A family in Mtaro, Maralal town, huddles as they watch a comedy episode on a smartphone, occasionally bursting into laughter at an especially funny scene.
Suddenly, outside, a convoy arrives carrying three brown coffins bearing the remains of three Samburu herders previously shot dead in a deadly cattle raid in Marti, Samburu North.
Among the mourners are women wailing and sobbing at the loss of the morans.
Nearby, the family pauses the video as they pay attention to the burial ceremony. The funeral continues.
This is a typical day at the Maralal public cemetery or “makaburi”, which is crowded by permanent residents trying to live their lives as normally as possible.
This side of Maralal, the dead and the living lie side by side amid a housing crisis in the sprawling town. With the population of the Samburu capital growing rapidly, hundreds of people count themselves lucky to space among the dead.
A section of the Maralal cemetery where people have encroached and developed structures.
“Life is normal. At the beginning when I moved here, life seemed very hard and difficult. After some time, you get accustomed to it and it becomes normal,” says Maureen Lekenit, a mother of three.
Most families have lived here, away from the hustle and bustle of the Maralal central business district and in a county with a booming population of 310,000, according to the 2019 census.
The Samburu are traditionally pastoralists and therefore cattle belonging to people neighbouring the cemetery are driven to the cemetery daily to make use of the used and unused parts of the graveyard.
As they graze, they knock down the wooden crosses that mark the graves of the departed. The crosses then disappear from the cemetery.
It is no surprise when the crosses, with the names of the deceased on them, become fuel for domestic fires in the neighborhoods to keep residents warm at night.
Finding a rental home here is easy but securing a final resting place for the dead is becoming harder, with graveyards running out of room amid mass encroachments.
But rising land prices, urbanisation and population growth are constricting the town’s cemetery.
Most parts of the cemetery now have permanent commercial and residential buildings. Other places have been fenced off tightly for new developments, leaving no space for the dead.
The cemetery was allocated about 40 acres in the north of Maralal, according to information from the defunct Maralal town council. But only about two acres of the land is left without graves and the living and the dead are scrambling for it.
Some of the residents who talked to Nation.Africa complained that there is not enough land in the town. Others claimed they were allocated the land by the old town council and say they have “a right to live side by side with the dead”.
A road under construction in Maralal town.
“We have no option but to build our houses in the cemetery because we have no place to go. Until they give us another land, we are here to stay,” said a resident, who pleaded for anonymity.
“We were allocated land by the defunct Maralal town council so we did not forcefully disturb the dead.”
The settlement is far from legal, but authorities have long shelved plans to evict residents because doing so now would spark an unwanted confrontation, said Maralal municipality chairman Rafael Leshalote.
Hundreds of people, he said, had encroached and developed structures on the public cemetery in Mtaro and the land has now drawn controversies.
He explained that the defunct town council had allocated people parcels in the cemetery land and most are seeking to be relocated to new lands.
“Most inhabitants argue that they were allocated the land by the council and so they want new land in order to move out,” he said.
“As a municipality, we have left the ball with the Samburu County government to decide whether the occupants will be evicted or not.”
It remains a mystery what the Moses Lenolkulal administration will do to address the matter.
Samburu Lands and Physical Planning executive Peinan Loronyokie noted that the encroachment on the public cemetery land is a thorny issue.
She said the settlements are illegal but added that the Samburu administration was close to finding a long-term solution.
“All settlements that are encroaching into the cemetery are illegal and the necessary processes are being undertaken to address the challenge,” Ms Loronyokie said.
She said the county had drafted a reviewed spatial plan as one of the measures to avoid such conflicts in Maralal.
The 10-year plan, jointly developed by the national government and the United Nations Food and Agriculture Organization will guide officials to budget for development programmes.
As the population grows, she said, more homes, schools and health centres will be needed and this must be factored into spatial planning.
“With spatial planning, Samburu County will re-examine new viable approaches to influence the distribution of people and activities considering available land space,” she said
“We want to make human settlements in ancient towns like Maralal inclusive and sustainable.”
A spatial plan as prescribed under the County Governments Act, 2012 is a physical development plan for the purpose of improving land and providing for such amenities as suitable transportation and designating commercial, industrial, residential and recreational areas.
Samburu’s efforts to make space for the dead mirror its struggles to find affordable housing for the living. As people continue to migrate to towns from rural areas, meeting housing targets has proved difficult across the sprawling town. BY DAILY NATION