When Kabon was a child, at a time when her family and community lived along the Kerio escarpment, leaving the Uasin Gishu plateau to different waves of Maasai, Karamojong and Nandi people, she began making a romoryet as she was herding cattle. The romoryet was a bundle of thin and very dry sticks, tied tightly with sisal, which was lit and used as a torch. Kabon needed one because that night she was stepping out to sing and dance with other children.
She ate her supper early, held the romoryet against the kitchen fire till it began to spark, then walked out. Expecting a full moon, she was disappointed by a cloudy sky which turned the land darker, but she could hear the other children singing in the distance and she went on. Somewhere, along her path, a hand emerged from the darkness, grabbed the burning end of the romoryet and snuffed it off. The same person spat on her twice, before fading off. Kabon was so scared that by the time she arrived where the other children were, she was mute.
Her friends asked why she wasn’t talking, why she was suddenly uninterested in singing, and soon enough the adults around began to intervene, asking, “Kaamin nee?” But Kabon wouldn’t utter a word. They guided her back home, telling her mother to mind over her till she got better. Hours later, at around 4 AM, or that hour which the Keiyo referred to as the time when elephants go to drink water, there was a loud hue-and-cry. Nandi warriors were raiding the village.
Kabon’s mother slapped her cowskin door, and her goats and sheep ran off, hearing the sound. She told Kabon to also hide, as she picked a spear smeared with red oxide. She lifted the spear high, letting it reflect any available light, as she screamed, summoning men to war. Men from the escarpment fought with the Nandi men, following them as far up as Kamariny and hurling them down the cliffs. They snatched millet bags tied around the necks of those who were fallen, eating the grains even if they were soaked with blood, their bodies needing energy.
When there was so much death, elders came and drew a line between the fighting warriors, asking that no more blood be shed. At that exact moment, Kabon found herself able to speak. They decided that a Nandi spy had put a spell on her, known as kiptakinik, to prevent her from warning her people. These spies would walk around the villages they intended to raid, to check it out for any epidemic or pestilence, and Kabon, sadly, had stumbled on one.