Guest Post by Ellie Williams: “I am honey at the top”

By Chris Lang, Conservation Watch, 8 August 2018

The Sengwer are indigenous people who live in the Embobut forest, in the Cherangani Hills, in western Kenya. Since British colonial rule they have faced violent eviction from their traditional lands. In recent years the evictions have intensified. The Kenya Forest Service has carried out repeated evictions — in the name of conservation.

In January 2018, a Kenya Forest Service guard shot and killed Robert Kirotich, a 41-year-old Sengwer man. When the Kenya Forest Service guards attacked Kirotich he was herding his cattle.

“Honey at the top” is a film by Dean Puckett, a UK-based documentary film maker. Puckett travelled to the Cherangani Hills in late 2014 to film and document the lives of the Sengwer people. You can see this beautiful, but disturbing film here.

Ellie Williams saw “Honey at the top” at a screening in the UK earlier this year. “I was thoroughly moved and inspired to write a poem as part of my creative writing dissertation on displaced people”, she told Conservation Watch.

Her poem, “I am honey at the top,” is posted below with her permission (the poem can also be downloaded here):

Originally published at Conservation-Watch.org on 8 August 2018.