, and hedging. Furthermore, they provided information on indigenous shrubs and trees adopted for use in the program to integrate trees, animals, and humans. The trees were valuable culturally, nutritionally, and economically. They could benefit soil, humans, and livestock. 45 Useful as well to this research were ethnographic data. They were significant in
complementing the value of oral tradition in reconstructing beliefs and practices related to the
landscapes in the period 1930-1940s just when colonial officials began to turn forest and hills
into forest reserves. It was a moment hardly captured in the colonial documents. The
ethnographies were collected between 1930 and 1950. Although the ethnographies were mostly
produced by anthropologists who worked closely with colonial administrators and missionaries
and sometimes denigrated African cultures, for example, referring to them as “magico-religious,”
they contain significant information about beliefs and practices, including people’s relations to
trees and landscape more generally. 59 Important in this case were ethnographies about the Bantu speakers of North Kavirondo that anthropologist Gunter Wagner collected in 1930s. They included valuable information on beliefs about trees, as well as on ownership and use rights to trees and land among different groups of Bantu speaking peoples, including Avalogoli and
Isukha. Despite their value, they were limited in capturing change because of their underlying structural approach. The beliefs and practices among the Bantu speakers appear unchanging.
Nevertheless, the data were useful in understanding the culture and societies of the Bantu between 1930 and 1950 the time when colonial officials were just embarking on the process of preserving the landscapes in western Kenya.
Organization
This study is divided into four chapters which examine linkages between struggles over rural landscapes and change in the Kenyan forestry policy in the period 1940-1990s. Chapter two focuses on the period 1930s and 1940s moments when colonial officials were beginning to
59 Wagner, The Bantu of Kavirondo , vol. 11, p. 90. 46 embark on the preservation of the landscapes in the western Kenya region. It looks at how residents of Chepalungu, Maragoli, Kakamega, and Kisian perceived and used the landscapes during this period. Kakamega had been alienated earlier but its declaration as a forest reserve came later in 1933 a little earlier though than when the landscapes in the three other areas were declared forest reserves. Through oral information and ethnographic data, this chapter shows that the Luo, Kipsigis, Avalagoli and Isukha perceived landscapes differently from colonial officials. While colonial officials viewed landscapes as a spaces that can be divided into settled areas and uninhabited areas like forests, a general view of landscape—whether forested or non- forested—as places to live in cut across these African communities. My interlocutors in
Chepalungu, Maragoli, Kisian, and Kakamega projected the view that wooded landscapes, which appeared to colonial officials as uninhabited and unused, were places that were used in varied ways. But by 1930s, missionary activities and colonial policies related to land alienation and forced labor began to influence the way rural Africans viewed and used the landscapes. This chapter spells out ways in which perception of landscape as places to live in shaped how residents of Maragoli, Chepalungu, Kisian, and Kakamega used their landscapes. It also shows how Africans started to change their views and use of landscapes in response to colonial environmental ideas and policies for land and labor. The chapter introduces differences and crossings between environmental ideas and practices that constituted a major thread stretching across the period, 1940-1990, shaping the forestry policy in discourse and practise. It also attempts to reconstruct how the landscapes looked before they were transformed into forest reserves, for that will help in understanding the ecological changes that resulted from the forestry policy. 47 Chapter three examines factors that motivated colonial officials to preserve the the landscapes and the process that characterized implementation of the policy in the four areas under study. It pushes against the high modernist view of colonial policies. This view sees colonial policies generally as tools used in implementing high level scientific ideologies in rural areas. In the case of environmental policies, conservationism has been emphasized as the motivating factor. The process characteristic of these policies, according to the modernist view, is essentially imposed on rural areas because of its underlying modernist objectives which contradict rural ways of life. This chapter, however, argues that what motivated colonial officials to preserve the landscapes were localized, varied according to place, and were not conservationist in nature. They were as mundane as creating sources of wood fuel supply and protecting sources of timber for constructing growing urban centers. Fear of disease among settlers and colonial officials led to the preservation of Chepalungu forest. The policy aimed at transforming the landscape to prevent occurrence of trypanosomiasis. Archival information shows that conservation became a common discourse used by colonial officials to justify the forestry in rural areas later in 1950s when the colonial government formulated a centralized forestry policy that emphasized conservation. This chapter is also concerned with the policy implementation process. It argues that the process involved contests, negotiations, and compromises between colonial officials and African residents of the areas proposed for the forestry policy. The groups of people colonial officials negotiated with varied with place. In some places they negotiated with the elite—elders and chiefs—and in others with both the elite and ordinary people. The process therefore exceeded mere imposition. Ways in which local residents adapted to the policy and what they drew on are also significant themes recurring in this chapter. For example, they formed new social networks and they drew on their traditions on 48 land and forest use practices to contest and bargain for land rights over areas alienated as forest reserves.
Chapter four examines the state of the forestry policy after Kenya attained her independence in 1963. It also looks at factors that shaped the policy during this period. The chapter shows that the policy was complex and fluid, embodying varied discourses and practices.
It argues that persistent contests against the forest reserves by people who lived near or within their boundaries influenced central government official perspectives on the policy. These contests in conjunction with policy attempts by the government to deal with colonial legacies through africanization and centralization significantly shaped the policy. The policy supported conservation, allowed commercial exploitation of forests, and began to accommodate local claims over access to particular forest reserves. This differentiated nature of the policy was reflected in varying perspectives among government officials. While some officials supported the policy for maintaining the forest reserves, others identified with claims that local residents made over the forest reserve. I argue in this chapter that while centralization was aimed at consolidating government control over forest reserves, it, however, allowed central government officials to directly engage with claims that local residents made over the forest reserve, a factor which influenced their perspectives on forest reserves. As a result, the government gave back several acres of forestland back to the claimants and also began to think of withdrawing from other forest reserves. I argue that Africanization played a role in this change, for although most of the forestry officials got trained in modern forestry, raised in cultures that did not practice forest preservation, some of them identified with the claims that people were making over the forest reserves in rural areas 49 Chapter five discusses the emergence of social forestry and agro-forestry programs in
1980s. The programs aimed at taking forestry back to the rural people, as well as integrating people, trees, and livestock within existing farms. They represented a move away from a policy that only emphasized conservation of trees without any regard for rural peoples’ interests. This chapter explains the rise of these forestry programs. It situates them within complex historical interactions between government officials, rural farmers, ecology, and international organizations of the preceding years. It argues that the programs unfolded not merely as a representation of high modernist processes but rather as the result of struggles over forest reserves and land between government officials and rural farmers. They struggled over land for agriculture, herding, and forest conservation. The officials, rural men and women, agents of non- governmental organizations and research agencies involved in designing and implementing the programs worked towards integrating official and local interests over existing landscapes with the aim of creating mutuality between forestry and farming practices. The programs, thus, appeared as an encapsulation of official and rural farmers’ interests over rural landscapes. They incorporated local forest and farm use practices which had been in use since pre-colonial times.
In the conclusion, I argue that the forestry policy was shaped by contests and negotiations over rural landscapes, processes which infused local forest and land use practices into official forestry. As the result, the policy appears as an embodiment of varied discourses and practices— local, national, and international.
50 Chapter Two
A place to live: African perceptions and uses of landscapes in the western Kenya Region before preservation
Tension between colonial officials and Africans in western Kenya over forests had become common place in the period 1930-1940s. In their reports and correspondences, colonial officials observed how the region had no forests, except for a few pockets existing in Chepalungu and
Kakamega which, according to them, faced extinction because of clearing and burning practices.
Expressing concern about Chepalungu forest, a colonist, K. Beaton, for example, noted with great urgency, “It is perfectly obvious that if this destruction is not checked immediately, a few years will see the whole area in the same condition as that between Sigor and Kabosson, which a few years ago was a beautiful wild olive and cedar forest and today a barren area of charred tree stumps and weeds, where soil erosion is rife.” 1 Colonial officials and settlers blamed African practices for the deforested condition they observed. Yet underlying this view was an understanding of forests rooted in English history and culture that viewed forests as landscapes bounded for specific uses, mostly fiscal, and for leisure and aesthetics. By contrast, the landscapes that colonial officials observed in this region and African uses of them did not fit that model. Existing forests and bushy landscapes were not bounded, but lay open for varied uses.
In their observations, colonial officials focused only on conditions of the landscapes at variance with the model and African practices that were connected to them. In the process, they ignored the history and culture that underlay the general shape of the landscapes. Terence Ranger has shown in his article how English missionaries and explorers viewed landscapes in central and
1 PC/NZA/3/11/3/9, March 1, 1938.
51 southern Africa in the nineteenth century. 2 He observes that when the English looked at their
landscape back home, they saw it in its totality as an expression of history and culture. But when
they ventured into other areas, they focused only on appearance of landscapes, looking for the
idyllic picturesque. In such cases, as he notes, they “certainly perceived landscape rather than
history of culture.” 3
Whereas Ranger noted a big difference between the way the English looked at their lands
back home and the way they viewed landscapes in Central and Southern Africa, evidence shows
that in western Kenya the contrary happened. They viewed landscapes through models rooted in
their historical and cultural experiences dating back to the post-Industrial Revolution period.
Before the Industrial Revolution, the history of forests in England was one of destruction. 4
Expansive forests were cleared for timber, fuel, pasture and fields for farming. The Industrial
Revolution tremendously changed this history. Exploitation of forests was dramatically reduced as a result of iron technology and coal mining which replaced timber and wood fuel. Expansion to the outside world allowed by the improvement in transport system provided new sources of timber which further significantly saved internal forests. 5 “By the beginning of twentieth century,” G.D. Holmes noted, “90% of the country’s needs of timber were met by imports—
2 Terence Ranger. 1987. “Taking hold of the Land: Holy Places and Pilgrimage in Twentieth-Century Zimbabwe.” Past and Present , no 117, p. 159.
3 Ranger, “Taking hold of the Land,” p. 159.
4 G. D. Holmes. 1975. “History of forestry and forest management.” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences , vol. 271, no. 911.
5 See Kenneth Pomeranz. 2002. The Great Divergence: China, Europe and the Making of the Modern World Economy . Princeton: Princeton University Press.
52 softwoods from the Baltic States, Russia and North America, and hardwoods mainly from the
tropical areas.” 6 These developments left most forests in England unscathed during this period.
This was also a time of great accumulation of wealth which allowed people to engage in
recreational activities and support scientific endeavors aimed at improving quality of forests. 7
From such endeavors arose arboreta and parks. As economic uses of forests reduced, and as
wealth multiplied and urban spaces burgeoned, forests changed into spaces for recreation where
people could go to escape from the rigors of the capitalist society. At the official level, however,
dependence on timber imports led to indifference by the government towards expanding forests
at home. It was not until the First World War that this attitude changed as shortage in timber
supply from the outside world made the government realize the significance of forests at home. 8
Consequently, with influence from forestry societies most of which emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century, the government adopted legislative and practical steps as from 1916 which expanded and protected forests for future emergency. As a result of these official and non- official processes, forests became spaces removed from society, bounded for recreational and fiscal emergency purposes.
These processes influenced ways in which colonial officials viewed landscapes in western Kenya. They focused primarily on immediate appearance of the landscapes, which they juxtaposed with the models of forests prevailing at home. Through the models, landscapes in the western Kenya region seemed unforested, disorderly, and unprotected. That explains why destruction of forests by Africans formed a recurrent theme in colonial documents. Visiting
6 G. D. Holmes, “History of forestry and forest management,” p. 71.
7 This led to the rise of Forestry societies such as the Royal Scottish Forestry (1854), the Royal Forestry Society of England and Wales (1881). See Holmes, “History of forestry and forest management,” p. 75.
8 John Sheail. 2002. An Environmental History of Twentieth-Century Britain . New York: Palgrave.
53 Kenya earlier in 1921, Robert Scott Troup, then professor of Forestry at Oxford and director of Imperial Forestry Institute, had commented about the low ratio of forest area to the total land area in the country and suggested that solution lay in the “the strict conservation and protection of all existing forests.” 9 His observation echoed the understanding of forests common among colonial officials and settlers, that is, forests as protected or conserved landscapes.
But these observations tell us no more than that Africans destroyed forests. They do not delve deeply into ways Africans used the landscapes and why they used the landscapes the way they did. Long term and changing African perceptions and uses of landscape in this region are, thus, extremely obscured if looked at through the colonial negative commentary of landscapes in the region. Evident in this commentary is a difference between the ways colonial officials and
Africans viewed and used forests. While colonial officials and settlers perceived forests as landscapes to be conserved for fiscal as well as recreation purposes, Africans perceived them as places to use and live in.
Going beyond colonial observations about local landscapes, this chapter looks at long term and changing African uses of local landscapes and their underlying perceptions in the period 1930-1940s. It argues that although rural Africans’ views and uses of landscape were different from those of colonial officials and settlers, by 1930s, as a result of missionary activities and colonial policies for land alienation and forced labor, change began to occur in the way rural Africans viewed and used local landscapes. For example, as a result of land alienation in Sotik, a location neighboring Chepalungu in the east, the Kipsigis lost huge tracts of land where they had formerly herded stock and practiced shifting agriculture. The result was an
9 The East African Standard , Saturday July 6, 1926.
54 increase in the clearing of the forest to create spaces for herding, settlement, and cultivation.
Also, colonial ideas about forests found their ways slowly into African reserves through migrant laborers who worked for white settlers and civil servants. Despite these changes, long term perceptions and uses of landscapes continued during this period and in the later years. The perceptios and practices significantly shaped the landscapes that colonial officials and settlers observed as deforested.
Apart from looking at uses of landscapes and their underlying perceptions, this chapter examines how these landscapes looked before colonial officials embarked on the process of transforming them into forest reserves. In this case, I attempt to juxtapose colonial officials’ observations with African oral history about the landscapes in order to make sense of their physical conditions before their preservation. Understanding conditions of the landscape is important because it helps us to grasp not only how the landscapes were used, but also how they were perceived by their local users.
The Kipsigis, Luo, Avalagoli, and Isukha had similar perceptions of landscape despite varied cultures and ecological conditions that influenced ways they used the landscapes. They viewed the whole landscape as part and parcel of human society. Landscape was also used as a medium to the spiritual world which was viewed as inseperable from the world of the living.
This connection was actualized through shrines which existed mostly on hills and forested landscapes. Shrines were not peculiar to western Kenya communities, but a phenomenon common in most parts of Africa as shown in studies from central and eastern Africa. In a study on Malawi, Mathew Schoffeleers has shown how shrine cults had direct influence on morality and ecological processes. Rituals performed at these shrines were aimed at correcting moral imbalances believed to be directly linked to ecological processes. The underlying belief behind 55 the cults as Schoffeleers contends was this connection between morality and ecology. He posits that “serious abuses in a community lead to ecological disaster which in turn threatens the life of the community. Or from a different angle management of nature depends on the correct management and control of society.” 10 Schoffeleers and other contributors to the book emphasize primarily the communal, ecological, and political significance of shrines. But the case of western
Kenya shows how the existence and regular utilization of shrines demonstrated more than the ecological value; it indicates spirituality of landscape, how landscapes were a valuable medium through which people articulated with ancestral spirits and the supreme being.
Also, in his study of Buganda, Neil Kodesh has discussed the significance of territorial shrines to collective health, clanship, and knowledge. 11 Sidelined by earlier scholarship which focused only on the political processes in the development of Buganda Kingdom, Kodesh demonstrated how shrines contributed to social well being and political development in
Buganda. Despite shared features in shrine cults and their historical significance, cases in western Kenya show the centrality of specific places and objects such as trees in mediating relationships between people, ancestral spirits, supreme being, and landscape. Such intimacy between spiritual, social, and material realms escaped attention of colonial officials who observed landscapes in western Kenya.
Forests in this case thus appeared not as secluded spaces. Rather, they were spaces implicated in cultural, economic, and social processes. This interlocking relationship was reflected in words used for forests. The Kipsigis in Chepalungu used the word, oosnet, for
10 J.M. Schoffeleers. 1978. Guardians of the Land: Essays on Central African Territorial cults.Gwelo: Mambo Press, p. 5.
11 Neil Kodesh. 2004. “Beyond the Royal Gaze: Clanship and Collective Well-Being in Buganda.” Unpublished PhD Dissertation, Northwestern University; Kodesh. 2007. “History from the Healer’s Shrine: Genre, Historical Imagination, and Early Ganda History.” Comparative Studies in Society and History
56 densely wooded area. The word did not refer to secluded landscapes. Rather, as my
interlocutors emphasized, it referred to a place to live in and to be utilized by people. 12 Forests were therefore seen as places to live in, places embedded in economy, culture, and social relations. But living in was not just a physical process entailing utilization of forest resources for economic purposes. It was spiritual as well, and forests acted as significant spaces which linked the material and spiritual world. Shrines existed within forests where rituals which connected the living with the spiritual world were conducted. There were also sacred trees valuable for rituals.
For the Kipsigis, forests were thus inseparable from cosmology. The same understanding of forests was found among the Avalagoli and Isukha. They referred to forests as ovulimu , meaning
uncultivated dense bush. 13 Although uncultivated, such spaces were not pristine nor bounded, but
were places which people depended on for wood fuel, herbal medicine, food production, and
rituals. No boundaries existed between them and settled areas. These uses reflected a wider
cosmology that sees no boundary between nature and society. In his ethnography of the Bantu
speakers of North Kavirondo, Gunter Wagner contends that:
[A]mong the Bantu Kavirondo there exists no notion of such a duality of ‘natural’ and ‘supernatural’ phenomena as mutually exclusive types of reality. For them the empirical and the mystical are rather two aspects of one and the same reality. They are not mutually exclusive, but supplement each other like the external and internal aspects of a process. 14
Forests were thus viewed within the context of these interconnected metaphysical and material
processes. They were deeply implicated within these processes, forming a nexus between them.
12 My interviewees stated that oosnet refered to open landscape—a place to live in. To live in here means to settle in and utilize. In this case, there was no distinction between nature and society. People considered themselves part of nature and nature as part of them, and this perception shaped ways in which they related to all aspects of nature.
13 See Wagner, The Bantu of North Kavirondo , vol. II.
14 Wagner, The Bantu of North Kavirondo , vol. I. p. 94.
57 Among the Luo, forests were referred to as bunge , meaning dense wood lot or thicket.
Likewise, bunge were not alienated spaces. Although dense, they were open spaces interconnected with human society through material and religious uses.
Lack of the concept forest in its modern sense or in the way colonial officials understood it among the Luo, Kipsigis, Isukha, and Avalagoli, thus, renders it problematic to use the terms forest and forestry according to their modern meanings for the western Kenya cases during this period. 15 In their study on forestry in west Africa, Reginald Cline-Cole and Clare Madge see forestry “as extending well beyond regional ‘forest’ zones and as predating the introduction of scientific forestry into the region during the colonial century.” 16 They base their argument on a sound perspective whose emphasis is that “forest in West Africa is never ‘nature.’ Nor for that matter, was or is forestry.” 17 Implied in this case is that forest and forestry in west Africa were not simply nature, but were systems of beliefs and symbolic representations. Forests contained trees and places considered sacred, valuable as medium to ancestral spirits and the Supreme
Being. Such beliefs shaped and reflected people’s relations to forests. The relevance of this conception of forests to the western Kenya case as available evidence shows is undoubted, for forestry there was also embedded intricately in beliefs about forests along side their symbolic representations as in shrines and rituals that were conducted at those sites. But forests also refer to spaces significant for their material value.
As oral history and oral tradition from the western Kenya region indicate, this perception of forests was long term, passed from one generation to another through the word of mouth and
15 See Reginald Cline-Cole & Clare Madge. 2000. Contesting Forestry in West Africa . Ashgate: Aldershot.
16 Cline-Cole et al, Contesting Forestry in West Africa , p. 6.
17 Cline-Cole et al, Contesting Forestry in West Africa, p. 6; the same idea is emphasized in Rajan R., 1994. “Imperial Environmentalism. The Agendas and Ideologies of Natural Resource Management in British Colonial Forestry, 1800-1950.” Unpublished PhD thesis, Oxford University, UK. 58 rituals repeated annually or whenever there was a crisis. It was also expressed in daily
conversations, in people’s memories, and in actual uses of landscapes. Despite the changes
during the colonial and postcolonial periods, the perception of forests as places to live in has
tenaciously continued among rural folks. In words, memories, practices, and claims over
preserved spaces, the perception still lingers, shaping significantly how people relate to
landscapes and how they respond to policies for afforestation and forest preservation. This
tenacity shows the longue durée nature of the perception and of uses of landscape as the next chapters show.
The perception shaped ways the Kipsigis, Luo, Avalagoli, and Isukha used their landscapes in the period 1930-1940s. Its commonality among these people led to shared ways of using landscapes. But difference in culture and ecological conditions sometimes created variations in ways the people used their landscapes. In the following sections, I shift focus to each of the areas that this study looks at, that is, Chepalungu, Kisian, Maragoli, and Kakamega.
I discuss how their inhabitants used the landscapes and why they used them the way they did.
My aim is to look at how cultural, social, ecological, and historical factors were enmeshed in forest and land use practices common in these areas.
Chepalungu Forest: The Kipsigis’ Paradise
Today, Chepalungu is in the Rift Valley region but was part of the western Kenya region in the colonial period. Hemmed in between Trans-Mara, Masailand, in the south, Sotik in the west and north, and River Nyang’oris in the east beyond which lay Buret, Chepalungu occupied the 59 backwater of Kericho district. One gets a glimpse of Chepalungu before 1940 through oral
tradition, memories of its present inhabitants, and descriptions by colonial officials.
Oral tradition shows that Chepalungu is a term with deep historical significance. It is a
Kipsigis word meaning daughter of the original inhabitants. The term was derived from the
prefix chep , meaning daughter of, and lungu , the original inhabitants. Chepalungu, the place, thus, owed its origin to the daughters of Lungu, the ancestors of the Kipsigis presently occupying
the area. 18 In this context, Chepalungu appears as an appropriative term with a feminine
connotation which the Kipsigis used to claim rightful ownership to the area on the basis of their
ancestry traced to lungu , the original inhabitants. It is, however, not known when the term was
first adopted for the place. That the area became known by this term shows the political
influence that the Kipsigis who currently predominate in the area had over other groups who also
made claims over the place. These groups included Masai, Gusii, and Ogiek, whom some
scholars such as Henry Mwanzi have thought to be the original inhabitants of the forest areas in
Kericho district. 19 The Masai inhabited Trans-Mara, south of Chepalungu, and Ogiek, Mau
Forest area, northeast of Chepalungu.
Because different groups of Africans aside from the Kipsigis had interacted with
Chepalungu from the pre-colonial period to the colonial times, the ethnic configuration of this
place in the period before 1940 was no less than fluid. Recorded oral tradition indicates that there
had been long standing interactions—wars, intermarriage, and trade—between the Kipsigis,
18 David Lang’at, from Chepalungu, a researcher with the Kenya Forestry Research Institute based in Londiani, also expressed this belief in 2005.
19 Henry Mwanzi. 1977. A History of the Kipsigis . Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau.
60 Masai, Gusii and Ogiek. 20 For example, an ex-chief, Torongei arap, narrated in 1951 in his memoirs recorded by Taaitta Towett how the Gusii and the Kipsigis interacted with each other.
“At first Kipsigis girls did not want to marry Kisii men. However, things changed gradually and later on they accepted Kisii men for husband, despite a little social stigma.” 21 Also, Mwanzi pointed out that there were some clans in Kipsigis who traced their descent to Ogiek. 22
Despite such evidence of ethnic fluidity in Chepalungu, the Kipsigis have been known to have predominated in the area in the 1930s. Groups of Ogiek, sometimes referred to as Dorobo, a
Masai word for poor, or lacking cattle, had migrated into Chepalungu in the same period after the colonial government evacuated them from Mau forest area. But they were few, less than a thousand in number. 23 Thus, despite their migration into the area, the Kipsigis remained predominant, evident even in the colonial administration’s declaration of Chepalungu as a
Kipsigis Reserve in the 1930s. Their marginalized status can also be reflected in colonial documents of the later period, 1940 onwards, which only mention them in few cases, focusing only on the Kipsigis. Yet their migration into the area produced considerable changes in the landscape. Based on available sources, this section focuses on the interactions between the
Kipsigis and environment before 1940. It also attempts to consider cases in which the Masai and
Ogiek influenced the environment of Chepalungu. But a look at ecological conditions in
20 See memoirs of Torongei arap Taptugen, an ex-chief, in Taaitta Toweett. 1979. Oral Traditional history of the Kipsigis. Nairobi: Kenya Literature Bureau. Dr. Toweett recorded Taptugen’s accounts in 1951. Taptugen narrated in this memoir how the Kipsigis and Gusii, besides fighting wars against each other, intermarried and intermingled, in the process exchanging ideas and practices. For example, the Kipsigis according to Taptugen learnt iron making from Gusii blacksmiths who came to settle in the Kipsigis land escaping epidemics or wars from their lands.
21 In Taaitta Toweett, Oral Traditional history of the Kipsigis , p. 66.
22 Mwanzi, A History of the Kipsigis , p. 33.
23 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, J. B. S. Lockhart’s, district officer, report on safari carried from July 24 to August 24, 1938. 61 Chepalungu and how the landscape looked is important before examining historical processes
active in the area.
Chepalungu lies at an altitude of about 6000 feet. It is an expansive flat land measuring about 120,000 acres, breaking in the northwestern part near Sotik into a hilly terrain. Its annual rainfall according to colonial officials’ accounts of 1930s varied spatially and seasonally from 50 inches in the northern part to 35 inches in the southern part along the Masai border, with heavy rains occurring between March and May, and short rains November and December. January and
February were mostly the driest months. The rainfall pattern typically oscillated between highs and lows, with some years receiving very low rainfall leading to long periods of drought.
These varied climatic conditions shaped the vegetation of Chepalungu, whose features we can glean from colonial officials’ accounts and oral information. The accounts were written within the framework of degradation discourse that painted Chepalungu as a degraded landscape with diminishing vegetation. Yet they can help to make sense of how the area appeared before the implementation of the forestry policy. The picture is of a patchwork of high dense forest of cedar and olive, dense undergrowth of witch hazel, clumps of trees, bush and vast open grasslands. Describing the vegetation, assistant conservator of forest, P. W. Porter, for example, wrote in 1940 that, “The better forest, approximately 50,000 acres, is situated towards the center, and forms the main catchment area of the Mogor River, which is a small muddy stream. The remainder of the land is open grasslands, covered with thick clumps of trees and bush.” 24 The
conservator added, “In the central block there is a large proportion of Cedar and Olive with
dense witch hazel undergrowth. The Cedar is mostly stunted, and branchy, and average 50-60
24 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, assistant conservator of forests, P. Porter’s letter to the conservator of forest, Nairobi, April 17, 1940.
62 feet in height.” 25 Providing another unimpressive picture of the vegetation is P. P. Bicker, assistant agricultural officer, who wrote, “Except for the cedar which grows near rivers and streams, in the better types of soil, the forest is of no economic value . . . The heavier forest occur mostly in the interior near Mogorr streams and on the banks of Nyangoris, Sise, Olmagon, and Sogorombi rivers.” 26 An anonymous official depicted the negative perception of Chepalungu
when he observed:
The center of the area, probably nearly one third of the whole, is occupied by dense bush and forest interspersed with some glades. The forest is of poor quality but there are numerous patches and belts of moderate Cedar. The whole area is black soil and very swampy in the rains. It forms the main catchments area of the Mogor River, which is a small muddy sluggish stream. 27
These colonial descriptions formed the basis of colonial land alienation policy adopted in favor
of white settlers in the 1930s, which alienated land for settlers and carved out a reserve for the
Kipsigis. The settlers alienated the fertile and well drained areas found in Sotik for settlement
and ranching, then left the whole of Chepalungu to the Kipsigis as a native reserve. The land
policy that favored the settlers later shaped the forestry policy implemented in Chepalungu in
1940 onwards.
The vegetation in Chepalungu was, however, not less diverse as these accounts seem to
portray, but rather composed of several tree species that the colonial officials failed to describe.
They, for example, failed to mention bamboo, reeds and papyrus, mostly lining riverbanks,
which the Kipsigis used for making mats, baskets, ropes, and bowls. Another species known in
25 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, assistant conservator of forests, P. Porter’s letter to the conservator of forest, Nairobi, April 17, 1940.
26 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, assistant agricultural officer, P. P. Bickper’s letter to the District Commissioner, Kericho District, April 27, 1939.
27 PC/NZA/NZA/3/11/9: a letter to the colonial secretary, May 18, 1931.
63 Kipsigis as Kapkorosit or Korosek , locally of great symbolic value also escaped the attention
of the colonial officials. The Kipsigis considered Korosek as sacred and used its vines and poles
to construct altars for the worship of Cheptalel , the Kipsigis God. 28 Generally, the Kipsigis
remember an environment filled with trees, bush, grass, and wild animals, which fluctuated
between bountiful and harsh conditions on the basis of climate change. 29
The soil in Chepalungu was generally thin, lighter and poor in drainage, getting
waterlogged during heavy rains. It could therefore hardly support intensive cultivation and that
explained prevalence of shifting cultivation in Chepalungu that created an ecosystem
characterized by cleared spaces, thickets, and dense forest. The wisdom behind this practice,
which colonial officials ignored, however, was to maintain crop production all the year round
without impoverishing soil fertility. While soil in Chepalungu forest areas appeared thin and
shallow, moving west and north of Chepalungu towards Sotik settlement, the soil changed in
form and structure, turning deep, heavy, black and less exposed to water logging. These were the
areas that European settlers alienated for agriculture and cattle ranching. Based on this policy,
the settlers alienated areas with the best quality of soil in Sotik and left Chepalungu for the
Kipsigis (see the map below).
28 Interview with Keino, 2005, and also mentioned in Mwanzi, A History of the Kipsigis , p. 121.
29 Interviews: the interlocutors narrated how Chepalungu was filled with trees, bushes, grass, and wild animals, which made hunting a major economic activity for the inhabitants. The interlocutors also remembered times when drought hit Chepalungu and the surrounding areas, Sotik, Buret, and Masai, causing shortages of water for stock and domestic use. One such drought occurred in 1938.
64
Map 2: European settlements around Chepalungu forest area (north and west) 30
Alienation of these lands in Sotik for cash crop agriculture and cattle ranching deprived the Kipsigis of lands which in the earlier period they used as herding places. The only alternative they had was to turn to the forest area which in the earlier period was a periodic herding area, used mostly during dry seasons. This period was thus marked by an increase in the use of the forest. Most Kipsigis encroached on the forest, clearing portions of it for settlement, cultivation, and herding. In 1938, after doing a safari in the area, J.B.S Lockart, district officer, reported that
“at present, very few, if any, Kipsigis, are using Chepalungu as purely a periodical stock-grazing area; complete families have come in from the surrounding locations to build homes and
30 A representation of Chepalungu drawn by J.B.S. Sinclair, district officer. See PC/NZA/3/13/25, Sinclair’s report on safari carried on July 24 to August 24, 1938.
65 cultivate shambas besides.” 31 In 1940, cultivators cleared 3,000 acres of the forest. 32 It was during the same time that 800 Dorobo (Ogiek) moved to Chepalungu. 33 They consequently cleared portions of the eastern part of the forest to establish homes and fields for cultivation and grazing. As soon as the Ogiek began their encroachment on the forest, several Kipsigis penetrated into the forest, clearing around 1,000 acres. 34 These increased pressures contributed to damages on the forest that colonial officials and settlers observed during this period. For example, a colonist, Sidney Farrar, expressed concern about “the serious damage that is being done to the Chepalungu forest, the watershed for the Mogor River (later the Gori serving the
Masai country), the Sesi, Omara, and Nyangoris and others, and already the rainfall is changing.” 35 Such statements show no more than the clearing that occurred during that time.
They do not show dynamics which contributed to this increased encroachment on the forest by the Kipsigis and Ogiek. Instead, they carry accusations that settlers and colonial officials made against the Kipsigis for destroying the forest. However, available evidence shows a link between the increased clearing of the forest in 1930s and the policy for land alienation that provided land in Sotik to settlers and deprived the Kipsigis of their valuable grazing land. Such evidence exists in conflicts that frequently occurred between the Kipsigis and the settler farmers whenever the
Kipsigis grazed or watered their stock in the alienated areas. In this regard, for example, in 1938, the district commissioner of Kericho expressed his fears about the situation. He wrote, “As I feared some of the farmers affected by the question of native cattle moving from Buret to
31 PC/NZA/3/11/9, Report on safari carried out by My J.B.S. Lockhart, district officer, August 24, 1938.
32 PC/NZA/3/11/9, W. Porter, assistant conservator of forests, letter to the conservator of forests, April 17, 1940.
33 PC/NZA/3/11/9, C. Tomkinson, provincial commissioner, Nyanza, July 1, 1938.
34 PC/NZA/3/11/9, C. Tomkinson, provincial commissioner, Nyanza, July 1, 1938.
35 PC/NZA/3/11/9, Sidney Farrar’s letter, 1938. 66 Chepalungu [across sotik settler farms], complained to the District Officer that this was
occurring almost everywhere.” 36 Because of the conflicts, the Kipsigis turned to the forest and
cleared different sections for alternate grazing lands. Clearing of the forest had been a common
practice among the Kipsigis, not just a phenomenon of the 1930s. But what was new during this
period was the increase in clearing as a result of the pressure that the Kipsigis faced from the
establishment of settler farms in areas around Chepalungu.
Up until this time, however, as oral history shows, the Kipsigis had used the forest in
varied ways as a place to live in, important both spiritually and materially. Within the forest there
was a shrine where rituals were conducted in honor of ancestral spirits and the Supreme Being,
Cheptalel .37 The rituals for Cheptalel were conducted annually at Kapkoros, Gorgorr, in
Chepalungu. 38 In the shrine, they built a mabwaita (an altar) with poles and vines from korosek, the sacred tree, upon which a white he-goat was annually sacrificed. 39 After every sacrifice, elders sprinkled a concoction of milk and animal urine, sugutek , on the people to bless and heal them from various illnesses.40 But, by 1940s, because of the effects of Christianity, the practice had waned. The National Holiness Missionaries had, for example, established a mission and a school in Chepalungu that had begun to attract converts and students. 41 Ian Q. Orchardson, an
36 PC/NZA/3/11/9, District Commissioner ‘s (Kericho) letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Nyanza Province, November 28, 1938.
37 See Taaitta Toweett , Oral Traditional history of the Kipsigis , 1979, p. 4; Mwanzi, A History of the Kipsigis , p. 119.
38 Interview with Tirop, 2005.
39 Ian Orchardson, The Kipisgis , p.22.
40 From the interview that I had with Tirop. He narrated to me how the Priest would go around sprinkling people with a concoction of urine and milk using a flywhisk as he shouted, Ugonjwa uende (he said it in Swahili), meaning disease go. The practice of offering sacrifice is also mentioned in Mwanzi. Also see Orchardson (1961).
41 PC/NZA/3/11/9, Report on safari carried out by My J.B.S. Lockhart, district officer, August 24, 1938. 67 English settler who after damaging his lungs as a result of his work as a chemist in England, on medical advice, came to Kenya in 1910 and lived among the Kipsigis for 19 years, wrote in his ethnography of the Kipsigis that the ceremony had not taken place in the twentieth century. 42
He did not, however, explain why the Kipsigis had not conducted the ceremony for almost thirty years. What we learn from him is that this practice was already on the wane by 1930s. But my interlocutors emphasized that part of the reason why this ceremony had not been performed was because of the new teachings by missionaries which attracted adherents from the Kipsigis.
Despite the change, the tree, Korosek, and the shrine at Kapkoros, were, however, still considered sacred. But there is no evidence available that link the religious beliefs and practices to ways in which the Kipsigis adapted to the consequences of the forestry policy implemented in the 1940s. Instead, the economic significance of the forest played a central role in shaping how the Kipsigis contested the forest protection policy as the next chapter demonstrates.
The forest had also been valuable to the Kipsigis as an economic resource. They cultivated millet, sorghum, beans, and eluisine on plots they cleared from the forest. Through shifting cultivation, the Kipsigis changed over time sections of the forest into open glades where they periodically grazed stock, and clumps of bush, which formed breeding places for wild animals. Wild animals such as rabbits, squirrels, and antelopes made these bushy areas important sites for hunting. The areas were also important as sources of wood fuel, food and herbs. Such areas were produced through the practice of clearing, in which certain portions of the forest were cleared for cultivation, and the rest left untouched, contributing to clumps of trees and bush which bordered the cleared spaces. When left fallow for a long time, these cleared portions also reverted back to bush, but when used for grazing stock shortly after getting abandoned they
42 Orchadson, The Kipisgis . 68 turned into open grasslands which traversed the landscape of Chepalungu. These grasslands supported pastoralism, one of the major economic activities, besides cultivation, hunting and gathering, in Chepalungu.
In the dense portions of the forest, the Kipsigis hunted big game and honey ( kuumyaat ).
The Ogiek also ventured into these areas from their villages, in the eastern part of Chepalungu, to hunt for honey. Pregnant women took honey to enable them to give birth to healthy and strong babies. 43 Honey was also used to make a sweet drink called kipketenik .44 Its economic value made it an important commodity locally and regionally, and sometimes internationally for export. 45 Its sales provided the Kipsigis and Ogiek in Chepalungu with substantial income, something which settlers and colonial officials working in the area frequently mentioned in their correspondences. For instance, highlighting the importance of honey to the Kipsigis to justify protection of portions of Chepalungu as a forest, K. Beaton, a settler in Sotik, noted, “some 300 tones of honey is produced annually from this area. The price paid to the native is 10 shillings per 60 Ib. tin, which means a net return to the native of 67,000 shillings a year.” 46 C. Porter, assistant conservator of forests, also in the same context, noted that honey industry brings in
70,000 shillings to the inhabitants of Chepalungu. 47 Although there is a possibility that the settlers and colonial officials who reported about honey in Chepalungu could have exaggerated the figures to show the importance of the forest to the Kipsigis as a justification for calls to
43 Interview with Rono, 2005.
44 Taaitta Toweett, Oral Traditional history of the Kipsigis .
45 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, 1938.
