ISSUE: Winter 2012
“Another main concern or risk that we face apart
from civil unrest is the threat of banditry,
mainly between Dadaab and Liboi, by far
the most menacing human quandary,
all the way to the border areas and now
like a skirt of cancer around the camps. Last Friday,
for example, a group of young bandits scowling
like a covey of warlords in trucks went to Dagahaley,
to one of the blocks. You know what a block
looks like? Well, they took forty-five minutes,
robbing door-to-door with their glocks
and AK47 bayonets. If you tried
to scream they broke your bit with it, blood
on the buttstock. By the time police realized,
after phone calls were made, they were out
already. On Saturday, again, in Dagahaley,
the same guns robbed five shops in a row.
In the markets there, they did their robbing and then
disappeared like a mirage on the distant plateau.”
