After traveling for two days we arrived at this ‘strange’
place called Miti Mbili that I hated from the word go but with nothing much to do as I had no
other option, I joined others and we started taking out our belongings from the
lorry and as we were doing this, other officers who we met at the camp were
busy erecting a new tent that was big enough to accommodate all of us and after they were
done, we got in, un packed our belongings, made our beds and from the look of things, there was no life here. No privacy, no electricity, no clean drinking water, no well done
toilets and even the bathroom was a poorly done structure without a permanent
door.
We were given time to settle, mingle with other officers, be taken round for orientation and after this was done, we were good to go! Life in a General Service
Unit camp is not easy. It is more or less a routine set up. One wakes up in the
morning, makes breakfast, shines the boots, puts on the uniform and makes sure that by seven forty
five in the morning, he is in a Tamaam parade and is ready for inspection . In this
case, inspection entails checking whether ones head is clean shaven, beards
too, boots well polished, the fire arm well cleaned and in general that one is
in good physical state. This is usually the time to apply for permission to get
out of the camp for personal matters, request for an off duty and also time for any communication which is usually done verbally or via a signal that is read to the officers by the section commanders.
A GSU camp is worse than a boarding school if i may be asked. This is because an officer is mature, well trained and past eighteen years of age but leaving the camp
without permission usually attracts a booking into the occurrence book as it is
an offense namely ‘breaking from the police camp without permission’. This
leads to what is commonly known as ‘kushitakiwa/mashtaka’ which is also
inserted into ones service file and also attracts a salary deduction whose
figure is usually determined by the presiding officer. This is usually not a
welcome story as being punished in this case can prevent one from attending a
promotion board, from a transfer or even consideration
for any new deployment that may arise.
From inspection parade,
it is usually time for what is commonly known as ‘Fatique’ which is time to cut
grass/slash grass, prepare our tents and make sure that in case the rains fall,
there is no way that water can come in and even ferry with it our personal
effects. This involves fastening the tents, preparing trenches that can easily
contain water flow and in some cases undertake other manual tasks that the
platoon sergeant may find necessary.
This is usually time to allocate work duties that may have arisen over nite and when there are no foot
patrols, Lost animal recovery missions or any other out of camp assignments, officers
break from the fatiques and head to their tents where the process of preparing lunch starts. In here, one rarely cooks alone. We used to get into groups of
twos or threes, do some collaboration and then cook together. Early lunch is valued as one may be called for an emergency assignment hence staying full is important. Use of charcoal
jikos was the common thing here and kerosene was only used when making breakfast.
At times though, one would light the jiko early and after preparing breakfast
hand it over to other colleagues who would use it for the same purpose.
At times, officers would not be set free after the morning parade but would be assigned some silly tasks by the officer commanding through the immediate supervisors. The worst that ever happened
when we were here was when a senior officer used to allocate juniors duties
like cutting and ferrying timber that he would sell to timber Merchants. This would result to a conflict with forest officers and someone would use his connections to silence them. One
day, a GSU lorry ferrying timber to Kitale was intercepted by forest officers
but thanks to a well connected cartel the officers
involved negotiated a deal and the vehicle was released. One of the
officers who was a lead scout in this trade would later be sacked after they
were caught with a similar cargo on board a GSU lorry elsewhere.
At times, the officers
would buy maize or collude with corrupt agricultural development corporation
officers where maize would be stolen from their farms, sold to the senior
officer where he would then force us to sort the maize, pack it in bags and
then load them to a GSU lorry ready for transport and sale. This is just a tip of the ice berg on how
senior police officers used to mis-use the human resource under them and even
government resources too.Any attempt to raise a red flag would meet the worst form of punishment and one could either be transferred, intimidated or even sacked over fake allegations hence the only option was to comply.At times though, some days days were cool and we were free to do our things with minimal interference.
In a relatively normal day
and when matters seemed favorable, some officers would sneak into the nearby villages
namely Kambi Nyoka, Cherubai amongst others which marked the beginning of a
Busaa/Chang’aa drinking spree. This would take place till some minutes to two
so as to ensure that one was back in camp in readiness for the afternoon tammam
parade which is more or less similar to the morning one apart from the fact
that this was usually the time to allocate duties which involved night and day
camp guard duties, foot patrols, and ambush duties which involved providing all
night guards to the Agricultural development Corporation farms. This was in a
place called Ngata firm and Njapata firms.
Due to lack of well locked rooms, some officers would steal blankets, Kerosene Lamps and stoves and other personal effects, sneak them out of camp and sell them to some village merchants and then use this money to buy the illicit brews. One would even come across what was once his during the foot patrols and when we investigated on how the item left the camp and found itself in the village, we would establish that one of our own or several others were responsible for this. In here, officers ceased to be living beings and turned to be 'animals' as one could even sell his own belongings just for a cup of illicit brew. Others would get lost in these dens and lose their jobs !
When it was peak time, work was not easy over
here owing to the fact that this was a bandit prone area and at times, they
would hit nearby villages, take away cattle and even kill the villagers. This
called for an immediate response where our work was mainly to track them,
recover the cattle and take them to their owners. It would take some days or
even a week to recover them and at times even after fighting the bandits, a number
of them would be left engaging us while the others were left driving the cattle
away and tracking them would not be possible. This would in future attract retaliatory attacks from the affected ones
and the cycle continued.
When Sunday came, it
was usually time for church and one had to ask for permission to attend church
service outside the camp. This i did most of the times but at times I would be
working hence could not go to church. This was not easy for me as it was
routine work from Monday to Sunday hence my desire to seek for a better way out
grew stronger and stronger.The catholic church here was a mud walled structure where
we used to sit on logs and was located some considerably short distance from a Uganda
people defense forces camp along the Kenya~Uganda boarder and gun shots were the order of the day but still, we
conducted our mass without much worries.
Basically there was no life there if i was asked....!
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