Top Kenyan athletes, including former world marathon record holders Wilson Kipsang and Tegla Loroupe, staged a 22-day “Walk for Peace” against ethnic violence.
Cattle rustling and revenge killings among rival communities are common in Kenya’s remote and impoverished northern regions, an area awash with automatic weapons. The 836-kilometer walk was organized by former Commonwealth Games marathon champion John Kelai, who marched in memory of three of his uncles who were killed in cattle raids when he was a teenager. The walk began in July 2015.
Ethiopia borders northern Kenya, and armed cattle herders launch raids on each side of the porous frontier. The marathon march began in the northern Kenyan town of Lodwar in the volatile Turkana region, heading south for 40 kilometers every day through the vast Rift Valley to Lake Bogoria.
The athletes carried an Olympic-style torch, which was passed from walker to walker as they trekked southward through some of Kenya’s most volatile regions.
The athletes, who encouraged people to join them in their walk, hoped to raise more than $250,000 to fund a peace-building program, said the Aegis Trust, which works to rebuild communities riven by conflict, notably in Rwanda after the 1994 genocide.
Aegis Trust helped to organize the walk and said the program “will engage at least 10,000 young people at risk of being drawn into the ethnic violence, saving lives.”
In May 2015, 75 people were killed in just four days of cattle raids and revenge attacks. In 2014, at least 310 people were killed, and more than 220,000 fled their homes as a result of intercommunal conflicts attributed to competition over land and water resources, cattle rustling, and struggles over political representation.
Comments are closed.