We all heard it, it was a very loud booming sound that cut through the night, once in a while we heard that kind of sound and knew that the season was ready. Season for cattle rustling, the neighbouring pokot community had come to steal the cows and goats from the village.

The best stealing time,was when there was full moon, since they are almost nocturnal human beings they do not see clearly with broad daylight, only at night with the full moon do they see clearly. They usually walked in files and covered themselves with a piece of cloth that dangled from one shoulder across the chest to the mid thigh.

No one knew how they managed to get the AK 47 rifles that they used in their mission but rumours had it that they got from the kenya-Uganda border.

For a long time i wondered why my mom could not have cattle in her farm, and one day when i decided to ask her, she only told me “it was inviting death in the homestead”. It was true, these bandits only attacked homesteads with cattle or goats.

That night the shooting was not to happen, but it did since they did  not like encountering anyone on their way to steal. Unfortunately for Bakari the village drunk was stuporing home when he met his death just outside our farm.

The bandits never bothered with you unless you bothered them. They never broke in houses, their only mission was to steal cows and drive them away. Many villagers knew that; if they ever came to the homestead never ever try to leave the house, let them carry on with their mission and save your life.

Bakari had been shot near our homestead because that was their route, they passed in the midle of my mother farm where there was a shallow valley with bananas. Mostly the next morning we would wake up to find the paths they had used and some of the banana bunches missing.

Even the village men dared not to go out at nite and some had invented ways of releasing themselves in the night, while the women and children peed in tins or basins, the men had cracked a small hole through the mud walls, where they could point out their manhood n pee. That was the way of life because you either go out at night and meet a cattle rustler or you meet the stark nake nightrunner doing his gymnastics.