Mzee Kiptenai Kosgei, 80, his wife Flora and children have had their lives turned upside down after Shadrack Kipkoech, 34, resurfaced on Facebook seemingly radicalised.
The humble family, which lives in Kapsoo village, Masombor location, Kaptumo, has been agonising over what to do after finding itself at the centre of a storm Kipkoech, their fourth son, triggered.
Al Shabaab, a Somalia-based Islamist group, attacked dusitD2 hotel complex in Nairobi on January 15, killing 21 and injuring 28.
The next day, with Kenyans praying for hostages to be rescued, Kipkoech instead cheered on the terrorists in a post that has since been pulled down by Facebook.
He questioned why Kenyan forces were killing Somalis and neutralising al Shabaab militants.
He, however, regretted the killing of the terrorists by police and warned of more attacks.
The post was widely shared across the county, much to the horror of his family.
Kipkoech, according to his Facebook posts, has converted from his Christian “Jehovah Witness” faith to Islam and changed his name. He is now known as “Ismael Kipkoech”, leaving his peers and relatives worried.
Any visitor trying to locate the homestead can only ask to be shown the “family of al Shaabab suspect”.
The family has been put under the surveillance of police and other security agents in Aldai subcounty.
ALL EYES ON FAMILY
The family's fears are clear on their faces because of the number of vehicles and strange people visiting them.
Police, Anti-Terror Police Unit, Directorate of Criminal Investigations officers and even the local provincial administration have interrogated members of the family concerning their sibling.
The family of nine survives on plucking tea leaves in the surrounding tea farms in the village, while Mzee Kiptenai, due to his old age, remains at the homestead waiting for “visitors”.
“We are constantly living in fear since my brother made the post from an unknown location,” Kipkoech's brother Keino says.
“When he called, he could claim he was in Juba. Now we cannot tell if he was in Sudan or Somalia.”
On the fateful day, someone called Keino alerting the family of a Facebook post by Kipkoech praising al Shabaab for the Dusit attack. Keino, wearing a tattered Jubilee Party campaign T-shirt, recalls his reaction.
“As you can see, my phone is a 'mulika mwizi'. I could not immediately read [the Facebook post], but eventually I managed. I called his number, which starts with the code +211 [the country code of South Sudan], but he did not pick. So I left a message for him to call back,” Keino says.
“When he eventually called me at night, I rebuked him over the Facebook post and asked him never to call us again because he had betrayed our family and the nation.”
A sobbing mother, Flora Kosgei, had reservations about Kipkoech, saying he was a troublesome boy since childhood, and his disappearance and suspicions of having been radicalised are no surprise.
Flora remembers too well one day in mid-June 2013, when Kipkoech told his parents to their faces to allocate him his share of their grandfather’s land from the family’s acre of land.
His parents complied after suspecting he was not up to any good. He had sold all his chicken, a family cow he was rearing on their behalf and packed his belongings in a bag.
“He had earlier taken away his clothes and hidden them somewhere, and we felt if we refused, he was going to do an unpleasant thing to anyone,” his mother says.
Kipkoech disposed of his share of 0.2 of an acre to a businessman. The day he received the final payment, he left with the chief and village elder at 6pm. That was the last time the family saw him.
Hand on the cheek in deep thought, Flora says she has given up on her son, leaving his fate be decided by his creator after he converted to Islam and maybe joined al Shabaab.
“We are Christians of Jehovah Witness by denomination. I took him all through the lessons to understand properly the doctrine of our faith, but he has decided to support terrorists. I feel so sad,” Florah says.
He could spend several hours in cyber cafés, browsing, and this is where he might have been recruited, as he was looking for opportunities for himself for a better life
Kiptoo, one of his peers
RECRUITED ONLINE?
According to the family, after many years of disappearance, they could be alerted by neighbours at least once in a blue moon of a new post.
However, his dusitD2 post took everyone by surprise and put the entire clan in isolation, as such has never been experienced in the past.
“From this, we get to know that he’s still alive, but we don’t know where he is. When we talked sometime last year, he claimed he was in Sudan, working for some SPLA [South Sudan army] general,” Keino says.
What could have driven him out of his home? According to his brother Keino, Shadrack failed to join form one after successfully sitting his KCPE exam at Mosombor Primary School in 2008.
Kipkoech was supposed to join Kaptumo Boys. But due to lack of school fees, he failed to do so. He decided to engage in casual jobs instead within the neighbourhood.
His peers say he was a very bright student and very ambitious in life, and this may have driven him to where he is.
“He could spend several hours in cyber cafés, browsing, and this is where he might have been recruited, as he was looking for opportunities for himself for a better life,” Kiptoo, one of his peers, said.
Keino is afraid the family could be targeted for producing an al Shabaab sympathiser.
“To speak the truth, we are scared as a family because if anything bad happens to someone from the village that could be blamed on al Shabaab, we are the soft target. We appeal for protection,” Keino says.
The family also wants the government to help trace the whereabouts of their son because they have co-operated and recorded several statements.
What puzzles them is claims that he is in South Sudan, even when there is a civil war pitting supporters of President Salva Kiir and those of former Vice President Riak Machar.
"He could be somewhere else and only using a South Sudan number," Keino says.
