For the last 43 years, residents of Nyaribo Village in Nyeri have been forced to adapt to a daily routine that requires them to take cover from live bullets flying over their heads and homes.
Nyaribo is not a war zone, neither is it in conflict.
10AM DAILY
The bullets that the locals have been ducking daily are fired from guns of police recruits in the neighbouring Kenya Police College at Kiganjo.
“At 10am daily, we have to take cover because that is when the gunshots start ringing,” says Pauline Muthoni as she walks out of her farm.
She was weeding and taking care to her crops but she fears for her life.
“You do not want to be outside when it starts because a bullet could hit you.”
From a distance, bursts of rifles being fired at the police college can be heard.
Occasionally, whizzes can be heard as bullets fly over Muthoni’s home.
This has become the norm and Muthoni says she is lucky not to have been hit by a bullet over the last four decades.
HOUSES
However, her house has not been as lucky.
She has had to replace its tin roof several times because bullet holes leak water into the house when it rains.
Walls and trusses of her wooden house have marks of the stray bullets— proof of the danger Muthoni lives in.
Why do(es) Pauline Muthoni and(/or) Julia wanjiru have eerily similar fingers with a slight bump on the right hand forefinger’s first joint? and, also eerily similar, beaded bracelet and ring (on the middle finger)?
You can always hear the rifle reports from anywhere in Nyeri. They probably use G3 rifles from the sound. long range guns that can kill randomly at over two kilometers distance. They should build a wall and shoot into it.