46 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, K. Beaton, March 3, 1938.
47 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, Porter, assistant conservator of forests’ letter to the conservator of forests, April 17, 1940.
69 declare it a reserve, the figures could be used as a clue to understanding the local economic
significance of honey. Despite the economic importance of honey, effects of honey hunting on
trees in the forest had begun to attract colonial officials’ attention in 1930s. “The Kipsigis have
done great damage to individual cedars which they ring bark at base, the bark being used for
construction of honey boxes,” wrote P.P. Bickper, an agricultural officer, in 1939. 48
The dense forest ( oosnet ) also served as a food reservoir during periods of drought. Its resources supplemented the meager food supplies available to the people during such hard times. 49 People hunted wild animals and honey, gathered plants and fruits, dug root tubers such as yams and arrow roots in such places. They also turned to the forest for pastures when the grasslands dried out. 50 These were the times when the Masai living beyond the southern border of Chepalungu, in the Trans-Mara region, moved northwards into Chepalungu to look for pastures as well as water. This role began to change in the 1930s when the forest turned into an alternative place for establishing permanent areas for grazing stock.
These interactions between the Kipsigis, Ogiek, and the forest in Chepalungu were embedded within social relations. The resulting landscape unfolded as a social product, embodying varied effects of socially differentiated individual activities. These variations were expressed in the dissimilar ways in which different people related to, and reshaped, the forest.
The differences were predicated on gender, clan, and generation. Young women and girls related to the environment in their roles as collectors of firewood, gatherers of plants and fruits, and
48 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, P. P. Bickper’s, agricultural officer, letter to the district commissioner, Kericho, April 27, 1939.
49 The idea of forest being a reservoir during times of scarcity in food came from an interview I had with Simeon Rono, 2005. Langat, a researcher with the Kenya Forestry Research Institute, Londiani, also confirms this use of densely wooded parts.
50 Interview, Simeon Rono, 2005. 70 cultivators of crops. The crops they cultivated, eluisine, millet, and also sorghum besides
being important sources of food and commodities of exchange, played an important role in social reproduction. For instance, women brewed an alcoholic drink from eluisine, maiywek , which was used in ceremonies such as marriages and to reciprocate those who participated in co-operative labor. 51 Through such uses, new relations were created and old ones renegotiated and cemented. 52
While women cultivated, young men cleared bush and dense woods to create spaces for cultivation. After some period of use, these spaces were frequently left fallow, reverting back to thickets or grasslands, areas in which the young men grazed cattle and hunted small animals. As herders and hunters, men enjoyed dominance over such spaces. Elders regulated use of the environment through control of sacred places and rituals. The elders, however, came from one clan, Bakuresek, whose members were known for their rainmaking skills. 53 Through sacrifices at
Kapsorok and the practice of imparting blessings on the people, the Bakuresek elders were able
to maintain and legitimize their influence over the other clans.
Whereas old men generally regulated communal relations with the environment, old
women by virtue of their experience and knowledge, supervised young women and girls in their
roles as cultivators and collectors of firewood and plants. They were also specialized in medical
practice, a field that was left for the old, women and men, because of their wide knowledge of
the environment and its flora. The field was also protected by the belief that it was only the old,
51 See oral traditions in Taaitta Toweett , Oral Traditional history of the Kipsigis .
52 Arjun Appadurai. 1986. Social life of Things: Commodities in Cultural Perspective. Cambridge University Press.
53 This information is borrowed from Mwanzi, A History of the Kipsigis . 71 beyond child bearing, who were supposed to handle and administer medicine. Other specialized fields for men were honey and game hunting which were done in the dense parts of the forest.
These human relations to the environment, however, were not clear-cut, as they may seem, but typically overlapping and ambiguous in the social realm and not least in their effects on the environment. Environmental spaces in Chepalungu thus appeared as convoluted expressions of multiple activities of men and women of different ages. Within this context,
Chepalungu environment turned out to be more than a mere physical environment. It was both a religious and social space where rituals that connected the living and the spiritual were conducted and where social differences, as well as negotiations were actualized with effects that created socially complex and ambiguous imprints on the environment. It was this complex environment characterized by multiple ecosystems—bush, glades, grasslands, shrine, and dense forest—that settlers and colonial officials encountered and described in the 1940s as disordered and degraded, blaming whatever they saw to what in their view was unwanton misuse of environment by the Kipsigis and Ogiek.
Picture 1: Part of Chepalungu Forest Reserve cleared for settlement, 2005. 72
Picture 2: Honey hunting, an old practice that is still common in Chepalungu, 2005.
Maragoli and Kisian hills
The term Maragoli used for the hill was derived from Mulogoli, the ancestor of the Avalagoli, the people who predominated in the area in the colonial period. According to the available oral tradition, Mulogoli is the ancestor of the thirty two clans of the Avalagoli that lived in Maragoli hills. 54 Among the clans were the Avamavi, Avakirima, and Abasali. 55 But since the beginning of the Avalogoli settlement in this place, which scholars such as Gideon Were, based on oral history, propose to have taken place between 1697-1706, numerous interactions, intermarriages and trade, have occurred between the Avalagoli and people from other communities such as the
Luo and Gusii. These interactions have reorganized to a certain degree the ethnic configuration of this place. 56 For example, the Avalagoli intermarried with the Luo and most of the Avalagoli in Maragoli hill speaks both Maragoli and Luo, but they still presently refer to themselves as
54 Were. 1967. Western Kenya, Historical Texts . Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau; Were, A history of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya ; Wagner, The Bantu of Kavirondo , vol. I, p. 61.
55 Interview with Mzee Magana, 2005.
56 Were, A history of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya ; Eric Barker. 1958. A Short History of Nyanza. Nairobi: East African Literature Bureau, p. 2.
73 Avalagoli. Likewise in this case, we will refer to the people inhabiting this area as Avalagoli the name they have continued to use for themselves despite their long standing interactions with the rest of the communities.
Maragoli is currently in Vihigia district, but was part of Kakamega district in the colonial period. The hill lies at an altitude of over 6000 feet. 57 The area receives an average of between 40 and 80 inches of rainfall per year. Its soil is loamy red and fertile and so appropriate for agriculture. One can get a view of the hill in 1930s and 1940s through oral accounts and colonial documents. The two sources provide different pictures of the hill. Colonial officials provided a view which justified their objective to appropriate the hill and turn it into a forest reserve. They portrayed the hill negatively as barren, interspersed with boulders, treeless, exposed to soil erosion and thus unsuitable for agriculture. 58 These colonial views of the hill reflected the discourse of degradation that ignored ways in which the Avalagoli used the hill and considered only features which could justify afforestation. By contrast, oral accounts provided a more detailed and localized picture rooted in historical experiences between the Avalagoli and the hill.
Just as in Chepalungu forest, as depicted in oral accounts, Maragoli hill intersected with cosmology, social relations and economy. The hill appeared as an embodiment of metaphysical and material processes.
But while Chepalungu had experienced colonialism so far mainly through the policy for land alienation, Maragoli was mostly affected by forced labor. Many young men left their homes to work as laborers in white highlands and as domestic servants in major towns as Nairobi and
57 Judith Abwunza. 1997. Women’s Voices, Women’s Power: Dialogues of Resistance from the East Africa. Broadview Press.
58 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/1, Forestry: conservation and afforestation, Divisional Forest Officer, 1954.
74 Mombasa. Gunter Wagner, doing his survey in Maragoli in 1930s, estimated that “in 1932
about 20% and 1937 about 30% of the adult male population of the District (and probably an
even higher percentage among the Logoli [Avalagoli] was at given time of the year away from
the Reserve.” 59 With men gone, women worked the land to produce food for their households.
Although they did not have rights to land, during this time women rather than men shaped the land a great deal as they and not men cultivated family fields on the hill. But the men who went away did not just come back with the meager cash they had struggled to save. They acted as conduits through which new ideas on how to use the hill began to insinuate into Maragoli. My interlocutors told me a story that captures this case well. 60 The story was about a group of
Avalagoli migrant laborers who worked for a white settler in Nairobi in the 1930s. Impressed by
their work, the settler offered to buy the laborers a bus to help them with transport whenever they
wanted to travel to their rural homes. Having their commmunty in mind, the laborers suggested
to the settler that instead of a bus they wanted something that could benefit the whole
community. On visiting the area in the 1930s before deciding on what to do for these laborers,
seeing the hill nearby, the settler proposed to afforestate the hill to provide the inhabitants with a
source of wood fuel and timber, but village elders and other users refused the idea.
In this narrative, the settler whose name my interlocutors could not remember,
introduced to these people the idea of afforestation, planting a large swathe of landscape with
less varied exotic tree species for particular use, in this case, woodfuel and timber. Afforesting a
hill that had been used in varied ways by its Avalagoli inhabitants seemed to be a new idea and
that might explain why the inhabitants declined the offer. Locally, the idea represented a new
59 Wagner, The Bantu of North Kavirondo , vol. II, p. 94.
60 Interviews with Kavunja, Magana, and George Ayuya in Maragoli, 2005. 75 form of landscape use which would have simplified the myriad ways in which the Avalagoli
used the hill. It had the potential to not only transfigure the landscape, but also reorganize the
ongoing uses of the hill and their underlying social relations, a possible threat to the existing
social hierarachy dominated by elders. The narrative was, however, more complex than just a
story about difference in ideas and practices related to landscape. It revealed significant
conversations between Africans and colonists that had begun to infuse ideas about forests into
African reserves. The ideas slowly began to engender differentiation in views on how to use
landscape among the Avalagoli. While the few laborers supported the white settler’s proposal to
afforestate the hill, the elders, men and women who used the hill in multiple ways objected to the
proposal. Long term perception and uses of the hill prevailed against the idea of afforestation for
the settler went back to Nairobi and the idea was not pursued even by the Avalogoli laborers who
brought the settler to Maragoli. The inhabitants continued to use the hill the way they had been
using it hitherto until late 1940s when colonial officials began to propose it for afforestation.
Maragoli had been valuable to the Avalagoli in varied ways, spiritual and material.
Spiritually, the hill was, and still is, a significant place of worship. On the very top, 6000 feet
high, lay a shrine in a cave sheltered by towering boulders at the center of which stood a big tree
called videdeye . From the topmost spot, the hill provided a rare sublime experience resulting from a scenic and panoramic view of the sky, hanging closely above, and the expansive landscape, spreading far west to Lake Victoria and lands beyond and northeast to Mount Elgon
and southeast to the great depression of the Rift Valley. No wonder the Avalagoli chose it as
their place of worship. It was, however, not just because of the panoramic view that this place
was symbolic. The shrine occupied a place very central in Avalagoli history. It was called
mungurumutu because the Avalagoli believed that it was their place of origin ( ngome ) where 76 their ancestors first settled before spreading out to the outlying lands. 61 Because of their
reverent attitude towards ancestral spirits, Avalagoli paid homage to the lands they occupied
first. 62
But mungurumutu was not just a place to offer reverence to ancestral spirits. It also served as a place where elders performed rituals to the supreme being, Omwami or Nyasai . In addition, it had meaning related to life and health. The tree, v idedeye , produced fruits once in a
year, symbolizing life and fecundity of the Avalagoli. 63 Next to the tree within the shrine
bubbled a permanent spring that flowed downhill. The spring like videdeye symbolized life.
Besides its symbolic value, the spring was used for domestic purposes and for watering stock
down the hill. Generally, thus, mungurumutu did not just serve as a shrine; it also stood as a
source of life to the Avalagoli. In the shrine, priests offered sacrifices mostly animals and
cockerels to Omwami , once in a year or whenever there was a crisis or calamities such as drought
and famine. In this regard, unlike in Chepalungu where priests came from one clan, in Maragoli,
each clan produced an elder to act as a priest. These clans included, the Awamugesi, Abasaniaga,
avamavii, awamhunami, wang’ang’a, and abandete, then living on the slopes of the hill and
around it.64 This broad membership of priesthood acted as a balance against domination of the
society by an individual or one clan. Shared shrine responsibility in Maragoli prevented the rise
of a centralized political system quite in contrast to other areas, as in Buganda, where as Kodesh
61 Interview with Mzee Magana and Baraza in Maragoli, 2005.
62 Wagner, The Bantu of North Kavirondo, vol. II. .
63 Interviews with Magana, Baraza, and Ayuyo also conducted in Maragoli, 2005.
64 Mentioned to me by Mzee Magana in Margoli hills in 2005.
77 shows, clans in conjunction with shrine cult contributed to political development expressed in
the rise of Buganda kingdom. 65
Despite such leverage in the relationship between clans and the shrine, a social hierarchy
existed. Not everyone attended or participated in the ceremonies conducted in mungurumutu . In
contrast to Chepalungu where everyone in the community attended ceremonies at Kapkoros
shrine, in Maragoli hill only the elders and a few young men whom the elders chose to help in
certain duties in the shrine like slaughtering were allowed to go to the shrine only on that
particular day of the ceremony.66 All women and young men, except those selected to help in the
sacrifice, were excluded and they were never allowed to venture near the shrine, unless the elders
allowed it, in which case, a ritual was necessary. During such ceremonies, the animal to be
sacrificed was clubbed to death as the elders recounted their petitions for good health, rain,
peace, and good harvest to Omwami .67 It was then shared among the elders and those who were
allowed to participate in the ceremony.
Mungurumutu was thus a place where the spiritual, social, and natural realms
interconnected. In the shrine, the elders sought to influence not just environmental conditions
that affected people’s lives, but also issues of health, production, and reproduction. It was,
however, a space controlled by a selected group of elders from different clans. As custodians of
65 Kodesh, “Beyond the Royal Gaze.”
66 My interlocutors emphasized that the shrine was essentially a place for men who were elders; women and young men did not attend the ceremonies held up in the hills. The assumption seems to have been that the elders from each of the clans in the area represented the clan members.
67 As my interlocutors narrated to me, the animals were used as a scapegoat for sins committed by the community against Omwami and was thus used in this case to propitiate Omwami just as it happened among the Kipisgis in Chepalungu where sacrifice of a white he-goat was offered to Cheptalel for rain and good health among people and animals.
78 the shrine, the elders influenced the rest of the community through messages from Omwami
concerning activities, such as cultivation, harvesting, and healing.
Contrary to the colonial officials’ view that this hill was bare, rocky, vulnerable to
erosion, and unsuitable for agriculture, oral accounts speak of a place that was not just culturally
important to the Avalagoli, but also served as a valuable economic resource. In the spaces
between the boulders that traversed the hill, farmers, mostly women upto 1940s cultivated
eluisine, simsim, sorghum, and beans. 68 Young men helped in clearing these spaces before crops
were cultivated on them. Cultivating on steep slopes of the hill posed the obvious problem of soil
erosion that the colonial officials also mentioned in their descriptions. The colonial officials later
used the susceptibility of the place to soil erosion to legitmize afforestation of the hill, arguing
that it was essentially unsuitable for agriculture. The farmers, however, had their own ways of
dealing with soil erosion, which the colonial officials who proposed afforestation ignored. Before
planting, the farmers arranged bunds of stones across the hill and cultivated in the spaces in
between.69 This practice helped to maintain soil fertility by preventing top soil from gettting
washed down hill during heavy rains.
Nonetheless, not all areas on the hill were subjected to cultivation. According to oral
information, the hill also had woody areas, bush, and grasses. But, most of the indigenous
vegetation that characterized the hill have since disappeared except for a few which still spotted
the area. The latter included siala (Markhamia lutea ), used as building poles and wood fuel. The disappearence of these indigenous tree species started earlier, but culminated with
68 The central role played by Maragoli women in cultivating crops has also been emphasized in Abwunza, Women’s Voices, Women’s Power, p.19.
69 Interview with Ayuyo and Wafula, 2005.
79 afforestation. 70 According to Magana, a long time resident of the hill, the Avalagoli who lived in this area “cut down most of the trees, other trees rotted, and then disappeared.” 71 The present
Avalagoli remember trees such as Amerembe , Sinzeywe , kigwambara (medicinal plant) and papyrus or reeds ( vidondo ), which filled the hill but no longer exist there. Also on the list were grasses such as Hypertholia dissoluta (osinde ) that the Avalagoli used for thatching houses.
While most of the vegetation disappeared because of afforestation, oral testimonies show that some of the indigenous trees had started to disappear earlier. 72 Such oral testimonies showing uncontrolled exploitation of tree resources by Africans call for an approach that transcends the conservation and exploitation binary implicated in some research on African uses of landscape in the precolonial and early colonial period. Using the “noble African” view that generalizes
African uses of landscape in conservationist terms, most research on African uses of landscapes has tended to emphasize only practices that fit conservation. Consequently, they ignore practices that adversly affected the environment. 73 In the case of Maragoli, for example, clearing contributed to the disappearence of certain indigenous species such as amerembe and kagwambara. Thus, for a comprehensive analysis of African relations to the environment in the precolonial and early colonial period, such practices need to be considered along with practices deemed conservationist within the context of long term and changing economic and social values on forest resources.
70 Interview with Magana in Maragoli, 2005.
71 Interview with Magana in Maragoli, 2005.
72 My interlocutors pointed out that some of the trees now extinct disappeared earlier before the hill was afforested.
73 For information on indigenous uses and management of forest landscape in Kissidogou, Guinea, See James Fairhead et al, Misreading the African Landscape. Tamara Giles-Vernick critiques the way in which the two authors portray indigenous relations to forests as generally conservationist. 80 The uses of vegetation in Maragoli hill were embedded in gender, class, clan, and generation differences just as in Chepalungu. While women collected wood fuel and herbs from thickets, men cleared trees and osinde grass for building and thatching houses. Women also practiced basketry for which they used papyrus and reeds. On the slopes of the hill, there were flat sections on which Avalagoli young men grazed their cattle. Also, bush and grasses provided areas in which the young men hunted wild animals such as rabbits, squirrels, porcupines, and antelopes. The hill was also a home to a number Avalagoli. Other Avalagoli utilized the hill for woodfuel, grasses, grazing stock, herbs, but lived a distance away. People who lived on the slopes depended on the hill for everything—from food, water, medicine, wood fuel, pasture, to building materials. To them, besides being a holy place of worship and a source of resources, the hill was home. By no means does this mean that their relationship with the hill in terms of ownership was different from those who lived away from it. Although different households owned private plots for cultivation and settlement, such rights were recognized communally. The difference in their relations to the hill lay in level of attachment. While elders who controlled the shrine and the rest of the people who lived on the slopes shared deep attachment to the hill, those who lived below the hill related to it mostly as a source of resources, although within the context of its symbolic siginificance as ngome . This variation in the levels of attachment to the hill later affected how those who inhabited the slopes and those who lived on the lands below responded to the afforestation policy.
Spaces on Maragoli hill thus appeared as an embodiment of varied and sometimes overlapping activities of different men and women. These activities created a complex environment that exceeded the colonial officials’ descriptions that portrayed the hill only as barren and strewn with boulders. Echoing the colonial view, J. S. Spears, assistant conservator of 81 forests, described the hill thus: “steep, badly eroded hill-sides, strewn with large boulders, on
which tree-crops are the only satisfactory answer to further land destruction.” 74 From the perspective inhering oral information, however, the hill appeared as a multi-purpose landscape and a complex embodiment of social relations as well as cultural representations of nature. It also appeared as a place suffering loss of several important species of tree. All these process mentioned in oral testimonies demonstrated the long-standing varied attachments of the
Avalagoli to the hill. This was the hill that colonial officials alienated for afforestation in 1955 as will be shown in the next chapter.
.
Picture 3: Part of Maragoli hill from the front. Until 1996 the hill was filled with pines and cypresses
About 4 miles south of Maragoli and 3 miles north of Kisumu, near Lake Victoria, lay another hill, Kisian. A section of the hill, measuring 2,490 acres was declared a Forest Reserve in
1955, but the project stalled in the 1960s as a result of incessant contests by the Luo for contol over this area. Thus, it is no longer a reserve, but it is important to this study in understanding not only how Africans related to their environment, but also how and why the colonial government
74 KNA, PC/NZA 3/ 11/ 1, J. S. Spears, assistant Conservator of Forests letter to the PC, Nov. 13, 1954. 82 alienated African lands as forest reserves. Its importance will also come out clearly in the later
chapters with regard to understanding shifts in the Kenya’s forestry policy in the postcolonial
period.
Because of dearth of sources from the Luo who inhabited the area around Kisian before
the hill was turned into a forest reserve, this section provides only a snapshot of local relations to
the hill using available oral sources and archival colonial documents. The Luo who lived in this
area identified with two different clans in the hinterland of Kisumu—JoKarateng’ and
JoKarondo. Jokarateng lived closer to the hill than JoKarondo who lived right on the northern
borders of Kisumu town. Both groups made claims over the hill. But, in understanding how they related to the hill from their own perspectives, the major problem has been that the Luo of the old generation from this area who witnessed events around the hill before 1940 have passed away, leaving behind less information on the physical conditions and local significance of the hill. Available information in the colonial documents provide a picture that speaks of an uninhabited place, steep, interspersed with large boulders, barren and characterized by poor soil conditions. 75 In colonial officials’ view, Kisian hill was unsuitable for agriculture, hence could
only be appropriate for afforestation. In other words, the colonial officials presented a picture of
an invaluable landscape seperated from the local society. 76 This view misrepresented the
physical conditions of the hill and its multiple significance to the local users. While the colonial
75 KNA Reel 101, PC, Argyle’s, Divisional Forest Officer’s Report. In this document, the Divisional Forest Officer reports on the physical conditions of the hill: the poor soils interspersed with boulders that emitted “solar radiation” during periods of drought.
76 This view is in accord with the European view of nature as wilderness, unused, and uninhabited place removed from the human society, which should be conquered or tamed for the purpose of human civilization. This idea is discussed, for example, in Roderick Neumann. 1998. Imposing Wilderness: Struggles over Livelihood and Nature Preservation in Africa. Berkeley: University of California Press; David Anderson & Richard Grove, 1987; William Cronon. 1983. Changes in the Land: Indians, Colonists, and the Ecology of New England. New England: Hill & Wang; Roderick Nash, Wilderness and the American Mind .
83 officials reported seeing a bare, unused, and uninhabited landscape, the present few Luo of the older generation recall a hill filled with trees, bush, and grass, useful to them in varied ways, contrary to colonial officials’ view that the hill was bare. 77
On the slopes of the hill, the inhabitants cultivated crops such as millet, sorghum and wheat. Individual households cultivated separate private plots regulated within a communal system, with both JoKarateng’ and JoKorando claiming ownership rights to the hill.78 Besides cultivation, the hill provided wood fuel as well as pastures for stock. The inhabitants also obtained building poles, herbs, and grasses ( osinde) for thatching houses. Access to these resources, however, faced occasional encumbrances from occasional fires. Burning the hill was a common practice which availed firewood and helped in clearing fields for crop cultivation. But a few of the inhabitants, especially Jokarateng’ who cultivated plots on the hill disapproved of the practice, for they found it destructive. 79 They always appealed to the local elders to stop the practice, for during such fires they lost herbs, crops, and pastures for stock. The practise continued despite such complaints. This case demonstrate the clash of interests among different users of the hill: those who burnt the vegetation to get woodfuel for local use and for sale, especially to residents of Kisumu town, and those who cultivated and grazed cattle. The conflicts in the use of the hill provide evidence against the view which emphasizes social unity and benignness to environment in precolonial African environmental practices. 80 In this case, burning
77 Naphtali Ojwang’s interview, 2005.
78 Ibid. Ojwang’ stated that individual families owned plots on the hill, but everyone in the area knew that the hill belonged to the community under the control of council of elders, whose duties were to distribute to families land spaces on the hill and to ensure that there were no conflicts between people over the land.
79 Interview with Mzee ojwang’ and mama Mary, 2005.
80 “Merrie Africa” view portrays Africa’s past as glorious and golden, a time when people lived amicably with each other and enjoyed a bountiful nature—Eden like situation. This noble picture has generally been used for indigenous 84 of woodlands common among indigenous people whose importance scholars have recently
associated with regeneration of vegetation, appears as a means of exploiting woodfuel which
frequently led to conflicts among the inhabitants and later between them and colonial officials.
Kakamega Forest, Buyangu Block
Kakamega Forest lies on flat and undulating terrain in the western Kenya region which turn into
steep hills rising at an altitude between 1520m and 1680m, north of Lake Victoria. The forest is
divided into two major blocks: the Kakamega Forest Reserve measuring 19,649 hectares under
the management of the Forest Department, and the Kakamega National Reserve composed of
Buyangu, 3984 hectares, and Kisere Forest, 471 hectares, all under the management of the Kenya
Wildlife Service. 81 These three blocks of the reserve spread over four major areas in the
Kakamega district, which include Buyangu, Bunyala, Malaba, and Kisere. 82 This Forest Reserve
has been considered as part of the eastern extension of the Congo Forest, which arguably was
seperated from the core forest through human activities. The forest was preserved in 1933,
much earlier than the preservation of the other landscapes in the Western Kenya region.
Given the vast size and diverse cultures in Kakamega, this section focuses on the block of
the forest in Buyangu, an area inhabited by the Isukha. 83 Although grouped under the Luhyia
people, a good example, American Indians. For discussion about this myth see A.G. Hopkins. 1973. An Economic History of West Africa. New York: Columbia University Press; Helge Kjekshus , Ecology Control and Economic Development in East African History . On Indians, see Shepard Krech III. 1999. The Ecological Indian: Myth and History . New York: W. W. Norton & Co.
81 Kenya Indigenous Forest Conservation Program, 1993. Livestock Activities in and Around Kakamega Forest . Kifcon, Karura Forest Station, Nairobi.
82 KNA, DC/KMG/2/24/27, Kakamega Forest Station Annual Report, 1962.
83 For more details on the Isukha and Idakho, see M.S. Mwayuli. 2003. The History of the Isukha and Idakho Clans, Among the Abaluyia of Western Kenya . The Catholic University of East Africa.
85 community, their interactions with people from different comunities who migrated to the
region shaped their history, making their identity fluid. 84 Scholars have suggested that these
groups included Nandi and Masai who interacted with the Bantu groups that inhabited the
place. 85 The groups became part of Isukha clan that presently inhabit Buyangu in the Kakamega
Forest district. The ideology of clan played a central role among the Isukha, influencing relations between them and other nearby clans such as Idakho, as well as relations between them and the forest. 86 Yet entrenched interrelations in the form of intermarriages, trade, and patron-clientships between different clans made any perceived interclan boundaries political, hence bringing into question assumptions about reality of clan. 87 Nevertheless, by no means does this view
undermine the instrumentality of clan, as an ideology, in legitimizing claims for rights to land,
the forest, and political positions among the Isukha and idakho.
Before the colonial government implemented the forest preservation policy in Kakamega
forest in Buyangu, the area formed a hotchpotch of vegetation, which included densely wooded
areas, pockets of thick bush of trees and shrubs, and open glades, which formed park-like
environments. 88 This landscape resulted from long time uses of the forest by the Isukha and other surrounding communities. The uses were embedded in local beliefs and social dynamics,
84 Were, A history of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya.
85 Were, A history of the Abaluyia of Western Kenya
86 M.S. Mwayuuli, The History of the Isukha and Idakho Clans, Among the Abaluyia of Western Kenya , p.3. Mwayuuli lists 18 clans in Isukha and 15 in Idakho.
87 Mwayuuli, The History of the Isukha and Idakho Clans, Among the Abaluyia of Western Kenya p. 26.
88 Interviews with Isaiah Lukunzi, Peter Tombe, Monde and Okwemba (code names), 2005; Also see Wagner, The Bantu of North Kavirondo , vol. II.
86 showing how landscape and society were intertwined. The beliefs shaped ways in which
different groups of people in Isukha thought about and related to various aspects of the forest.
The beliefs about the forest were interconnected with social relations among the Isukha.
This interconnection was evident in the Isukha’s relations to particular trees. They had no
shrines, but sacred trees which mediated the spiritual and material realms existed. 89 One such tree was called murembe (Erythrina tomentosa) , used in oath making. Murembe contained power which could be harnessed to dispense justice. To make an oath using this tree was considered among the Isukha as a matter of great weight, for violation of oaths made using murembe resulted in grave consequences. Given the belief, murembe was commonly used in arbitration, for no one dared to contravene an agreement or an oath after swearing on murembe. 90 The case of murembe demonstrated how through beliefs particular trees became instrumental in negotiations to resolve conflicts in order to ensure peaceful coexistence and stability. In murembe, thus , one sees beyond materiality of forest. The use of the tree reveals sociality of forest, its sedimentation in daily rythms of social relations.
This case is starkly different from the colonial officials’ view of forest as separate from society and as valuable only for its materiality. The social value of murembe has been confirmed by linguistic evidence which shows its origin in a root word, lembe , meaning “peace, calm, balance, coolness.” 91 David Schoenbrun shows that a tree of the same attributes existed in the
89 Interview with Peter Tombe, 2005.
90 Wagner, The Bantu of North Kavirondo , vol. II. Wagner uses the word mutembe, instead of murembe . He states that the tree was used in “connexion with oaths and ordeals.” Walter Sangree states that violation of an oath taken by thrusting a spear into the trunk of murembe brought “much sickness and death to one’s family and probably to one’s own death during the next several years.” See Walter Sangree. 1966. Age, Prayer and Politics in Tiriki, Kenya . London: Oxford University Press, p. 90.
91 D.L. Schoenbrun. Comparative Vocabularies for Violence, Vulnerability, and Social Standing in Great Lakes Bantu: Etymology, Semantics and Distributions. Unpublished manuscript, p. 680. 87 Great Lakes Bantu region. The fact that such a tree is widely used in a region with related
languages for almost the same purposes in peace making and social healing provides a powerful
evidence for its long term use. Elision of such valuable forest use practises by colonial observers
showed their lack of knowledge of deeply historically valuable connections between people and
forest, connections which ensured continued existence of both society and forest. Seeing
landscapes only in their material forms, colonial officials failed to recognize such intricate
relationship between people and landscape, an intimacy in essence.
Another tree of such significance was lusiola ( Platycalyx markhamia ) which served a central function in rain making. Whereas in Kakamega this tree had such special functions, in
Maragoli it was used simply for wood fuel and building poles. The difference in its use in the two cases shows how uses of particular trees were culturally specific. In Kakamega, elders prayed under lusiola, especially during times of drought to ask for rain from Were . During such ceremonies, the elders after making their petitions touched the head of young men and sprinkled women with a concoction of animal blood and stomach. 92 Men received the impartation because of their role in defending the community, and women, the sprinkling because their roles were deemed subordinate to those of men. Another important tree, lusui, also known as a woman’s tree was useful for women’s health and could not therefore be cut for any other use.93
In general, these cases showed the intricate connections between beliefs, social relations, and landscape among the Isukha, similar to the case from the Kipsigis in Chepalungu and
Avalagoli in Maragoli. The relations were in stark contrast to the colonial conception of a
92 Interview with Peter Tombe and Ishikunzi, Kakamega, 2005.
93 Interview with Isaiah Lukunzi, in Buyangu, Kakamega, 2005.
88 bounded forest landscape whose use is shaped by fiscal and leisure interests. In Buyangu, the
Isukha used the forest as a source of resources for economic, social and cultural purposes—a
place to to be cleared and settled in when necessary, a place to connect with the spiritual realm,
and a place that provided objects with which to influence climatic conditions and negotiate social
relations.
The uses were underlain by diverse and intertwined system of perceptions of flora and
fuana that characeterized the landscape. For instance, the inhabitants never viewed and used trees
collectively as a forest in the modern sense, but related to particular trees and spaces in the forest
in specific ways: trees for wood fuel, rituals, medicine, basket making, oath making, and spaces
for grazing and hunting. By no means were these relations haphazard and bounded but they
constituted part of the whole belief system which linked them not only to nature as a whole,
people, animals, physical landscape, but also to the spiritual realm. Hardly, thus, can this
complexity in Kakamega and Chepalungu be captured through the colonial or modern
conception of forestry. A clear indication of this complexity existed in the use of lusiola tree, significant not only as a tool for rainmaking, but also as an object around which the residents socialized. During rainmaking ceremonies performed under the tree, elders sacrificed animals to
Were and blessed the people. The activities were not just spiritually significant. They also reinforced social relations among members of the clan, for as the people participated in the rituals they interacted with each other and declared their allegience to the elders and Were .94
Evident here, thus, was an intersection between trees, people, animals, rain, and the Supreme
Being.
94 Omwami or Nyasae are common names for God among the Avalagoli. Bukusu mostly refer to God as Were .
89 But one may ask how the association of lusiola with rainmaking in this case differed from the modern scientific connection between forests and rainfall embedded in colonial and postcolonial government discourse on significance of forests. 95 The two standpoints, though different in terms of methodologies through which their conclusions were arrived at, one through science, another belief and experience, associated trees with rainfall. But, the siginificant difference is that, while the scientific perspective on tree-climate relations is objective and concerned with the whole forest, the Isukha’s view was more particular as well as experiential, for it concerned one tree, and was embedded in a process that involved active mediation by, and participation of, people and deity. The two perspectives not only show difference between old
Isukha’s and colonial uses forest. They also show possible points of intersection between the two perspectives.
Nonetheless, whereas certain trees within the landscape of Kakamega had special spiritual significance, portions of this landscape, including flora, land, and fauna were significant in varied material ways to the people of Isukha. Their significance had intricate linkages with social relations just as it had in Maragoli and Chepalungu. Traversing the landscape were hardwoods which the people used as building poles, woodfuel, and wood for making handles of hoes and axes—tools used in clearing bush and cultivating crops. While building and craftmanships were special fields for men, collection of wood fuel was an activity mostly for young women and girls. Trees were also significant for their medicinal value drawn from their barks, leaves, roots, and stems. In Kakamega, as elsewhere in Africa, medicine was, however, a
95 My interlocutors in Kakamega, for example, Shikonzi, Monde, and Tombe seemed to have internalized the scientific association of forests with climatic conditions. When I asked them how the forest reserve is currently useful to the local inhabitants, they mentioned that it helps them only with rainfall since other local ways of utilizing the forest have been criminalized. So, in their view, rainfall is the only benefit they get from the forest reserve.
90 protected field left for elders and specialists, men and women, who were known locally to
possess elaborate knowledge on ailments and herbal remedies. Apart from the herbs, the forest
provided trees such as ilongo for lighting homes at night in a period when lamps had not reached this place. 96 The forest also had papyrus and bamboo trees used in basketry, a major economic activity in this area. Their hard and flexible stems made them suitable for making plates, baskets, mats, doors, and trays.97 While women dominated basketry in Maragoli and Chepalungu, in
Kakamega it was a field left for men.
The Isukha also practiced shifting agriculture and animal farming in the forest. Men cleared the forest and women cultivated crops such as millet, eleusine, and sorghum. They harvested collectively. The farmers usually abandoned the cultivated fields for newer grounds annually to prevent depletion of soil fertility in order to maintain an adequate level of crop production, because some of the crops they cultivated, for example, millet, did well in new fertile soils. 98 Once abandoned, with time, shrubs and grasses colonized these fields turning them into glades used as grazing fields and grasslands from which the Isukha cut grasses ( Imperata
cylindrica ) used for thatching huts and firing pottery. The change to glades and grasslands
(savannah) occurred only when the fields stayed in an abandoned state for a short period. 99
Otherwise, they turned into coppices and underbrush which traversed most parts of the forest.
96 Mzee Shitambasi mentioned this idea to me during an interview I had with him in 2006, Kakamega. And in the local language the word for lighting is zimuli .
97 Interview with mzee Tombe, Shikunzi, and Monde, Kakamega, 2006.
98 Interview with Shikunzi, Kakamega, 2006. He explained to me that they practiced shifting form of agriculture because crops they planted, for example, millet and sorghum, required “virgin” soils. Virgin here, perhaps, referred to lands that had been un-cleared and uncultivated for a long time, hence accumulated high levels of soil fertility. But it doesn’t mean that they were literally pristine landscapes.
99 Kenya Indigenous Forest Conservation Program, 1993.
91 The coppice and underbrush formed breeding environments for wild animals—
antelopes, elephants, squirrels, hares, lions, warthogs, porcupines—that men hunted to
supplement food provisions. In Kakamega, hunting constituted a major economic activity, quite
unlike in Maragoli and Kisian where it played a marginal economic role. It was a specialized
field dominated by men, although boys also usually tested their unhoned skills with small, non-
ferocious wild animals such as hares and squirrels. 100 Specialized hunters focused on tracking
animals and setting traps, thus, did poorly in other activities such as agriculture. To get
agricultural commodities that they lacked, they bartered meat for other commodities such as
grains, baskets and iron tools. 101 Thus, hunting supported both hunters and farmers through the
existing trade in meat and agricultural commodities. As the result, hunting cemented relations
between people who specialized on different areas of production. Besides wild animals, the
Isukha hunted honey in the dense parts of the forest. Honey hunting, however, occupied a
marginal place in the economy, less extensive compared to Chepalungu where honey served both
as a local and an export commodity.
By 1933 when the forest was preserved most of these uses were officially prohibited by
the colonial administration. Clearing forest for cultivation and extensive hunting in the forest
were some of the activities prohibited. But as my interlocutors emphasized, despite the
preservation of the forest, people still continued using the forest the way they did before the
preservation. Forest rules were still tenously enforced. They continued drawing wood fuel, poles,
medicine from the forest, and herding stock and hunting game within the forest. In cases where
colonial officials got involved, for example, hunting, the inhabitants acted more cautiously.
