Wajir In 1969, Tonelli moved to
Kenya, where she began working as a teacher at Wajir Secondary School. After some years she studied to be a nurse too and spent over a decade in the town of
Wajir caring for the destitute and ill. Tonelli also created a deaf school in
Wajir whose graduates have gone to other parts of Somali-speaking Africa to start schools. A former pupil from this Wajir deaf school and two deaf women from Wajir established the first schools of
Somali Sign Language. In 1984, following political and inter-
clan clashes, the army of
Kenya started a repression campaign against the
Degodia Somali clan in the Wajir area known as the
Wagalla Massacre. The Degodia were suspected of being
Shifta or bandits along the roadways. The Kenyan military rounded up 5000 men and boys and brought them to the Wagalla Airstrip and forced them to lie on the stomachs naked for 5 days. Possibly a thousand were shot, tortured or died of exposure. Annalena brought a couple lorries and her Toyota Serf to the Wagalla Airstrip and attempted to collect the bodies and treat the wounded but was refused. Later she followed the tracks of the military vehicles who were dumping the bodies outside the Wagalla Airstrip. Some were not dead and she rescued them. She brought a journalist to photograph the genocide. She smuggled the photos out with
Barbara Lefkow, the wife of an American diplomat to put pressure on the international community. The public denunciation by Annalena Tonelli helped to stop the killings but not before thousands died. The
Wagalla Massacre is Kenya's worst human rights violation in its history. Arrested and taken in front of a martial court she was told that the fact she escaped two ambushes was not a guarantee to survive a third one. Due to Tonelli's vehement protests over the Kenyan military's use of violence against the Wajir community, the Kenyan authorities refused to extend her work permit. Tonelli subsequently relocated to
Somalia. ==Somalia and Somaliland==