The Story Of Boni Forest

Until recent pase, Kenya’s Boni forest was an oasis of peace occupied by the Aweer, a nomadic hunter-gatherer community. The poor, sandy soils and unreliable rainfall rendered this dry lowland forest on Africa’s east coast unsuitable for agriculture, and the ubiquitous tsetse fly meant pastoralists were averse to grazing their cows or camels in this remote corner of Kenya. So, the Aweer, also known as Boni, had the place for their own for more than 2,000 years, trading wild animal skins with their neighbors and developing a reputation as elephant hunters. Their traditional hunting of the pachyderms was sustainable, however, and until recently, the area boasted one of the largest elephant populations in east Africa.

Indeed, anecdotal evidence gleaned through conversations with members of this community elicited claims that their familiarity was such that they could understand the “language” of the “gray shadows” in the bush. But that peace has been shattered by spillover from the civil war in neighboring Somalia, as fighting between the jihadist militant group Al-Shabaab and the U.S.-supported forces of the Kenyan military and African Union, turned the Boni forest into a battleground.

Militants crossed the border from Somalia to slaughter elephants for their ivory, which they sold to purchase more guns and ammunition. Today, armored four-wheel-drive vehicles plow through the sun-dappled sacred glades where Aweer hunters in giraffe-hide sandals once trod,and the stench of petrol and diesel exhaust replaces the fragrance of burning balambala wood offerings intended to appease the spirits of the bush.

The Aweer community found itself caught between a rock and a hard place. The Al-Shabaab Islamists accused them of spying on behalf of the Kenyan authorities, while the Kenyans asserted that the community was leaking information to the Osama bin Laden-inspired militants based in Somalia. Many members of the Aweer community fled the bush, as they had done in the 1960s,when newly independent Somalia sought to expand its borders so as to include all ethnic Somalis in northeastern Kenya. Others were forcibly corralled into the few village settlements where they were interned in what was euphemistically called “protective custody.”

Visits to the bush were considered off-limits, and thus links to their cultural heritage were curtailed.