100 I obtained this information from mzee Tombe and mzeeAchianga, Kakamega, 2006.
101 Mzee Tombe narrated to me how hunters exchanged wild meat for grains and implements, Kakamega, 2006.
92 During his research in the region in the same period, Wagner observed change in hunting as a result of the alienation policy. “As hunting is officially prohibited, it is only pursued by isolated individuals more or less stealthily, and is limited to netting antelopes and trapping and snaring birds and small game,” he wrote. 102
Picture 4: Kakamega forest, 2005
As demonstrated in this section, the relations between the Isukha and the forest were intricate and interlocking, hence inseperable. The Isukha related to the forest as part of their society, a place to use and live in, not as an isolated objective reality. Their culture, social relations, economy, and health were intertwined with the forest. Thus, alienating the forest began to engender unimaginable environmental, sociocultural as well as economic consequences as the next chapter will show.
102 Wagner, The Bantu of North Kavirondo , p. 53. 93 Conclusion
Colonial officials’ and settlers’ observations about conditions of the landscapes in the western
Kenya region in the 1930s and 1940s generally glossed over significant perceptions and processes deeply embedded in African cultures, social relations, history, and landscape. Focusing on the landscapes and what was happening to them then, colonial officials and settlers failed to recognize African uses of the landscapes and their underlying perceptions which were long term and changing as well. Underlying this elision was difference in view and use of the landscapes.
Colonial officials and settlers understood forests as places seperate from societies, places to be conserved for recreational and fiscal purposes. In this context, the value of forests was seen only in terms of their materiality that satisfied those fiscal and recreational needs. Those value had to be tapped into only in those specific and sustainable ways, not haphazard, nor diversified.
Although the landscape that colonial officials and settlers encountered in the western Kenya region had siginficant woody patches, in their condition which appeared disorderly and degraded to the colonial officials, and in the myriad ways they were used, they did not fit colonial officials’ model of forests. According to them, forests had to be beaconed, protected, and subjected to specifically controlled use.
As this chapter has shown, the Avalagoli, Luo, Kipsigis, and Isukha viewed landscapes differently from the way colonial officials viewed them. But through Christianity and migrant labor, new ideas had begun to insinuate into African reserves, influencing views and uses of landscapes by 1930s. In these rural Africans’ cosmology and practise, landscapes were deeply interlinked with society. Forests, in this case, thus, lay sedimented right within society. Their value was not just material, but social as well as spiritual. Forests were not bounded, but were used in myriad ways: timber, wood fuel, herbal medicine, hunting of game and honey, herding, 94 spiritual and social healing. This view and use of landscapes shared among the Luo, Kipsigis,
Avalagoli, and Isukha were long term in nature as oral history evidence indicates. As a result of missionary activities and colonial policies, changes in the way the people used the landscapes had slowly began to take place with profound effects. In Chepalungu, for example, because of the influence of Christianity, the annual ceremony that used to be conducted at Kapkoros was no longer in practise in the 1930s. Also, the land alienation policy had led to a significant increase in forest exploitation among the Kipsigis and Ogiek as they sought to create more land for herding, settlement, and cultivation in the 1930s. In Maragoli, through migrant labor, colonial ideas about forest conservation began to move to the area, differentiating albeit in a much less way people’s views on how to use the hilly landscape. This case showed that colonial views of forest had started to make entry into rural places, slowly influencing people’s views on how to use local landscapes. The difference in views and uses of landscapes and the adaptations that had begun to occur by the 1930s essentially shaped the preservation process in the western Kenya region. This pattern of interactions which was manifested in differences and crossings between environmental ideas constituted a major thread that stretched across the period 1940-1990, shaping the forestry policy in discourse and practise.
95 Chapter three
Alienating landscapes: Forestry policy in Western Kenya 1940-1963
Colonial officials in western Kenya embarked on the policy of preserving sections of landscapes
in Chepalungu, Maragoli, Kakamega, and Kisian before 1940. What motivated the formulation
of the policy in each of these areas is an important question to ask because such motivations
constituted part of what shaped the formulation and implementation of the policy in different
contexts. From the research that has been done so far in Africa, conservation discourse and social
control have mostly featured as the major factors that generally motivated colonial forestry. 1 This
research has emphasized that colonial officials used conservation discourse to obscure real
motives behind the policy, which was social control. This view on conservation resulted from a
top-down perspective. Yet the diversity and particularity of motives that underlay the forestry
policy process in different local areas exceeded conservation and social control.
The process through which the policy was implemented has also been seen from the same
top-down perspective as essentially coercive irrespective of temporal and spatial variation of
colonial contexts. 2 From the backdrop of such a coercive process, local adaptations to the policy
commonly appear in most histories in the form of resistance. 3 But the emphasis on coercion and
1 David Anderson et al, Conservation in Africa ; Thomas Basset. 2003. African Savannas: Global Narratives and Local Knowledge of Environmental Change . Oxford: James Currey; James Fairhead et al. Misreading African Landscapes ; see also James Scott, Seeing Like A State ; Jamie Monson. “Canoe-Building under Colonialism: Forestry and Food Policies in the Inner Kilombero Valley, 1920-40.” In James Giblin et al (eds.), Custodians of the Land .
2 Several literature has focused on how conservation policies in Africa and elsewhere were generally imposed on rural inhabitants. See, for example, Roderick Neumann, Imposing the Wilderness ; see Scott, Seeing Like A State ; Anderson et al, Conservation in Africa .
3 David Anderson. “Managing the forest: the conservation history of Lembus, Kenya, 1904-63.” In Conservation in Africa ; Roderick Neumann, Imposing the Wilderness ; Fiona Mackenzie. 1998. Land, Ecology and Resistance in Kenya, 1880-1952 . London: Edinburgh University Press; See also nationalist scholarship, which has addressed in general colonial policies and African responses, for example, Gregory Maddox. 1993. Conquest and Resistance to Colonialism in Africa. New York: Garland Publishing. 96 resistance as the central dynamics that generally characterized implementation of the policy in
Kenya and other parts of Africa eclipses negotiation, contests, and compromises that also shaped the process. Exceptions exist in work such as Tamara Giles Vernick’s that has gone beyond resistance to capture how Africans appropriated aspects of the colonial forestry policy into their own beliefs and practices. 4 The divide between colonial policy and local adaptations has, however, continued to thrive because of the less attention given to intersections between interests of colonial officials and Africans, as well as their underlying discourses, which resulted in significant effects on both sides. 5
This chapter examines factors that motivated colonial officials to create the forest reserves in Chepalungu, Maragoli, Kakamega, and Kisian. It goes beyond conservation discourse to capture local factors that influenced the making of the policy. These factors varied in each of these four areas. Trypanosomiasis and the fear it generated among colonial officials contributed to the forest protection policy in Chepalungu. Significant work has been done on trypanosomiasis in colonial Africa, but the focus centers on factors that contributed to the spread of the epidemic and how the colonial state deployed it as a tool for social control. 6 Yet the case of Chepalungu shows how colonial officials used fear of the disease to legitimize a forestry
4 Tamara Giles-Vernick. Cutting the Vines of the Past ; Also see Fairhead, Misreading the African Landscape ; Christopher Conte. “Ecological History in the Plateau Forests of the West Usambara Mountains, 1850-1935.” In James Giblin et al, Custodians of the Land .
5 The most recent work by David Schoenbrun has made important contribution toward this end, focusing on complex interactions between deep historical African public healing practices and various forms of power embodied in colonialism as well as capitalism. See David Schoenbrun, “Conjuring the Modern in Africa.”
6 See James Giblin. 1992. The Politics of Environmental Control in Northeastern Tanzania, 1840-1940. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. Giblin focuses on the political-economic changes resulting from colonialism that contributed to the rise of trypanosimiasis epidemic. See also Richard Waller. 1990. “Tsetse Fly in Western Narok, Kenya.” In the Journal of African History , vol. 31. Waller is concerned with socioecological factors—intra-social conflicts and vegetation change—that contributed to the rise of the epidemic in Narok; Maryinez Lyons. 1992. The Colonial Disease: A Social History of Sleeping Sickness in Northern Zaire , 1900-1940. Cambridge University Press. 97 policy that aimed at changing not only social relations between white settlers and Africans but also physical environment according to colonial notions of hygiene. In Nyanza, demand for wood fuel in Kisumu, a small but growing town near Lake Victoria, contributed to the afforestation of Kisian and Maragoli hills, while the need for timber for building Kakamega town was central in the protection of Kakamega Forest. Conservation became a central discourse that colonial government officials began to use only after 1955 to justify the forestry policy nationally.
The chapter also examines the process that characterized the implementation of the policy in the four areas. Negotiations and contests between colonial officials and Africans characterized the process. The compromises reached as a result of negotiations over use and management of the landscapes contributed to the implementation of the policy in all the cases. But contests which emanated not just from Africans but also from colonial officials at times frustrated the policy process. What these Africans and colonial officials specifically contested constitutes a major concern for this chapter.
Of concern as well were things Africans drew from in their struggle. Some of these things included local African traditions in land use, and labor within indigenous as well as colonial context. Traditions were important because they shaped African perceptions of the colonial forestry policy. Also, Africans deployed them to legitimize their rights to the landscapes when colonial officials wanted to alienate them into the forest reserves. Furthermore, colonial officials at times attempted to fit the policy within local traditions to legitimize the process in the eyes of
Africans. From neo-Marxist perspective, labor has been seen as an object of control and 98 exploitation that Africans in colonial capitalist context resisted. 7 Elias Mandala, however, weaves labor into stories about resistance and accommodation between African peasantry and imperial capitalism in Lower Tchiri Valley in Malawi. 8 But labor was significant not just as a process that contributed to instances of resistance and accommodation in the colonial context. As an embodied process embedded in people driven by interests and aspirations within specific cultural contexts, not a mere means of production, labor empowered Africans to negotiate and bargain with colonial officials for more land rights in new places within and outside their reserves. 9 In this process, labor mediated indigenous African practices and colonial officials’ agenda on local forests because it was inseparable from the peoples’ culture, interests and aspirations. The process contributed to compromises, which subjected colonial forestry to
African traditions in land and forest use. But before addressing these issues, a brief look at the general condition of the forestry policy in Kenya after 1940 is important in understanding its structure at the national level and how it translated at the local levels during this period.
Kenya colony had no central forestry policy until 1957 when colonial government enacted the white paper on forestry policy. Neither did the forest department have any written policy on forests. 10 Most colonial officials working at the district levels of administration made
7 R.M.A van Zwanenberg addresses European settlers’ attempts to extract surplus from African labor in Central Kenya. R. M. A. van Zwanenberg. 1975. Colonial Capitalism and labor in Kenya, 1919-1939 . Kampala: East African Literature Bureau. Tabitha Kanogo is concerned with Kikuyu laborers’ resistance against coercion and subordination by European settlers and colonial government: Tabitha Kanogo. 1987. Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau . London: James Currey.
8 Elias C. Mandala. 1990. Work and Control in a Peasant Economy: A History of the Lower Tchiri Valley in Malawi, 1858-1960 . Madison: Wisconsin University Press.
9 In indigenous context, labor enabled Africans to acquire use and ownership rights to land. It was in that context that they used labor needed in forestry related projects to gain use and ownership rights over new land.
10 J. P. Logie, Forestry in Kenya: A historical account of the development of forest management in the colony.
99 policy statements that were localized, diverse and less coordinated. Lamenting this state of affairs, the chief conservator of forests wrote:
Too much emphasis cannot be laid on the need for a statement of forest policy made at the highest administrative level and published. Management of this colony’s Forest Estate has suffered too long from the absence of an accepted Forest Policy. 11
The colony also suffered from lack of personnel trained in forestry. Most officials who engaged in forestry in this period at the district or provincial levels came from agricultural, veterinary, civil, labor and medical departments. The few who had training in forestry were posted to districts, which the colonial officials viewed as heavily forested, hence worth protecting, and because the western Kenya region appeared to the colonial officials as largely unforested, except for Chepalungu and Kakamega, it was invariably ignored when it came to posting of forestry personnel. Calling for the colonial government attention on this matter, the Provincial Labor
Officer of Nyanza Province wrote:
[T]he province [the present western Kenya] is again noteworthy because it possesses no forest officer. Although it will be agreed that the all too small existing acreage of forests in the colony must be protected at all costs it appears that little attention is paid by the Forest Department to the spread of tree growing in other areas. Forestry officers are posted to Forest Reserve districts; forestry becomes a part of the Agricultural officers’ duties elsewhere. 12
This situation partly resulted from the Second World War. About 11 foresters left the forest department to enlist in the military, stripping an already understaffed department of its few qualified personnel. 13 It was in this background of a centralized and weak forest department characterized by short supply of trained personnel, especially at the local and regional levels of
11 KNA, VF/11/1, chief conservator of forests’ letter to the Secretary of Forest Development, July 26, 19543.
12 KNA, PC/NZA/2/10/12, the provincial labor officer, Nyanza Province, tree planting item, January 20, 1951.
13 J.B. Logie, Forestry in Kenya. 100 administration that colonial officials from different departments working in the western
Kenya region proposed to alienate certain sections of Chepalungu, Maragoli, Kakamega, and
Kisian as forest reserves. In the following sections, I explore in each of the areas why the forestry policy process occurred, how it unfolded, how it impacted Africans and how Africans adapted to the process between 1940 and 1963.
Map 3: Western Kenya forest reserves
101 Forest Protection, Tsetse flies, and Segregation in Chepalungu
Occupying the backwater of Kericho district, Chepalungu was, and still is, a place of physical and temporal contradictions. Larger climatic forces have dictated this scenario. At its best, during rainy seasons, Chepalungu teemed with rich pastures, food and fresh water for people and animals, but at its worst, during dry spells, it turned into the meanest environment one can imagine—dry fields, desiccated riverbeds, withered fruitless vegetation, and cracked soils. 14 An example of such harsh times occurred in 1938, when it failed to rain for many months. As a result, contests over water and animal pastures erupted between the Kipsigis and white settlers, who had by then settled in Sotik, the area bordering Chepalungu in the west. P. P. Bickber, agricultural officer, for example wrote: “During the dry year 1938 natives in this location were severely inconvenienced by shortage of water chiefly for stock. Trespassing on European owned farms at Kytit and Kerongit was the result.” 15
Since drought was not a novel occurrence in this place, the Kipsigis and Ogiek had developed ways of adapting to and minimizing its effects. During such times, they turned to the densely wooded areas which acted as reservoirs of food and pastures. They drew root tubers, gathered leaves of wild plants, hunted honey and wild animals, and grazed their stock in these areas. For water, they turned to permanent springs in Sotik such as Kelongit, which proved adequate for people and stock until rain resumed. 16
14 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, P.P. Bickber, assistant agricultural officer’s letter to the District Commissioner, Kericho District, April 27, 1939.
15 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, P.P. Bickber, assistant agricultural officer’s letter to the District Commissioner, Kericho District, April 27, 1939.
16 John Kiprotich, September 2005. He narrated how during dry periods the rivers in Chepalungu dried and they would take their cattle to Kerongit permanent spring in Sotik for water. 102
Map 4: Chepalungu, Sotik and Trans-Mara.
Tremendous changes which circumscribed alternatives available to the Kipsigis for survival during periods of drought began to occur by 1930s. The effects of colonialism had penetrated this place in significant ways. European settlers had established farms and ranches in
Sotik, around the eastern, northeastern, and northwestern borders of Chepalungu. Expansion of these settlements into Koiwa, Buret and Tinderet, locations bordering Chepalungu in the north, prompted displacements of the Kipsigis and Ogiek most of whom subsequently moved southeastwards into Chepalungu to continue with their extensive agro-pastoral activities. As happened elsewhere, for example, in Central Kenya, the settlers in Kericho district with the help of the colonial state alienated areas that were of high quality in terms of richness of soil and 103 permanence of water supply. 17 They carved out areas in Sotik for themselves and left
Chepalungu where most rivers were seasonal for the Kipsigis. But as in the preceding periods, despite restrictions by the settlers, the Kipsigis and Ogiek living in Chepalungu continued in the late 1930s to depend on the permanent water sources in Sotik for domestic use and for their cattle during dry periods, frequently drawing harsh responses from the settlers who also claimed ownership rights to the permanent springs.
This practice generated serious conflicts between the Kipsigis and settlers in 1938, which became a watershed to the struggles from 1940s onwards to preserve densely wooded areas in
Chepalungu. The conflicts were, however, not just about water and pastures. They were also about social differences and their underlying discourses. Disease and fear of disease coupled with colonial imageries of hygiene became central tools that shaped the forestry policy that colonial officials implemented in Chepalungu beginning in the 1940s. The socioecological conflicts that intensified in 1938, culminated into the formulation and implementation of the forestry policy in Chepalungu, hence worth discussing.
On December 22, 1938, an altercation that almost erupted into violence occurred on a farm belonging to a settler, H.C. Dawson, in Manga, Sotik, west of Chepalungu. 18 As B. Sinclair
Lockhart, the District Officer of Kericho, reported, Mr. Dawson’s headman, Arap Chemaset, had narrated that on that day a group of Kipsigis herders were grazing their cattle on unoccupied alienated land near a famous local watering place, Kelongit. The headman and a Kenya Police
Constable named Kibor, under the impression that the area was part of Mr. Dawson’s estate,
17 This also happened in other areas in Africa. See Nancy Jacobs, 1996. “The Flowing Eye: Water Management in the Upper Kuruman Valley, South Africa, c. 1800-1962.” The Journal of South African History 37, 2.
18 The event is reported in KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9 by B.S. Lockhart, District Officer, in his letter to the District Commissioner, December 23, 1938.
104 ordered the herders to depart with their stock. The Police Constable apparently had been sent
there earlier “to patrol the area for the trespassing Kispsigis and their stock.” 19 The herders refused to heed the constable’s order and, instead, called for help from those nearby. A group of
‘natives’ responded and with pangas (machetes), threatened the two, who in dread escaped to a neighboring homestead belonging to another settler by the name Charles. From there, the two made calls to the Assistant Inspector of Police, Kericho district, who then called Sinclair
Lockhart, the District Officer, before heading to the scene. He arrived there at 4pm the same day with two constables. The Inspector reported having seen “a great many natives sitting on hillocks around and hundreds of stock around moving off towards the Abossi end of Chepalungu after having watered at the Kelongit permanent spring and no doubt having grazed in the vicinity en- route.” 20
This case was not the only one that had attracted the attention of the colonial administrators in Kericho district. Earlier in the month of November, Mr. K. de P. Beaton, another settler, had written to B. Sinclair Lockhart, the District Officer, complaining about the
Kipsigis who trespassed on his estate. He wrote:
I am writing to you to ask you to please take immediate action to stop the wholesale trespass of Chepalungu natives and their stock on my Kytit property…Daily the women are incanting and pouring water from gourds, as a supplication to whatever god or gods they worship. As no result has come of this, they calmly walk across my farm with all their stock to water each day. Not only do they graze to and from the water, but there are several outbreaks of rinderpest in various bomas [homes] and there is no Veterinary or Police control. 21
19 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, District officer’s letter to the District Commissioner, Kericho, December 23, 1938.
20 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, District officer’s letter to the District Commissioner, Kericho, December 23, 1938. 21 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, K. Beaton’s letter to the District Commissioner, Kericho, October 15, 1938.
105 It was in the context of such conflicts between the Kipsigis and settlers apparently
over sources of water and grazing places that in 1946, A.C. Swann, the District Commissioner of
Kericho district, reported about an alarm at two outbreaks of animal trypanosomiasis in Sotik
settler area, bordering Chepalungu, an African reserve. On receiving the report, the settlers
blamed the Kipsigis herders and their stock for the outbreaks. In response, zoologists and
veterinary officials from the region conducted a field survey in settler farms in Sotik and African
reserve in Chepalungu to determine the origin of these outbreaks of trypanosomiasis. But
throughout the settler farms and African reserve, the survey yielded only three Glossina pallidipes , one in the vicinity of the settler farms and two in the African reserve. 22 Based on this
finding, field zoologists, E. Aneurin Lewis and J. D. Freund downplayed the fears among Sotik
settlers that tsetse flies had spread into the alienated farms. The question still troubling some
settlers, nonetheless, was how the fly reached the vicinity of their farms and whether or not it had
caused the two outbreaks of animal trypanosomiasis. The zoologists attributed the one fly found
in the vicinity of Sotik farms to mechanical transmission through movement of people and stock
from the nearest known fly infested area in Trans-Mara, Masailand, bordering Chepalungu area
in the south. 23 But they delinked it from the few outbreaks of trypanosomiasis that had occurred
in the settler farms. They argued that these outbreaks had been “transmitted by biting-flies from
infected native-owned cattle grazing, watering or passing near to the cattle farms.” 24
22 KNA, PC/NZA/2/14/63, Aneurin Lewis’s report on Tsetse-fly situation in Chepalungu, December 20, 1946.
23 Historical research has confirmed the infestation of this area by trypanosomiasis in the period prior to the Second World War. See Richard Waller. “Tsetse fly in West Narok.” Waller links the infestation to intra-communal conflicts among the Masai, Rinderpest epidemic, and migration, which contributed to expansion of bushy conditions conducive to tsetse fly breeding.
24 KNA, PC/NZA/2/14/63, Aneurin Lewis’s report on Tsetse-fly situation in Chepalungu, December 20, 1946.
106 The zoologists blamed the Kipsigis for the mechanical dispersal of tsetse flies from
Trans-Mara and for the small outbreaks of trypanosomiasis in Sotik settler farms. The two
Glossina pallidipes caught earlier in Chepalungu wooded area were reportedly found in “isolated pocket of thickets where no breeding places were found.” 25 But, Lewis still emphasized that these thickets, which in his view were “residual patches of dense forest,” afforded permanent breeding environments to tsetse flies because during the survey “[n]o flies were found in the dense forest, nor in the open country occupied by the Kipsigis. They were restricted to the half- cleared patches of forest (thickets).” 26 Consequently, the zoologists accused the Kipsigis of disordering the environment. They blamed the Kipsigis for clearing the forest haphazardly and leaving behind several patches of thickets favorable to Glossina pallidipes . Lewis wrote:
They have not known that the partial opening-up of the dense bush, creating numerous glades separated by narrow bends of forest and leaving behind them patches of uncleared bush in the form of thickets, has favored the dispersal and rather prolonged the stay of G. Pallidipes in the vicinity of grazing-grounds within the forest. 27
Although the zoologists had ruled out natural breeding as a factor behind the presence of the two pallidipes in the vicinity of Chepalungu, suggesting mechanical transmission as the likely cause, they still went ahead to propose a policy meant to change the landscape. Based on the finding from the survey that the fly disliked continuous dense forest and open country, the zoologists proposed, on the one hand, to clear the thickets, and on the other, to protect an undisturbed dense forest to prevent the dispersal of tsetse flies into Chepalungu Reserve and
Sotik settler farms and preventing future outbreaks of trypanosomiasis in the region. “The
25 KNA, PC/NZA/2/14/63, Aneurin Lewis’s report on Tsetse-fly situation in Chepalungu, December 20, 1946.
26 KNA, PC/NZA/2/14/63, Aneurin Lewis’s report on Tsetse-fly situation in Chepalungu, December 20, 1946.
27 KNA, PC/NZA/2/14/63, Aneurin Lewis’s report on Tsetse-fly situation in Chepalungu, December 20, 1946.
107 pressing need,” the Provincial Agrarian Development officer, Nyanza province, had emphasized, “is to control the movement of tsetse fly in the Trans-Mara of Masai from moving north into Chepalungu and the European settled area in Sotik.” 28 Implied in the statement was the idea that the policy was intended to benefit not only the European settlers living in Sotik, but also the Kipsigis in Chepalungu reserve. Apart from preventing the encroachment of tsetse flies into
Chepalungu and Sotik, A.C. Swann, the District Commissioner, stated that the policy for clearing thickets was “to open up additional land for African settlement.” 29 The aim as evident in the designation of the project as Betterment was to transform the environment, infrastructure, settlement, agriculture, and livestock farming in Chepalungu.
Just as in most colonial state projects, the plan of the scheme was abstracted into a map, which the colonial administrators were to follow in their objective of reordering the place. The map ignored all other things and captured only those features that interested the colonial administrators: the forest to be protected and the thickets to be cleared and used in settling
Africans (map 4). As James Scott points out, schemes of this nature typically “are designed to summarize precisely those aspects of a complex world that are of immediate interest to the map maker and to ignore the rest.” 30 The rest of the things that the maps neglect are, however, the very things that end up shaping the projects that they represent. Scott maintains that “the transformative power resides not in the map, of course, but rather in the power possessed by
28 KNA, PC/NZA 3/ 11/7, The Provincial Agrarian Development officer’s letter to the Commissioner, African Land and Settlement, 1948.
29 KNA PC/NZA 3/11/7, A.C. Swann’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Nyanza Province, September 17, 1947.
30 James Scott, Seeing Like A State , p. 87.
108 those who deploy the perspective of that particular map.” 31 But the case of Chepalungu shows how the power was diffused among colonial officials who deployed the maps for various reasons, as well as among the Kipsigis who contested the resulting policy. The Kipsigis also had power which enabled them not just to contest but also to negotiate over the policy agenda in the context of local traditions and changing political conditions. 32
According to the plan, Chepalungu was to be divided into four areas (map 4). Area 1, bordering Sotik settler farms and stretching north of the dense forest, already settled by the
Kipsigis, was to be cleared and the Kipsigis living there given the option of adopting co- operative farms. Area 2, adjoining Trans-Mara, the fly pocket area was earmarked for clearing and not settlement because of its fragile soil. Area 3, south of the dense forest—partly forested and filled with bush and glades—was proposed for clearing to settle immigrants from Koiwa, northeast of Chepalungu, strictly under cooperative farms and area 4, the dense forest, for reservation. As the zoologists and veterinary officials emphasized, the purpose of clearing patches of forests and protecting the dense forest was to create barriers against the encroachment of tsetse flies into Chepalungu Reserve and Sotik farms. 33
Besides clearing bush and protecting the forest, the District Commissioner, A.C. Swann, and the zoologist, Aneurin Lewis also proposed construction of fences to create a boundary between Sotik settler farm, Chepalungu and Trans-Mara, the fly infested area, which was part of
Masai land. One fence was to run between area 1 and Sotik settler farm, then westwards round
31 Scott, Seeing Like A State.
32 While Scott focuses on resistance by local subjects, there were also instances of negotiations and compromises between subjects and agents of the state that significantly shaped policy formulation and implementation process. See Ibid, 87.
33 KNA, PC/NZA3/11/7, conservation and forestry, Nyanza Reserves, South Lumbwa, Chepalungu, 1946-1950.
109 the forest, then turn southwards toward the fly infested area, where a fence was to be erected
between area 3 and 2 to “act as a barrier to fly advance from the pocket in Masai” (shown in map
4). Justifying the fencing project, the District Commissioner emphasized that “it would help
considerably in preventing the spread of trypanosomiasis and reduce the danger to European
stock arising from cattle trespass.” 34
Although the colonial officials attempted to present the scheme in a technocratic manner, underpinning it was a discourse which depicted the Kipsigis as backward, incompetent and unhygienic. According to this discourse, the Kipsigis, their livestock, and environment were seen essentially as agents of diseases that threatened the settler world. This discourse explains why, when trypanosomiasis broke out in the two settler farms in Sotik in 1947, even before the zoologists did their survey, the settlers and colonial officials had already formed the opinion that the disease originated from the Kipsigis reserve because of the “dirty” stock and unhygienic environment. The available evidence shows that prior to the outbreaks of trypanosomiasis, the settlers had been blaming the Kipsigis and their stock for outbreaks of other diseases, such as rinderpest, in their farms. For instance, P. Beaton, a settler, complaining to the District
Commissioner about the stock wrote, “Not only do they graze to and from the water, but there are several outbreaks of rinderpest in various bomas and there is no Veterinary or Police control.
As you are aware, I am trying to clean this property from a stock point of view, and unchecked movement of dirty stock in this way hardly helps.” 35
This discourse hardly spared the environment of Chepalungu. It presented this environment as disordered and prone to disease infestation, and blamed the Kipsigis for the
34 KNA, PC/NZA 3/11/7, A.C. Swann’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Nyanza Province, May 4, 1948.
35 KNA, PC/NZA/3/13/25, P. Beaton’s letter to Swann, the District Commissioner, November 15, 1938.
110 situation. In his criticism of the Kipsigis, Aneurin Lewis, the chief field zoologist wrote, “the clearing of forest by the Kipsigis in parts of the Chepalungu has been so haphazard as to create conditions favorable to G. pallidipes .” 36 In this context, the policy of clearing and protecting the forest unfolded as a strategy to protect Sotik white settlement by reordering the environment and restricting African activities that had contributed to the environmental conditions in Chepalungu that in the opinion of the colonial officials threatened disease. 37
The forestry policy together with the project of creating physical fences in Chepalungu aimed at essentially segregating—racially and tribally. Besides creating physical boundaries, the proposed fences appeared as metaphors for separation aimed at warning the potential aggressor that crossing was a trespass. The fences were not just aimed at preventing cattle trespass, but at restricting the movement of the Kipsigis and Masai across the Sotik farms and Masai land. They were practically about stock as much about people. Pushing for the colonial government funding for the fencing project, acting District Commissioner, Kericho District, P. W. Low wrote, “The
Sotik settlers have an extremely difficult time keeping native cattle off their farms. They have suffered heavy losses through the mechanical transmission of disease from native cattle.” He added, “The provision of the fence would be a sound move politically. Not only would it make the work of this office and the police very much easier, but relationships between the settlers and
Kipsigis would improve.” 38
36 KNA, PC/NZA/2/14/63, Aneurin Lewis’s report on Tsetse-fly situation in Chepalungu, December 20, 1946.
37 The aim behind the clearing and forest preservation was to prevent contact with trypanosome hosted in pallidipes . For research on ways in which the disease is transmitted see J. Ford. 1971. The Role of Trypanosomiases in African Ecology: a Study of the Tsetse Fly Problem . London: Oxford University Press; James Giblin. The Politics of Environmental Control in Northeastern Tanzania.
38 PC/NZA3/11/7, P. W. Low’s, acting District Commissioner, letter to the Provincial Commissioner, May 4, 1948.
111 The question worth asking is how this fence would have improved relationships between the Kipsigis and settlers if not as a tool for segregation. The northern fence was to keep the Kispigis and their “dirty” stock away from the settler farms, and the southern to keep the
Masai and their stock away from Chepalungu. In the latter case, the idea was not to protect
Chepalungu, which was an African reserve, but to protect the Sotik settler farms. But colonial officials conflicted over this project. While those at the local levels such as the District Officer and District Commissioner rooted for the project, the Provincial Commissioner disapproved it because it was aimed at serving only the interests of the settlers and not of the Kipsigis. In his criticism of the project, the Provincial Commissioner, K.L. Hunter, insisted that “[t]his fence would not add any protection to the area which is fly infested, but was designed merely as insurance for farms lying to the north.” 39 Besides protecting the farms in Sotik, the fencing was aimed at separating the Kipsigis of Chepalungu from the Masai in order to prevent the Masai from moving with their cattle into Chepalungu and the Kispsigis from moving into Masailand.
Segregation as a means of ensuring security to the European settlers not only aimed at creating barriers between the settler farms and the Kipsigis reserve and settling the Kipsigis on particular restricted spaces. It also aimed at transforming their economic activities. With experiences else where, the colonial officials had realized that segregation could not be achieved by restricting movements alone. The key, in their view, also lay in initiating development in the reserves, separate from the European settlement with the aim of changing practices of the
Kipsigis that seemed threatening to the settler community. This idea was in fact in accord with the justifications that had earlier been provided for Indirect Rule. As anthropologist Lucy Mair
39 KNA, PC/NZA 3/11/7, Minutes of the proceedings of the Provincial Team assembled in the Provincial Commissioner’s Office, January 10, 1948.
112 stated in 1936 “The basic aim of Indirect Rule is the development of African society able to
participate in the life of the modern world as a community in its own right.” 40
To achieve this development objective for the Kipsigis reserve, the colonial officials
planned to replace the extensive agro-pastoral activities in Chepalungu with intensive agriculture
and livestock farming. The proposal to protect the forest and clear bush was thus a
sedentarization project that aimed at dismantling the local economy as well as the open and
bushy environment it had spawned—an environment that threatened settlers with
trypanosomiasis. Aneurin Lewis captured this objective when he wrote that the scheme was:
[T]o enable the district team to inculcate the principles of agricultural improvements, prevent haphazard destruction of forest which among other disadvantages will, in this case, attract tsetses; it will also enable the introduction of improvements with regard to stock and stock diseases.” 41
This scheme demonstrated interconnections between forestry policy, public health, agriculture, and livestock farming.
While the motivations behind the Forest Scheme included segregation of the Kipsigis reserve by restricting movements of the Kipsigis within Chepalungu and of the Masai and their stock outside Chepalungu, its implementation unfolded as a process of contests and negotiations between the Kipsigis, Masai, and colonial officials that significantly shaped the policy. The policy outcome thus exceeded the limits of its initial objectives—social control and environmental change. It unfolded as an embodiment of contests and negotiations between colonial officials and the Kipsigis, processes that infused Kipsigis traditions on land/forest use
40 Jesse Ribot. 1999. “Decentralization, Participation and Accountability in Sahelian Forestry: Legal Instruments of Political-Administrative Control.” Africa: Journal of the International African Institute, vol. 69, no. 1, p. 24.
41 KNA, PC/NZA 3/ 11/7, E. Aneurin Lewis, chief field zoologist, December 20, 1946. 113 into the forestry policy agenda. Essentially, the forestry policy as the result was shaped in ways that colonial officials never anticipated.
Implementation of the clearing and settlement facet of the forest scheme began in 1947. It was implemented in two sections using Kipsigis laborers within Chepalungu. The first section covered the areas north and south of the dense forest, and the second, concentrated on the southern border of Chepalungu adjoining Trans-Mara, the tsetse infested area (see map 4). While the first section aimed at clearing the bushy areas in the Kipsigis Reserve for settlement, the second aimed at clearing barrier between Trans-Mara and Chepalungu without settlement. The
Kipsigis Reserve project started off successfully, but the one near Trans-Mara started in spasms and then stopped.
According to the available evidence labor appeared central in shaping the disparate courses the two parts of the project took. The central question was whether or not the conditions for labor dovetailed with ways in which the Kipsigis had been using the forestland. Although the scheme in the Kipsigis Reserve aimed at stopping shifting cultivation, paradoxically, in implementing it the colonial officials tapped into the Kipsigis ways of acquiring use and ownership rights over land. In indigenous context, clearing and cultivation established temporary rights of ownership over a piece of land and its resources to an individual or a household. In other words, use of labor bestowed ownership and its withdrawal nullified such ownership. The principle of individual use and ownership, however, did not contradict communal ownership, but was in fact part and parcel of the system. For although land was communal, individuals or families through use appropriated ownership rights. One could not make claims over a piece of land, which another person had cleared, settled in, or put into cultivation. As Mahmood
Mamdani points out, “there was no necessary contradiction between notions of community rights 114 and corporate and individual rights: the existence of one did not necessarily preclude that of
others.” 42
In much of elsewhere in Africa, colonial land and agricultural policies rested on the
assumption that Africans had no notion of individualized free-hold tenure. But the colonial
policy of clearing and settlement in the Kipsigis Reserve of Chepalungu mirrored the principles
that underlay Kipsigis practice of shifting cultivation in which clearance and use rights conferred
ownership. The policy, however, contradicted the practice in its objective to initiate intensive
agriculture. The successful take off of the project lay in its intersection with the principle of use
and ownership rights. Placed under the management of the African Settlement Board, the project
depended on free labor from the Kipsigis who were destined to settle the cleared spaces.
Basically, the laborers cleared spaces, in which they were to settle in and cultivate. The clearing
was done in four-acre blocks, and a family settled in four or five of these blocks. 43 Writing about
the method used in this project and the success it had registered by 1951, the District
Commissioner, P. G. Tait stated, “I am quite certain that settlement and clearance are the answer
here and that we can clear our own side of the border. The clearance that has already been done
by settlers here is immense.” 44 This method of clearance and settlement had elements that were
analogous to the old practice where individuals gained rights over portions of land by clearing
them for cultivation or settlement. As the evidence shows, it was this convergence between this
42 Mahmood Mamdani, Citizen and Subject , p. 139; Pauline E. Peters also makes this point in respect to Botswana where colonial officials misunderstood local land tenure by assuming that it was communal. Pauline Peters. 1994. Dividing the Commons: Politics, Policy and Culture in Botswana . Charlottesville, University Press of Virginia; p. 10; Also see David M. Gordon . 2006. Nachituti's Gift: Economy, Society, and Environment in Central Africa. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.
43 KNA, PC/NZA/ 2/14/63, Senior Veterinary Officer, R.A. Hammond’s letter to the District Commissioner, October 19, 1946.
44 KNA, PC/NZA/ 2/14/63, the District Commissioner, P. Tait’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, February 5, 1951. 115 practice and the method adopted for the project, which contributed to the success of the project in terms of its objective to clear patches of forests and settle the Kipsigis. This project, thus, was by no means a product of mere use of force or submission of the Kipsigis to force, for that matter, but rather an expression of intersection between some elements of Kipsigis land use practices and the method of clearing and settlement adopted for the project. Yet, given that this project contradicted shifting agriculture in its objective of constricting local land use, it generated among the Kipsigis contests for more forest spaces for cultivation, grazing, and settlement that later affected the policy for forest reservation. This case shows how the forestry policy was intertwined with policies for labor, agriculture, settlement and stock keeping.
