Fred Ngusilo stoops to pick up a leather pouch, once used to collect honey, and a discarded shoe from the Mau forest floor, painful reminders that his Ogiek hunter-gatherer community once quietly flourished in southern Kenya, before they were evicted and their homes destroyed.

Ngusilo belongs to the Ogiek group, which is among the last hunter-gatherer communities in Africa and one of the most marginalised in Kenya.

He described how their ancestral lands were seized by the government in the name of conservation at the end of 2023, when men armed with hammers and axes suddenly appeared, violently evicting them from their homes.

“When I come here, I feel that I’m so sad. Tears are coming out of my eyes,” Ngusilo said, his eyes resting on the remains of his father and grandfather’s house.

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