I remember back, about two decades ago, when I was a young boy, sometimes during the school holidays my parents used to take us kids to our somewhere in the edge of mau forest where my dad and uncle owned farms.
Those days the forest spread right to the road that dissected my uncles farm with some forest, but under private hands. If you went further into the forest, you’d descent into a river in about a kilometer.
The water was crystal clear, and sweet, grass always green. Close by downstream on the river the river parted to two streams, then rejoined in about twenty metres ahead, to for an island of sort.
More amazing was the fact that at the point the two streams met there was a small water fall. And some 'oke had set up a water mill for grinding millet and maize there, a poshomill of those days.
Sometimes we used to cross the river or the two streams to the other side of the forest proper, owned by the government and as wild as a forest can be. Full of bamboos so tall and thick, and all types of wild fruits. Elephants and all kinds of wild animals inhabited the placed. The only people who lived there at the time were the Dorobos, and they lived strictly on nature, hunting and gathering.
We used to go there with my cousins and friends to collect wild strawberries, some fruit that resemble k apple and much much more that is lost to memory or I never knew them.
About two years back I went to the place, to visit my uncle.
The place looks beautiful, is warmer and the roads are well maintained.
Any trace of natural forest is gone.
You look in all directions and its green tea plantations. A first time visitor there would probably be impressed with the place. As for me, I feel a loss, a loss like death.
All that nature is gone. The streams are gone, the throbbing forest, our wild fruits. Even the Dorobos are gone, while a few of them squat around.
Some politicians at some point hatched a plot to hive off a part of the forest, registered the Dorobo’s and squatters as genuine beneficiaries, then once the allocations were done, went ahead to transfers the forest to themselves.
They then went ahead and used all available government machinery to clear the forest build roads etc.
But what hurts most, the only thing I think back with Nostalgia, is the virgin nature.