Otiato GuguyuWhen Jacob Oronda Mama expanded his business enterprise in Bulanda, he was fodder for village gossip and admiration in equal measures.
He had arrived at the sleepy village on the border town of Busia as a man of the cloth, but of the entrepreneurial kind.
Bulanda, on the outskirts of Busia town along the Uganda border is a sleepy center that coalesced around a butchery and hospital. It is the typically rural small holder farmer centers that grew out of communal convergence in the evenings to buy kerosene for their lamps and barter vegetables.
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Real estate had not been a thing for the area where children inherited their parents land and lived on it. The only units that worked were one roomed units called Landi's or Sakatis’ where those who choose to live away from their homesteads, migrants from across the country and the few workers and retailers lived.
As Busia was growing into a provincial town it attracted migrants who were looking for affordable property close enough to access the town. My father happened to be one of them and he quickly fell on family ties to help him identify a property.
One of our relatives Nyachonga was married there and so her husband was the one who actually helped my father settle in what at the time looked like the middle of nowhere in Bukhayo. He was lucky that he built a retirement house there because in the 1990’s during the aftershocks of the IMF structural adjustment programmes (SAPs) he found himself scuttling back to Bulanda.
I remember during that time real estate did not do well and you could barely make enough return from letting it out. Bulanda also relied on Busia town for most supplies but as population grew it needed businesses to open more convenient outlets closer to customers.
A man of the cloth?
As people moved so did capital and trade and the village opened up to the concrete spilling from Busia town and prospects for real estate looked promising. Oronda Mama’s entry into the economy was thus noticeable after he took up not one but two shops and ran three businesses.
He started off with a motorcycle repair and spare parts shop and quickly expanded to a hotel which he named Oronda Mama.
“He came like someone from church… church. When he arrived he asked where he could open a garage to repair motorcycles. He got a space here next to Christco church. We used to take our bikes to him and we became his customers and felt he was decent man,” Lima a childhood friend tells me.
No one knows exactly when the rumours began. In a few months Oronda Mama had a dispute with his landlord and relocated to the Okamari’s shops, quickly reopening his motorcycle repair, spare parts shop, hotel and Mpesa shop. He was soon suspected to be laundering money through his business fronts.
“In a short while he opened a hotel and employed people. We thought the business was doing very well. But then we started hearing rumours that he was not a straight forward guy, he was suspected to be a motorcycle thief,” Lima said.
Feizal says that in December last year the rumour took its own proportions when a rider who had ferried Oronda Mama lost his motorcycle.
According to Feizal, Oronda Mama took a rider with him to his rural village 22 kilometers away for a land transaction. While they were inspecting the property the motorbike which had been left a little far off disappeared.
Violence does not work
“The boda swore that Oronda Mama knew who had stolen the motorcycle because he had told him where to leave the ride,” Fezal says.
He alleges that after raising queries and investigating, it was claimed that Oronda Mama’s own father confessed to seeing the motorcycle.
Mr Oscar Khalende the Chief Township location in Busia confirmed this particular incident about the land saga and how the bike disappeared. His account varies slightly however, he says Oronda Mama excused himself to go to the toilet whereupon he sneaked round his quarry and made away with the bike.
Within a matter of hours the rumour had crossed 22 kilometers and boda boda riders and the village descended on his property, looting his shops and eating the food in his hotel and proceeding to banish him.
The chief says after the crowds cornered Oronda mama they discovered they were in the same clan/ family and instead the crowd turned to his property instead.
Feizal says Oronda Mama had to rush to the police station for protection lest the mob would have fallen on him and killed him.
Incarceration is said to have bought him time for rural settlement and it is claimed that his father approached the boda boda, agreed that the motorcycle was Kes150,000, which was reinstated to the victim.
Even still, Oronda Mama is said to be on the run. “We now hear he has run away and is living in Lodwar,” Feizal said more in reference to the outside world away from Bulanda which for him can be represented by as far as Lodwar.
I ask the boda boda if the violence, killing suspects and burning their homes is reducing the rate of theft and the brutal killings.
“The mob justice is usually to vent anger, the motorcycle is lost, maybe someone has been killed but it does not reduce the frequency of the theft. The thieves are so many and some of them are hiding amongst us so it is difficult to deal with the problem,” he said.
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