Contrary to what happened in the Kipsigis Reserve, in the southern border of
Chepalungu, the project of clearing drew a lot of contests from the Kipsigis, Masai, and colonial officials. The contests were over the method that the field zoologist proposed in consultation with the District Commissioner for implementing this project. The officials opted to use paid labor without any provision for settlement and cultivation rights to laborers. The reason behind this proposal was an assumed fragility of the soil in this area, which according to the colonial officials made this place less conducive for settlement and permanent agriculture. Furthermore, the fact that the site was in the border between Chepalungu and Masailand, and that some of its portion was in Masailand complicated even more the labor issue for this project, especially in terms of whom between the Kipsigis and Masai were to provide labor, under what conditions and how they were to be convinced to do so. The colonial officials had already foreseen difficulty in making the Masai work in the project given their nomadic lifestyle. They thus opted to use labor from the Kipsigis who lived in Chepalungu. But this option presented the problem of convincing the Masai, in case they refused to work, to allow the Kipsigis to work in their territory, and the 116 Kipsigis, to provide their labor for wages without cultivation rights or a plan for settlement. 45
To resolve this conundrum, the colonial officials convened a joint meeting between the Kispigis and Masai in Gorgor, Chepalungu, in April 1947. The meeting failed to reach a resolution and instead generated further tension between the Masai and Kipsigis. The Kipsigis who attended the meeting insisted that they would provide labor only if they were allowed to cultivate the land, while the Masai maintained their preference to clear the land themselves.46 While rebutting the position taken by the Kipsigis, the Member for Agriculture and Natural Resources warned that,
“any indication which might be given to the Kipsigis that land could be claimed by them for settlement owing to action taken in clearing bush and preventing regeneration might gravely prejudice the future issue.” 47
Because of the frustrations the colonial officials had already experienced hitherto in attracting labor for the project, to raise the number of laborers that the project required up to its completion, the Provincial Commissioner proposed as an alternative the invoking of the
Compulsory Labor Ordinance of 1936. 48 According to the estimation of the District
Commissioner, this project required a labor force of between 600 and 1,000 for it to be completed in one year. 49 The recruitment of labor in this case was to be done by the District
Commissioner with the help of local chiefs in five locations, Belgut, Buret, Chepalungu, and
45 KNA, PC/NZA/ 2/14/63, A.C. Swann, District Commissioner, Kericho district: About this case, Swann, for example, noted that, “If the Kipsigis carry out the clearing with the consent of the Masai, administrative difficulties for both districts, which would otherwise be great, will be reduced to a minimum.” 46 KNA, PC/NZA/ 2/14/63, the District Commissioner, A.C. Swann’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, April 3, 1947.
47 KNA, PC/NZA/ 2/14/63, Member of Agriculture and Natural Resources’ letter to the Provincial Commissioner, May 15, 1947.
48 H.J. Simpson’s letter for Provincial Commissioner to the Hon. Chief Secretary, December 2, 1948.
49 KNA, PC/NZA/ 2/14/63, the District Commissioner, P.W. Low’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, October 18, 1948.
117 Sotik. 50 The colonial officials’ assumption was that chiefs were knowledgeable in matters of
African “religion, social life, and agriculture,” and thus could provide necessary advice during this exercise.
The laborers drawn from Chepalungu through this exercise, some of whom volunteered proved futile to the colonial officials in implementing this project. Apart from showing great disinterest in their work, they proved to be uncontrollable. Expressing his frustrations, the field zoologist, R.B. Power, wrote:
[L]abor is voluntary only in name i.e. of the 250 men theoretically on clearing, only about 30 are in the least interested in their work or in their pay. The rest are with us only because they have been sent to work by the Administration, or by local Headmen. It is hopeless trying to deal with such labor. They openly refuse to do the work, always reasonable, which they are given, they come to work or stay away as they please and then expect to draw money at the end of the month. 51
This situation actually speaks less of control than contest between the laborers and colonial officials just as the field zoologist had realized when he wrote, “If facts be faced what this amounts to is our paying labor over which neither we, nor the administration have any control.” 52
Even the colonial officials’ attempts to use the colonial legal system to make the Kipsigis laborers work in the project failed. Names of defaulters were submitted to the local tribunal for trial and a return to work plan, but the colonial officials achieved much less out of this strategy.
These contests between the laborers and colonial officials were not merely an expression of resistance against the project which the colonial officials had put a lot of effort on to legitimize through their propaganda on tsetse flies and trypanosomiasis. Instead they were
50 KNA, PC/NZA/ 2/14/63, the District Commissioner, P.W. Low’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, October 18, 1948.
51 KNA, PC/NZA/ 2/14/63, field zoologist’s letter to the chief zoologist, February 1, 1951.
52 KNA, PC/NZA/ 2/14/63, field zoologist’s letter to the chief zoologist, February 1, 1951.
118 struggles over meaning and use of labor. The Kipsigis laborers in their refusal to or
disinterest in work were essentially involved in a struggle aimed at reconfiguring the project in
order to fit the framework of their practices on forest and land utilization. Central in this case
was the link between the practice of clearing, cultivation and settlement. The Kipsigis laborers
were accustomed to clear land not to earn wages or food ratios, but to get a place to cultivate,
graze cattle or establish a homestead. Explaining the attitude of the Kipsigis laborers to paid
labor, the District Commissioner, P.Tait, noted sarcastically that the Kipsigis “is much more
concerned with his cattle and crops. Money is of little real interest hence the preference for
working for settlement.” 53 Thus, in making claims for cultivation and settlement rights in exchange for labor, the Kipsigis were basically adapting the project into their culture and economy.
Because the project in Trans-Mara contradicted these practices, its failure was inevitable unless the colonial officials decided to reach an agreement not just with the Kipsigis laborers but also with the Masai who used the area for grazing. Convinced of the unfeasibility of gaining
Masai acceptance to Kipsigis settlement in Trans Mara, the colonial officials proposed to either use outside labor or improve the labor conditions for the available laborers. 54 Adoption of the latter bore no fruit, for despite the efforts to improve labor conditions by purchasing new tools and increasing food ratios and wages, the project ground to a halt in April 1951. Frustrated, the field zoologist reported, “We had no labor what-so-ever working in Masai [the Trans-Mara site]
53 KNA, PC/NZA/2/1/43, the District Commissioner’s letter to the chief field zoologist, April 15, 1951.
54 KNA, PC/NZA/2/1/43, field zoologist’s letter to the chief zoologist, February 1, 1951.
119 during March, with the result that not only has Fly clearing been at a standstill, but also
breeding site clearing.” 55
The methods that the colonial officials adopted for the clearing project after this failure resulted not only from the contests over the site, but also change that occurred in the physical site. Having surveyed the area and seen that places cleared earlier had, during the period the project stopped, regenerated into bush, the chief field zoologist, fearing that this bush might generate disease, decided to allow the Kipsigis to enter this area only for a period of 3 years for cultivation purpose, something that he and other colonial officials had vehemently objected to before. He, however, allowed cultivation to take place with the condition that the cultivators were to live in the Kipsigis Reserve and cross the border only for cultivation. They were also not supposed to construct huts in the area and take any stock there for grazing. 56 The District
Commissioner and Agricultural Officer had to screen the cultivators before allowing them to sign a written agreement that they would leave the area completely at the end of the period laid down.
Clearing patches of forest in order to control movements of the Kipsigis, Masai, and their stock between Masailand and Chepalungu, actually created a physical space that generated contests between the Kipsigis, Masai, and colonial officials. These contests, for the most part, resulted from the conflicts between the Kipsigis land use practices and the method adopted for the project, as well as the interethnic tensions that the project engendered. By making claims for land rights, the Kipsigis laborers were essentially reshaping the project to fit the context of their practices. The policy adopted later for this project that allowed the Kipsigis laborers cultivation
55 KNA, PC/NZA/2/1/43, field zoologist letter to the chief field zoologist, April 3, 1951.
56 KNA, PC/NZA/2/1/43, chief field zoologist report (undated).
120 rights, was thus a product of these contests. It incorporated the Kipsigis laborers’ practices
into colonial officials’ agenda of bush clearance. For that reason, it hardly reflected the
objectives of control that the colonial officials had initially set for the project. Instead, it shows
how African practices modified the policy. Sara Berry has addressed this theme by showing how
Africans influenced colonial land use regimes. But her significant emphasis on the use of social
networks and wealth by Africans to influence colonial policies ignores the empowering role of
labor among ordinary Africans in their struggle to reshape the policies in order to fit their land
use practices. 57
The other facets of the scheme, forest preservation and construction of fences, also embodied patterns of contests and negotiations just like the clearing project. Earlier in the 1930s the Forest Department had proposed the protection of the dense forest measuring 50,000 acres but with conditions less stringent than those its officials later proposed in the 1940s. In the former case, the Kipsigis were to be allowed to graze cattle and sheep and harvest honey, but they were prohibited from residing in the forest. 58 Yet even with such concessions the Kipsigis
opposed the colonial officials’ proposal to protect the forest. 59 In the 1940s the objective of protecting the forest shifted rather to transforming the extensive agro-pastoral activities in
Chepalungu and creating a hygienic environment by restricting human and stock movements across the landscape. To achieve this objective, the zoologists and District Commissioner proposed maintenance of an undisturbed dense forest, which was to involve outlawing of activities that in the opinion of the colonial officials disturbed the equilibrium of the forest
57 Sara Berry, No Condition is Permanent.
58 KNA, PC/NZA/ 3/ 11/9, assistant conservator of forest to the conservator of forest, April 17, 1940.
59 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, Provincial Commissioner’s letter to the conservator of forests, April 17, 1940.
121 landscape. Justifying the scheme, the District Commissioner stated, “Open country or thick
forest are said to be effective fly-barriers. It is therefore proposed to keep a large L-shaped block
of thick forest in the center and to clear systematically the inner and outer perimeter and settle
them.” 60 This shift in the objectives of the forestry policy resulted from the fear of disease, which had engulfed the settler community in the late 1930s onwards, and the need it spawned among colonial officials to create an environment that approximated the colonial imageries of hygiene as an insurance of health and social security to the settler community.
In the fence construction project, the Provincial and District Commissioners disagreed on the objectives and the modalities of funding the project. The District Commissioner fully supported the project and proposed that the African Settlement Board should fund it because it
“would help considerably in preventing the spread of trypanosomiasis and reduce the danger to
European stock arising from cattle trespass.” 61 The Provincial Commissioner disputed the notion that this fence would prevent the spread of tsetse flies from the fly infested area. In his response to the District Commissioner, he wrote that this “fence would not add any protection to the area which is fly infested, but was designed merely as an insurance for farms lying to the north.” And on that note, he insisted that “it could not therefore be justified as a charge against the African
Settlement and Land Utilization Board Funds.” 62 Furthermore, he doubted if this fence if erected would be effective in achieving its objective, for “any person determined to move stock illicitly
60 KNA, PC/NZA/11/7, minutes of a meeting held by the District Team, Kericho District, September 17, 1947.
61 KNA PC/NZA/3/11/7, District Commissioner’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, May 10, 1948.
62 KNA PC/NZA/3/11/7, Minutes of the Proceedings of the Provincial Team Assembled in the Provincial Commissioner’ Offices (Undated).
122 would not hesitate to cut the fence.” 63 As a result of his views, the colonial government
declined to fund the construction of the fence. The project stalled until February 1949 when R.
R. E. Livingstone-Bussel, a settler in Sotik offered to fund it. The fence, however, did not stop
interactions and movements among the Kipsigis and Masai. Its porosity allowed them to move
back and forth between Masailand and Chepalungu beyond the watch of the colonial officials. 64
On the forest preservation, the colonial officials from the civil administration and Forest
Department differed over the method to be used, while the Kipsigis opposed the project. Having
failed to get involved in the clearing project, the Forest Department attempted to take a center
stage in the planning and implementation of this project. The conservator of forest proposed that
the forest be protected as a Native Forest Reserve under the Forest Ordinance, which stipulated
that forests should be placed under the management of the Forest Department. Aware that this
proposal would lead to a complete alienation of the forest, the Local Native Council whose
membership included local chiefs and elders with the District Commissioner as its president
opposed it and instead demanded that the forest be made a Local Native Council Forest.
According to A.C. Swann, the District Commissioner, the African members of LNC opposed the
proposal because of “a deep rooted dislike and distrust of the Forest Department.” 65 Although the local chiefs and elders supported the idea of protecting the forest, they demanded authority to make the rules to guide the management of the forest, and concessions to the Kipsigis on use of the forest. 66 Whereas the conservator of forest opposed this idea of protecting the forest as a
63 KNA PC/NZA/3/11/7, Minutes of the Proceedings of the Provincial Team Assembled in the Provincial Commissioner’ Offices (Undated).
64 Interview with Cheruyiot (code name), September 2006. He narrated how despite the construction of the fence, they continued to trade, visit, and even intermarry with the Masai. 65 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/7, Nyanza Forest Reserve, 1946-1950.
66 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/7, Nyanza Forest Reserve, 1946-1950. 123 Local Native Council Forest, the District and Provincial Commissioners fully supported it as
a strategy for legitimacy in the eyes of the Kipsigis. 67 Yet, the District Commissioner sought
legitimacy not just for forest protection, but also for the right to manage the forest. There was
thus a struggle between the District Commissioner, Forest Department and the members of the
LNC over the right to manage the forest.
These struggles contributed to the abandonment of the earlier proposal to protect the
forest under the Forest Ordinance and to the adoption of the proposal to protect it as an LNC
Forest in order to legitimize the policy of alienating the forest in the eyes of the Kipsigis. Evident
in this case was heterogeneity in the struggle for legitimacy. The struggle was differentiated
among colonial officials, each one of them pursuing the preservation for particular interests, not
necessarily for the colonial administration but personal, especially as for this case where
managing the forest included issuance of licenses for specific uses of the forest—an activity
which could generate some income. The Forest Department lost this battle with the District
Commissioner gaining an upper hand after siding with the demands of the LNC African
members who represented colonial government at the grassroots levels, but had realized the
importance of gaining legitimacy from the Kipsigis by fighting for concessions that seemed to be
in their interests. In April 1949, the LNC passed a resolution that declared Chepalungu an LNC
Forest. According to the resolution, LNC had to make By Laws for the protection of the forest.
67 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/7, conservator of forest’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, June 30, 1949. The conservator stated in regard to the proposal for an LNC Forest that it did not seem to him “possible for the area to be proclaimed a Native Forest Reserve under the Forest Ordinance and yet not be fully protected under the various clauses in that Ordinance.” 124 The District Commissioner regarded the LNC resolution as a huge success, for it marked, as
he stated, “the successful climax of 4 years’ battle.” 68
But that was not the end of the battle over the forest. For although the forest was placed
under the management of LNC, the laws that guided its management restricted local uses, save
for honey hunting which was allowed to continue because it benefited settlers and colonial
officials. 69 The laws outlawed cutting of trees, cultivation, grazing and hunting in the forest. As
a result, from a socialized space, the forest was turning into an alienated tool for preventing
movements of Africans and their stock in order to prevent the encroachment of trypanosomiasis.
The forest was morphing into a fence, real and metaphorical; real in terms of its new utility as a
physical barrier, and metaphorical, in the new meanings and unfamiliar images of restriction that
it evoked among the locals. Despite these changes, outside the watch of forest guards, the
Kipsigis continued to use the forest for firewood, honey, and poles, in a sense maintaining use of
wooded places as places to live in, but sometimes arrests by the guards threatened serious
punishment.
These changes, however, began to transform the ecology of the forest with negative
consequences for local security and crop production. The restriction of hunting activities and
human movements in the forest contributed to an increase in the population of wild animals,
68 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/7, Kipsigis Local Native Council meeting held at Kericho, April 1, 1949.
69 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/7, Schedule 1 to Forest Resolution 1, Kitui Local Native Council Forest Rules, 1949. The same rules that were used in Kitui in the eastern region of Kenya were applied in Chepalungu Forest. KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, P.P. Bickber’s, assistant agricultural officer, letter to the District Commissioner, April 27, 1939. In the letter, the agricultural officer indicated that in 1938, the value of honey exports from Chepalungu could be estimated at 2,000 pounds compared to the exports of the precedent years, which ranged between 4,000 to 5,000 pounds. KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/9, assistant conservator’s letter to the conservator of forest, April 17, 1940. The conservator indicated in 1940 that honey industry brought about 70,000 Kenya Shillings to the “inhabitants” of Chepalungu. The local Africans harvested the honey from the forest and sold it to settlers living in Sotik settlement and sometimes to outlying markets in Kericho district.
125 which not only became a big threat to villagers and stock, but also wreaked havoc on local farms. 70 Furthermore, criminals, especially stock thieves also found the forest to be a strategic hideout, a place from which they organized raids on the villages and retreated when pursued. 71
As these changes show, from an open landscape accessible to the Kipsigis users and a place to live in according to their perceptions, the forest for once became an unfamiliar physical space, withdrawn from the local community, and a place which threatened dangers to the people.
Coupled with the policy for intensive agriculture and cattle farming, the forest protection led to a dearth in food and reduction of wealth in Chepalungu. As a reservoir of food that provided an alternative during periods of drought, alienation of the forest deprived the Kipsigis of a major recourse during hard times. The vacuum this policy created increased the vulnerability of these people to climatic vicissitudes. Also, by 1949 overstocking had become a major problem in Chepalungu. It was, however, not the result of an actual increase in stock population, but a decrease in the capacity of the available grazing land. Most of the land had been alienated as part of the forest and the rest put into cultivation. The land that remained for grazing cattle could thus hardly cater for the available stock. Figures are, however, not available to show this decrease in the land capacity in the 1950s, but one can tease it from an observation that the Works
Supervisor for Development Officer, J. de Delmege, made in 1949. He wrote, “The Kipsigis cattle have deteriorated enormously within the last two years or so, and their cattle nowadays are stunted, small framed, and generally of framed constitution.” He explained that “This is probably due to the great increase of cultivation and the stock population, lack of water and controlled
70 Interview with Cheruiyot, September 2005. Also in KNA, BA/6/34, K. A. Ng’etich, County Council of Kipsigis, January 26, 1974. In this memorandum, Ng’etich, recapitulates the history of the Forest Reserve and the issues that generated demands for the excision of the whole forest.
71 KNA, BA/6/34, K. A. Ng’etich, County Council of Kipsigis, January 26, 1974
126 grazing, inbreeding and overstocking.” 72 Evident in this statement are the consequences of
increase in cultivation and controlled grazing which limited land for grazing. Controlled grazing
and its effects on cattle farming adversely impacted the area, for young men who were once
involved in grazing found themselves idle having the option of either helping in cultivation,
which was already doing poorly due to depletion of soil fertility and limited land, or moving out
of Chepalungu in search of employment. About three quarters of my interlocutors in Chepalungu
who were born in the 1930s and were in their late teens in the 1950s, migrated during this period
to urban centers and settler farms to look for better lives. Most of them got jobs as squatters and
houseboys in settler farms and urban centers. As they pointed out, the situation in the villages
was becoming tough, and so they had to go out of Chepalungu to look for ways to survive. 73
The loss of labor as the result of rural-urban migration, combined with the problems of
limited land, low food production and decrease in stock, left the Kipsigis farmers with no option,
but to intensify their struggles against the alienation of the forest. They increasingly demanded
back the whole forest for settlement, cultivation and grazing. Members of the Kipsigis County
Council led the Kipsigis in this struggle. In the 1950s, the clerk of the council, S. Soi, sent
several petitions to the colonial government demanding the whole forest to which the Forest
Department responded by emphasizing the importance of conserving the forest as a watershed
area. In this period, justification of the forestry policy in Chepalungu began to shift from the
emphasis of prevention of disease to conservation of water resources. This change synchronized
with the formulation of the official forestry policy in 1957, the White Paper on Kenya forestry
policy that emphasized the conservation utility of forests. Nevertheless, continued demands from
72 KNA, PC/NZA/2/14/63, Report for Sotik-Chepalungu Betterment Scheme for the Months of April/May, 1949.
73 Interviews with Rono, Cheruiyot, Kiprotich, Kirui, September 2005. 127 the Kipsigis forced the colonial government in 1960 to ask the Director of East African
Agriculture and Forestry Research Organization (EAAFRO), E.W. Russel, to visit Chepalungu
Forest Reserve to determine the “probable hydrological consequences of excising a portion of the northern part of the Reserve for settlement.” 74 From the survey he conducted, Russel concluded, “As far as I can judge the excision would have little effect on the water supplies of the region and I can find no important hydrological reason for maintaining the forest.” 75 The
Kipsigis appropriated and deployed Russel’s position to beef up their arguments against the reservation of the forest. In 1962 the colonial government agreed to degazette 12,906 acres of the forest—almost half of it—for use by the Kipsigis. This move by the colonial government heralded the beginning of a new approach to the forestry policy extending into the first decade after independence that allowed degazettment of some forests as a response to local pressures. It was, however, a brief shift that lasted for few years, as the next chapter will demonstrate.
The forest scheme implemented in Chepalungu aimed at protecting forested areas, and creating spaces for sedentarization process, strategies to prevent the spread of trypanosomiasis.
Although its objective was to segregate to control disease, the scheme at every stage involved contests and negotiations among the Kipsigis, Masai, and colonial officials that stemmed from conflicting and intersecting interests as well as practices. Colonial officials began to use conservation discourse to legitimize preservation of Chepalungu forest in 1957 when the colonial government formulated the country’s forestry policy. But in the earlier period, the localized factors revolving around fear of trypanosomiasis had greater influence.
74 KNA, BA/6/34, Report by E. W. Russel, Director of East African Agriculture and Forestry Research Organization, 1960.
75 KNA, BA/6/34, Report by E. W. Russel, Director of East African Agriculture and Forestry Research Organization, 1960.. 128 Wood fuel, transport crises, conservation, and afforestation of Kisian and Maragoli hills While fear of disease significantly influenced the forestry policy in Chepalungu, urban demand
for wood fuel and lack of infrastructure contributed to colonial officials’ attempts to afforest
Kisian and Maragoli hills. Lying about 80-100 miles northwest of Chepalungu, afforestation of
Kisian and Maragoli hills was directly linked to the development of Kisumu as a major port in
the East African region. Kisian lies 3 miles and Maragoli about 8 miles, north of Kisumu, the
third largest city in Kenya.
Located on the shores of Lake Victoria, Kisumu by 1940 had become a hub of
commercial activities in the region, attracting business people, workers, missionaries, job
seekers, and colonial officials. These immigrants were of diverse races and cultures—Africans,
Asians, Arabs, and Europeans. They lent the town its first cosmopolitan image, notwithstanding
its size, as the population increased sharply from 6,559 to 11, 899, about 80% increase. 76 If
compared to the modern size of urban population, the figures may seem to be trivial, but hardly
so at that time, when urban centers were just beginning to burgeon on Kenya’s landscape amid
conditions of limited infrastructure, housing and other amenities. The increasing population
required shelter, food, fuel, and infrastructure, all of which increased the town’s dependence on
trees, especially because of limited supply of electricity, which had just been introduced there
after the Second World War. About 33 Kilovolts of electricity was transmitted to Kisumu from a
5000 Kilovolts Ampere substation located in the Rift Valley. 77 Wood fuel remained the most
common source of energy used in homes, hospitals, prisons, schools, mission centers, factories,
76 Figures are in Godfrey Anyumba. 1995. Kisumu Town: History of the Built Form, Planning and Environment, 1890-1990. Delft University Press.
77 Anyumba, Kisumu Town: History of the Built Form, Planning and Environment, 1890-1990, p. 194.
129 ports, and in locomotives. But due to limited sources of wood from the hinterland and poor infrastructure that circumscribed transportation, the town’s demand for wood fuel increasingly outstripped supply. In this context colonial officials proposed to afforest Kisian escarpment, in the northern border of Kisumu town, and Maragoli hills, lying about 8 miles from the town.
Wood fuel shortages plagued the residents of Kisumu town at the beginning of 1940.
With no solution in sight by 1950s, the problem intensified and developed into a huge crisis that demanded an immediate solution. W. A. Abrahams, the Divisional Forest Officer, writing Harold
Williams, the Provincial Commissioner, in 1952, stated, “For some time it has been apparent that the wood fuel supply in Kisumu would reach a critical stage. This has now arrived, & the price paid by Messrs. Roadways (Kenya) Ltd. for a reputed ton (7 cu.ft. stacked) has very recently been raised to shs. 27.00.” 78 The increase in transportation cost obviously made it expensive for domestic and large scale users in the town to acquire wood fuel: the price “for uncut lengths, delivered to a person’s house in Kisumu” amounted to 35 shillings. Domestic users included
Europeans, Asians, and Africans, while large-scale users included hospitals, schools, missions, public works, ports, and prisons. According to Abrahams, in one month, inhabitants of the town consumed about “3,410 bags of charcoal (170 tons of firewood) and 250 tons of firewood, which gives a total of 420 ‘reputed tons’ of firewood per month for household consumption.” 79 Most of the wood came from Londiani Forest Station, 84 miles from Kisumu. Because of poor roads and long distances, transportation seems to have been a major problem to the colonial administration, as Abrahams noted, “The main factor at present affecting the price of fuel wood in Kisumu is
78 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/19, Divisional Forest Officer’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Jan 14, 1952.
79 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/19, Divisional Forest Officer’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Jan 14, 1952.
130 that of the high transportation cost. As no reserve in bulk exist near Kisumu.” 80 According to
the Provincial Commissioner, the estimated cost for transporting wood fuel from Londiani to
Kisumu was about 20 shillings, which added to the cost of wood fuel, brought the total cost to
shs.38 per ton. 81
To find a way of resolving the problem, the health and works committee of Kisumu
municipality convened a meeting on February 6, 1943. The meeting emphasized the
indispensability of wood fuel to the town residents as the result of its domestic and industrial use,
for example, in the manufacture of bricks and firing of boilers. 82 The board then recommended
that the escarpment north of Kisumu be planted with trees. 83 But, because at this time much
attention was focused on the Second World War which demanded many resources from the
colony, colonial officials in Kisumu made no significant efforts to follow up on this proposal to
afforest the escarpment until early 1950s when Abrahams, the Divisional Forest Officer,
recommended strongly that “fast growing exotic fuel plantation be planted at once, in the very
near vicinity of Kisumu, so as to cut out the high transportation costs.” 84 Supporting the
recommendation, Kisumu Town Clerk, Thomas Anderson, also emphasized that “the real
solution is to afforestate the hills surrounding Kisumu which so far as I know, have never been
inhabited.” 85 However, while the hill appeared uninhabited and unused to these officials, it
80 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/19, Divisional Forest Officer’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Jan 14, 1952.
81 KNA, Reel 102, Provincial Commissioner’s letter to the General Manager, East African Railways and Harbors, November 3, 1952.
82 KNA, PC/NZA/2/10/12, Thomas Anderson’s letter to the District Commissioner, February 6, 1943.
83 KNA, PC/NZA/2/10/12, C. H. William’s, the District Commissioner of Central Kavirondo, letter to the forest officer, Kakamega district, February 16, 1943.
84 KNA, Reel 102, Divisional Forest Officer’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, January 14, 1952.
85 KNA, Reel 102, Letter from Municipality’s office to the Provincial Commissioner, 1952. 131 served as a multipurpose resource from which the local Luo had for a long time obtained their food, medicine, wood fuels, poles, grasses for thatching huts, and pastures for stock.
Alienating it was destined from the beginning to be an uphill task.
In 1953 the town’s major suppliers shifted from wood fuel to the business of transporting maize and wheat in the Nyanza region, deepening further the wood fuel transport crisis. This shift resulted from the high cost of transporting wood fuel from far outlying forest reserves, which left transporters with profits not enough to justify their involvement in the wood fuel business. The estimated cost of transporting and distributing wood fuel in Kisumu was then about 33 shillings, and the selling price, 38 shillings, which the colonial officials sometimes set at 35 shillings. The difference left the suppliers with a meager profit ranging between 2 and 5 shillings, per ton. 86 An agent of Roadways Nyanza, a transport agency and firewood dealer, seeking advice from the Provincial Commissioner wrote, “With due respect we are to write to you that firewood position in Kisumu is taking a deplorable turn. Our firewood suppliers are now engaged in transporting maize; matama [wheat] for Maize and Produce Control and many other individual growers in the province.” 87 In October that year, Roadways Nyanza had no “single firewood” in its yard to supply to Kisumu residents after having failed to receive supplies from the major suppliers for two days. The repercussions of this shortage apparently were serious since Roadways was the major distributor of firewood to hospitals and prisons in the district.
As the district colonial administration struggled to resolve wood fuel and transport crises in Kisumu, the colonial state embarked on a wider program to develop natural resources in
86 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/19, Abrahams, Divisional Forest Officer’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Jan 14, 1952.
87 KNA, Reel 102, Roadways Nyanza letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Nyanza, October 21, 1953. 132 African areas as part of the post-Second World War rural development plan. In 1954, R.M.J.
Swynnerton, Assistant Director of Agriculture and Natural Resources, drew up a 5,000,000
pounds five-year plan for rural development to be financed by the British government.88 The
plan devoted 50,000 pounds for afforestation in Nyanza Province. 89 Dealing with fuel and
transport related problems, the colonial administration in Central Nyanza district viewed this
fund as a timely relief. Following the earlier suggestion by colonial officials in Kisumu to
afforest Kisumu hills to resolve the fuel crisis, the colonial administration proposed the Kisian
escarpment, approximately measuring 2,490 acres, and Maragoli hills, about 4, 000 acres for
afforestation under the Swynnerton plan.
The available evidence shows that during this period, unlike in the earlier decade,
colonial officials began to use conservation to justify the project in Kisian. For example, in 1955
C.N. Argyle, the provincial Forest Officer, justifying the project stated that, “The afforestation of
the Kisian Escarpment will undoubtedly conserve water supplies and indeed, may turn dry
watercourses into permanent streams. The Forest Area will be an added amenity to Kisumu
Municipality onto which the escarpment looks.” 90 To be sure, afforesting Kisian escarpment had
been proposed a decade earlier before the drafting of the Swynnerton plan to remedy the wood
fuel crisis and transportation problems in Kisumu. This perspective is drawn for the colonial
officials’ view of forestry in the region prevalent in the 1940s, a view that emphasized that the
western Kenya region, then known as Nyanza, required forests for wood fuel and timber, hardly
for climatic reasons given its topography. H.M. Gardner, the conservator of forests, expressed
88 East African Standard , Friday May 27, 1954.
89 KNA, Reel 101, Section 10, Provincial Commissioner’s letter to the Secretary of African Affairs, December 17, 1954.
90 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/1, Afforestation plan written by M.C. Argyle, the divisional forest officer, October, 1955.
133 this view in 1941 when he noted, “the climatic forest requirement are not so important in the
case of Nyanza as elsewhere in the colony but to meet the needs of timber and fuel of the large
population.” 91
Why did conservation become central to the justification for creating the Kisian escarpment in the 1950s? Conservation reflected changes in the intersection of local exigencies, colonial state ideology on environment, and international influences. Throughout the 1940s, the colonial government had been attempting to formulate a centralized forestry policy to conflate diverse and localized motivations behind forest reserves into a single official justification for preservation. But by the end of the decade, not much had been realized towards this effort. In
1955, while the Kenya colonial government was going through this process, the Sixth British
Commonwealth Forestry Conference was convened in Ottawa, Canada. Over one hundred representatives from Commonwealth countries, including Kenya attended the conference. The
United States of America and the United Nations “unanimously affirmed that it was of the utmost importance for each country to have a definite forest policy and that such a policy should be clearly set forth and widely publicized.” 92 It was after this conference that the Kenya colonial
government issued the White Paper of 1955 entitled “A Forest Policy for Kenya,” which
emphasized conservation and commercial significance of forests. 93
91 KNA, HT/9/1, H. M. Gardner, conservator of forests’ letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Nyanza, July 1, 1941.
92 KNA, Reel 101, White Paper, A Forest Policy for Kenya , 1955.
93 KNA, Reel 101, White Paper, A Forest Policy for Kenya , 1955. The paper emphasized that, “The Forest Estate of Kenya ranks high as one of the country’s most important national assets in its protective aspect of conservation of climate, water, and soil; as the source of supply of forest produce for all uses by the inhabitants of Kenya, and as a revenue earner of high potential.”
134 The policy was introduced at the local administrative levels in the western Kenya
region through the Swynnerton plan, under which local forest projects, such as the one for Kisian
Escarpment were to be funded. From this perspective, the deployment of conservation by
colonial officials in the region to justify the Kisian Escarpment forest project appeared as an
attempt to fit the project to the conservationist and developmental objectives of the Swynnerton
plan. This strategy mostly aimed at guaranteeing financial support from the colonial government
to the project. Its effects significantly reshaped the project, but local needs for wood fuel
continued to reign prominently as reflected in the design of the project proposed by C.N. Argyle,
the divisional forest officer. “Kisumu and its environs urgently require fuel and charcoal [his
emphasis]. Thus, 1/2 of the area [my emphasis] should be dedicated to Fuel and Charcoal production (1,150 acres).” 94 For fuel, he suggested a silvicultural system of exotic softwood
plantation such as Eucalyptus paniculata that “should be Coppice with Standards [his emphasis]
on a 6 year rotation.” He proposed a 50 acres space for two parks and arboretum for picnics.
Up to this point, the forest project reflected colonial officials’ perceptions of the
landscape, local demands for wood fuel, and the use of conservation discourse, but its
implementation was to bring it into contact with land use practices of the Luo living in Kisian,
JoKorando and JoKarateng.’ The colonial officials had already envisaged what this process
would entail as depicted in the District Commissioner’s warning to his fellow officers: “There is
no doubt that we shall have to face suspicion and general dislike of the scheme from the
immediate landowners,” he wrote. 95 The major task for the colonial officials thus was to
appropriate the escarpment without generating conflicts with the inhabitants of Kisian.
94 KNA, Reel 101, Assistant Divisional Forest Officer’s Report, 1955.
95 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/1, District commissioner’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, December 1, 1954. 135 Negotiation with JoKorando and JoKarateng’ seemed to the colonial officials the best strategy to adopt to ensure security of the project. Anxiety over security of the project, in fact, explains why the colonial officials chose the hill: it seemed to them to be unoccupied and underused, thus likely to be secured without much opposition. P. M. Gordon, the provincial commissioner, observed, “I believe that there is less cultivation in the area proposed for afforestation in Kisumu location and that there is more chance of securing local agreement to setting the land aside for afforestation” 96 To achieve that objective, Gordon proposed to declare the area “under section 51 of the Native Lands Trust Ordinance with provision as is possible for occupation and cultivation by people who are already living in the areas.” 97 A. H. Brown, provincial agricultural officer of Nyanza Province, suggested that “cultivation under license and under suitable rules would be permitted in that area.” 98 Though the procedure contained some concessions to JoKorando and JoKarateng’, it was bound to generate opposition because, as per the stipulations of the ordinance, the ownership of the hill would shift from the Luo farmers to a trust board. To avert opposition, the secretary of African affairs suggested, “before advising that the areas in question shall be gazetted as forest areas in accordance with the Section 51 of the
Ordinance, the Trust Board will require to know the views of the African District Council and the Local Land Board.” 99
The negotiations led to compromises between leaders of the two Luo clans and colonial officials over the project. The African Land Development Board (ALDEV), the national body
96 KNA, Reel 101, District Commissioner’s letter to the Divisional Forest Officer, January 1, 1955.
97 KNA, Reel 101, Provincial Commissioner’s letter to the Secretary of African Affairs, December 17, 1954.
98 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/1, A.H. Brown, Provincial Commissioner’s letter to the Director of Agriculture, 1954.
99 KNA, Reel 101, the secretary of African Affairs’ letter to the Provincial Commissioner, January 11, 1955.
136 formed by the colonial government to coordinate projects under the Swynnerton Plan, began
to exert pressure upon local colonial administrators to implement the project under section 51 of
the Native Lands Ordinance as a way of guaranteeing its security, but because the colonial
officials needed local support for the project as much as they needed ALDEV’s funding, they
opted to compensate the owners of the hill from profits they expected to get from the project.
This proposal was presented to the Kisumu Locational Council, whose membership included
chief Ochuka of Korando location and chief Orao of Karateng’ location, and village elders from
the locations. The council approved the project by a vote of fourteen to five, on the
understanding “that the right holders be paid a proportion of the profits when the scheme
becomes profitable, and that all the profits be paid to the Locational Council” 100 It was then
transferred to the African district council (formerly local native council), which also approved
the plan, but on condition that “all profits will be paid by the Council to the Kisumu Locational
Council; that the scheme will be financed from a grant from Swynnerton plan for the first eight
years or until the scheme showed a profit, whichever was the earlier.” 101
By consulting chiefs and village elders, colonial officials hoped to legitimize the project
in the eyes of local residents. But the chiefs and elders represented the colonial government
locally, so they were basically performing their duty. They, however, had self interests especially
in a case where funds which they could misappropriate were available. They were also
concerned about their legitimacy in the people’ eyes, a factor that influenced their perspective on
the project. While chief Ochuka of Korando supported the afforestation project, chief Orawo of
100 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/1, Provincial Commissioner’s letter to the Secretary of African Affairs, May 9, 1955.
101 KNA, PC/NZA/3/1/1, P. M. Gordon, District Commissioner’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, March 25, 1955.
137 Karateng’ disapproved it because JoKarateng’ lived in proximity to the hill, and depended on
it for most of their needs, from wood fuel and pastures to herbs and land for cultivation. 102 On
May 9, 1955 the Provincial Commissioner accepted the resolutions passed by the African
District Council (ADC) and asked for an official permission from the Secretary of African
Affairs to declare the Kisian scheme a Forest Reserve. 103
Important up to this point was that the process of implementing this project began to
generate new areas of contests with regard to land ownership and management of funds that in
the long run remodeled the project by bringing on board some interests of the Luo who claimed
ownership rights to the hill, interests such as compensation and profit appropriation. According
to the plan, the hill was to be afforested and the locational councils to get the profits once it
became profitable.
The plan provoked disputes among colonial officials and between them and the Luo
claimants. Whereas the provincial and district commissioners supported the proposal that the
scheme be funded through grants and profits realized be paid to the councils, the forest officers
rose against it. According to the forest officers, because the project appeared economically
viable, the funding of the project should have not been totally in the form of grants, and half of
what had earlier been earmarked as the grant, amounting to 10,000 pounds should have been
given as a loan. 104 This proposal, if adopted, was bound to complicate the issue of compensation,
because the profits to compensate the land owners would instead have been directed towards
servicing the loan, implying that the local councils and land owners would get the payments only
102 Interview with mzee Ojwang, and mama Mary, in Kisian, 2005.
103 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/1, Provincial Commissioner’s letter to the Secretary of African Affairs, May 9, 1955.
