This encounter was far enough from the village marked as a permanent centre by the iron roofing sheets and the mosque to raise the soldiers' suspicions.
The man was stopped, asked to identify himself, frisked by the soldiers and led towards the town, where the officer in charge, a lieutenant, was talking to the Transitional Federal Government forces that police the area.
The soldiers found that the man was wearing a pair of shorts under his trousers, had three mobile phones and a kitchen knife.
Their suspicions were raised further when they discovered a mobile phone SIM card sewn into a pocket and several packets of what appeared to be tobacco wrapped in pieces of dirty newspapers.
Questioned, the man claimed to have been with a group of herders originating from the town and was headed back home for something.
But to the soldiers, he might as well have been on reconnaissance, checking out the location of their patrol base on the instructions of Al-Shabaab
... Harakat ash-Shabaab al-Mujahidin aka the Mujahideen Youth Movement. It was originally the youth movement of the Islamic Courts, now pretty much all of what's left of it. They are aligned with al-Qaeda but operate more like the Afghan or Pakistani Taliban...
.
Fortunately for him, one of the women in the village said she knew him, had seen him earlier in the day and could therefore offer a guarantee of sorts that he was not on a suspicious mission.
For the soldiers in the towns in the Central Sector that have been liberated from Al-Shabaab (Dhobley, Hawina, Tabda and Belesc Qoogani), anything that strays from the normal is checked thoroughly.
The population in some of the towns has increased since Operation Linda Nchi began in October 2011. Hawina was initially a ghost town but has come back to life and Hosingow's population has tripled from 150 to 450.
While some may see this as reflecting the stability brought about by the removal of Al-Shabaab, there are signs that the militia retains a presence.
Two weeks ago, a KDF convoy was ambushed just outside Hawina on its way to Tabda.
One soldier was killed, another sprained his ankle and the rest were saved by their reflexes and the quick action of the lieutenant in charge, who shot one of the attackers as he took aim at the troops from a tree.
The patrol base at Tabda was under attack the same evening, with several mortar bombs fired from a distance.
The nature and execution of the two attacks suggest some element of coordination and intelligence, with the very possible chance there were Al-Shabaab operatives among the locals.