Cosmas Chemwotei Murunga - Voices from the Indigenous Women's Exchange, Kenya

Between February 28 – March 3, 2022, the Chepkitale Indigenous Peoples’ Development Project (CIPDP) and FPP organized a 3-day Indigenous Women’s Exchange at Chepkitale, Mount Elgon, Kenya. The intention of the exchange was to make space for Indigenous women to come together, across borders and boundaries, to share their experiences and strategies within their collective land rights struggles and learn from each other’s stories.  

Cosmas Chemwotei Murunga, Elgon Ogiek community Elder and a long time community rights defender, shared a powerful speech on the last day of the exchange:

“Thank you so much. Before I say anything, I want to thank God, because God has enabled our visitors to travel from different communities, within Kenya and different places, to come up to here. Especially those people who have come from Uganda. We thank God because he has allowed for all of us to meet on this mountain. Thank you so much.

 

We are people who have been Created. It is not a mistake for us to be here on this mountain.  

 

God wanted us to be in this world. When you are seated, know that you are a big person. Let me start.  

We are people. Those whom I’m talking about are the father, the mother, and the children; those are the people who make the community. The community are you who are seated here. When you come from Aweer, when you come from Sengwer, when you come from Mau, those who are coming from Benet, and those Ogiek of this place, Chepkitale: you are here as a community. You are not alone. And you tell God, thank you. Because God selected you to come and have this meeting for our community. You have come to sit here on behalf of your community. Your mind is the one that will help us here and will help those you have left at home. So that we can see the troubles which we are going through in this world.  

There is no one who God created to be bigger than the other. When someone says that he is big, he is the only one that has made himself to be big. But before God’s eyes, we are all equal. The thing which brought you here, sometimes you don’t understand, but you have found yourself here. When you see [the situation], you ask: why has this happened like this? In truth, God made a place for everyone to stay. But, today you see that someone comes and tells you that you are not supposed to be here. And you ask yourself why? And who am I? When you see, it is people who are making other people suffer. But there is no one [bigger than the other]: man is man. (laughter from audience of 250 women) Man is man. I wanted to tell you this.  

Batwa, Benet, Aweer, Sengwer, Ogiek, and some who are not with us, we want the women to know that from where you are, from where you came from and from where you are now, you were there when they started disturbing us. So you started asking yourself: why are they disturbing me from where I was? The women and children watched men go as a delegation, asking: why are they burning us? And why are they telling you that this is not your home? They see people being killed, people killed without any reason. 

Read more: Lidya Liyio: Voices from the Indigenous Women's Exchange, Kenya

Women, if any of you have not yet moved as a delegation to the offices, you have not told anyone, from us men we say: thank you so much. We have been together in the struggle. You were there beside me in my ribs when they were beating me. (applause) When I’m in Nairobi, when one is in Kampala, when one is at any place. Today, for us men who are seated here, we don’t say that let’s go for this battle together. We have come to tell you that you have been with us in this struggle. We have come to tell you that we want now to see how we can help each other in this struggle.  

Every human being is equal to each other. If a man gets a spear, even you get a spear as a woman. (laughter from audience) So we are telling you because if you don’t have anywhere to live, you are already dead when you are living. You are a human being who has not been buried. That is why we have come to tell the women that we are moving together in this struggle and one of the ways we can do this is to form women’s groups. (applause) Through that we can get people who can sponsor us and give you empowerment as women, so that we move forward in this struggle. So that women also will be doing their meetings, which are different from the ones of men, but in the same struggle. So today,  

 

I want to assure the woman who are here from different places that we are big together in this struggle, not one alone, we are together.  

 

At this point before you disperse, we want to see that the women get networked globally (applause from audience) so that they can continue to discuss their own concerns. For us as a community, we can continue with our struggle in different ways. One of the ways is the songs, which when we sing, remind us how we have suffered and how we need to be involved in the struggle. This is one of the ways we will get guidance on how we should move in the struggle.  

So, when you have a meeting as women here, even as men we had a meeting, men of different communities who have come here, so that we see how we can move together in this struggle.  

Let me finish this way: when we met here as men, not as men alone, but with the women, all of us, have we got something? (audience: yes!)  

I want to leave you with one word that the white man brought: “behind every successful man, there is a woman.” (audience cheers) But we are saying now: behind a successful man there is a woman, but now we need women also to come, not behind, but beside. (audience cheers louder). Thank you so much.”