104 KNA, Reel 101, Divisional Forest Officer’s Report.
138 after the loan had been paid. To the commissioners, this idea appeared inappropriate and
unfortunate, for it had the potential to generate opposition against the project because the African
Councils had approved the project on the basis of the ALDEV’s promise to fund it through grant.
Changing it was contradictory to the principles on which their acceptance of the project was
based. The District Commissioner, expressing his surprise about the turn of events wrote: “I find
this suggestion an extraordinary one in view of the fact that the Central Nyanza African District
Council anyway were informed that finance for this scheme was by way of grant only.” 105 The
Provincial Commissioner appeared more concerned in his response. He wrote:
If half of it is to be by loan, it is more probable that the Central Nyanza African District Council will refuse to accept it, which will be more than a pity, in view of the great deal of hard work, which has been put in towards persuading them to agree to the scheme. 106
These disagreements hampered the colonial officials’ efforts to gain legitimacy for the project
among the landowners, jeopardizing its progress.
ALDEV accepted the Forest officer’s suggestion that half of the 20,000 pounds, the
amount earlier earmarked for the project, should be turned into a loan. The Executive Officer of
ALDEV stated, “If, however, the loan element is not accepted, all revenue from the scheme will
have to be credited back to the United Kingdom Treasury.” 107 The shift in ALDEV'S policy for
funding the Kisian Forest project demonstrated how local struggles among colonial officials and
the land owners reshaped colonial state policies.
105 KNA, Reel 101, District Commissioner’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, 1955.
106 KNA, Reel 101, Provincial Commissioner’s letter to the Executive Officer, November 10, 1955.
107 KNA, Reel 101, Executive Officer’s ALDEV letter to the Provincial Commissioner, 1955.
139 As his response to the directive from the Executive Director of ALDEV, the
Provincial Commissioner demanded that the matter be referred to the African District Council
(ADC). Following his directive, the colonial administration held a meeting with the ADC in
1956, in which the ADC accepted the loan of 10,000 pounds by 6 to 5 votes, but on condition
that “section 51, sub-section (3) of the Native Land Trust Ordinance is waived.” 108 Under this section, the Divisional Forest Officer wrote, “no money will be paid to the ADC in the post
Swynnerton Plan Period until the Accumulated Revenue exceeds Accumulated Expenditure, namely in the year 1979.” 109 If this proposal had been adopted as a condition for the issuance of the financial support, it was likely to have caused opposition as the Provincial Commissioner had earlier emphasized.
By 1956 tree planting on the land had begun. Two hundred acres of land had been planted with eucalyptus species. But local opposition which erupted the same year as demarcation of the hill got underway slowed down the progress of the project. The Divisional
Forest Officer wrote, “Demarcation is going slowly because we have to fight for every acre of ground against strong local opposition.” 110 This opposition was partly shaped by local clan politics. Whereas Jokorando, who lived further away from the hill negotiated with the colonial officials under the local chief, Ochuka, JoKarateng ’ who lived near the hill contested the project.
Despite the clan differences, the struggle for the hill became a unifying factor which brought
together some of those who identified with the two clans to protest the policy for turning the hill
108 KNA, Reel 101, Divisional Forest Officer’s letter to the District Commissioner, April 7, 1956.
109 KNA, Reel 101, Divisional Forest Officer’s Report to the District Commissioner, April 7, 1956.
110 KNA, Reel 102, Divisional Forest Officer’s Report, August 21, 1956.
140 into a forest reserve. 111 The project, however, continued for a few years despite the protests it
had hitherto generated. After an inspection of plantations on the Forest Reserve in May 1957, the
Divisional Forest Officer reported thus, “There is no doubt young trees are making progress
particularly Cupressus lusitanica, Chlorophora excelsa . Self sown Terminalia are forcing their heads through the bush which is thickening noticeably.” 112 In 1958, however, as the demarcation got underway, JoKarateng’ land owners, among them, Mzee Naphtali Ojwang’ crossed the demarcated area and cultivated fields there against the colonial officials’ order. Subsequently, twenty four people, including Ojwang, accused of being the mastermind of the protest, were arrested and sentenced to one month in jail with an option of 100 shillings fine. 113
To the landowners, this demarcation revealed a discourse about the project that the colonial officials had not articulated among the reasons they provided to justify the project. The landowners realized that the project had nothing to do with trees, but rather was a strategy to alienate their land. 114 Their opposition appeared not to have been directed at the forest reserve
project per se, but at the demarcation. For, before then, negotiations seemed to have been
working as evident in the plantations earlier in 1955.
Occurring in the immediate aftermath of Mau Mau war in central Kenya, the demarcation
of the hill resonated among inhabitants of the area with the issues of land alienation policy which
111 Interview with Mzee Ojwang’, 2005. However, JoKarateng’ claimed that chief Ochuka of Korando supported the project because he had been bribed by the colonial officials. This claim about bribery was also made against other members of the African District Council, who also supported the project. JoKarateng’ also claimed that Ochuka supported the project in order to get more land for his people.
112 KNA, Reel 102, Divisional Forest Officer’s Report, June 13, 1957.
113 KNA, Reel 102, Divisional Forest Officer’s Report, June 13, 1957.
114 Interview with mzee Ojwang’, near Kisian hill, 2005.
141 had partly contributed to the rise of Mau Mau. 115 They believed that by demarcating the hill,
the colonial officials were introducing in Kisian land alienation policy from Central Kenya. The
influence of Mau Mau, however, resonated not only among the Luo in Kisian, but also among
colonial officials working in the region. Because the protest in Kisian erupted during the state of
emergency that the Governor of Kenya, Sir Everlyn Baring, had declared in 1952 in response to
the Mau Mau uprising, it led to anxiety among the colonial officials. The anxiety manifested in
change in colonial officials’ perception of forests which stemmed from the fact that Mau Mau
guerilla mostly attacked settlers and government installations from forests. The colonial officials
began to perceive forests as places that threatened danger. Because the protests in Kisian arose as
the result of the policy for forests, the colonial officials in Central Nyanza district viewed them
in the context of Mau Mau and the new perception of forests as dangerous places. One can tease
evidence for this case from a letter that Lord Portsmouth wrote to Mr. Oscar Froye in 1953. “It is
also more than likely that it is through the forest, as much as anything else, that Mau Mau or
similar societies might infect other tribes,” he wrote. 116 In Central Nyanza, as a result of this
fear, the colonial officials accused the protesters arrested in Kisian of being supporters of Mau
Mau. 117 This fear influenced colonial officials’ approach to issues on forest preservation in this
period, leading to the suspension of the project in 1959. In the same year, Cuthbert wrote, “I
115 Interview with mzee Ojwang’, near Kisian hill, 2005.
116 KNA, BV/76/34, Lord Portsmouth’s letters to Oscar Froye, November 25, 1953.
117 Interview with Ojwang, in Kisian, 2005.’ He stated to me that colonial officials accused them of being connected to the Mau Mau rebels in Central Kenya, something, which he insisted, was not true. They were against the demarcation of the escarpment.
142 have been notified by Mr. Barnwell that in consequence of difficulties met in Central
Nyanza, the Swynnerton Afforestation Scheme at Kisian will be abandoned from the 30 th
April.” 118
Whereas the colonial officials suspended the project in Kisian, they managed to declare
Maragoli hill a forest reserve in 1957, the same year that the white paper on forestry policy was promulgated. The declaration of the hill as a forest reserve punctuated a series of serious contests, which started in the preceding years and persisted after 1957. Maragoli hill just as
Kisian had been proposed for afforestation earlier in the 1940s as a remedy to the wood fuel shortage in Kisumu town. Although solving the wood fuel and timber problem continued to feature as an objective of the afforestation in 1950s, with the Sywnnerton plan, conservation discourse became part of the justifications provided for the project. 119 This shift was linked to the conservationist objective of the Swynnerton plan to protect mountains and hills from soil erosion and deforestation. In Maragoli, the colonial officials earmarked a block of about 1,000 acres for afforestation under the Sywnnerton plan with financial support amounting to 10,000 pounds. 120
As elsewhere, contests over land ownership appeared significant in shaping strategies which colonial officials adopted for the forest project in Maragoli. The Avalagoli in Maragoli viewed the project as a strategy to alienate their land. The colonial officials were aware of this fear among the Avalagoli and knew that it would be an impediment to the afforestation project.
The conservator of forest, J.S. Spear, had noticed this problem and thus wrote:
118 KNA, ACW/27/9, Mr. Cuthbert’s letter to F.F. Gilboy April 21, 1959.
119 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/5, Divisional forest officer of Nyanza, M.C. Argyle, 1956.
120 KNA, J. S. Spears, assistant conservator of forest, Nyanza province, November 12, 1954.
143 [T]he inhabitants of Buyonga (a hill selected for afforestation in Maragoli) will not entertain the idea of setting aside land as an African District Council or even Locational Council Forest. They feel that by so doing, they are forfeiting all claim to land from which for the past twenty years they have been reaping a small annual crop. 121
As a result of this mistrust, the colonial officials opted to negotiate with the Avalagoli and
members of the African District Council, who included the local chiefs and village elders. Spear,
the assistant conservator of forest at Maseno, and the District Commissioner, North Nyanza
district, entered into discussions with the Avalagoli who lived on the slopes of the hill, and those
who inhabited lands below the hill but made claims for ownership rights to the hill.
Subsequently, the colonial officials suggested the formation of a local forest committee to
include the inhabitants of Maragoli in the management of the forest project. The suggested
members of the committee included, the local forest officer, the local chief, a local forest ranger,
and four local landowners. Although the colonial officials aimed to show their commitment at
involving the people in the management of the forest project, management still remained in the
hands of the forest officer. As a member of the committee, the forest officer was supposed to
manage the financial expenditure and make forest rules with the approval of the committee. 122
The members of the African District Council and Avalagoli from the surrounding
villages accepted these suggestions. Chief William Mnubi of Maragoli explained during the
forest committee meeting held in 1957: “the decision to give the landowners a part in the
scheme, and the fact that in the end the forest would be left to them, had made his people to
121 KNA, DC/KMG/2/2/58, J.S. Spears, assistant conservator of forest, Maseno, letter to the provincial commissioner, Nyanza, November 13, 1954.
122 KNA, DC/KMG/2/2/58, J.S. Spears, assistant conservator of forest, Maseno, letter to the provincial commissioner, Nyanza, November 13, 1954.
144 agree to the afforestation of the hills.” 123 But not every resident of Maragoli accepted the
afforestation as he seemed to portray in this statement. As shown below, those who resided on
the slopes of the hill objected to the policy. Nonetheless, in forming the committee, the
conservator of forest and the District Commissioner aimed to show the inhabitants that the hill
was theirs’ despite the proposed forest project. The colonial officials also promised the
inhabitants that they would not be evacuated from the hill. These efforts were aimed at averting
opposition and ensuring a future supply of labor for the project. In this regard, the District
Commissioner wrote “no persons would be removed from their land, because the growing of
trees needs labor and therefore it was necessary to have landowners on the hills. Only where it
was rocky and uneconomic would trees be planted.” 124
While some of the Avalagoli accepted the project because of the concessions, others,
especially those who inhabited the slopes of the hill objected. The latter viewed the project as
collusion between the local chief, members of the African District Council, the Avalagoli from
villages below the hill and the colonial officials to steal their land. An anonymous landowner
wrote the District Commissioner of North Nyanza district in 1957:
[W]e are deeply saddened that negotiations are used in other parts of Maragoli and Bunyore on the land issue, and on this side of Maragoli, our land is taken without our acceptance, while there is no law which allows the chief and his followers to steal our land. 125
The statement reflected the contradictions at the heart of the process of the
implementation of afforestation in Maragoli. Colonial officials negotiated with some of the
123 KNA, DC/KMG/2/2/58, J.S. Spears, assistant conservator of forest, Maseno, letter to the provincial commissioner, Nyanza, November 13, 1954..
124 KNA, DC/KMG/2/2/58, J.S. Spears, assistant conservator of forest, Maseno, letter to the provincial commissioner, Nyanza, November 13, 1954.
125 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/1, letter to the District Commissioner, North Nyanza District, January 4, 1957.
145 Avalagoli over the afforestation, leading to compromises, but they left out those who lived on
the slopes. 126 These landowners, as the result, objected to the policy of afforestation. Yet their objection was hardly against planting of trees on the hill. Rather, it was against the role of the
Forest Department in managing the forest as evident in their demand that the government should allow them to plant the trees themselves. 127 In their response, the colonial officials emphasized lack of competence among the Avalagoli to manage a project “involving large amounts of money over a long period of time.” 128 They, however, promised to compensate the landowners from the profits expected to accrue from the forest. They also emphasized that the land belonged to the inhabitants and would be returned to them at the end of the project.
To channel their struggle towards this end, a group of landowners proposed to form a co- operative society, which they also intended to use in managing the forest on behalf of the inhabitants of the hill. Elija Ogola, a landowner who had earlier resigned as a member of the forest committee because of what he termed lack of “democratic process,” wrote the District
Commissioner, North Nyanza, “We can only hold our freedom and rights of our lands if we start a Co-operative Society, which we feel will do the same work you want the Forest Department to do, without worries.” 129 Consequently, in 1957, the land owners formed the Maragoli Hills
Farmers’ Society, with Elija Ogola as its secretary. Taking place at the outset of the demarcation
126 Interview with Aduogo, and Magana in Maragoli, November 2005. They emphasized that the land was taken from them against their will.
127 KNA, DC/KMG/2/13/13, Extract from minutes of the committee from the Agriculture, Veterinary, and Forests, October 22, 1957. Chief M. Agoi informed the District Commissioner in the meeting that his people wanted to plant the trees themselves, not the Forest Department.
128 KNA, DC/KMG/2/13/13, extract of minutes of the agriculture, veterinary, and forests committee, Kakamega, October 22, 1957.
129 PC/NZA/3/11/5, letter to the District Commissioner, North Nyanza, Dec 27, 1956.
146 of the forest reserve, the formation of the society appeared as a contest to take over the management of the forest project. In addition, it reflected changes that had began to take place in the social realm in Maragoli. In 1950, with the introduction of institutions, such as the African
District Council (ADC) formed in the colony and the negotiations that had been going on between some of the inhabitants of the hill and colonial officials, new differences began to emerge among the inhabitants, wavering between acceptance and objection to the forest project.
Legitimacy of local institutions controlled by clan elders who had hitherto regulated use of the hill began to erode as people took different positions with regard to the project. In this context of differentiated responses to the project, and ambiguity of legitimacy of local institutions, as well as failure of the traditional elite to come out strongly against the afforestation, the landowners formed the society to reclaim and safeguard not only local uses of the hill, but also their land rights, all of which were threatened by the newly proposed colonial utility of forests.
The struggle for the land and past uses of the hill, in certain cases, turned physical as in
1956 when some landowners in the hill uprooted a number of jacaranda trees that had been planted within the demarcated area. 130 The problem here appeared to be that while the rest of the inhabitants lived near the hill but made claims of ownership rights, most of the landowners who objected to the compromises reached with the colonial officials had their homes and plots on the slopes, which after the demarcation got enclosed within the area that was to be alienated as the forest reserve, contributing to the disputes that erupted in 1956.
In 1957, despite the disputes, the colonial officials declared the hill an African District
Council forest reserve. The council was to own the forest, and the Forest Department manage it on behalf of the council. The success of the colonial officials in this case resulted from the
130 PC/NZA/3/11/5, letter to the District Commissioner, North Nyanza, Dec 27, 1956. 147 compromises they had struck with the African District Council and some inhabitants of
Maragoli, mostly those who lived near to the hill, with the objective of giving the project a local
outlook. Most of the people accepted promises of rents and land rights, others agreed to provide labor for demarcation and planting. The declaration of the hill as a forest reserve would not have been realized without the complex negotiations and contests between colonial officials and inhabitants of the hill, a process that led to compromises and disagreements. Some inhabitants of the area supported the project because of promises of rent and other benefits from the forest, and others objected to the project because of restriction of their use rights to the hill. In that same year, the Forest Department demarcated 1160.2 acres of the hill as forest reserve and left fourteen sections totaling 158.6 acres for the more than 50 families who lived on the slopes. In line with the earlier promise by the District Commissioner, the Forest Department resolved to license the resident families to cultivate in the forest area as long as they demarcated their farms.
They were, however, not allowed to graze cattle within the reserve. 131
In spite of these concessions, as well as assurances that the forest reserve would benefit
the inhabitants, contests against it continued mostly among those who lived on the slopes of the
hill. In 1962, Eli Ogola, the secretary of the Maragoli Hills Farmers Society, voiced these
contests when he wrote, “Landowners whose land has been implanted with trees without their
consent, would not trust that the work done by the forest department is done on their behalf and
is worthy something.” 132 He continued to press the colonial government to allow their society to
own and run the forest. “When the forest becomes economic we must run it ourselves,” he
131 KNA, PC/NZA/3/11/5, M.C. Argyle, Divisional Forest Officer, report on Maragoli hill Afforestation, 1959.
132 KNA, DC/KMG/2/13/13, Eli Ogola, secretary of the Maragoli Hills Farmers Society letter to the Forest Conservator, June 15, 1962.
148 wrote. 133 The contests were, however, not only about management of the forest, but also
about money which accrued from sale of trees. In this regard, the members of the society
conflicted with the African District Council whose members had been benefiting from such sales
as from 1960. Ogola, for example, demanded that “All the money received from the selling of
the trees should be paid to our society and not the county council. We therefore ask you to ask
the then A.D.C. of North Nyanza to pay the money received from the selling of trees in 1961 and
1962 to our society as soon as possible.” 134
The colonial officials continued to assure the landowners that the Forest Department was
just managing the forest on the behalf of the local inhabitants, but the attempt failed to have
effect. A series of meetings between forest officers, local chiefs, and representatives of the
landowners took place to resolve the grievances, but all failed to come up with a resolution. The
landowners insisted on running the forest, while the forest officers continued to maintain that
their role was to manage the forest on behalf of the inhabitants of the hill. In 1963, amid the
negotiations, three cases of fire occurred in the forest, destroying some acres of plantations and
two huts belonging to forest rangers. 135 According to the forester, Simeon Kinara, disgruntled
landowners started these fires, which according to available evidence expressed contests over
management of the forest project, types of trees to be planted, specific places to plant, who to do
the planting and benefit directly from the plantations. They were not simply against the
afforestation.
133 KNA, DC/KMG/2/13/13, Eli Ogola, secretary of the Maragoli Hills Farmers Society letter to the Forest Conservator, June 15, 1962.
134 KNA, BA/6/7, Elija Ogola’s letter to the Civil Secretary Western Region, July 29, 1963.
135 KNA, BA/6/7, Simeon Kinara’s letter to the Divisional forest officer, December 21, 1963 149 Timber, Land and Conservation in Kakamega Forest Buyango
Although Kakamega forest was alienated much earlier than the other forests, in 1912, and
officially declared an African District Council forest reserve in 1933, struggle over it among
Africans and colonial officials continued after 1940. Thus, its significance in understanding
motivations for, process and consequences of, the colonial forest protection policy needs not be
overemphasized.
Factors that led to the policy were varied according to evidence available in colonial
documents as well as oral information. Colonial documents indicate that the forest was protected
to preserve indigenous trees from local uses which to the colonial officials appeared to be
destructive on the forest. But oral information suggests that commercial reasons contributed to
the policy. In 1936, in the wake of the declaration of the forest as a reserve, loggers cleared
several acres within the forest for timber which were to be used in constructing bridges, as well
as in building Kakamega town. 136 The Isukha emphasized that exploitation of timber was the
main reason that led to the alienation of the forest at that time. 137 According to them, claims about improper usage of the forest formed the discourse that the colonial officials used to justify the policy. It had less to do with the ways in which the Isukha used the forest, for as Mzee
Tombe emphatically posited, “If the local inhabitants were really destroying the forest as the colonial officials claimed, then the colonial officials would not have found the forest that they wanted to preserve.” 138 This case showed how the colonial officials’ attempts to legitimize the
136 Interview with Mzee Shitamba and assistant Chief, 2006.
137 Interview with the local assistant chief and mzee Tombe, January 2006.
138 Interview with the local assistant chief and mzee Tombe, January 2006.
150 forest protection policy generated counter discourses from Africans who sought to legitimize
their own forest use practices.
When the wooded landscape of Kakamega was alienated many areas which the Isukha had been using in different ways were enclosed within the forest. The areas included fields in which they cultivated crops, meadows where they grazed their cattle, thickets in which they hunted wild animals, gathered wild fruits and collected firewood. Most of the cultivated places were individually owned by households on the basis of rights of use passed on from one generation to another. But clans recognized and regulated such individual rights. With the alienation of the forest, the individual rights and communal authority, which regulated land use got undermined, resulting in an ambiguous system of land tenure, expressed in the varied contests that ensued among the Isukha to reclaim the alienated spaces. While some individuals made claims for these areas on behalf of their own families, justifying their rights on the basis of use that they traced back to their immediate lineage ancestors, others made claims for the same areas using clan rights, arguing that the areas belonged to their clans. For example, some Isukha petitioners while making claims for their lands wrote the District Commissioner of Kakamega,
“we owned this Forest area and that by tribal custom we are individual farmers and owners of and the land does not vest in the clan community.” 139
In 1936, as a result of these claims, the colonial government handed back some of the
areas that had been alienated in 1912. These areas included Iloro, Ilori, Musuyi, Khamala,
Mwanasakho, Shamworelo, and Isherere. 140 There were about fifty two of such areas that the
139 KNA/DC/KMG/2/2/43, Isukha Petitioners’ letter to the District Commissioner, Kakamega District, November 11, 1954.
140 KNA, DC/KMG/2/2/43, Petitioner’s Isukha Location letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Nyanza Province, May 25, 1954. 151 colonial government handed back, all totaling about 5, 200 acres. The colonial officials gave
back all the areas, except Isherere, for cultivation. Isherere was handed to the location council.
Of all these places, what occurred in Isherere, Isukha in the aftermath of the degazettment of the
area demonstrated how ecology, forest use and land tenure changed as the result of the forestry
policy. Also, important is the discourse the colonial officials used to justify the land tenure, as
well as ways in which the Isukha contested it, including things they drew from while making
their claims.
Twenty years after the alienation of this area, it changed from an open cultivated place
into a thick forest that colonial officials in the 1930s described as pristine. In the face of petitions
from the Isukha for ownership rights to this forest, the colonial officials justified its alienation
based on the pristine appearance the thick woods evoked. They argued that because of its pristine
nature, the Isukha had no rights to make any claim over the area. The point the colonial officials
were making in the 1930s in this regard was that the place had existed in an unused state before
its alienation. Thus, in their view, the Isukha had no rights to make any claims over it. This new
discourse marked a change from the way in which the colonial officials had earlier legitimized
the forestry policy by denigrating forest use practices of the Isukha. E. L. Leslie, the District
Commissioner of North Nyanza justifying the position of the colonial government wrote the
Provincial Commissioner, Nyanza, “From the size of the trees and from local information it is
clear that this area was not cultivated prior to 1912 …not true it was unoccupied.” 141 But the
141 KNA/DC/KMG/2/2/43, E. Leslie’s, District Commissioner’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Nyanza Province, January 1955.
152 inhabitants refuted this claim, maintaining that the area only turned into a forest after it was
alienated: “that it is now Forest does not prove that it was always so.” 142
The difference in the way the Isukha and colonial officials perceived this particular
landscape not only reflected change in its ecological conditions from a cultivated to a densely
wooded area, but also difference in their understanding of nature as a whole. While the Isukha
related to this particular landscape as a place to live in, the colonial officials sought to change it
to fit their view of nature as pristine and secluded from the society. The Isukha deployed their
past relations to this area to make claims over it in the 1930s. A group of Isukha petitioners, for
example, writing to the District Commissioner noted, “we still claim for this land. It is our
fathers’ and we still have the right to own it.” 143 The colonial officials, on the other hand, used
the pristine appearance of the place to counter the Isukha’s claims.
In response to contests for more land from the alienated forest, the colonial officials
handed back Isherere to the whole location. 144 The assumption here seemed to have been that
private ownership of land or forest never existed among the Isukha, that the forest was a
communal property under the authority of clan elders. This assumption is clearly depicted in E. J.
Leslie’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner of Nyanza. He wrote:
According to this indigenous system no individual has any right to virgin land. All rights are vested in the clan and subclan inhabiting adjacent areas. Individuals may bring this virgin land under cultivation and so acquire rights in it by virtue of permission from the elders of the clan which has a right over the area. 145
142 DC/KMG/2/2/43, Petitioner’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, November 11, 1954.
143 DC/KMG/2/2/43, Petitioners’ letter to the District Commissioner, (undated).
144 DC/KMG/2/2/43, Chief Jeremiah Segero’s letter to the District Commissioner of Kakamega, July 10, 1956. Writing in retrospect, the chief noted that the land was not given back to a particular individual or clan, but to the whole location. The land, thus, was a communal property under his care, as the chief of the location of Isukha.
145 DC/KMG/2/2/43, District Commissioner’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, July 14, 1954. 153 While Leslie attributed communal rights over local land to clan elders, available evidence shows that elders hardly had such rights. They only mediated conflicts between individuals or households over land by virtue of their knowledge of past land rights. With this knowledge they showed individuals particular sections that their families’ ancestors had cultivated or owned in the past, in consequence, helping to resolve conflicts. This role accorded them authority, but not rights over communal land. Thus, individual or household claims for land based on inheritance and use existed in Kakamega just as they were in Chepalungu, Maragoli, and Kisian. In giving back the land to the Isukha location council under the chief and local elders, the forest department assumed that their action agreed with Isukha land customs.
In 1951, the colonial officials’ assumption on the existence of absolute communal land ownership in Isukha was exposed when the Isukha who claimed individual rights over Isherere heard that the local chief, Jeremiah Segero, and agricultural officials, had hatched a plan to take over Isherere and turn it into a settlement scheme. Between 1936 and 1951, the Isukha used the forest area as a source of wood fuel, timber, and wood for making farm implements such as hoes.
These activities expressed continuity in old forest use practices. The aim to use it for settlement, according to Segero, was to settle poor landless Isukha in the area. Segero, as a colonial chief, operated in the context of colonial understanding of local land system as absolutely communal, that explained why he and the agricultural officials resolved to change the use of the landscape.
The chief with the help of a number of Isukha began to clear portions of the forest, selling the timber to private loggers. On hearing about this event, about a hundred Isukha who claimed ownership rights to this area rushed there and cleared several portions and established homesteads as well as fields on which they began to cultivate crops. Most of these people justified their rights as individual owners based on their family rights. Writing the Provincial 154 Commissioner of Nyanza Province in 1958, Lawrence Chitira, a local landowner, for
example, asked, “Do you know that the chief of Isukha has taken the land which my father left
for us (his sons) and given to someone by the name of Shikondi.” 146 This conflict over Isherere
continued until early 1960s when the postcolonial government stopped the settlement project.
The conflict demonstrated how shift in the forestry policy in Kakamega engendered new
conflicts among the Isukha as systems of land/forest ownership and use changed. Alienation of
the forest and creation of new local institutions such as the location councils headed by the chief
and elders rendered ambiguous old systems of land ownership. This transformation unfolded in
the erosion of legitimacy of the clan elders. Just as in Maragoli, instead of representing the
interests of local landowners, the elders in Isukha compromised their “traditional” status by
working with the chief and colonial officials. Much of this change resulted from the alienation of
the landscape that dispossessed the elders of their status in local land and forest politics. They
worked in tandem with the location advisory council as members to clear the land and divide it
up into a settlement scheme. While the Provincial Commissioner, C.H. William’s statement that
“all individual or clan rights over the area were extinguished when it was alienated as Forest
Reserve” 147 simplifies a complex process, it reflected the shift that had been taking place at this
time in Isukha with regard to the role of elders in the local political economy. Their authority had
been undermined by the dispossession of the land and by the individuated and collective contests
it generated. In the context of this change, Isukha residents exercised their rights over the area
and individually petitioned the Provincial Commissioner, C. H. Williams, to recognize their
individual land rights. They consequently cleared the area, built homes and cultivated crops.
146 DC/KMG/2/2/43, Lawrence Chitira’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, July 8, 1958.
147 DC/KMG/2/2/45, Provincial Commissioner, C.H. Williams, to the Secretary of African Affairs, January 20, 1955. 155 This action pitted those Isukha residents who claimed rights over the area against the chief, elders, the District Commissioner, agricultural officials and the “landless” residents of
Isukha who had hoped to benefit from the new project. According to the residents, the so called
“landless” Isukha were outsiders whom the chief had brought there to support his interest. As a result, they had no rights to make any claim over the land. The forestry policy that had alienated the forest fractured the local land tenure, contributing to the social conflicts over land experienced in the area in the 1950s, continuing into the period after independence.
Conclusion
The motivations underlying the policy for creating forest reserves in Chepalungu, Kisian,
Maragoli, and Kakamega were local, diverse, and contingent. They did not fit conservationism, the ideology that emphasizes prevention of soil erosion, protection of water catchments, and improvement of rainfall conditions in local areas. Instead, fear of disease, segregation (racial as well as tribal), demands for wood fuel and timber, poor infrastructures, all featured prominently as the factors that contributed to the forestry policy proposed in different areas in the western
Kenya region in the period 1940-63. The formulation of the Swynnerton plan in conjunction with the promulgation of the forestry policy in 1957 marked the beginning of the era in which conservation became a major discourse that colonial officials used in these local areas to justify the policy. But, the local factors continued to have great influence over the forest reserves during this period. The process of preserving the local landscapes proved quite complex, involving negotiations and conflicts among Africans and colonial officials. Underlying the process were struggles to bend the projects to fit African and colonial officials’ interests. The consequences were expressed in the policy that allowed some African forest use practices within the forest 156 reserves. In other cases, colonial officials incorporated Africans in the management of the reserves. But conflicts continued, resulting, for example, in the abandonment of the forest project in Kisian and in the handing back of several acres of Chepalungu and Kakamega forests to the local people. These shifts reflected national trends in forestry in the period before and immediately after independence in 1963.
157 Chapter Four
Continuity and change: forestry policy at the local and national levels, 1963-1980
When Kenya achieved its independence in December 1963 most colonial personnel who controlled the government both at the local and national levels left the country, creating a vacuum, which threatened the running of the postcolonial government. 1 In relation to the forest department, concern among central government officials was that the vacuum created there might jeopardize management of rural forests. As a response, the central government adopted policy strategies that in combination with local ecological change and persistent claims for alienated forests in rural areas significantly changed the forestry policy in the country in the postcolonial period.
In 1964 the central government made a declaration in the Legal Notice Number 174 that turned all African District Council (ADC) forests into central government forests to “ensure continuity in management,” as the chief conservator of forests, J. P.W. Logie, recalled. 2 With foreign financial and technical assistance, the central government also embarked on africanization program to fill the vacuum existing in the government. The forestry policy that the government adopted in the context of these strategies was complex as well as contingent. In the first decade after independence, the government returned several acres of forestlands to local inhabitants and legalized regulated use of some forests that were to continue under preservation.
It also simultaneously engaged in exploitation of timber for export. Furthermore, in 1970s it
1 At the central government level a few of colonial officials with the support of Jomo Kenyatta continued to hold their positions: J. P. W. Logie as the conservator of forest and Bruce Mackenzie as the minister for agriculture, and Humphrey Slade still remained the speaker of the National Assembly. See William Ochieng’. “Structural and Political Changes: Independent Kenya’s Development Strategies.” In Bethwell Ogot et al. 1995. Decolonization and Independence in Kenya, 1940-93 . London: James Currey.
2 KNA, BA/6/7, J. Logie’s (conservator of forests) letter to the permanent secretary, ministry of Natural resources, October 13, 1966. 158 embarked on a conservation oriented national policy that aimed at expanding at forest zone in rural areas.
In this chapter, I examine interactions between the central government strategies and rural inhabitants’ claims over the forest reserves in Maragoli, Chepalungu, Kakamega, and
Kisian in the period after the attainment of independence. I explore how these interactions contributed to fluidity and complexity of the forestry policy, in discourse and practice. I argue that persistent contestations by the inhabitants of these areas against socioeconomic as well as ecological consequences of the forest preservation policy influenced central government officials’ perspectives on local forest use practices and local claims over the forest reserves. This influence, which significantly diversified official perspectives on the forest reserves, took place in the context of central government’s attempts to deal with the legacies of colonialism in forest management through centralization and africanization programs. While centralization has generally been seen as a top-down strategy, in this case it enabled central government officials to directly engage with claims that inhabitants of the four areas made over the forest reserves. The claims influenced their perspectives, which conflicted with those of regional government officials. Most of the central government officials were Africans who had just been trained in
‘modern’ forestry. They as a result brought on board ambivalent ideologies which wavered between support of, and opposition against, local forest use practices.
These processes contributed to complexities in the central government position on management of rural forests. For while a number of government officials continued to display rigid recalcitrance against claims made by the inhabitants of the four areas, others for various reasons began to identify with the claims, but in varied conflicting ways. They individually and collectively supported different claims, which embodied conflicting policy implications. These 159 claims mostly centered on use, ownership, and management rights to the forest reserves.
They were also about compensation in cash and land to the local claimants for the alienated
forestland. The central government officials who supported the latter claims were ready either to
give back whole or parts of the forest reserves to the local owners, while those who identified
with the former rooted for maintenance of the forest reserves. From these varied perspectives,
government officials contested among themselves and with the inhabitants. This chapter shows
that the ramifications of the interactions were expressed in the policy that sought to expand forest
zone in rural areas and that legalized varied levels of local forest use practices in different
locales. It also appeared in discourse, which by 1980 had not turned into actual policy, although
later it did, as the next chapter will show.
In the rural areas, the consequent policy initiatives generated contests and appropriations.
Inhabitants of the four areas and other parts of western Kenya contested aspects of the policy that
outlawed their access to forest resources. But they also domesticated objects, discourses, and
procedures characteristic of the policy, thus, transforming the ecological and cultural landscapes
of the rural parts of western Kenya.
To make sense of the interactions and consequent complexities expressed in the Kenyan
forestry policy in the postcolonial period, I situate this chapter within work on policies in
postcolonial Africa which emphasize the view that postcolonial period was not a mere moment
of transition after independence, but a composite cultural and intellectual struggle against the
legacies of colonialism. 3 The contention is that independence was less than a break from
3 See Appiah Kwame Antony. “Is the ‘post’ in ‘postcolonial’, the “post” in ‘postmodern.” In McClintock, Mufti and Shohat. 1997. Dangerous Liasons: Gender, Nation, and Postcolonial Perspectives . University of Minnesota Press; Paul Ahluwalia. 2001. Politics and Post-Colonial Theory: African Inflections . New York: Routledge; On environmental policies see Tamara Giles-Vernick, Cutting the Vines of the Past ; Fred Cooper. 2002. Africa Since 1940: The Past of the Present. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 160 colonialism. It entailed continual struggle against postcolonial setting ‘entrapped’ in colonial
structures. 4 While the political leadership aided the continuation of this entrapment, at varied
levels Kenyans struggled to recuperate what they had lost during colonialism. Showing the role
of the elites in the entrapment process, historian William Ochieng,’ writing on Jomo Kenyatta’s
regime, observes that, “Kenyatta and his associates preserved what they most needed from the
colonial state, and particularly the law and order aspect.” 5
The available work emphasizes that the struggle against the postcolonial entrapment in
colonialism was multilayered. It took place against neocolonial structures, its ideologies, and
against elite who represented its interests nationally and locally. 6 Analysis of postcolonial
policies, thus, generally unfolds in the context of these dialectics between hegemonic and local
processes. This literature has examined instrumentality of the policies in perpetuating
ideological, political, and economic interests of the state, ruling elite, and international
institutions. 7 Much of it has shown, for example, how the policies in their effects entrenched
state control in rural areas. 8 Its concern has also been with the struggle by local people against
the policies, focusing mostly on resistance. Lacking in this literature, however, are slippages and
compromises between postcolonial state policies and local knowledge as well as practices, which
also constituted an important thread in the postcolonial struggles. While literary work has made
significant attempts to go beyond binaries to capture complexities in the postcolonial context at
4Ahluwalia, Politics and Post-Colonial Theory ; See William Ochieng, “Structural and Political Changes: Independent Kenya’s Development Strategies.”
5 Ochieng,’ “Structural and Political Changes: Independent Kenya’s Development Strategies,” p. 93.
6 Ahluwalia, Politics and Post-Colonial Theory .
7 See James Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine .
8 Ferguson, The Anti-Politics Machine .
161 the ideational level, so far less effort has been made in work on policies. 9 Thus, in this
chapter, I make an entry into this debate by addressing connections between dialectical
interactions and compromises among postcolonial state officials and inhabitants of the four areas
affected by the forest preservation with focus on how they contributed to, and were affected by,
the fluidity of the forestry policy in the period after independence to 1980.
