 |
| A map of Nandi County |
Brian of an online blog, Emopolitics, recently contacted me with a list of questions for an online interview.
EMOPOLITICS: In a nutshell, who is Dr. Cheison?
(Family, origins, present locality and profession, any other information you
would deem necessary for the electorate).
SCC: That is quite a bulky
question there! Well, let us begin with the first question in CRE at Form one:
Who Am I? I was born Barnaba Kibet on Tuesday February 20th 1968 at my
grandmother Opot Tera’s house just above Chererees river at a place called
Chebinyiiny in what is currently Tindiret District in Nandi County to the late
Joseph Kiptorus arap Rugut and Julia Chemoso (nee Chebo Koisamoo). Notably, my maternal grandfather, Surtan arap Koisamoo, was a Maotiot to Koitalel Samoei and his "court" tree-shade (Ketitab arap Koisamoo) still stands at Taito right below Taboiyat Primary School in Nandi Hills. I was later
given the “kureneet” name Seronei after my grandfather’s
brother (Nyongi Seronei). I dropped my Baptismal name Barnabas at Kapsabet Boys
after reading the literature set-book “Betrayal in the City”. In that book, a
“meeting” was called in Kafira and the first item on the agenda was
“Africanisation of our names”. A good number of us changed our names as a
consequence. That is how Barnabas went. Because the exam registration could
only take three names, I kept Seronei arap Chelulei Cheison. Obviously I was
given the name arap Chelulei after I went through the Nandi right of passage in
1986, although I had been instructed by my paternal uncles to register it as I
reported to form one in February 1986, well before I was initiated, in November of that year. My family
and I are born-again Christians. We fellowship with the Pentecostal Assemblies
of God in Kenya.
