We can’t forget the day Koyaso stood up in front of the crowd, confessing he had been a poacher for 17 years, and that he was done. 17 years. In that time, he had trained several men to follow in his footsteps, and now, he was calling them all out to live clean. The silence that followed his speech shook the earth.
More earth-shaking was watching him do what he said he would. From 2013, when STE’s Community Outreach meetings began, Koyaso was standing by to speak to the masses, dialogue with warriors, elders, county government and conservationists alike. He preached the message that poaching was not worth it, and the more work he did as a community scout in Kalama conservancy, the more he spoke of the beauty and benefits of wildlife.
Through him, 11 ex-poachers came out from the cold at our community meetings. Through our radio shows where he was always a guest speaker on Serian FM, which reaches far and wide across the north, more people were reached than we could have ever gotten at our remote community meetings.
On Thursday 24th September, Koyaso was at Archers Post. Cattle rustlers tried to raid poor homes of their few goats and cows. If this was in his other life, he may have stood by. It wasn’t his property after all. But this Koyaso was different. He wasn’t going to let raiders impoverish an already poor community. He chased after them, and got caught up in the crossfire.
Koyaso will forever be remembered as a fallen hero. He changed his ways, and the ways of many others; he died defending the downtrodden.
We will continue to work fervently to turn poachers to warriors for wildlife, sharing our awareness with people of different communities so that they too appreciate and benefit from their amazing heritage. And we will remember the man who gave us a head start in this effort.
All hail the glorious departed.