Local struggles for Maragoli, Chepalungu, and Kakamega Forests On December 17, 1963, five days after Malcolm John MacDonald, the Governor of Kenya, had
handed over power to Jomo Kenyatta as the new Prime Minister of the Republic of Kenya, a
group of Avalagoli delegates from Maragoli set on a journey to Nairobi to present petitions to the
Minister of Natural Resources, Lawrence Sagini. 10 The group included, Zafani Magomere,
chairman of the Maragoli Hills Farmers’ Society, and Elijah Ogola, its secretary. As they
traveled to Nairobi, their expectations were that the government would hand over the forest back
to the society to manage it on behalf of the inhabitants of the hill. Revenues accruing from the
sale of the forest produce would go to the society, which would then distribute them to the
landowners. The landowners would be allowed to cultivate crops and graze their cattle on flat
sections of the hill. They would also be allowed to use the forests for wood fuel, timber,
medicine as they planted trees in the rocky sections of the hill under the supervision of the
leaders of the society with technical advice from the forest department officials. Thus, as they
headed to Nairobi on that day, they hoped that the new government would act immediately on
these issues. On reaching Nairobi, they met the Minister who promised to take their grievances
9 Homi Bhabha. 1994. The Location of Culture . London: Routledge.
10 KNA, BA/6/7: I found the information about this trip in Eli Ogola’s letter to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources, January 2, 1964. 162 to the National Assembly to determine if the management and ownership of the forest would be handed to the society. 11 Although the response was less of what they expected, the minister’s assurance that things would be taken care of lifted their spirits as they set on their journey back to Maragoli. 12
The central government, however, did nothing to address the grievances that the delegates had presented to the minister more than in letters that continued to state its position on management of local forests in general. On the issue of revenues, the government’s position was clear: “Under the constitution only net profits can be paid by the Forest Department to a county council. If there is any commitment for profits to be handed over to the Maragoli Hill Farmers’
Society it would be a matter between the county council and the society.” 13 And on the delegates’ demand for management right, the government maintained that there was no
“provision for the Forest Department to manage a forest on behalf of a private society.” 14
It was in this context that cases of arson began to occur frequently in Maragoli hill. 15 Yet hardly were these fires mere reactions of resistance against afforestation of the hill. Motives that underlay them appeared complex, for different inhabitants of the area deployed the fires for various objectives. Some, especially the Avalagoli who inhabited villages below the hill used the fires to contest the use over flat sections of the hill, which had been left out of the forest
11 KNA, BA/6/7, Eli Ogola’s letter to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources, January 2, 1964.
12 KNA, BA/6/7, Eli Ogola’s letter to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources, January 2, 1964.
13 KNA, BA/6/7, M.C. Argyle’s, Permanent Secretary for Natural Resources’ letter to the General Secretary of the Maragoli Hills Farmer’s Society, December 27, 1963.
14 KNA, BA/6/7, M.C. Argyle’s, Permanent Secretary for Natural Resources’ letter to the General Secretary of the Maragoli Hills Farmer’s Society, December 27, 1963.
15 KNA, BA/6/7, In a letter to the Divisional Forest Officer, Simeon Kinara, Forester, Kakamega reported cases of fire in Maragoli hill, February 10, 1964. 163 boundary for cultivation and grazing since 1955 when the hill was declared a forest reserve, but after independence were scheduled for tree planting under the centralized forest management. The landowners who lived on the slopes of the hill used the fires to claim family plots that were enclosed within the forest reserve, while members of the society who claimed to represent the landowners in their struggle used such fires to make claims not just for land but also for management rights over the forest and for rights over revenue collected from the sale of forest produce. To achieve their objectives, the inhabitants targeted the local Forest Ranger,
Jonathan Inwani, demanding his resignation, in the hope that when he left, they would take over the management of the forest. They asserted, “as long as he remains a forest ranger the forest will continuously burn.” 16 The motive of taking over the management of the forest from the forest department as demonstrated in this case, thus, also contributed to the fires that occurred in
Maragoli.
Although the petitions that the members of the society had presented to Lawrence Sagini, the Minister of Natural Resources, somewhat managed to draw the attention of top government officials to the plight of the inhabitants of Maragoli, it was these cases of fire that led both regional and central government officials to begin to make some steps towards resolving the conflicts in Maragoli. One such step was made on January 31, 1964, when Assistant Regional
Agent, M. Sifuna, convened a meeting in the slopes of Maragoli. Several inhabitants of the area, including the chiefs of south and north Maragoli, the Forest Ranger, Jonathan Inwani, and the forester, Simeon Kinara, attended the meeting. Issues for debate revolved around the fires, the boundary, and ownership of the forest. After a long haul, the meeting managed to reach an
16 KNA, BA/6/7, H. Sifuna’s report on Maragoli Hills Forest meeting, February 4, 1964. 164 understanding over the boundary, but the issue of ownership still remained hotly contested.
Peter Sifuna, the Regional Government Agent reported thus:
It appears that there are some places claimed by the forest workers to be part of the forest and therefore subject to tree planting and at the same time disputed by the inhabitants. Mr. Kinara promised that no more trees would be planted in those areas and that he would make the position clear. 17
The places that Kinara mentioned in this statement represented the enclaves that remained in the
forest as the result of the negotiations and conflicts between colonial officials, Maragoli elders,
and inhabitants of Maragoli. They were left for those who inhabited the slopes of the hill, as
places for cultivating crops and grazing cattle. But with the centralization of forests management,
such compromises that had allowed the landowners to live within the forest reserve and use
certain sections within its boundary became issues to be contested again between the central
government and landowners.
The contests not only manifested in meetings ( baraza ) and through calculated physical actions such as burning of the forest but also in discourse. For instance, the central government began to refer to the landowners as squatters, a term that they borrowed from colonial officials who used it to refer to landless Africans who worked in European settler farms in the Rift Valley and Central Province in exchange of small plots for settlement and cultivation. Interestingly, there is no evidence showing any use of the term by colonial officials to refer to the inhabitants of the hill, but postcolonial government officials found its use for these people appropriate. In response to the discourse, the landowners continued to emphasize their claims for rightful ownership of the forest, reminding the government that it was just managing the forest on their
17 KNA, BA/6/7, report on Maragoli Hills Forest by M. Sifuna, Assistant Regional Government Agent, February 4, 1964.
165 behalf. 18 Zafani Magomere, Thomas Mahanga, and Elija Ogola, leaders of the society, made it clear to the government that “the forest is theirs and the Government acts only as their agent.” 19 Writing the Regional Forest Officer in 1964, Elija Ogola also emphasized that:
[T]he continuation of planting trees in the above Forest by your Department is opposed by the land owners and must be stopped at once until the forest is handed to the society. The laborers must also stop working unless they each prove to have a piece of land in the scheme. The Society does not see any right for a person whose land is not within the forest benefited by this scheme while the landowners suffer. 20
Ogola in this case did not just express the contests against the role of the Forest Department in the planting of trees but he also indicated their heterogeneity in terms of the actors involved.
There were landowners who opposed the planting of trees; members of the society who struggled to take over control of the forest from the government; laborers most of who lived in the villages below the hill and worked in the forest reserve.
In the context of these contests, cases of fire, which threatened progress of the project, continued to occur in the hills. 21 As the result, the central government adopted judicial means to ensure that the project continued. Those suspected of starting fires were frequently arrested or summoned to appear before the African court at Mbale in Kakamega district. 22 Between 1964 and 1966, having realized that the central government officials had no immediate plans to give up their management role, Maragoli landowners also began to adopt the same legal means that
18 It is important to note that postcolonial government officials referred to these people as squatters while the colonial government officials did not. But the officials borrowed the term from colonial officials who used it to refer to Africans who squatted in lands alienated by European settlers especially in Central Kenya and Rift Valley. See Tabitha Kanogo, 1987.
19 KNA, BA/6/7, Peter Sifuna’s report to the Regional Government office, Kakamega.
20 KNA, BA/6/7, Elija Ogola’s letter to the Regional Forest Officer, April 18, 1964.
21 KNA, BA/6/7, S.M. Kinara, Forester, Kakamega, letter to the Divisional forest officer, February 1964.
22 KNA, BA/6/7, Maragoli Hills Farmers’ Society’s memorandum to M. Abraham, conservator of forests, Western Kenya, 1964. 166 the central government officials were using to maintain claims over the forest scheme. The
landowners collected money, which they handed to Elija Ogola to launch a case against the
government in Kisumu high court. 23 The case went on for some time, but no resolution in favor of the landowners came forth. Despite lack of progress in this case, these organizational and legal acts by the Avalagoli of Maragoli hill demonstrated how they adopted practices and places belonging to the central government to challenge its claims for ownership and management rights to the forest reserve.
It was not only the change in the forest management that intensified contests over
Maragoli hill in the early 1960s. Ecological change that subjected the inhabitants of Maragoli to hard conditions also played a significant role. By 1965, the more than 870 acres of the hill planted in 1955 had turned into a thickly dense green coppice of eucalyptus, cypress, and pine trees. 24 Wild animals such as leopards, hyenas, monkeys and baboons found this new environment conducive. The animals became a major source of danger to the inhabitants of the hill and to those who lived in the nearby villages. 25 Many a time did leopards, hyenas kill people and livestock, and baboons, destroy crops in the local farms. At the end of the decade, around 14 individuals had lost their lives as the result of these attacks by wild animals. 26 The change in the flora also led to disappearance of indigenous trees that the local people had known and had been using for a long time. 27 Many had been cleared when the exotics were being planted, others died
23 Interview with mzee Magana and Aduogo in Maragoli, November 2005; Richard Roberts et al show how Africans, although in the colonial period, appropriated aspects colonial law to contest against colonial policy.
24 Interviews with Magana, Aduogo, Baraza, 2005.
25 Interviews with Magana, Aduogo, Baraza, 2005.
26 Interviews with Magana, Aduogo, Baraza, 2005.
27 Interviews, Magana and Abungu, 2005. 167 out as the result of the introduction of the exotics as the ecology was changing. Only a few indigenous species remained, such as platycalyx markhamia (usiala ) used for wood fuel and timber. The disappearance of such trees deprived the people in Maragoli of herbal medicine, wood fuel, timber resources, leaving them only with the option of using exotics for wood fuel and timber, which intensified conflicts between them and the government.
Despite such restrictions on access to the forest resources on the hill, the use of mungurutu shrine at the top of the hill for worship and other religious ceremonies continued unabated. 28 Change had, however, occurred on how it was used and on actors who used it. This change occurred due to influence of Christianity and the fracture of elders’ authority, a colonial legacy, which rendered the shrine open to all the inhabitants of Maragoli. A place once confined only to elders became available to women, men, youths, and children who as a consequence participated in ceremonies organized at the shrine. For example, every New Year, residents of the hill would gather at the shrine for thanksgiving ceremonies, turning the place into a space where groups that were once sidelined from the shrine interacted with each other. 29 People of different denominations and faiths also flocked the area to pray as a group and individuals on different occasions. 30 These changes showed how the residents of Maragoli adapted opportunities that became available as a result of the forestry policy’s usurpation of the elder’s control over the holy ground. But the actors never used the shrine as a platform from which to challenge the forestry policy. Instead, the government restrictions of regular uses of the hill
28 Interview with mzee Magana, Avunja, Ayuya, and Aduogo in Maragoli, 2005.
29 Interview with mzee Magana, Avunja, Ayuya, and Aduogo in Maragoli, 2005.
30 Interview with mzee Magana, Avunja, Ayuya, and Aduogo in Maragoli, 2005.
168 constituted the issues that the Avalagoli landowners deployed to contest the management role of the central government and to make claims over the forest.
Beginning 1966, in response to these claims, the central government officials began to propose contingent and varied measures to resolve the case of Maragoli. These proposals differed among the provincial administration and central government officials. The provincial commissioner of western province, Charles N. Chomba, argued that the best alternative for
Maragoli would be to resettle elsewhere the “squatters” whose activities, in his view, had hitherto jeopardized the success of the forest reserve. His objective was to maintain the hill as a forest reserve. But efforts to achieve this objective failed by 1967 because of the issue of compensation that the landowners had brought up based on agreements they had reached with the colonial government. They insisted that they could only consider moving if the government compensated them in cash for their land and provided them with free land elsewhere, enough for settlement, as well as cultivation. In this regard, my interlocutors posed, “how could they move at that time while the government had not compensated them for their land?” 31 The commissioner supported the residents’ claims for compensation, because it was part of the deal that had in the first place allowed the colonial government to declare the hill a forest reserve.
Chomba, the provincial commissioner, explaining the conditions in Maragoli in his letter to the permanent secretary of the ministry of Lands and Settlement, wrote:
I would like to inform you that the administration has tried all possible methods to persuade the 41 families to take up plots in the settlement schemes as you suggested, but without any success. Meanwhile, work on the afforestation of the hills has greatly been interfered with by malicious activities of members of these families, despite court action being taken against offenders. For your information, the 41 families claim bonafide right of ownership of the area affected by the afforestation. They argue further that there would be no justification for them to
31 Interview with mzee Magana, Avunja, Ayuya, and Aduogo in Maragoli, 2005.
169 pay for land for their alternative settlement since they were not compensated for the land now occupied by the Ministry of Natural Resources. I am inclined to agree with them on this. 32
To the Central government officials, compensation and resettlement seemed impractical.
Instead, they suggested that the government should allow the inhabitants of Maragoli to take over the hill. The acting chief conservator of forests, J. D. Owuor Onyango, and J. M. Ojal, the permanent secretary of the ministry of Natural resources, shared this view. Justifying this perspective, Onyango wrote S. C. Mbinda, conservator of forests, Eldoret Division (west), in
1968:
I would be right in saying that the major reason for the afforestation of the Maragoli Hills is the protection of the hills and possible water catchments in the area; to produce timber, poles, charcoal and fence posts which would be of tremendous use to the extremely heavily populated areas in these parts of the Western province. If these are accepted as being the major reasons, then the Ministry of Natural resources and for that matter the Kenya Government does not stand to lose by pulling out of this and allowing the people so affected to continue the cultivation of these rocky and ragged hills. 33
Onyango in this statement justified the proposal for Government’s withdrawal from the hill
based on the argument that the forest was significant to the residents of Maragoli, not the
government; the claim was that the government had nothing to lose. Yet in alluding to the
possibility of government’s withdrawal from the hill to give way for local land use practices,
Onyango indicated an emerging discourse in the forestry policy that had began to recognize local
practices on forestland. Such recognition was embodied in the accommodative approach that
most central government officials began to adopt in relation to local claims for forestland. For
instance, P. Kiambuthi, assistant Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Natural Resources, in
32 KNA, BA/6/7, Charles Nchomba’s, Provincial Commissioner, Western Province, letter to the permanent secretary, Lands and Settlement, September 29, 1967.
33 KNA, BA/6/7, J. D. Onyango’ letter to the conservator of forests (West), May 5, 1968.
170 his letter to P. K.Boit, the Provincial Commissioner, Western Province, asked him to
“arrange to have local leaders including the county council consulted on whether the popular
stand is that the Forest Department should pull out of the place and let the people cultivate the
rocky and ragged hills.” 34 It was through such meetings with the residents of Maragoli that the
central government officials began to understand the views of these people about the forest—
what they wanted and why.
Thus, despite instances mentioned earlier in which the government used local courts to
charge those considered as offenders, the central government officials in this case adopted a local
approach that began to have influence on their perspectives. It was in this context that J. Ojal, the
permanent secretary of the Ministry of Natural Resources, decided to visit Western Kenya in
June 1968 to investigate the case of Maragoli and try to provide a solution. His visit ended with a
meeting between him, Boit, Onyango, Mbinda, as well as the District Commissioner of
Kakamega and the Divisional Forest Officer of Kisumu, among others. Ojal, the permanent
secretary, disagreed with Boit, the Provincial Commissioner, on how to resolve the problem.
Boit’s concern was to keep the forest as it was. The only way to do that, in his view, was to
compensate the “squatters” with cash and land so that they could move out of the forest. He
suggested that the people be given land “elsewhere either in the settlement scheme or in
Kakamega Forest.” 35 However, based on the view that Maragoli Forest was beneficial to the people of Maragoli and not the Forest Department, Ojal insisted that the government would not compensate the “squatters” nor excise a part of Kakamega Forest to settle them. He thus concluded that if there was no other way to help the “squatters,” he “would instruct the Treasury
34 BA/6/7, J. Kiambuthi’s letter to the Provincial Commissioner, Western Province, May 8, 1968.
35 BA/6/7, S. C. Msinda’s notes on the visit to the Provincial Commissioner’s office, Kakamega, July 15. 1968.
171 to write off the money already spent in afforestation in Maragoli and hand over the hill together with the trees already grown there to the squatters for their cultivation and settlement.
The Forest Department would claim no compensation.” 36 J. P.W. Logie, the Chief Conservator of forest, in his letter to the Commissioner of Lands also agreed with this suggestion. In April
1969, he wrote:
Because the afforestation scheme is of only local importance our Ministry has been prepared to hand over the area to the County Council or even to abandon it entirely. The County Council has been unwilling to take over the area as a forest and the Administration, with good reason, have been opposed to it being abandoned. We have now stopped any further planting until the situation can be cleared up. 37
Logie in this letter indicated an emerging perspective among central government officials that expressed willingness to hand over Maragoli hill back to the local owners. But by 1970s the hill was still under the Forest Reserve largely because of the contending perspectives from provincial administrators and forest officers supportive of the policy for forest preservation.
These perspectives resulted from the incessant struggle over Maragoli forest, a struggle that involved central government officials, regional administration officials, and inhabitants of
Maragoli. Acting as individuals, sometimes in groups, these people advanced varied agendas about the forest, which shaped each other. At the national level, the results of the process were expressed in the official perspectives that recognized and opposed local claims for use and management rights to Maragoli hill. At the local level, the process was expressed in the landowners’ contestations against the forest reserve and management role of the government in and in their claims for land, revenue and management rights. The latter claims were in part appropriations of official forestry practices. Of note in this case is that these conflicts and
36 BA/6/7, S. C. Msinda’s notes on the visit to the Provincial Commissioner’s office, Kakamega, July 15. 1968.
37 KNA, BA/6/7, Logie’s letter to the Commissioner of Lands, April 25, 1969. 172 interconnections represented changes that had begun to occur in the forestry policy which up
to this time emphasized conservation and commercial interests on forests, yet in discourse as
well as practice had begun to accommodate indigenous forest/land use practices.
Whereas on Maragoli the central government was beginning to consider giving way for
local land and forest use practices, in Chepalungu, a large portion of the forest amounting to
12,000 acres had already been handed back for settlement and cultivation in 1964. 38 In 1955
when it was declared a forest reserve Chepalungu measured about 50,000 acres. By 1964 it had
reduced to about 25, 000 acres. 39 Almost half of the forest had been given back to the Kipisigis in Chepalungu for settlement and cultivation. But that practice hardly stopped the demands that continued after independence for more of the forestland. The demands represented a struggle by the Kipsigis to maintain their old ways of utilizing the forest as a place to live in. S. Soi, Clerk of the County Council of Kipsigis, echoed this motive in a letter in which he appealed to Ojal, the permanent secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources, to “give serious consideration to the opening up of the whole of Chepalungu Forest for the settlement of the landless people in the county area.” 40
Alienation of the forest had not only denied the Kipsigis of Chepalungu a place to live in, but it had also engendered ecological changes that posed danger to the inhabitants of the area just as it occurred in Maragoli. Restriction of use of the hitherto protected portion of the forest created an impenetrable dense forest that harbored wild animals. The animals killed people, livestock, and destroyed crops in the fields. The problem of wild animals had, however, been
38 KNA, DC/KMG/2/13/13, S. Soi’ letter to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Local Government, April 1972.
39 KNA, BA/6/34, J.P.W. Logie wrote about the excisions in his letter to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources, November 29, 1966.
40 KNA, BA/6/34, S. Soi’s letter to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources, October 26, 1967.
173 there since 1955 when the forest was preserved. R. Murtland, Divisional Forest Officer,
Londiani Division, for instance, wrote in 1967 that “the people in the surrounding areas had experienced great difficulty because the wild animals harbored in the forest were destroying their crops and killing their livestock as well as people.” 41 Because of these experiences, the Kipsigis of Chepalungu continued to put pressure on the government to make Chepalungu available for settlement in order to create a humanized environment in which dangers from the increasing number of wild animals would reduce.
It was in response to these claims that in 1971, William Odongo Omamo, the Minister of
Natural Resources, traveled to Chepalungu to listen to the local grievances and to explain the policy of the government on handing back forests to local people. This policy was changed in
1968 because of the several acres of forest reserve land that the government had lost since independence. The government had given back 101, 659 acres of forestland to local people, leaving the country with 1, 673, 500 acres of forest, which was less than 3% of the total land area. 42 The practice of degazetting portions of forests intersected with commercial interests of the government on forests, which also influenced its policy at this time. Available evidence shows that during this period when several acres of forestlands were given back to the local people export in forest produce increased substantially until early 1970s when it began to register a huge drop (see table below). 43 That was the same period the government stopped giving back forests to local claimants.
41 KNA, BA/6/34, R. Murtland’s letter to the Chief Conservator of Forests, September 15, 1967. The chairman of the County Council of Kipsigis also mentioned this case about the wild animals in a memorandum he presented to William Odongo Omamo, the Minister for Natural Resources on January 26, 1974.
42 KNA, BA/6/30, Information found in a Draft speech attached to letter dated January 11, 1973, from C. M. Ndegwa (for Chief Conservator of Forests) to Permanent Secretary of Natural Resources.
43 This table is included in a Government Report I found in KNA, BA/6/31 World Forest Conference draft. 174 EXPORT AND INTERSTATE TRADE IN TIMBER
YEAR Export outside E.A. M³ Export to Uganda M³ Exports to Tanzania M³
1966 4,219 5,721 7,578
1967 5,235 7,958 8,413
1968 4,857 12,143 13,060
1969 5,057 12,404 13,111
1970 7,296 9,705 12,662
1971 4,315 10,370 9,332
1972 4,660 3,814 1,111
But because of the loss of forestland experienced during this period, Jomo Kenyatta’s cabinet met and ruled against further degazettment of forests. 44 This was the message that
Odongo Omamo carried as he headed to Chepalungu that June. On reaching Chepalungu, he encountered a memorandum from the members of the County Council of Kipisigis in which they expressed the inhabitants’ demand for the whole forest area. 45 To support this claim, the council used the conclusion that E. W. Russels, the former Director of the East African Agriculture and
Forestry Research, had reached in 1960 after conducting a research on Chepalungu Forest
Reserve. He had concluded that there would be little hydrological consequences if Chepalungu
44 KNA, BA/6/34, provincial commissioner’s letter to the permanent secretary of the Ministry of Natural Resources, May 29, 1968.
45 KNA, BA/6/34, County Council of Kipsigis’ memorandum presented to William Odongo Omamo, the Minister for Natural Resources on January 26, 1974.
175 was opened up for settlement and other uses. 46 Using this report, members of the council thus
argued that there was no need for the government to continue protecting the forest; that it would
be of more use if the local inhabitants were allowed to take over its management. While
members of the council engaged the government at the negotiational level, the inhabitants of the
area had began moving into the forest, especially from 1966 after hearing a rumor that the
government was planning to move out of the forest. 47 Although the government had already
outlawed forest excisions in the country in 1968, it was ready to give out more areas in
Chepalungu to the local inhabitants because of the incessant claims for the forest. But this
proposal was to be implemented on the condition that only the landless in the area majority of
whom were Ogieks, were to benefit. 48
During the same period, in Kakamega, just as in Maragoli and Chepalungu, the
government dealt with several claims for the forest reserve. Whereas in Maragoli and
Chepalungu the local inhabitants utilized social institutions to represent their claims to the
government, in Kakamega most of these claims appeared sporadic and random, expressed on
individual basis. They were manifested practically in activities such as grazing, cutting of trees
for wood fuel, cultivation of crops inside the forest, pitsawying, and burning. In 1965 as the
result of such activities the government stopped a settlement scheme that had been earmarked for
Isherere and allowed those who claimed ownership rights over the place to settle and cultivate
46 KNA, BA/6/34, County Council of Kipsigis’ memorandum presented to William Odongo Omamo, the Minister for Natural Resources on January 26, 1974.
47 KNA, BA/6/34, The information found in a letter that S. Soi wrote the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources, March 28, 1969. Also from the interview with Jonathan Maritim, former Forest Guard, November 2005.
48 KNA, DC/KMG/2/13/13, S. Soi in his letter to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Local Government, indicated that William Omamo, the Minister for Environment and Natural Resources, assured the local inhabitants that their request for land in the forest would be considered. April 12, 1972.
176 the area. 49 Besides Isherere, there were several reports in the 1960s about such “illegal” activities taking place in Kakamega Forest. In 1965 J. O. Nyundo reported about fires that broke out in different parts of the forest. 50 A fire broke out in Bunyala that year destroying about a quarter of an acre of trees. In Malaba a surprise fire destroyed unplanted glades, about four acres of grass were burnt, and in another case in the same place, a fire destroyed twenty seven acres of forest. In Kakamega, a total of forty one trees were destroyed in a fire, while in Kibibiri, seventy seven trees were lost in yet another fire. Most of the fires resulted from shamba burning, a practice in which farmers burned their fields to clear them of bush, weeds and pests before planting. Burning of farms near the forests contributed to cases where fires spread into the forest. 51 It was an old practice that failed to disappear even with the alienation of the forest.
Through it the Isukha were hardly just holding onto the past, but rather, making a practical claim on something that belonged to them. Cultivation was also another way in which the Isukha expressed their claims over the forest. In a case reported in 1968, a local farmer in Kibibiri pruned one acre of tree plantations in the forest to make way for his crops. 52 While the government considered such practices as offences against forest preservation, from a different perspective they represented ways through which the Isukha utilized the forest as a multipurpose resource, valuable not only because of trees but also because of land resource. The act of pruning trees to create spaces for crops showed how the Isukha farmers recognized value of land and
49 KNA, DC/KMG/2/24/27, J. Nyundo (Forester, Kakamega), Kakamega Forest Station Annual Report, 1965.
50 KNA, DC/KMG/2/24/27. These cases were mentioned by J. Nyundo, Forest Officer in his Monthly Report to the Divisional Forest Officer, February 1965.
51 KNA, DC/KMG/2/24/27, J. Nyundo, Forest Officer , Monthly Report to the Divisional Forest Officer, February 1965.
52 KNA, DC/KMG/2/24/101. I found the information in Kakamaga Forest Station Monthly Report prepared by the Forester, W. K. Kiwinda, March 1969.
177 trees, making use of the two resources at the same time and in one place contrary to the
utilization of the forest advocated for by the government.
However, in the 1960s, as the result of the claims that the local people constantly made on the forest, the central government decided to allow regulated use of the forest. Earlier in 1960, the colonial government had allowed licensed burning to curb the frequent cases of fire in the forest. Farmers had to get permits from the local chief or agricultural instructor. 53 But after independence as my interlocutors in Kakamega recalled, the government allowed the Isukha farmers to draw wood fuel from the forest, graze cattle on glades inside the forest, search for medicine, and practice healing. Furthermore, the youth were allowed to engage in sports such as soccer in the park like sections of the forest. 54
Thus, the central government policy on the forest reserves varied in each of the areas.
While in Chepalungu the government handed back a large section of the forest to the Kipsigis, in
Maragoli government officials suggested withdrawal. In Kakamega the government accommodated regulated local uses of the forest reserve. In a wider context, these shifts were taking place at a time when the government was also trying to expand the forest zone in the country especially after losing about 10% of forestland handed back to local claimants. These two streams of the forestry policy posed a conundrum to the central government. For if the government continued to give back forests to local claimants, afforestation efforts made hitherto would be jeopardized and if it took a hard stand on afforestation, its legitimacy among rural subjects would be jeopardized. In this situation thus, government officials had to craft a policy that would allow forest expansion without endangering government relations with people living
53 KNA, DC/KMG/2/2/39, Letter from the District Officer of Kakamega to chief Hezron of Tiriki Location concerning burning of farms.
54 Interviews in Isukha, Kakamega, with Baraza, Peter Shitamba, and IshiKunzi, January 2006. 178 in rural areas. And in this case, local claims that had driven the government to open up a number of forests to local inhabitants for settlement and cultivation played a significant role in shaping the new government’s effort to formulate an agreeable policy that would promote forest expansion without aggravating relations with rural inhabitants. Among these claims, land for settlement and cultivation featured prominently. Thus, the policy for Rural Afforestation Scheme that the government formulated after this period reflected the effort to strike a compromise between local inhabitants’ claims for land and the government’s effort to expand forests in rural areas.
Greening Rural landscapes
In November 1970, Honorable A. A. Ochwada, Assistant Minister of Natural Resources delivered a keynote address at the opening of a foresters’ conference in Nakuru town in the Rift
Valley region. In the course of his speech, Ochwada touched on the conundrum that had characterized the forestry policy in Kenya in the first decade after independence, that is, the conflict between giving back forests to local claimants and expanding forest zone. He explained:
It is not always possible to act on recommendations immediately owing to, perhaps, financial limitations and the unavoidably lengthy process of obtaining final clearance on policy matters. For example, foresters are concerned about excisions from the forest estate. This is a complicated issue involving a number of ministries of the Government. There may be cases where it is a question of priorities of land usage. Our ministry, however, is opposed to excisions without justified cause shown by the interested party. In the meantime, I would urge you to intensify your search for land suited for afforestation purposes. 55
Ochwada in this case captured the variation in government officials’ perspectives on the forestry policy. While foresters argued against giving back forest reserves to local claimants, other
55 KNA, BA/6/30, Speech by the assistant minister for Natural Resources, November 7, 1970.
179 government departments such as that of agriculture supported such actions in response to
increased local claims for more land. In light of these conflicting situations, the task before the
government in the 1970s was to create a policy that recognized local claims for forests, while
pursuing government interests on afforestation and forest preservation. In concluding his speech,
Ochwada appealed for an increase in the search for land for afforestation but the central question
that still remained unanswered was where and how to get such land.
These questions were being posed at a time when the government had begun the process
of Africanizing the forestry department. In 1970 the government made a tremendous
achievement by appointing the first African chief conservator of forests, O.M. Mburu. 56 The appointment marked a significant step in a process that had been going on since independence involving the appointment of Africans as officers to head various conservancy and forest research departments rendered vacant following resignation of several forestry personnel after independence. 57 For example, even in 1967 the forestry research department literally had no research specialist. As the result, the government embarked on training programs at professional and sub-professional levels to fill this vacuum. To achieve this feat, the government resorted to technical assistance from foreign countries and international organizations. For instance, with aid from New Zealand and Britain, the Forest Industrial Training Center was established in 1968 to provide technical and administrative training on forestry to Africans. Another school, Kenya
Forestry Training Institute was started in Londiani in the Rift Valley region around the same time. It was as the result of these training programs that the number of technical and subordinate personnel increased from 1172 in 1965 to 1366 in 1972. Of this total, “123 were foresters, 190
56 KNA, BA/6/30, William Omamo’s speech at a Divisional Forest Officers meeting, January 12, 1971.
57 KNA, BA/6/31, Forest Policy draft (undated).
180 rangers, 1030 forest Guards and the rest in survey and roads.” 58 Training at the professional level mostly took place outside the country. Several Kenyans through technical aid went to
Makerere University in Uganda and other universities in East Germany, U.S.S.R.,
Czechoslovakia, U.S.A and Yugoslavia to pursue forestry related degrees. As a result of this effort, the professional staff increased from 17 in 1965 to 38 in 1972, over 100% increase. 59
Most of these personnel, however, specialized mostly in forestry management and industries, not in research, which still continued to suffer from lack of well-trained personnel. Nonetheless, this process availed to the central government Africans who were well trained in forestry. Yet given their cultural background, these Africans were able to empathize with rural inhabitants’ claims for land under forest reserves, thus, contributing in part to the ambivalent perspectives on management of the rural forests in the 1960s and later in the 1970s. Supporting expansion of forests in rural areas, the central government also recognized local claims on the forest reserves.
It was in this context that the government came up with a new approach to forestry, the Rural
Afforestation Scheme, in 1970.
The Swiss government provided funds to support the scheme. Written documents used in this research failed to show the motive that led the Swiss government to support this program.
Clues, however, came from my interlocutors who maintained that in funding the project the
Swiss government was simply laying a stake on Kenyan future forests, especially after Kenya had shown in the 1960s its potential as an important source of timber supplies to other countries. 60 Thus, in this context, the support appeared as an investment the Swiss government
58 KNA, BA/6/31, Forest Policy draft (undated.
59 KNA, BA/6/31, Forest Policy draft (undated).
60 Interview with Chief Conservator of forests, Mr. Ambune, January 20, 2006. 181 made to secure a future source of timber in Kenya. This motive synchronized with the
Kenyan government commercial interests on forests at this time, which was expressed in its
emphasis on developing the timber export sector. In this regard, Ochwada stressed:
The development of the timber export industry which is becoming an important contributor to Kenya’ foreign exchange earnings and to the diversification of Kenya’s export trade will eventually play a deciding role in Kenya’s forests scene. The export market is an extremely competitive one. It is important therefore that we aim at improvement of the quality of our timber while at the same time reducing costs. 61
Although the interests of both the Kenyan and Swiss governments motivated the making
of the policy at a time when significant acres of forest had been lost, it was rural inhabitants’
claims over land that shaped where and how the policy was implemented. The claims also
shaped the framing of the policy objective to expand the green zone in the rural areas. These
local influences on the policy occurred because government officials had realized through
experience that contests for land had been the major factor influencing forestry in rural parts of
Kenya. Thus, for successful implementation of this policy the government chose to target areas
far removed from rural villages and farms, places that government officials considered
unsuitable for agriculture or settlement and unclaimed by rural inhabitants. Hilltops proved
suitable in this case. 62 This scheme thus targeted hilltops as a strategy to expand forest zone in the country while in the process avoiding the land problem which hitherto had underlain the intensification of local contests for rural landscapes in areas such as Chepalungu, Maragoli, and
Kakamega.
61 KNA, BA/6/30, Ochwada’s speech at the Foresters’ conference in Nakuru, November 18, 1970.
62 In my interview with Paul Ongugo of Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), Nairobi on January 15, 2006. Also mentioned by Mr. Ambune, the Deputy Chief Conservator of forests, Karura Forest Department headquarters, Nairobi, January 10, 2006.
182 With in this new program, the government also had a proposal for areas where there
were strong local claims for land. For such cases it proposed on-farm forestry that aimed at
encouraging rural farmers to plant exotic trees for themselves in their own villages without any
interference from the Forest Department officials. 63 The aim of the government here was to
improve the forest zone by allowing rural people to plant trees on their own land and for their
own use. Local pressures for land thus proved to be central in the shaping of the Rural
Afforestation Expansion Scheme. In explaining the land pressure that influenced the scheme,
government officials, however, either misunderstood the dynamics that shaped it or intentionally
euphemized the dynamics through propaganda. Ochwada, the Assistant Minister of Natural
Resources, wrote for instance that:
As population increases and greater pressure mounts for cultivable land, naturally people turn to the forest areas for agricultural production. Such pressure has built tremendously since independence with the inevitable result that we have lost quite a large part of the forest, especially those forests with indigenous trees alone. 64
His Malthusian perspective was ahistorical at best since it ignored, whether advertently or inadvertently, the fact that part of the reason why claims for land intensified in rural areas in this period was because of the consequences of the forestry policy that had led to the alienation of portions of rural landscapes as forest reserves, which were used earlier in multiple ways other than “conservation” of trees alone. It is important to note here that despite this misrepresentation, the rural afforestation program showed government’s recognition of local claims over these landscapes and its readiness to consider them in any policy initiative. That was why in this program the government targeted hilltops. Hardly, however, did government officials consider in
63 KNA, VF/18/4 Notes on Key issues on forestry development in Kenya.
64 KNA, BA/6/77, Ochwada’s Report on Rural Afforestation (undated). 183 the initial stages that these areas, which they thought were far removed from rural villages,
were in fact under local ownership. Rural inhabitants made claims over these landscapes too.
They, thus, influenced significantly the course that the Rural Afforestation program took in the
1970s.
Before we explore the development of the program, first let us consider how this program
was implemented. Exploring this question is important at this point because it opens up issues
that will bring to light the shifts in the government’s approach to forestry in the 1970s, a central
part of the question we are exploring in this chapter.
The scheme deployed forest extension officers most of whom had just been trained in the
forest schools established in the 1960s. They were to sensitize rural people on the importance of
planting trees. For this purpose, many of the officers were sent to various districts. To guide the
officers in implementing the program, the Ministry of Natural Resources issued out a
memorandum to various regional forest department offices outlining two sets of procedures. 65 In the first procedure, the Divisional Forest Officer had to come up with the proposal of afforesting a particular hilly area. The officer then presented the proposal to the chief or headmen of the area in question, explaining to them the benefits of planting such a hill. If the local elders disagreed, the proposal had to be dropped. If they agreed, it was presented to the local County Council for approval. After this, the Forest Department could then begin demarcating the hill for tree planting. While in this procedure, the initiative for afforestation had to come from a government official, in the second procedure the initiative had to come from the people themselves. About the latter case the memo suggested:
65 The procedures are outlined in a report written by Ochwada, the Assistant Minister for Natural Resources in KNA, BA/6/77 Rural Afforestation (undated). 184 The local people on their own initiative invite the Forest officer and ask that an area be put under afforestation. They have to have the Local Council resolution to this effect, which is ratified by the County Council before the Forest Department makes a move. Demarcation follows with the elders “walking” the boundary line. 66
These two procedures had one thing in common. They indicated the effort by government officials to include rural inhabitants in the making, implementation, and management of forestry projects. The projects were not to be imposed on rural communities but rather had to go through a process of negotiation. They also recognized local uses of the hilly landscapes in cases where the inhabitants of those areas made claims for such uses. In this regard, the memorandum emphasized:
One principle from which we have not departed is the principle of democratic procedure in all matters. Where the local people can make use of the hills in one way or another, we have refrained from any activities therein. It is only where there is a mutual agreement that we have done any work. Where local leaders have stirred up animosity against our scheme, we have not pursued the matter further. 67
This statement was hardly propagandist in respect to the new policy on Rural Afforestation
Scheme. A perfect evidence available for this case is the Kisian Escarpment in Western Kenya, one of the hills that the central government targeted for this policy. Forest officials had assumed that given its location, JoKorando and JoKarateng,’ inhabitants of the area, would hardly lay claims over the hill. The claims had proven inimical to the previous forest project the colonial government started there in the 1950s that stalled in 1957. The assumptions that the postcolonial
Kenyan government officials displayed in this case appeared as a continuing trajectory traceable to the colonial officials’ assumptions about the remoteness of the hill and how because of that the hill would be easy to alienate for afforestation. Their experiences in the area, however, proved
66 KNA, BA/6/77, Rural Afforestation (undated).
67 KNA, BA/6/77, Rural Afforestation (undated). 185 otherwise, for JoKarateng’s and JoKarondo’s claims led the colonial government officials to give back the hill. The same thing happened again under the Rural Afforestation program. When the Divisional Forest Officer went to Kisian to ask the inhabitants of the area to allow the government to plant trees on the hill, the response was negative. 68 The people demanded compensation before they could allow the government to start any project on the hill. And because the government was not ready to offer compensations, the project could hardly take off.
