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By Kevin Philips Momanyi
Sixty-year-old Ntilaren Supuko has spent four decades haunted by a night of unimaginable horror that destroyed her life.
She is still unable to sleep on her left side. Her gait, slow and unsteady, bears the weight of lingering pain. Pointing to her body, waist downwards, she says, “It’s completely finished.”
Her face is deadpan, but her words betray her emotions.
The year was 1985. Ntilaren, then 20, was walking home after gathering firewood in the forest when she crossed paths with seven British soldiers stationed in Kenya under the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK).
“They grabbed me, one on this hand, another on that. They kicked me in the ribs, tried to strangle me, and then took turns raping me,” she recounts to TRT Afrika.
What the perpetrators took from Ntilaren that night was more than her dignity – they broke her physically, mentally, and her will to live.
Her marriage collapsed under the weight of her trauma. “I haven’t been in a relationship since,” she laments.
Ntilaren still feels an impotent rage at the thought of justice eluding her.
"What kind of life is this? If I die now, will this girl be the one to bury me?" Ntilaren asks, referring to her daughter, Grace. "In Maasai tradition, a daughter doesn't bury her mother."
Grace does what she can to alleviate her mother’s pain.
"I buy her painkillers, and she calms down a bit. At least she gets to sleep," Grace says. "The next day, it's the same. She cannot use the washroom without pain; she has difficulty even urinating. She's gone to many hospitals, and nothing seems to work.”
Like Ntilaren, scores of others live with the agony of what was done to them, the ghosts of their past refusing to let go.
One afternoon in 1995, a decade after Ntilaren’s ordeal, Noldonyio Piro and her sister, Mantoi Lekoloi Kaunda, were grazing their father's goats in the plains of Samburu, close to a BATUK training range. Out of nowhere, British soldiers attacked them, gang-raping Mantoi. She didn’t survive the assault.
Noldonyio tried to escape, but they caught her.
"I saw two people, they were white. We had never seen anyone like them before. I tried to run, but they caught me. One tripped me, and when I fell, another stepped on my hand with a boot, while his colleague assaulted me. It's an experience I dread talking about," she says, sitting outside her polythene-roofed shack.
“God help me, I feel a lot of pain.”
Unlike Ntilaren, who was left to fend for herself, Noldonyio finds solace in her husband, Leko Piro, who stands by her side.
"Noldonyio and my sister-in-law were raped and treated worse than animals. The culprits stepped on her left forearm and legs. The arm never healed,” Leko tells TRT Afrika, holding it up to show the damaged portion.
Walking towards where Mantoi lies buried, he says his wife never goes there. “This is her sister's grave, and she gets overwhelmed by memories of her."
Tainted history
Thousands of soldiers from the United Kingdom have trained in the East African nation over the past 60 years as part of the British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK).
Established in 1964, the force operates under an agreement with the Kenyan government that allows up to six infantry battalions to carry out training exercises spanning eight weeks each year. The operational bases are Kifaru Barracks in Nairobi and Nyati Barracks within the Laikipia airbase, a US$ $92.8-million facility about 200km north of the capital.
What isn’t in the public domain, at least officially, are the allegedly unpunished crimes many visiting soldiers have gotten away with during their stay in Kenya.
One British soldier recently confessed to killing a Kenyan woman in Nanyuki town in 2012 and dumping her body in a septic tank.
No legal recourse
Solomon Ole-Pussi, a community leader in Laikipia, says women raped by BATUK personnel have had no legal recourse all these years.
“We are still following up, but don’t know what is happening between the Kenyan and British governments. The long wait for justice to be dispensed to these survivors continues,” he tells TRT Afrika.
Many survivors have chosen to remain silent. A few who have spoken out are ostracised by their communities, where being raped is seen as taboo.
"When people see me, all they say is, ‘Leave this piece of trash alone, she has been raped by the British. She's not a human being,” rues Paulina Lekuleiya, a survivor in Samburu.
Another survivor, Angelina Nakindongói, speaks of the unending torment of her physical and mental pain. “When I was assaulted, we didn't even know where the hospital was. You had to use traditional medicine and toughen up,” she says.
Many more such stories remain hidden. The plight of abandoned biracial children born to Kenyan women allegedly raped by British soldiers is just as sad.
“I look different from the others. My dad is dark-skinned – the one who raised me – but I want to know who my real father is and why he abandoned me," says Louise Gitonga from Laikipia.
Any attempt to seek information is promptly stonewalled.
The items returned to the Ethiopian embassy in a ceremony late on Thursday in London.
"Whenever I visit BATUK offices, it's always in vain. The commander there is Scottish, and the father of my child is also Scottish, so I don’t get an audience. Sometimes, I am not even allowed in," says Jenerica Namoru.
David Mwangi from Nanyuki shares this predicament. "They have nicknamed me ‘British’, and when they call me that, I wonder what world I live in,” he says.
The accountability mechanism is apparently different in other countries where the British army trains, including Cyprus, Canada and Germany.
"In Cyprus (Greek-administered Cyprus), they have an ‘area claims office’ where Cypriot farmers post claims when the noise from low-flying British helicopters causes abortions in their goats and sheep. The farmers are compensated for that," advocate Kelvin Kubai tells TRT Afrika.
"In Kenya, they roam unchecked because the local communities cannot litigate their claims beyond a reasonable doubt before the army."
Continued depredations
Attempts to raise awareness about legal rights haven’t made much of a difference.
"When the King (Charles III) came to Kenya, hordes of people welcomed him. That was a mockery. We can’t be generous when his soldiers are targeting our community," says Ole-Pussi.
Kenya continues to be a playground for the British army, with the UK extending its military training indefinitely after its initial agreement lapsed in 2021.
For families like Noldonyio's, the scars remain unhealed. "We left those British soldiers in God's hands. We let God hold them accountable for their sins," says her husband.
And what of Ntilaren? How does she summon the desire to soldier on?
"We are helpless; it’s like we are crippled," she says. "Why do they come to oppress us? Can't they do their job and leave peacefully? Must they harass us? Or is it because we are black people and fools, as they often claim?"
Paulina is tired of waiting for justice. "I want action to be taken on these cases, and we pursue them to their end and see what the courts will determine. We don't want what they did to us to continue in Kenya forever. It's terrible,” she says.
In a recent statement, the British High Commission in Kenya said every allegation would be probed. "We take any allegations against our personnel seriously, and as of now, we are doing a lot of investigations. The findings will be treated with utmost seriousness.”
But Prof Marion Mutugi of the Kenya National Human Rights Commission is sceptical about the outcome.
"We believe there's a conspiracy to ensure nobody is held accountable. We must keep on shaming them…The British government owes these families, the mothers who were sexually assaulted, and the children who are offspring of British soldiers and, by law, are British," she says.
