Pokot Pt. 2: Sunday Bloody Sunday

(A continuation of the last post)
Apakamoi was our guide. He is Pokot and has worked for peace resolution amongst the tribe. He’s one of the few Pokot that has made it out of tribal life and into an education and collegiate studies. He’s worked as a peacemaker and peacekeeper with World Vision and other organizations. His story truly is proof that the resurrection happened and that the resurrection is happening.
I heard of hardship. I heard of death. I heard of traditions that promoted destruction and hatred. Apakamoi was the one of three children that were still alive out of 14. Many times in Africa, when twins are born, the one born second is thrown out. In his family there were 5 sets of twins, so he lost many siblings simply by this. He actually was the second twin born, but by the grace of God his uncle took him to raise him. Otherwise he simply would have been thrown out the window.
Because of disease, starvation and, just simply living out in the bush he lost most of his other siblings. Only 3 remain.
He now spends his time ending those injustices. Ending the fact that so many are starving and hurting because of bloodshed and war.

This began soften my heart. It began to wear away the apathy and the ignorance from being so far away from anything like this in the comforts of America. The rigidness and calicing aroung my heart, around my ablility to be able to feel, began to soften. It was much like being in a swimming pool. After you’ve been immersed for a certain amount of time the skin on the tips of your fingers and the tips of your toes begins to soften. It took this immersion in poverty and turmoil to truly soften my soul.
And this was only the beginning.

The next story is one of utmost agony. It painted a portrait in my head that will never leave my attic.
His name was Emanuel. The Pokot have inhabited an area that straddles Uganda and Kenya for years. So since lines have been formed, since borders have been established, its been difficult for them to stay in just one country because they have no concept of a government that can limit in such a way.
So Emanuel recently lived on the Uganda side. That is his home. The Ugandan side is also closer to a river, so the livestock, crops, and people are much healthier and plentiful. His wife was pregnant with his first child. The crops were growing well thanks to the unusual amount of rainfall. In Uganda though, the military gets bored sometimes. They sometimes carry out orders to a violent extreme or even act on their own will.
In mid August, the Ugandan Army began raiding the Pokotian village with great force. They were trying to force the Pokot back into Kenya.
I actually had the oppourtunity to cross over and Uganda and shake the hands of the Ugandan Army (some border patrol right). This men truly were careless and ruthless. They shook my hand with excitement, very happy to see a mzungu, with a backyard brew in one hand, holding their AK-47 like a 5 year old holds a water gun, finger on the trigger ready to go off and accidentally kill a few villagers and with flip-flops on. I wouldn’t feel safe as a Ugandan and would definitely feel threatened if I wasn’t a mzungu.
When the Army raided, they shot in every direction and at many villagers trying to instill fear in them so they wouldn’t return. Apakamoi got a call the day of the attack, and rushed out to the village with a vehicle ready to transport any victims of the army’s evil hostility.
When he arrived he found that Emanuel’s wife had was one of the victims of the spray of fire. He immediately loaded her into the small van with hopes that she would make it.
What was to follow is an image that will never leave my mind. Apakamoi called me over, as we sat around the fire, to show me a picture he had taken on her phone. They didn’t make it to the hospital on time. She didn’t get to see her first-born child born. She didn’t get to receive the unlimited love that her husband Emanuel had to give. The picture was a picture of her, covered in blood, perished as a result of evil.
A picture is worth a thousand words. This one though didn’t produce a single one. I had nothing to say. I had nothing to appreciate. Evil is hard.

Emanuel now was on the Kenyan side. The sense of community is so great that he had been given a meal every few days. He had the clothes on his back. But Emanuel had nothing else. He’d been driven out of his home. He was a Christian, so he only had one wife(most had many wives because the mortality rate is so high, that the men have as many children as possible so their legacy can live on). And the first child he was soon to have, was now also gone. All had been lost. All that he knew was gone.
It was a truly a divine decision though that he had taken the name Emanuel when he became a Christian, which means God With Us. Emanuel hadn’t lost everything. He still had his faith. He still had hope. And he had even more hope for restoration after he’d seen a team of Americans come all the way out to West Pokot.

There wasn’t much shape left of my heart at this point. Much had been broken. But I could finally began to understand pain that these people experience everyday. My world had been turned upside down. I could now be thankful for every breath that I am given. I could now begin to comprehend how blessed we are as Americans. I could now begin to Live, and Live for something Bigger.


This is only the beginning. I’ll be traveling back to West Pokot in mid October. Construction on the bore hole will have started. It will be a glorious thing witnessing the construction of New Life. I am anxious to return. I can’t wait to see these brothers and sisters that I’ve recently discovered, even if we are as different as night and day and live in completely different eras, maybe even different millennia.

(stop reading and go to the next post if you aren’t Rocky Balboa and have a stomach that is like iron)
Ah, and I almost forgot…The Pokotian smoothie: Since it is the wet season, they don’t practice the blood and milk ritual. They’ll eat real food instead since its available. I did witness (and videotape) another common practice though that again left me speechless.
The warriors cooked a goat for us everyday. And when they kill a goat, they spare nothing. EVERYTHING is used.
So, to kill the goat they pierce the jugular vein in the neck, hold the goat up, and drain it of all of its blood into a gourd. They had also obviously had done this hundreds of times because the gourd was just the right size for all the blood. The goat remains alive for the majority of this process as well. As you’ll see, if I can ever this video posted on YouTube(and watch at your own risk, or if you don’t want to eat in the next 24 hours), the goat cries out many times even though it has such little blood pumping through its veins.
What happens next? Do they keep the blood to make the meat even juicier? Do they boil the blood and mix it with other things? Why wait though?
They immediately starting passing that thing around and began sucking it down. They looked like a bunch of alcoholics passing around a bottle of Jack Daniels, they sipped it down so fast. Blood congeals quite quickly, I discovered that evening. They stuck their hand down into the gourd to squeeze out any clots and to better liquefy this new Bloody Mary concoction.
They roasted all the big pieces of meat. With the stomach, they cut it open, fed the digesting food to whatever animals and pets they had, and then cut the stomach up to boil. They also added the intestines (after they squeezed the crap out of it…haha literally) the liver, the heart, the brain, and everything else to boil. The skin was used as a mattress. And the bones, they would crack open the bones and suck all the bone marrow out. Mmmm, nothing like a good ole downing of bone marrow.
I didn’t eat any of the boiled meat the first night, but did the second. I really enjoyed the goat soup though. It was the water that they had boiled the meat in. The goats eat a grass that gives the meat a salty taste, so I overall believe that the Pokot are pretty good cooks, even though they love a big handful of blood.

So…until next time, that’s Pokot.

I’ll also try and create a yahoo account where you can see pictures. And the keep looking out for the Goat Draining on YouTube.

Rhythm is finally coming also. I should be posting more. As long as I still have the energy to relive these experiences in words.