J.M. Ojal, the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Natural Resources expressed his frustrations about such cases when he wrote:
The Rural Afforestation program cannot as yet be properly carried on because it takes time to set the land apart and to gazette it. Trust land is not easy to obtain without people asking for compensation and Treasury is not keen on providing compensation for afforestation of marginal areas whereas there are more viable areas already earmarked for afforestation. 69
And with that Ojal concluded, “West Kenya schemes will only succeed if West Kenya people show they are keen to see them succeed.” 70 Ojal in this case depicted an important aspect of the
Kenyan government’s approach to forestry at this juncture. It was a forestry that sought to cultivate mutuality between rural inhabitants’ and government’s interests on trees without which no forest project would succeed just as government officials had realized by this time. This objective, however, proved frustrating to achieve with the Rural Afforestation Scheme because of conflicts over land and forest utilization which contributed to minimal achievements realized in the program by 1980. Whereas rural inhabitants emphasized multiple uses of their
68 KNA, OP/1/989, J. M. Ojal’s Report to the Minister for Natural Resources, June 19, 1970; interview with Mama Mary and mzee Ojwang,’ 2005.
69 KNA, OP/1/989, J. M. Ojal’s Report to the Minister for Natural Resources, June 19, 1970.
70 KNA, OP/1/989, J. M. Ojal’s Report to the Minister for Natural Resources, June 19, 1970.
186 environment, in hilltop forestry, government officials expressed the importance of forestland
only in terms of tree resources.
By contrast, the government somewhat succeeded in the on-farm forestry that encouraged
rural farmers in western Kenya to plant tree seedlings in their own farms. 71 Farmers planted trees without interference from local forest officers who only came in to provide seedlings of exotic species and to advice on planting. Most farmers began to prefer the exotic species for wood fuel and timber because they matured more quickly than the indigenous species. 72 They also preferred them for shade, fencing, and scenic appearance within homesteads. Several families in Kakamega, Chepalungu, Maragoli, and Kisian and other parts of Western Kenya planted exotic trees mostly eucalyptus, pines, and cypresses. This adaptation did not just result from the on-farm forestry campaign but also from the restriction of local access to forest resources, which drove people to establish their private tree plantations for their own use. But as early as 1971 a few people in the region had begun to notice the side effects of these species on the rural environment. Indigenous species began to disappear at an alarming rate as farmers cleared them to create spaces for the exotics. 73 This change affected not only the flora but also the fauna of the region which depended on the indigenous species for food and breeding. Birds and small animals were the most seriously affected. 74 Slowly, doves, sparrows, crowned cranes, and hares, among many other birds and animals, disappeared as they died out or simply migrated
71 KNA, BA/2/2, Monthly Report of Kisumu Forestry Division, 1975. There was a report on successful plantation of Eucalyptus Canaldulena, Jacaranda Meru, Pinus Patula and Eucalyptus Saligna species in the area.
72 My informants in Chepalungu, Kisian, Maragoli, and Kakamega emphasized the importance of the exotic species.
73 I got this information especially from informants in Kakamega and Maragoli.
74 Informants in Kakamega and Maragoli.
187 to other areas. One man, Henry Lukanyu Wachu, from Kimilili captured this change clearly
in his letter to the Permanent Secretary, Ministry of Natural Resources. Wachu wrote:
I am especially thinking about the wisdom of this policy of replacing local species of plants for foreign species in regard to our fauna which bring us a lot of foreign currency. I am also thinking about it as regards the whole ecological set up of our Kenyan environment. Well, you see our fauna depend on natural vegetations [environment] and with them gone, our fauna can only exist in natural parks. But who would like to part with the melodious, refreshing and uplifting singing of birds etc. be able to have it or see them only in national parks etc. 75
Despite such pockets of contestations against the consequences of the on-farm forestry, the adaptation of the exotic trees into rural ecology and the realization locally of their importance represented aspects of intersections that had begun to take place between local and state forestry practices. Such intersections marked the beginning of a process in the postcolonial context which culminated in the later periods in participatory oriented forestry programs as the next chapters will show.
Lack of research in this period also played a significant role in the course of the rural afforestation program partly leading to its decline in 1980. The program was started in areas where the government had hardly done elaborate research on the prevailing entomological and ecological conditions. 76 Thus, apart from the rural inhabitants’ claims for hilly areas and their disputes against changes resulting from the policy, the ecological conditions in Western Kenya also influenced the Rural Afforestation program. Because of these conditions in the rural areas the program had not realized significant achievements by 1980. Nonetheless, the experiences that government officials and people in rural areas underwent during the 1970s as the result of the
75 KNA, BA/13/6, Henry Lukanyu’s letter to the Permanent Secretary, Natural Resources Ministry, May 17, 1971. Also got the information from my interviews in Kakamega and Maragoli.
76 Interview with Paul Ongugo of Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), January 15, 2006 188 Rural Afforestation program contributed immensely to the approaches the government adopted in the years that followed.
Conclusion
The Kenyan forestry policy in the first two decades after independence was less than definite. As this chapter has shown, it was manifested in diverse discourses and practices. From degazettment of forest reserves to regulated use of forest reserves, maintenance of forest reserves to exploitation of timber for export, expansion of forest zone in rural areas to perspectives that suggested the possibility of complete withdrawal of the government from forest reserves such as
Maragoli. By using the four cases in western Kenya, the chapter has demonstrated that the complexity of the policy resulted from interactions between central government strategies and multiple claims that rural inhabitants made over the alienated forest reserves.
The strategies included centralization and africanization which the government adopted to maintain and expand its role in forest management in the country. Yet the strategies enabled central government officials to engage directly with claims that rural people made over the forest reserves in different locales, a process that resulted in the divergent policy initiatives expressed in the maintenance of the forest reserves and recognition of local claims for use rights to these landscapes. The consequences of the policy initiatives expressed in the forest loss of the 1960s and early 1970s that contradicted conservation discourse and jeopardized future source of timber for export led the government to embark on the rural afforestation program which was shaped by local claims for land. Local claims over the preserved landscapes forced government officials to target hilly areas away from villages for afforestation. But as the contests that ensued demonstrate, even such hilly terrains that seemed unused to the government officials, areas 189 which they thought they could afforestate easily without sparking disputes, were under local residents’ ownership. The program also aimed at including rural people in the making, implementation, and management of afforestation projects. In fact, proposals for afforestation along with places to be afforested had to come from the people. The program, thus, represented central government interests, commercial and ideological, as it also recognized local claims to land. Despite the local approach adopted for the project, it, however, floundered because of ecological conditions in rural areas and government’s misinterpretation of the boundaries of the land to which rural people made claims. But it registered some success in its on-farm forestry facet as a result of the participation space and autonomy accorded to the rural inhabitants.
The divergent policy initiatives on local forests and the nationwide fluid forestry policy in the first two decades after independence resulted from multilayered government responses to local claims and its efforts to simultaneously pursue economic as well as ideological interests on rural forests. Locally, the consequences of the process were manifested in disputes against aspects of the policy that restricted local forest utilization, as well as in appropriation of exotic trees and discourses by rural inhabitants, processes which significantly transformed rural environment. Indigenous species cover reduced as most people began to plant exotic species for wood fuel, timber, and scenic appearance. 77
77 Interview with Paul Ongugo of Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), 2006. Eucalyptus has been known to deplete soil fertility wherever they are planted. It was not just my interviewees in Kakamega, Maragoli, Kisian, and Chepalungu who confirmed this, but also forestry specialists who pointed out that because of eucalyptus’ adverse effects on soil fertility they now encourage farmers to plant nitrogen fixing trees such as Grevillea s pecies besides indigenous species. The spread of exotics in the region was accompanied by reduction in indigenous species along with fauna such as birds which depended on them for food and breeding. A big chunk of the landscape was therefore filled with exotic species by 1970s. 190 Chapter Five
Taking forestry back to the People: Agroforestry and Social forestry policies, 1980-1990s
The interactions among government officials and rural people over the forest reserves in the years after independence had contributed to diverse policy initiatives some of which accommodated local claims over access to rural forests and land resources as the last chapter has shown. Central government officials had also begun to realize the value of incorporating rural people in the decision making and implementation process as exemplified in the Rural
Afforestation Extension program. The experience in terms of failures and success that informed this effort, in part, contributed to the forestry programs adopted in the years that followed. From the 1980s onwards, research agencies and non-governmental organizations collaborated to introduce agro-forestry and social forestry programs in the country. By no means, however, did this shift mark a complete break from the earlier forestry approaches, which included conservation and industrial forestry. These earlier threads in forestry persisted, yet agro-forestry and social forestry certainly introduced a different trend, which attempted to reorient forestry from its emphasis on trees alone to focus on people as well. 1
The agro-forestry approach aimed at creating complementary relationships between trees, livestock, and food crops. 2 This objective involved incorporating perennial trees, shrubs, and annual crops within existing farms to improve production and sustainability in land use practices in rural areas. It also aimed at expanding local participation in forestry by incorporating local
1 KNA, VF/14/4, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (GIAR), Research on Forestry in land Use Systems. The research identified varied threads in forestry policy in the 1980s and 1990s Initiative, which included agro-forestry, social forestry, industrial forestry and ecological forestry (conservationist forestry).
2 KNA, VF/14/4, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (GIAR), Research on Forestry in land Use Systems, 1980-90s.
191 farmers in decision making and implementation. 3 Whereas agro-forestry was oriented
towards technical strategies for diversifying and maximizing land use practices, which hitherto
had been under pressure due to alienation of forest reserves, social forestry approach was broader
and aimed at situating forestry within local social ties, culture, and market requirements. 4 For this reason, agroforestry has been considered part of social forestry, for it is also oriented against the practice that separates trees from people. 5 It emerged within the context of the broader social forestry perspective whose objective is to situate forestry within people’s interests, economy and culture.
Both agroforestry and social forestry were not just meant for areas with forest reserves such as Maragoli, Kakamega, and Chepalungu. They also targeted areas in the region without forests such as Kisumu and Siaya with the objective to initiate tree management practices in order to expand plantations within existing local farms. The forestry programs’ concerns with specific local contexts rendered their implementation variable and complex. They were, thus, in essence localized and small scaled, “confronting the traditional or industrial forestry whose main aim is to make a maximum contribution to macro or national economy.” 6
Emerging in India in the 1970s and African countries such as Kenya in the 1980s, agro- forestry and social forestry have since their inception attracted substantial research. Much of the resulting work produced from the late 1980s has explored their potential to increase crop and tree
3 KNA, VF/14/4, Consultative Group on International Agricultural Research (GIAR), Research on Forestry in land Use Systems, 1980-90s.
4 Interview with Paul Ongugo of Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), January 2006; KNA, VF/14/4, Social Forestry Perspective in Kenya (undated).
5 VF/14/4, Social Forestry Perspective in Kenya.
6 KNA, VF/14/4 (GIAR), 1980-90s.
192 production. It has also looked at their effect on farmers’ control over land as well as forest
use systems in rural areas. 7 In this case, the work highlights the significance of trees in enhancing
farmers’ claims over rights to use and own land. 8 It has also, in particular, emphasized the
potential of the forestry programs in empowering women and improving their status within local
land tenure systems. 9 There is work, however, which takes a critical perspective on agroforestry and social forestry elsewhere, arguing that they have only served interests of governments and elite men in expanding their control in rural areas. 10 In consequence, as the work argues, they
reinforce “the hegemony of dominant forestry discourses and practices.” 11 But how the
formulation and design of the forestry programs intersected with local forestland practices have
not yet been historically explored despite its significance in showing the contribution such
practices made to the forestry programs.
Agroforestry and social forestry programs in Kenya unfolded as part of continuing
struggles between the government, rural farmers, and non-governmental organizations over rural
landscapes. Thus, viewing them only from a top-down perspective that emphasizes their
hegemony may not capture the process that informed their making and implementation locally.
Permeating the process were conflicts and intersections between rural farmers’ claims for
preserved forests and government efforts to maintain and expand forests in rural areas. The
7 James C. Rindell. “Land Tenure and Agroforestry: A Regional View.” In John B. Raintree. 1987. Land, Trees and Tenure . Nairobi: ICRAF.
8 Rindell, “Land Tenure and Agroforestry: A Regional View.”
9 Dianne Rocheleau. “Women, Trees, and Tenure: Implications for Agroforestry Research and Development.” In John B. Raintree. 1987. Land, Trees, and Tenure ; Noel Chavangi. “Agroforestry Potentials and Land tenure Issues in Western Kenya.” In Raintree, Land, Trees, and Tenure.
10 Richard Schroeder. 1999. Shady Practices: Agroforestry and Gender Politics in the Gambia. Berkeley: University of California Press ; Jesse Ribot, “Decentralization, Participation and Accountability in Sahelian Forestry: Legal Instruments of Political-Administrative Control.”
11 Cline-Cole et al, “Promoting (anti-) social forestry in Northern Nigeria?” 193 struggle that this process entailed led to the rise of the forestry programs that drew significantly from local forest-land use practices. This chapter captures convergence between government forestry, or rather “modern” forestry and local forest-land use practices in western
Kenya. It argues that agroforestry and social forestry, from a historical context, unfolded not as a mere representation of hegemonic discourse but rather as an embodiment of intersections, resulting from the struggle over preserved and non-preserved rural landscapes. The chapter, thus, situates the policy programs in the context of the preceding forestry policy, forest-land use practices in western Kenya along with outside influences from non-governmental organizations as well as prevailing political economy of the country.
The convergence between the forestry programs and local forest use practices appeared more than just in claims made in their objective to take forestry back to the people. They were also reflected in practical changes in forestry. For example, by 1997 the government had given back over half of Chepalungu forest to the Kipsigis and the whole of Maragoli hill to the
Avalagoli landowners. Also, the agencies and non-governmental organizations involved in forestry emphasized planting of indigenous species instead of exotic plantations, an approach quite different from the forestry of the preceding years. Furthermore, the social forestry and agroforestry programs that the organizations formulated borrowed heavily from local forest-land use practices. Local farmers adapted to these forestry processes by domesticating indigenous trees which had begun to disappear from settled areas. In areas like Kakamega, such trees were mainly found in the forest reserve.
Despite the convergence, to portray the policy programs as neatly dovetailing with local forest-land use practices by no means imply absence of difference between them. For the programs also incorporated interests, techniques, and discourse associated with modern forestry, 194 all having characteristics distinct from forest-land use practices typical of the region. The
interconnections and differences between official and local forest use practices embodied in the
programs emerged in the context of forestry experiences continuing from the preceding years.
Land use, afforestation, and forestry research Land constraints in combination with ecological conditions appeared as the major factors that
undermined rural afforestation and on-farm programs that the government had initiated in
Western Kenya in the 1970s. The hills that seemed to government officials as unclaimed by rural
farmers, hence fit for afforestation, for example, Kisian, turned out to be the mostly contested as
shown in the last chapter. These contests expressed an ongoing competition between local land
use systems and official forestry. They were about management and use of land resource whose
significance from the local perspective lay not just in their potential for crop production, but also
in provision of wood fuel, timber, and herbal medicine.
Despite the contests, there were cases where extension forest officers succeeded in
encouraging local farmers to engage in tree planting. These cases occurred in places such as
Kakamega, Chepalungu and non-forest areas in northern and southern parts of Kisumu district, formerly Central Nyanza. In these cases, there was, on the one hand, success in growth of plantation with a wide range of benefits such as wood fuel, timber, and shade accruing to farmers, and on the other, ecological costs in depletion of soil fertility as well as disappearance of indigenous fauna and flora. 12 About the latter, according to local farmers, the exotic trees
12 Interviews in Kakamega and Maragoli where my interviewees emphasized that most of the exotic plantations covered large sections of land, that they consumed large amount of soil in areas where they were planted. Eucalyptus has been known to deplete soil fertility. It was not just my interviewees in Kakamega, Maragoli, Kisian, and Chepalungu who stated this, but also forestry specialists. The specialists pointed out that because of eucalyptus’ adverse effects on soil fertility they now encourage farmers to plant nitrogen fixing trees such as grevillea s pecies besides indigenous species. 195 consumed large amount of soil and covered large sections of land useful for food crop
production. In addition, their canopies obstructed food crops from sun light in cases where they were planted on farm edges leading to poor crop yields.13
The negative ecological effects occurred because the plantations which represented initial
government efforts to encourage integration of farming and forestry within existing farms were
carried out without intensive research to determine tree species appropriate for the varied
Western Kenya climatic conditions, ranging from warm to semi-humid climate with bimodal
rainfall distribution. There was also no research conducted from a forestry perspective on the
region’s soil conditions, which supported mixed land use systems based on food crop production
and livestock farming. Not least was the inadequate information available on pests and diseases
endemic to the area and on their potential to affect tree plantations. 14 Most of the trees, for
example, died because of termites, a common problem in the region. 15
The lacuna in forestry research before 1980 and a few years after resulted from lack of
research agency specialized on forestry. Research on forestry was subsumed under the Ministry
of Agriculture through its research agency, Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI). 16 The
practice of combining forestry and agricultural research within one agency specialized on
agriculture undermined progress in forestry research. And this lacuna grew at a time when there
was great need for research given the frustrations that government officials had so far faced from
13 Interview with Laban Owinga, in October 2005 and in January 2006.
14 Interview with Paul Ongungo Kenya Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI), 2006; KNA, VF/10/9, Kenya Forestry Research Institute, 1983-1989; VF/14/4, forestry training 1988-1989.
15 KNA, VF/10/9, Kenya Forestry Research Institute, 1983-1989; VF/14/4, forestry training 1988-1989.
16 KNA, VF/14/4, forestry training 1988-1989.
196 farmers and as a result of knowledge gap on ecology and farming practices in the region. 17
In his letter to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources,
O.M. Mburu, the chief conservator of forests, argued against this practice of combining agriculture and forestry research. He wrote: “For the benefit of forestry development, I feel that forestry research requires greater identity than it can receive under KARI. A situation where the
Ministry of Agriculture is responsible for forestry research and development is undesirable.” He went further to suggest, “I think matters can only improve if forest research were to come under its own institute.” 18
Consequently, in 1985 the council for science and technology, whose role was to oversee various research agencies in the country, met and resolved to advise the government to establish a forestry research institute. 19 The following year, 1986, the government established the Kenya
Forestry Research Institute (KEFRI) through an Act of Parliament under the science and technology Act. 20 Its mandate was to conduct forestry research and work with other research institutions to disseminate research findings. Its research priorities focused on silviculture, tree improvement, forest ecology, agroforestry and watershed protection. 21 Operating from its headquarter in Muguga, Nairobi, the institute established a center at Maseno, western Kenya with the objective to develop agroforestry and social forestry technologies for the land use
17 KNA, VF/14/4, J. Odero, deputy director of forest’s letter to the permanent secretary of Ministry of Environment and Natural Resources (undated).
18 KNA, VF/14/4, June 24, 1984.
19 KNA, VF/14/4, the council comprised Kenya Agricultural Research Institute (KARI), Kenya Industrial Research Institute (KIRDI), Kenya Marine and Fisheries Research Institute (KEMFRI), Kenya Medical Research Institute (KEMRI), and Kenya Trypanosomiasis Research Institute (KEMTRI).
20 KNA, VF/14/4, Kenya Forestry Research Institute, March 1988
21 KNA, VF/14/4, National Forestry Research Priorities in Kenya, February 6, 1989.
197 systems within the bimodal highland region with an altitude ranging from 1000m to 2500m above sea level and a total rainfall of 1000m and above. 22 These technologies were to be deployed in integrating trees into crop farming and other land use systems, such as animal farming, typical of the region.
KEFRI was not the only organization involved in this effort to develop technologies for integrating trees into farming. A consortium, which included KARI and a non-governmental organization, International Center for Research on Agroforestry (ICRAF) was involved. ICRAF, established in Canada in 1978, focused on developing strategies for sustainable forestland use systems in the tropical regions. 23 For this reason, it established a center at Maseno that collaborated with KEFRI, KARI and other regional non-governmental organizations such as
CARE, Forest Action Network, and Kenya Wood fuel and Agroforestry project (KWAP) toward achieving the social forestry programs in the Western Kenya region. Although it operated from such a local area, this collaborative research center situated at Maseno had links with the regional and international forestry program of Agroforestry Research Network for Africa (AFRENA) that covered Rwanda, Uganda, Burundi, Ethiopia, and Kenya. 24 AFRENA’s goal was to promote agroforestry programs in the highland region of Eastern and Central Africa. 25
The concepts of agroforestry and social forestry therefore were not peculiar to Kenya or the western Kenya region. But the peculiarity which forms our concern in this case existed in the historical, ecological as well as sociocultural contexts in western Kenya within which the
22 KNA, VF/14/4, Kenya Forestry Research Institute, March 1988.
23 Interview with chief conservator of forests, Ambune, and ecologist, Paul Ongugo, 2006.
24 Interview with chief conservator of forests, Ambune, and ecologist, Paul Ongugo, 2006.
25 KNA, VF/10/9, on-farm Research Forest Activities, Agroforestry Research Network for East Africa Maseno, Kenya, 1983-1989.
198 programs were implemented and the methods adopted toward the goal of creating sustainable
forest-land use systems focused on people. Various research done in different places confirms
the regional and local variability of agroforestry and social forestry process in institutions
involved, methods adopted for its implementation, trees proposed for plantation, and their
consequences in those places. In the Sahelian region, for example, local institutions with an
upward accountability to the state, not to the local communities, were involved in the
implementation of participatory forestry programs, which denied local farmers space to
effectively participate in decision making and implementation. 26 This approach was also
followed in Java, India, where Java State Forestry Corporation actively participated in the
implementation of social forestry. 27 The approach undermined the objective to enhance participatory forestry in Java. In the case of tree crops for agroforestry, in the Gambia, orchard trees were proposed to replace gardening in vegetables as an agroforestry project, while in western India, wood fuel, fodder and fruit trees were planted in places such as Gujarat,
Maharashtra, and Rajasthan. 28 But, western Kenya case shows active involvement of the civil society represented by research agencies and non-governmental organizations. 29 Forest extension officers played a minimal role, except in management of actual forest reserves in parts of
Kakamega and Chepalungu where they continued to have significant influence.
26 Ribot, “Decentralization, Participation and Accountability in Sahelian Forestry: Legal Instruments of Political- Administrative Control.”
27 Nancy Lee Peluso. 1993. “Traditions of Forest Control in Java: Implications for Social Forestry and Sustainability.” Global Ecology and Biogeography Letters , vol. 3, no. 4/6.
28 Parmesh Shah and Andrew Weir. 1987. “Approaches to Social Forestry in Western India: Some Aspects of NGO Experience.” Social Forestry Network .
29 KNA, VF/18/4, Notes on Key Issues on Forestry Development in Kenya: the Report indicates that “the government realizing the role of the forestry sub-sector, has allowed NGOs, churches, Donor Agencies and leaders from all walks of life to participate in forestry development and on environmental protection projects.”
199 The active involvement of the agencies and non-governmental organizations in forestry resulted primarily from rural people’s claims to preserved lands along with frustrations they caused the government in its efforts to maintain and expand forests in rural areas. The bottlenecks to forest expansion, however, developed at a time when the government had begun to experience macroeconomic difficulties, which led to the adoption of the structural adjustment programs in the period 1980-1990s to reform the public sector. 30 After independence, government efforts to expand employment opportunities in the country created a bloated public sector which enormously increased government recurrent expenditure. As a consequence, non- recurrent expenditure declined and wages of civil servants stagnated. In the Forestry Department, the decline in wages and reduction of non-recurrent expenditure affected the capacity to manage forests in sustainable ways. 31 Forestry officials were demoralized as infrastructure and equipments deteriorated and as rural people frustrated forest expansion efforts. Forestry management, thus, became unprecedently expensive. As part of the downsizing strategy proposed in the structural adjustment program to resolve the crisis in the public sector, the government resolved to withdraw some of its control over the management of forests to cut back government spending. The agencies and non-governmental organizations through their research and programs filled the space, getting involved in enhancing participation of rural communities in forestry through social forestry and agroforestry programs. Although macroeconomic factors played a central role in the policy shift, the process took place in the context of the struggles by
30 See Richardson Julie A. 1996. Structural Adjustment and environmental linkages: a case study of Kenya . London: Overseas Development Institute.
31 KNA, VF/18/4, Notes on Key Issues on Forestry Development in Kenya: The Report indicates that in the 1980s forestry department spent about 80% of her recurrent and development budget on paying salaries for her staff. 200 rural farmers for ownership and use rights over preserved forests, struggles which compelled
the government to adopt new strategies for expanding forest frontiers in rural areas.
Formulating Agroforestry and Social forestry programs
To formulate and design agroforestry and social forestry strategies suitable for the food crop land
use system in the region of Western Kenya, KEFRI, ICRAF, and KARI began to collaborate on
research in 1989. 32 The research focused on areas with and without forest reserves in Kisumu,
Kakamega, Vihiga, and northern parts of Kisumu including other areas such as Siaya and Busia districts. Its first priority was to gather information on biophysical and socioeconomic conditions in these areas. It was also focused on studying land use systems. 33 In an area of relative land
scarcity, the research aimed at gaining insights into problems faced by farmers and strategies
they adopted to mitigate them. It also aimed at gaining farmers’ input into the design and
evaluation of the techniques and approaches proposed for changing land-forest use systems. 34 In
all the case studies in Kakamega, Kisumu, and Siaya, farmers identified depletion of soil fertility
as the most serious land use problem in the area, contributing to low food crop production. 35 The
problem resulted in part from constant intensive land use practices involving the planting of
annual crops such as maize, millet, sorghum, bananas, beans, cassava, and sweet potatoes in the
same plots. In the high rainfall areas such as Kakamega, maize yields only reached less than 1
32 KNA, VF/10/9, on-farm research activities, Agroforestry Research Network for East Africa Maseno, Kenya.
33 KNA, VF/10/9, on-farm research activities, Agroforestry Research Network for East Africa Maseno, Kenya.
34 KNA, VF/10/9, on-farm research activities, Agroforestry Research Network for East Africa Maseno, Kenya.
35 Ibid; Interview with Carsen of ICRAF, Laban Owinga, community youth leader, Maseno, and the former chief of Buyangu, Kakamega, 2005.
201 ton per acre, meaning that areas with low rainfall received even much lower yields. 36 Farmers also kept cattle, predominantly indigenous breeds for milk, meet, manure, traction, and wealth.
To mitigate soil fertility depletion so as to maintain crop production, farmers in the region practiced short period fallowing, mixed farming, and intercropping. 38 They also applied livestock manure on their farms. Although these practices occurred in the context of influences from intensive agriculture introduced in the region in the colonial period, they represented aspects of old farming practices, which had continued despite changes resulting from intensive agricultural practices. Short period fallowing, for example, represented continuing aspects of shifting agriculture. The practice occurred in two different ways. In the first case, a household stopped to cultivate a piece of land for a short period before subjecting it again to any farming activity. During the fallowing period, grass, trees and leguminous shrubs such as Markhamia
lutea and Sesbania species, common in the region, took over the landscape creating a covering
over the topsoil. The covering retained soil moisture and protected the topsoil from activities
such as wind and water erosion that affected its fertility. 39 In the other case, fallowing occurred
naturally based on local customs of building homesteads, goyo dala or ligala (pacho) , in Luo,
amadala or eligala , in Avalagoli and Isukha. 40 This practice is still common in most parts of
western Kenya. It involved sons moving away from their fathers’ homesteads when they became
adult to build their own homes near or further away from their fathers’ homes. The process
36 KNA, VF/10/9, the KEFRI Zonal Agroforestry Research Project.
38 KNA, VF/10/9, the KEFRI Zonal Agroforestry Research Project.
39 Interview with Laban Owinga in Kisumu, 2005 and 2006.
40 For details on the practice in the case of the Luo see David Cohen & Atieno Odhiambo. 1989. Siaya: The Historical Anthropology of an African Landscape. London: James Currey; the practice was also common among the Avalagoli, Bukusu, Isukha and other Luhyia clans. See Gunter, The Bantu of North Kavirondo , vol. 1, p. 49.
202 stopped with the last born son who sometimes decided to remain behind to live permanently
in the home, for according to the custom the youngest son had ownership rights over his father’s
home. At times, homesteads remained empty especially after all sons had moved out and parents
died. Under such circumstances, the homesteads naturally turned into gunda (abandoned homes
or land) in Luo, eligunda in Avalagoli.41 Over time, places within the homestead which were
cultivated as gardens and where houses stood reverted back to fields of trees and shrubs. By
experience, such places were known to be very fertile, especially after remaining fallow for an
extended period. When put back to cultivation they produced high crop yields for extended
periods because of compost waste and moisture retained as the result of the vegetative
outgrowth.
Apart from fallowing, farmers in the region practiced hedge planting and intercropping.
As hedge rows farmers planted trees such as euphorbia and Markhamia lutea around farms and
homesteads. These hedges served as fences. Most of these trees were used for timber and wood
fuel in such areas as Maragoli, Chepalungu, Kisumu and Siaya, but the Isukha in Kakamega
considered Markhamia as sacred, using it only in rituals for rainmaking. In intercropping,
farmers allowed woody and fruit trees to grow within existing farms in which they cultivated
crops, helping to improve soil fertility and sources of nutrition for households. 42
These farm-tree management practices interacted with private land tenure and forest
protection policy to contribute in part to the land constraints typical of the region in the period
after 1980. As sons moved out of their fathers’ homesteads to construct their homes within the
41 Gunter, The Bantu of North Kavirondo , vol. 1.
42 S. J. Scherr. 1992. “The Role of extension in agroforestry development: evidence from western Kenya.” Agroforestry Systems , 18.
203 context of private land tenure systems, land increasingly became scarce. The situation was
aggravated in Kakamega, Maragoli, and Chepalungu as the result of the policy that restricted
local use of protected forestland. 43 These processes contributed to increase the demand and use
of land in the region by the 1980s. The spiraling effects were manifested in land constraints and
soil fertility reduction that KEFRI, KARI, and ICRAF sought to reverse as from 1988 through
agroforestry and social forestry techniques. But the significant problem was to identify specific
techniques and approaches appropriate for the region.
Available evidence shows that most practices these agencies adopted for the agroforestry
and social forestry programs came from the locally existing farm-tree management practices.
During their collaborative research project in Kakamega, Vihiga, Kisumu, and Siaya, the
agencies observed and studied farm management practices used in the region. Some of the
practices, such as fallowing had been common in earlier periods but declined significantly by
1980s as the result of the existing land constraints. But farmers continued to practice mixed
cropping and use animal manure to maintain adequate food production.
After the research, the agencies proposed to use improved short period fallowing,
manure, hedgerow intercropping, woody perennial trees and shrubs. 44 These methods were
appropriated from the local farm management practices, although with slight improvements in
techniques involved and types of trees adopted. The appropriation of these methods into
43 Many of my interviewees in Chepalungu, Maragoli, and Kakamega complained about land scarcity in their areas especially due to the policy of forest protection.
44 KNA, VF/10/9; interview with Laban Owinga, extension farmer, Maseno, 2006; Qureish Noordin, et al. 2007. “Scaling up adoption and impact agroforestry technologies: experiences from western Kenya.” Development in Practice . Taylor and Francis; B. Jama. 2000. “ Tithonia diversifolia as a green manure for soil fertility improvement in western Kenya: A review.” Agroforestry system, 49; J.S. Scherr. 1992. “The role of extension in agroforestry development evidence from western Kenya.” Agroforestry systems , 18: Interview with Ongungo, 2005; Interview with Carsen of ICRAF, Nairobi, 2005.
204 agroforestry and social forestry programs resulted from their scientifically proven potential to
maintain sustainable land and forest use. Improved short period fallowing, for example, was
adopted from the existing aspects of fallowing practice of goyo dala or amadala, which turned
old homesteads into abandoned fields of trees and shrubs. 45 The researchers observed soil
fertility improvement when these areas were put back to cultivation. 46 They confirmed that the
improvement of soil fertility resulted from trees and shrubs which recolonized the homesteads,
adding humus, moisture, as well as nitrogen to the soil. 47 Trees and shrubs identified in this
process included Markhamia lutea, Sesbania sesban and Tithonia diversifolia. Besides their significance in improving soil fertility, the trees also provided wood fuel and medicine to farmers. They also served as fodder for livestock. These uses made the trees a multipurpose resource. A case in point is Sesbania whose medical value and contribution to soil fertility has
scientifically been proven. It has been used in Western Kenya to treat fever, wounds, small pox,
kwashiorkor, and sexually transmitted diseases.48 Sesbania has also been known to fix up to
600kg/ha of nitrogen per year into the soil because of the nodules that readily form in its roots. 49
Both Markhamia and sesbania species are native to the region, but Tithonia is said to have
originated from Mexico before it spread to Asia and Africa. 50 People in western Kenya, however,
45 Interview with Owinga, 2006, and Andrew in Maragoli, January 2006.
46 VF/10/9, the KEFRI Zonal Agroforestry Research Project; Interview with Laban Owinga, 2006; Interview with Andrew, 2006.
47 Interview with Laban Owinga, 2006.
48 J.F. Onim, K. Otieno, & B. Dzowela. “The Role of Sesbania as Multipurpose Trees in small-scale Farms in Western Kenya.” In Bill Macklin & Dale Evans (Eds.). 1990. Perennial Sesbania Species in Agroforestry Systems . Nitrogen Fixing Tree Association and International Council for Research in Agroforestry (ICRAF).
49 Otieno, & Dzowela. “The Role of Sesbania as Multipurpose Trees in small-scale Farms in Western Kenya.”
50 Jama, “ Tithonia diversifolia as a green manure for soil fertility improvement in western Kenya: A review.”
205 maintain that the shrub is native to the region, and that they have known it for a long time as
medicine and fodder. 51 If it did originate in Mexico, then its introduction to the area must have
occurred almost over four centuries ago after the Portuguese had landed on the coast of east
Africa, which has made the shrub appear indigenous to the area.
In Agroforestry, these trees and shrubs were adopted in the fallowing of regular farms, a
practice which was already on the decline. But unlike in homestead fallow, past shifting
cultivation, or short period fallows in which such trees grew naturally, in improved short period
fallows of agroforestry, farmers were to be provided with seeds to plant on the farms. The
improvement resulted from the adoption of the biological approach whose aim was to induce
quick germination and growth of the leguminous trees. 52 The trees were then left to grow on the
fallowed land for a short period after which they were cleared. 53 Apart from the nitrogen they added into the soil, their leaves and stems were left in the farm to rot as humus. 54 Also, livestock which provided milk, meat, and manure to the farmers fed on the shrubs while they were still in the field. Viewed in the context of past farm-tree management practices, improved short period fallow method suggested by the research agencies in the western Kenya region appeared less than new despite the biological method adopted for it.
51 Interview with Laban Owinga, 2005.
52 See Qureish Noordin, “Scaling up adoption and impact agroforestry technologies: experiences from western Kenya.”
53 Noordin, “Scaling up adoption and impact agroforestry technologies: experiences from western Kenya.”
54 In his research, Qureish Noordin mentions the practice in which leafy biomass cut from leguminous trees were spread on crop fields. Noordin, “Scaling up adoption and impact agroforestry technologies: experiences from western Kenya,” p. 510.
206 The agencies also developed hedgerow-intercropping systems. 55 In this method farmers were encouraged to plant indigenous trees and shrubs such as euphorbia, Markhamia ,
albizia coriaria , and Sesbania sesban within farms and along farm boundary. They were also
encouraged to plant exotic trees, including Grevillea robusta and cupresso species in rows or in
small wood lots under wide spacing with in farms. These trees provided farmers with wood fuel,
timber, medicine, and fodder. They also added nitrogen as well as manure to the soil thus
improving soil fertility. Farmers were also encouraged to plant fruit trees such as paw paw,
mangoes, avocados, and guavas, together with crops in the same farm. 56 The agencies borrowed
hedgerow intercropping from the existing local practice of the farm hedge, which served as
boundary markers, farm protection, fodder, and source of wood fuel. The social forestry
approach through alley or hedgerow intercropping, thus, appeared as an adaptation of the local
hedging practices.
Historical and ecological processes which varied locally underlay application of these
forestry strategies in Maragoli, Kakamega, and Chepalungu. This variation creates the need to
explore local processes that preceded and shaped social forestry in each of these places.
The Clearing and Replanting of Maragoli Hill Although the central government had proposed in the 1970s to give back the whole of Maragoli
forest reserve to the Avalagoli landowners, the hill continued to be maintained as a forest reserve
through 1980s and early part of 1990s. The landowners who lived on the enclaves inside the
forest reserve and farmers who lived in the villages below the hill persisted to make claims for
55 KNA, VF/10/9, Proposal for Kenya Agroforestry Research Project, 1988.
56 KNA, VF/10/9, Proposal for Kenya Agroforestry Research Project, 1988.
207 use and ownership rights to the hill and its forest resources. Afforestation had denied them
land for cultivation and grazing, contributing to acute land constraints that the landowners faced
during this period. 57 In addition, the wild animals which inhabited the forest continued to destroy crops in local farms. Magana, a long time resident of the hill, for example, lamented how his family could not get adequate harvest at the end of every planting season due to invasions from monkeys, baboons, and birds. 58 And neither could he and other residents keep cattle because of
hyenas and leopards which always invaded their homes. The danger posed by these wild animals
contributed to the glaring poverty evident even today among the residents of the hill. The poverty
situation was also linked to low level of formal education among the residents which resulted
from the location of the hill away from schools in the surrounding villages and the danger that
wild animals posed to children. 59
The residents adapted to the policy of afforestation along with its consequences in two
major ways. They utilized the forest resources out of the watch of the forest guards. Male
residents continued to cut trees for charcoal and women ventured into the forest to collect wood
fuel and medicine. 60 They claimed use rights to the trees within the forest reserve because the
forest department as a legitimating strategy had emphasized earlier that the trees were planted to
benefit the inhabitants of the hill. These uses of the forest, however, always contributed to
conflicts between the resident landowners and the forest guards who normally executed the
restriction policy. But the responses to such restrictive policy had by 1980 become uncoordinated
57 Interviews with Kavunja, Magana, assistant chief Aseso, 2005.
58 Interviews with Magana, 2005.
59 Interviews with Magana, 2005.
60 Interviews with Kavunja and George Ayuya, 2005.
208 due to lack of an organization, which could articulate their claims to the government. The
Maragoli Hill Farmers’ Society that used to articulate the interests of the resident landowners to
the government in the previous years had declined after its fiery secretary general, Elija Ogola,
relocated to a settlement scheme in Kamkuyu near Kitale in late 1970s. 61 The current residents of
the hill claimed that he accepted to relocate after being bribed by the government. 62 His relocation, a result of government’s divide and rule tactic, disorganized the society, rendering it inactive in the 1980s. The residents were consequently left on their own to continue with the struggle for the hill. Several instances of contests between the forest guards and individual families which sometimes turned bloody occurred during this period. 63 Most of these instances involved residents who were caught by the forest guards cutting trees, collecting firewood or burning charcoal on the hill. One such instance occurred in 1987 when forest guards arrested a young man by the name Charles for burning charcoal inside the forest. They severely beat him, inflicting fatal wounds that led to his death that same year. 64
Besides continuing to secretly defy forest use restrictions, the resident landowners created economic links with the Avalagoli families residing near to the hill and Luo communities further away from the hill. To augment their meager subsistence produce, the residents, both men and women, walked miles to work in the Avalagoli and Luo homes. 65 They were paid in cash or with
61 My attempts to trace Elijah Ogola in Makuyu where he is said to have relocated proved unfruitful.
62 Interviews with Kavunja in Maragoli, 2005.
63 Interviews with Magana and Andrew in Maragoli, 2005.
64 Interview with Magana. Charles was the son of the respondent.
65 Interview Aseso, 2005 and 2006.
209 grains, measured in tins ( gorogoro ), for a day’s labor. 66 They mainly worked in farms, tilling
land and weeding crops. Some of them tended cattle. In the evenings, they trekked back to their
villages carrying their payments. Attempts by the government to persuade them to relocate to
other areas generated demands for alternative land and cash for relocation without which they
would not move. But the government was not ready to offer these payments, contributing to the
residents’ decision to stay put on the hill.
Following incessant claims over the hill from the resident landowners and continuing
conflicts between them and forest officials, David Mwangi, the District Commissioner of Vihiga
District under which Maragoli hill fell made a decision in 1997 that changed the history of the
place. 67 Without the knowledge of the residents, Mwangi invited loggers one of whom was
called Okwaro to clear the whole forest. Mwangi’s motive for authorizing the clearing remains
unclear even today. Some residents claimed that he did it to benefit himself by selling the timber,
while others claimed that it was an altruistic action aimed at allowing them to get back their
land. 68 Both reasons, altruistic and personal, could have influenced the decision to clear the
forest.
The clearing began that same year and the cleared timber was sold to sawyers and others
transported to Kisumu for sale. 69 The residents contested, arguing that the trees belonged to
them, that Mwangi, the District Commissioner, had no rights to sell the trees. When Mwangi
failed to respond, chiefs and local councilors asked the residents also to join the clearing because
66 Interview with Aseso, 2006.
67 Interviews with Kavunja, Ayuyo, Mary (the assistant chief) and Aseso, her husband, 2005.
68 Magana’s emphasis. He mentioned that the DC assured them that the land was theirs’ and that they should get it back.
69 Interview with Magana, 2005.
210 they could not sit back, while others who had no rights over the forest benefited from the
trees. 70 As the result, the residents began to clear the forest, using the trees they had cleared as wood fuel, timber, and wood for charcoal. They sold the wood fuel and charcoal to nearby
Avalagoli villages. Sometimes they took them to the nearby markets such as Darajambili and
Kiboswa each about 3 miles away from the hill. Within a few months, the whole hill that a year earlier boasted a dense canopy of cypresses and eucalyptus turned into a cleared landscape strewn with heavy boulders and dotted with a few bushes. The resident landowners got back their land, although the hill still remained a reserve. Notwithstanding the reserved status of the hill, a few families who had left for settlement schemes in districts such as Kakamaga and Kitale, consequently started to move back to reclaim their land which they had lost to the forest reserve.
George Ayuya who left the hill in 1960s with his parents came back in 1998 and is now settled on the slopes of the hill with his family, including a wife and three children. And families below the hill who had lost their plots to the forest reserve began to exercise usufruct and ownership rights to those places. They began to cultivate crops on the slopes of the hill. Conflicts were therefore inevitable, especially because of fuzzy boundaries and instances of illegitimate claims.
But elders’ intervention helped to resolve the conflicts, for they knew those who had ownership and use rights to various sections of the hill before its afforestation by the colonial administration. 71
After the clearing, the major question at this point was whether to leave the hill as it was or to replant it with trees. Whereas the residents of the hill opposed replanting, the government through the forest department advocated for replanting. In justifying their position, the forest
70 Interview with Magana, 2005.
71 Interview with Peter Kavunja and George Ayuya, 2005.
211 officials argued that the clearing was done not to allow the residents to take over the hill, but
to allow replacement of the old trees with new ones. In response, the residents swore that no
trees would be planted there again.72 To justify their position, they emphasized the benefits that
resulted from the clearing of the forest. 73 Their farm harvests had improved greatly after the clearing. They were also able to keep cattle following the disappearance of the wild animals which used to inhabit the forest. Magana, for example remarked, “Since the clearing there is no more hunger. We harvest maize, millet, and sorghum, and we keep cattle. Things have changed greatly.” 74
These contests against replanting the forest occurred at a time when ICRAF, KEFRI, and
KARI had developed agroforestry and social forestry technologies from research done in various parts of the region, including Vihiga where Maragoli lies. Based on social forestry approach, the forest department instead of reafforesting the hill itself opted to allow a non-governmental organization, the Forest Action Network, to work with ICRAF to negotiate with the residents to plant trees. 75 The trees had to be relevant to their needs as well as their land and tree use practices. But most of the indigenous tree species from which the inhabitants could raise seedlings disappeared after the afforestation; others were cut during the clearing. Among these were amerende , kigwambara (a medicinal tree) and videdeye , the sacred tree that stood in the
72 Interview with Magana, 2005.
73 Interview with respondents in Maragoli hill, 2005.
74 Interview with Magana, 2005.
75 The Forest Action Network is a non-governmental organization established in 1995 to sensitize people on the importance of planting trees. During the interview in Maragoli, the residents indicated that the agencies agreed to negotiate with them on how to replant the hill. They used the word, kuongea (Swahili) which means to talk, implying that the forestry officials had agreed to choose the path of negotiation.
212 middle of mungurumutu shrine. Videdeye was cleared in 1997 by a young man called,
Sangara, who used it to make charcoal. The residents considered what Sangara did as a big taboo that would bring punishment either to the young man, his family, or to the residents of the hill as a whole. 76 Shortly a year after, Sangara became insane and infertile. He never married. His father also died. According to the residents, these events confirmed the belief in the power embedded in the tree. 77 The residents emphasized that before cutting the tree, the elders should have performed a ritual to neutralize that power. This event showed how generational difference and differentiated locations of individuals diversified Avalagoli perceptions of the sacred tree and mungurumutu shrine. Whereas a few, mostly young people, such as Sangara, for instance, only saw the tree in terms of its economic value, most of the residents still believed in the sanctity of videdeye, as well as the sacredness of mungurumutu despite the changes which had resulted from the afforestation policy. For instance, after the afforestation, followed by the clearing, there were no custodians to look after the shrine, or perform rituals. But elders continued to remind both residents and visitors alike of the significance of the shrine, including its history. Their loss of control exemplified in the clearing of the sacred tree, however, rendered the place open for everyone to visit for meditation, recreation, and prayers as most Christians did every New Year’s
Eve. These differences in perceptions of the hill shaped ways in which the residents of Maragoli responded to the efforts to replant the hill through social agroforestry and agroforestry programs.
To facilitate this effort, ICRAF in conjunction with the Forest Action Network agreed to provide seedlings of indigenous trees, including markhamia , mangoes , kigwambara (the
medicinal tree), which had disappeared or were on the verge of disappearing. The agencies
76 Interview with George Ayuyo and Kavunja, 2005.
77 Interview with Samwel. His father was an elder, 2005. 213 organized workshops in churches, local schools, and baraza (assistant chief’s meetings) in which their agents exhorted residents to do intercropping—planting trees in their homes and farms for wood fuel, soil fertility, food nutrients, medicine, and soil erosion prevention. 78 The agents suggested trees relevant to the local economic as well as cultural contexts. Since it was mostly women who attended the local churches, they became the first major recipients of the social forestry principles. 79 Men living mostly in Avalogoli villages below the hill also became interested in the programs. 80 The inhabitants of the hill, both men and women, continued to emphasize that no outsiders would be allowed to replant the hill, that they would accept the seedlings and plant the trees themselves in their own homes and farms for their own use and not for anyone else. 81
The source of contention in this case was over control of the hill and trees to be planted.
The contests were shaped by a difference between forestry agents and landowners’ perceptions of the hill. To the residents, besides being a source of multipurpose resources, the hill was home, whereas to the government officials it only appeared useful as a forest reserve. The contests also appeared to be over claims for private ownership rights to land and trees, which had been usurped by the forest reserve. In this context, the social forestry approach attempted to bridge the gap not only between trees and the residents but also between the residents and the non- governmental organizations concerned with social forestry. In spite of the motive to serve official interests on forestry, the approach aimed at encouraging the people to plant indigenous trees with cultural meaning as well as relevance to the local economic needs. It also aimed at
78 Interview with Ayuya and Samwel in Maragoli hill, 2005.
79 Interview with Aseso, 2006.
80 Interview with Aseso, 2006.
81 Interview with Magana and Ayuyo, 2005. 214 convincing the people to work with the Forest Network and ICRAF toward this end. ICRAF offered to develop indigenous seedlings for the planting.
But by the late 1990s no planting on the hill had started due to suspicions and difference in opinions among the residents of Maragoli. While the Avalagoli who resided on the hill continued to express suspicion over the replanting, arguing that the motive for replanting was to dispossess them of their land once again, Avalagoli from the villages below expressed their support, citing climatic and scenic significance of trees. 82 The latter case expressed how some
Avalagoli, mostly the elite and youths, had appropriated elements of the official ideology on forestry with their emphasis on the conservationist significance of afforestation. But the residents of the hill had emphasized that they would accept replanting on one condition: only if they planted the trees themselves. In their view, the act of planting a tree signified appropriation of ownership rights to land. Thus, allowing outsiders to do the planting meant forfeiting such rights. Nevertheless, social forestry agents working for the Forest Action Network articulated the same perspective in their meetings with women and youths. 83 The agents promised to establish seed beds from which the residents would get trees to plant in their own farms. Their approach reflected participatory forestry, allowing the people to do the planting themselves, which appeared as an attempt to achieve mutuality between official forestry and Avalagoli forest use practices. The struggles over replanting of the hill are still going on to this date. The forestry agents still make visits to Maragoli, holding meetings with the residents to discuss the possibility of replanting.
82 Interview with Aseso, 2005.
83 Interview with Aseso, Maragoli, 2006.
215 Expansion of access to land and trees in Kakamega and Chepalungu Forests
In Kakamega, the social forestry approach sought to incorporate members of the local community in the management of the forest reserve. It also aimed at improving sustainability in local land use and access to forest resources. In 1980 the government adopted a policy that divided the Buyangu Forest Reserve into two sections: Buyangu Wildlife Reserve and Forest
Reserve at Isecheno under different management. The Wildlife section was put under wildlife department and the Forest Reserve at Isecheno remained under the Forest Department. While the
Forest Department side was left open for regulated use, the Wildlife Reserve section was put under strict restriction policy to protect the wildlife as well as the forest. 84 The Isukha residing in the surrounding villages were consequently stopped from getting wood fuel, timber, herbs from the forest and cultivating crops therein. The restrictions increased land constraints and intensified land use in unprotected areas, which contributed to depletion of soil fertility. Moreover, the policy also affected cattle farming due to lack of grazing grounds, which lay protected within the forest. 85 In response, most Isukha decided to reduce the number of their stock and substitute dairy cows for their indigenous cattle which required large areas for grazing. 86 These forest use practices criminalized in the wildlife reserve section, however, continued in the forest reserve sections in Isecheno. 87 The youth grazed cattle and played sports, women and men collected wood fuel as well as herbs from the forest. 88
84 Interview with Ishikunzi, and Mwangi, the chief Game Warden of Kakamega Wildlife Reserve, 2006.
85 Interview with Ishikunzi, and Mwangi, the chief Game Warden of Kakamega Wildlife Reserve, 2006.
86 Interview with Ishikunzi, and Mwangi, the chief Game Warden of Kakamega Wildlife Reserve, 2006. He mentioned how the Isukha in the past kept as many as over 50 cows per household because there were enough grazing fields inside the forest. When the grazing fields were alienated from the people, they had no choice but to reduce their stock. Most of them opted to go for the dairy cattle which didn’t need to graze in the forest.
87 Interview with Ishikunzi, Peter Shitamba, 2006. 216 The tight restrictions in the wildlife reserve generated conflicts between the Isukha
and game wardens. People caught “trespassing” in the forest ended up arrested. Despite the
restrictions, the Isukha residents still continued to draw their wood fuel, medicine, and timber
secretly from the forest out of the watch of the game wardens. 89 Shikunzi, a former assistant
chief, now an elder, for instance, recalled that “With the protection of the forest, sneaking and
indiscriminate usage of the forest came in. The aim was to escape arrests.”90 In addition, the
Isukha frequently complained to the Wild life Department that “local people adjacent to the
forest were not benefiting at all from the forest resources.” 91 Social forestry programs in
Kakamega worked towards resolving these conflicts not only to save the forest but also to
improve Isukha’s land use systems, as well as access to trees.
Kenya Indigenous Forest Conservation Program (KIFCON), a non-governmental
organization, worked with the local community on the forestry programs. 92 In addition to the
local uses allowed in Isecheno section of the forest reserve, KIFCON proposed tree planting
within homes and farms to provide wood fuel, medicine, and improve soil fertility instead of
total dependence on the forest reserve. 93 Working with women and men from Isukha, KIFCON established tree nurseries to develop seedlings of indigenous trees, which had cultural and
88 Interview with Ishikunzi, Peter Shitamba, 2006
89 Interview with Ishikunzi, Peter Shitamba, 2006.
90 Interview with Ishikunzi, Peter Shitamba, 2006.
91 Interview with Baraza, Shitambasi, and Ishikunzi, 2006.
92 Interview with Baraza, Shitambasi, and Ishikunzi, 2006.
93 Interview with Baraza, Shitambasi, and Ishikunzi, 2006.
217 ecological significance to the Isukha. 94 The seedlings included those of the common
Markhamia lutea species, which was of great value in rain making, Croton megalocarpus ,
among others, and exotic ones such as Grevallia stomata . They also proposed the planting of
Sesbania seban species for soil fertility improvement, wood fuel and fodder. The tree nurseries
were based in Isecheno from where the Isukha picked them for planting.
Availability of the seedlings in combination with the restrictive forest protection policy in
Buyangu Wildlife Reserve, led Isukha farmers to domesticate indigenous trees, especially those
which had symbolic and economic value. The step was necessary because in criminalizing the
use of these trees within the forest reserve, the policy essentially threatened to disconnect the
Isukha not only from their cultural values, but also from their past, culturally and socially bound
with the forest in complex ways. To avoid this tragedy, Mzee Peter Shitambasi, an Isukha from
Buyangu, for example, resolved to plant indigenous and exotic trees inside and around his
home. 95 The trees included Markhamia (lusiola) which he planted for its sacredness, and
murembe (Erythrina) for its significance in oath taking. 96 Each tree stood as a repository of knowledge about past cultural and ecological interactions that in part shaped contemporary perceptions of, and practices on, forests. Shitambasi had a story about each one of them, stories about past rituals for rainfall, oaths for social negotiations, as well as ecological control, and ceremonies that accompanied these interactions. The act of domesticating these trees, thus, represented the struggle by the Isukha to protect their culture, history, and ecology. In this
94 Interview with Baraza, Shitambasi, and Ishikunzi, 2006.
95 Interview with Shitambasi, 2006. When I asked him why he planted the trees, his response was that he decided to plant them in his home because of their cultural significance. The trees formed significant part of his culture that he would not want his family to lose. Moreover, as sacred, the trees also stood in his home as a symbol of blessings.
96 Interview with Shitambasi, 2006.
218 context, therefore, social forestry’s emphasis on the planting of indigenous trees in homes
and farms created opportunities, which the Isukha adopted to protect endangered aspects of their
history, culture, and ecology.
KIFCON also worked with Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS) through a community
approach to involve the Isukha in the management of the Wildlife Reserve section of the forest.
Through meetings in churches, schools, and village baraza , it sensitized members of the Isukha
community on the importance of conserving the forest. It also emphasized biodiversity of the
forest as well as its significance in improving rainfall conditions in the area. The Isukha, mostly
the elite, appropriated this discourse in their support for conservation as a means to improving
rainfall conditions. Asked if the Isukha were benefiting from the forest, Shikunzi, an elder
stated, “The only way we are benefiting from the forest has been through rainfall which it
attracts to this area.” 97 This discourse was appropriated from the ideology of modern forestry,
which emphasizes the climatic significance of forestry. KIFCON also trained the local youth to
act as tour guides in the forest reserve. 98 Despite such attempts to reconcile the Isukha and KWS and its wildlife preservation policy, the Isukha continued to regard KWS as their enemy because of the restrictions the department imposed on the local forest use practices. 99 Although the forest department had allowed the use of Isecheno forest and social forestry had improved access to trees, the Isukha viewed protection of Buyangu Wildlife reserve as a contradiction. But social forestry offered them alternative options for access to tree resources, which they adopted to maintain aspects of old forest use practices.
97 Interviews with Shikunzi, 2006. He stated in Swahili that they are benefiting “Kwa ajili ya mvua,” meaning because of rainfall.
98 Interviews in Buyangu, Kakamega, 2006.
99 Interviews in Buyangu, Kakamega, 2006.
219 In Chepalungu, the government had given back more than half of the forest to the
Kipsigis for settlement, cultivation, and grazing cattle by 1994. 100 Between 1990 and 1994, it had
given back another 5,200 acres of the forest to the Kipsigis added to the acres given to them
earlier in 1964. Despite this policy, the Kipsigis continued to make claims for the remaining
dense portion of the forest. 101 Given the loss of the forest experienced up to 1994, government
extension officers through agroforestry programs urged the Kipsigis to plant both indigenous and
exotic species in their homes and farms.102 They also urged the Kipsigis not to clear trees in the
forest but to instead prune them and plant crops in rows between the trees. In encouraging
farmers to do this kind of intercropping the aim was not just to improve soil fertility and increase
access of the Kipsigis to land. It was also to improve their access to trees. In this context, the
intercropping linked interests in food crop production and tree management in Chepalungu. The
linkage embodied intersection between local and government interests in land and use of forest
resources. This practice was similar to citemene practiced in Zambia. 103 But while citemene was
an old practice, continuing in the colonial period, the tree pruning practice in Chepalungu
reflected change in use of forest resources as the result of the attempts within the context of
social forestry to attain mutuality between conservation of forest resources and continuation of
local forest/land use practices. Efforts towards social forestry in Chepalungu, however, were
slow compared to the other areas due to the remoteness of the place and lack of better roads.
From Sotik in the north and Trans-Mara in the south, there were only rough roads—impassable
100 Between 1990-1994, Chepalungu forest lost another 5,200 acres of the forest that was given to the Kipsigis.
101 Interview with John Maritim, 2005.
102 Interviews in Chepalungu with Maritim,Rotich, Kipng’eno, 2005.
103 Hanrieta, Moore, et al.1994. Cutting Down Trees: Gender, Nutrition and Agricultural Change in the Northern Province of Zambia, 1890-1990. Portsmouth N.H: Heinemann. 220 during the rainy seasons—connecting Chepalungu with other areas. The remoteness of the
place in conjunction with the poor transport system slowed down movements of people, as well
as ideas.
Conclusion
Social forestry and agroforestry programs reflected attempts to integrate forestry into local farm
use practices. The strategies adopted in the cases from the western Kenya region included
incorporating local people in forestry management, encouraging private plantation to enhance
individuals’ control over land as well as trees, and giving back forest reserves to the local people
for both agricultural, settlement, as well as forestry purposes. They also incorporated old local
forestry and farming practices that had helped in the past to maintain sustainable land and forest
use systems. The adoption of the strategies into the programs resulted from contests and
negotiations during and after the colonial period over rural landscapes. To government officials,
the landscapes seemed suitable only for forest preservation but to the local people they served
multiple purposes, from cultivation, wood fuel, grazing of stock, and social healing, to herbal medicine. The strategies were also part of government attempts to understand cultural and ecological conditions which had frustrated its efforts to expand forests in rural areas.
Local people adapted to these programs in varied and overlapping ways, depending on generation, gender, class and spatial differences. Youths, women, and the elite from all the cases appeared to embrace social forestry programs. In Maragoli, youths, women, and the elite who lived away from the hill supported the idea of replanting the hill as long as it was done on their own terms, which included planting the trees on their own as a way of stamping their ownership rights to different sections of the hill. In Kakamega, the elite, mostly educated people, and elders 221 domesticated indigenous trees with both symbolic and economic significance, and in
Chepalungu, the elite and some ordinary people pruned trees to allow cultivation in areas formerly under forest reserves. On the contrary, elders viewed these programs as part of the unending government effort to appropriate their lands. Examples were in Maragoli where they opposed the efforts to replant the hill. But in Kakamega, some elders appropriated elements of the forestry programs by planting in their homesteads indigenous trees that grew in the forest.
The differentiated and overlapping adaptations among the local people resulted from the implications of the forestry policy which engendered ambiguities in the local systems of environmental control. The local people, depending on their social locations, adopted what had the potential to protect their old ways of using the landscapes and improve their socioeconomic situations in different contexts. Their adaptations to the policy, thus, represented conflicts, as well as interconnections between past practices and official environmental ideologies. The same process was expressed in the formulation of the social forestry and agroforestry programs which drew in aspects of local farm and forestry practices into the conventional forestry discourse.
222 Chapter Six
Conclusion
How and why did the Kenyan forestry policy evolve from an emphasis on preservation to a
combination of programs which embodied both rural Africans’ interests and practices and state
interests in environmental issues in the period 1940-1990s? This is the question that this
dissertation set out to answer. It is an important question to ask because it gets into the heart of
linkage between struggles over rural landscapes and nature of the policy that aimed at regulating
their utilization. It leads us to the dynamics that shaped politics over rural landscapes. In colonial
and postcolonial African societies the dynamics have generally been seen as characterized by a
conflictual encounter between modernist technologies and local knowledge and practices, an
encounter which frequently leads to failure of such technologies in rural places. 1 In this context,
because of their hegemonic nature, rural people find these technologies intrusive, and as a
consequence, resist them intensely.
The foregoing narrative presents us with two central dynamics underlying politics over
the rural landscapes, that is, the imposition of modern environmental ideas on rural areas and
resistance against them by rural residents. Such an mage is, however, totalizing at best. It
conflates a temporally and spatially heterogeneous process into a simplified encounter.
Essentialized in this case is not only the process, but also its underlying motivations. Generally,
in the case of environmental policies, the motivations have been generalized into
conservationism despite variation in contexts. 2 The result is that the policies appear no more than
embodiments of modernist ideologies.
1 See James Scott, Seeing Like A State.
2 David Anderson et al , Conservation in Africa. 223 Focusing on colonial and postcolonial Kenya, this dissertation has argued that intentions behind the implementation of the policy for afforestation and forest preservation in western Kenya were diverse and contingent. They exceeded the modernist ideology of conservationism. They varied in the four areas that this study looked at. In Chepalungu, fear of trypanosomiasis among settlers and colonial officials led to the clearing and forest preservation policy that aimed at remaking the landscape to prevent the movement of Glossina pallidipes , the host of parasitic Trypanosoma , into the settler farms which bordered Chepalungu. According to the colonial officials, Kipsigis’ farming and herding practices produced a disorderly and haphazardly cleared landscape that harbored breeding places for Glossina pallidipes. Colonial officials proposed streamlining of the landscape through clearing thickets that dotted the landscape and protecting a dense swath of the forest as the best means to prevent trypanosomiasis outbreaks in the area.
In Maragoli and Kisian, wood fuel needs played a central role in motivating afforestation that aimed at turning the landscapes into dense forests. In 1940s, Kisumu, a port town near Lake
Victoria was plagued by wood fuel crisis. Receiving meager supply of electricity, about 33 kilovolts, Kisumu largely depended on wood fuel for its energy supply. Given lack of expansive forests in the hinterland, most wood fuel supply came from Londiani about 80 miles from the town. With increased wood fuel and timber demand during the Second World War, wood fuel supply to the town dwindled a great deal. As a result, the colonial administration proposed to afforestate escarpments that lay near to Kisumu to provide sources for wood fuel. Kisian, a hill lying 3 miles away from the northern border of Kisumu, and Maragoli lying about 8 miles away, were proposed for afforestation in 1940s. That marked the beginning of the process to plant the hills with exotic trees valuable for wood fuel. In Kakamega, exploitation of timber was 224 significant in the preservation of the forest. There was a clash between timber exploitation and the myriad ways the Isukha used the forest. Colonial officials deemed these uses as threats to commercially valuable forest resources such as timber. To protect timber resources, colonial officials adopted regulations to restrict farming, herding, hunting, and collection of wood fuel within the forest.
But in the 1950s, the way colonial officials articulated the policy for afforestation and forest preservation in rural areas changed significantly. International influences, which became noted during world forestry conventions, and the need to systematize the forestry policy, led the colonial government to adopt a highly conservationist tone. Also, during the decade, the colonial government embarked on a grand project, the Swynnerton plan, financed by the British government that aimed at making interventions in rural areas to improve infrastructure, agriculture, and conservation. As a result, the afforestation and forest preservation projects which had already been started in some places and waiting to be implemented in others were subsumed under this project in order to guarantee their financing. That led to the emphasis on conservation as an objective of afforestation and forest preservation projects in Western Kenya. Conservation continued to be a significant discourse that the colonial and postcolonial government used to justify the forestry policy. Despite the emphasis on conservation, the government pursued commercial and industrial interests over forest resources as evidenced in the high timber exports from the country in the 1960s and 1970s. Furthermore, local factors that initially motivated the forestry policy initiatives in the region continued to be significantly influential in their implementation. Thus, motivations behind the policy for afforestation and forest preservation were diverse and changing over time. 225 The process behind the forest preservation and afforestation in Western Kenya was complex, requiring an analysis that goes beyond imposition and resistance paradigm. State officials and rural residents contested, negotiated, and compromised over rights to the local landscapes at different times during and after the colonial period. Because these landscapes were closely linked with society and valuable in significant diverse ways to rural African residents as shown in chapter two of this study, alienating them into the forest reserves proved an arduous task. For such a process based on a view of forests as bounded landscapes, contradicted African perceptions and uses of the landscapes as places to live in. Colonial officials were aware of the resulting difficulty. They thus adopted a negotiational approach in order to successfully implement the policy. They negotiated with elders, chiefs, and ordinary residents over varied things: usufruct rights to land, labor, compensation for land to be preserved, and management rights over the forest reserves once preserved. In Chepalungu, for example, they negotiated with
Kipsigis laborers over labor and usufruct rights to land. With elders and chiefs they negotiated over management rights to the alienated forest reserve. In Maragoli, they negotiated over compensation to landowners, management rights over the forest reserve, and continued use of the land in question. But the colonial officials negotiated only with segments of these communities, not everyone. The exclusion of others from the negotiations engendered instances of opposition. In Maragoli, for example, they negotiated with Avalagoli who lived on lands below the hill and not with those who lived on the slopes of the hill who as a result contested the afforestation project.
Through the negotiations, however, compromises were reached that led to the remaking of the landscapes into the forest reserves. These compromises reconfigured the policy by infusing African interests and values on the landscape into colonial agenda for turning the 226 landscapes into forest reserves. In Chepalungu, for example, laborers were allowed usufructs rights over land cleared from bush, the forest reserve management was placed under Local
Native Councils (LNCs) whose membership included elders and chiefs. The same thing happened in Maragoli, Kisian, and Kakamega. All the forests were declared Native Council forest reserves. The aim was to incorporate elders, chiefs, and other residents in patronage relations with them in the management of the forests. One may argue that inclusion of elders, chiefs, and other representatives in the management of the forests was not inclusive enough and thus resembles indirect rule approach. Yet the conditions in which the elders and chiefs operated was more complex, hence may not fit the indirect rule. Although influences from personal and colonial interests certainly existed among chiefs and elders, their legitimacy in the eyes of their subjects was a serious concern to them as well. They thus played the role of mediators, negotiating with their subjects and with the colonial officials. They bargained with the colonial officials over claims their subjects made over the forest reserves. In Maragoli, for example, such bargaining spawned promises of compensation to the Avalagoli for the preserved land and allowed residents of the hill to continue living within the demarcated forest reserve. The residents were allowed to cultivate demarcated sections but not to graze stock inside the forest reserve. In Kakamega, the Isukha were allowed to collect wood fuel, poles, and herbal medicine from the forest, and herd cattle on glades inside the forest. Through the intense bargaining, the forestry policy in Chepalungu, Kisian, Maragoli, and Kakamega was reconfigured.
Despite these compromises, contests arose over afforestation and forest preservation. In restricting African uses of the landscapes that in the earlier period served enormously valuable purposes, the policy assaulted the social, economic, and spiritual foundation of rural communities. Momentous changes occurred as a result of the policy. Systems of authority were 227 overturned as elders lost control of lands which had defined their social position relative to other members of the community. Such change rendered sites of symbolic significance formerly under the control of male elders open to the rest of the community. As in Maragoli, women and young men gained access to mungurumutu , a place earlier accessed only by selected male elders.
More challenging were the economic consequences. These preserved landscapes were of enormous economic value to local residents. The residents cultivated their crops and got their wood fuel from the landscapes, hunted honey and game and grazed stock within the forests.
Restriction of these uses reduced availability of food. The situation was aggravated further by ecological changes. Population of wild life, which rendered havoc on farms and assaulted people, increased because of hunting restrictions and growth of dense vegetation conducive for breeding of wild animals. Farmers living near the forest reserves could not successfully cultivate crops and neither could they keep livestock because of the wild animals. These changes generated conflict toward the forest reserves. Claims for rights over the forest reserves reverberated among those who resided near or inside them. For example, contests among the Luo in Kisian in conjunction with fear of forests generated among colonial officials as a result of Mau Mau led colonial officials to withdraw from the hill in 1957. In Chepalungu, a study to reassess the value of the forest reserve to conservation efforts in the area was launched by the colonial government through the East African Agriculture and Forestry Research Organization (EAAFRO) in 1960.
Findings from the study that disapproved the significance of the forest in protection of watershed areas were a boon to the Kipsigis. They used them to make a case against the preservation of the forest. Subsequently, in 1964 the government handed back about 12,000 acres of the forest back to the Kipsigis. 228 In the negotiations and contests, rural Africans drew from a mixture of things.
Traditions in land and forest use proved central in this case. They used traditions, for example, in transfer of land rights, to justify their claims over usufruct as well as ownership rights to the preserved landscapes. The traditions were not just expressed in rhetorical claims over the landscapes; they were embodied in actual appropriations over the preserved landscapes through persistent uses despite the restrictive policy. At times the rural residents went beyond traditions and appropriated legal practices, scientific findings, as well as official forestry practices to make claims over the landscapes. The appropriations hardly fit the resistance paradigm. Instead, they show how the rural Africans meshed traditions and official practices into contests for the preserved landscapes.
The negotiations and contests continued into the postcolonial period. Due to land constraints resulting from the afforestation and forest preservation, the Avalagoli, Kipsigis, and
Isukha continued to make claims for more rights over the forest reserves in order to get more land for settlement, grazing stock, and cultivation of crops. The contestations represented a clash between rural African uses of the local landscapes and conventional forestry practices. The continuation of the conflicts resulted from the independent Kenyan government’s commitment at ensuring continuity of management of the forest reserves alienated in the colonial period. To achieve this objective, the government opted to shift management of the native council forest reserves, including Maragoli, Chepalungu, and Kakamega to the central government. Although centralization often is seen as a top-down strategy, in this case, it increased contacts between the residents of the affected areas and central government officials, contacts which were minimal in the colonial period, for during that time it was colonial officials at the local and regional levels of administration who were directly involved in the struggles with the rural residents over the forest 229 reserves. This dissertation has shown that the increased contacts allowed central government
officials to come face to face with the plight of the rural residents and to engage directly with
them over the forest reserves, processes that contributed to change in their attitudes toward local
claims over the forest reserves.
This shift was expressed in differentiated positions on the forest reserves taken by
forestry officials in the 1960s and 1970s. While the central government officials supported the
return of certain sections of the reserves to local claimants or regulated uses of the forest, local
and regional administration officials argued for the continuation of the forest reserves. The
forestry policy had thus become highly differentiated during this period, conservationist but
becoming accommodative in discourse and practice to the local uses of the forests. The
accommodative approach was expressed in the government’s adoption of the on farm forestry in
1970s that aimed at encouraging rural residents to plant exotic trees themselves within their own farms for their own use without interference from the government. But the program failed because of its use of exotic plants which suffered from pests, and because of its negative effects on indigenous fauna and flora, and depletion of soil fertility in areas the trees were grown. The ecological change, however, occurred with complicity of the rural residents who planted exotic trees because they matured more quickly than indigenous species. The planting of these trees by the rural residents is a case in point that shows how the rural residents had appropriated aspects of official forestry. Realizing the change taking place as a result of the on farm forestry, some residents of Western Kenya, however, began to deplore the exotic plantation and instead appealed for a move back to the indigenous trees.
Persistent claims made by the rural residents over the forest reserves influenced significantly the forestry policy in the 1980s. Encountering claims over land rights in western 230 Kenya, the government shifted from the policy of alienating landscapes into forest reserves to the policy that aimed at integrating official forestry into local land and tree use systems. The idea was to expand tree plantations in ways that avoided controversy over land while accommodating local interests in land and trees as well as their underlying socio-cultural values. The government working in tandem with non-governmental organizations formulated the social forestry and agroforestry approaches.
These approaches drew from old African land and forest use practices that underlay the persistent contests for the alienated forest reserves. As oral history evidence has shown, local forest uses were embedded in social, cultural, and economic processes. People in Western Kenya cultivated crops in fields cleared alternately from forests, used shrubs in forests as fodder for cattle, used trees as hedges around homesteads and farms, and used trees for spiritual and social healing. In taking forestry back to the people, the approaches aimed at situating forestry within local economies, cultures, and social relations. Following a research project conducted in different parts of western Kenya, fallowing, intercropping, and hedging, old ways of utilizing trees and land that intimately entwined people, livestock, and landscape, were adopted. I have argued that these forestry programs integrated old African uses of landscape into official forestry discourses. They, thus, embodied African landscape uses and official forestry. Through contests and negotiations between officials and rural residents, local uses of landscape and official forestry encountered and reshaped each other. In this context, the forestry policy appears more complex than the modernist label commonly used for environmental policies in general.
Throughout this struggle over the rural landscapes, it was not just the forestry policy that changed. African views and uses of forests also underwent some change. As individuals adapted to the changes from the forestry policy, local views and uses of trees were differentiated. Old 231 views and uses of forests continued, but individuation of relations to the landscapes, as
private land tenure and official discourse on forests insinuated into rural areas, led to differences
in ways rural residents valued forests. The younger generations most of whom had acquired
some formal education emphasized the economic, climatic, and scenic significance of forests.
This change was clearly manifested in the clearing of videdeye, the sacred tree, by an individual who saw the tree in terms of its economic value. But the interpretation by villagers of what happened to Sangara after clearing the tree testifies to the resilience of the old perceptions. While most residents expressed opposition to replanting of the hill after its clearing, others regretted the clearing of the forest reserve because rainfall dwindled and the scenic appearance that the forest evoked was replaced by boulders and cultivated fields. In Kakamega, when asked about significance of the forest, most interlocutors commented that the forest helped them with rain, a reflection of official view on climatic significance of forests. In the same area, an old man,
Shitambasi, decided to plant lusiola and murembe within his homestead because of their symbolic value. Shitambasi’s action was a reflection of the lingering old intimacy between the forest and the Isukha. In Chepalungu, an interlocutor commented, “it would be better if people were allowed to settle in the forest and cultivate crops.” 3 What turn up in rural areas as views and uses of forests are complex and differentitated, reflecting an entanglement between old African uses of landscape and official discourses on forests.
This dissertation has underscored the significance of long term African ways of using landscape in the shifts of the forestry policy. It has traced and examined the process through which such ways were infused into the policy. In this case, it has problematized the common asymmetrical approach to colonial and postcolonial policies that focuses only on how they
3 Interview with Rono in Chepalungu, 2005. 232 impacted rural societies and environments. I argue that just as the policies impacted rural areas, so too were they reconfigured by values and practices from those areas. This argument gets into the center of assumptions that portray colonialism as a one sided process shaped by ideas and power that come from the top. The argument casts doubt on assumptions about colonial power by providing a window into how this power was diffused among colonial officials and rural residents. The diffusion of power led to the bargaining and contests that characterized the policy process. Also, instead of the authoritarianism commonly associated with the postcolonial governments in Africa, a process through which local values and practices entangled with official discourses emerged.
233 BIBLIOGRAPHY
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