Kenya Crisis, Up Close and Personal

The following post was written by UUSC President Charlie Clements. Clements writes from Kenya, where he is leading an emergency delegation to assess the political and humanitarian crisis that has engulfed the country in the wake of the flawed presidential elections held in late December 2007.

The plane en route to Nairobi from Amsterdam was only about one-third full. Kenyatta National Airport, itself, looked like a ghost town compared to the bustling nerve center I remembered when I visited less than a year ago.

As we drove into town on the Uhuru Highway, I asked the driver, “How did events of last week affect you and your family?” He replied, “It was quiet. Everything is fine.” I wondered to myself, is he trying to be cheerful for the tourists? A few minutes later, when he discovered that one of us spoke Kiswahili, he chattered away in his native tongue. After we checked into our hotel, I learned the driver had spoken about how hard the week had been; about taxis being stopped on the highway, where we were driving, and burned; about electricity outages; about shortages of food and water because stores were closed or their shelves already emptied; and police chasing protestors with “shoot-to-kill” orders. He had concluded with something like, “I didn’t want to upset the muzugu (the white guy).” We were prepared to be upset, as we had come to bear witness, three of us, on an emergency-assessment mission for the UUSC-UUA Kenya Crisis Fund.

Headlines the next morning screamed, “MORE LIVES LOST,” and talked about the 26 deaths across Kenya on the Sunday we arrived, some lost in “an orgy of violence” in a Nairobi slum.

Bearing witness

We “held court” all day today (January 21) in a small meeting room in our hotel. Groups of 8-10 people would arrive, spending as much as two hours, telling us about their personal experiences since the December 27 national elections and the paroxysm of violence that erupted a few days later, when the incumbent, President Kibaki, was suddenly announced the winner after trailing in pre-election polls, exit polls, and vote tallying.

Each person we met with shared an affiliation with others around the table in the same session -- human rights activists; members of organizations focused on strengthening civil society; academics; and those with a proximity to the violence because they either work as market vendors or live in neighborhoods that are now ashes, neighborhoods where rioters, some former customers, “cleansed” areas of people suspected of having specific ethnic identities or neighborhoods where gangs of young men sought out older women, mostly vendors, and raped them. The sexual and gender-based violence was driven by their rage, their need to humiliate, to dominate, to seek revenge for decades of simmering communal resentment about exclusion.

Some of their stories were not easily told, and as we listened to the unburdening of so many emotions, I fervently hoped that the telling might begin some healing for each of them, because it was unlikely they would ever receive any therapy. As a physician, I was horrified to hear that some hospitals turned away patients because of their tribal affiliation, an attitude similar to that of some police officers who watched, but refused to protect. We promised that their stories would be shared verbally, in written reports, and on blogs/websites in an attempt to put a human face on what for many around the world was only statistics or phrases in the media, such as “widespread violence.” We were there, we told them, because we and the people we represented in America wanted to help the people of Kenya mend these wounds and be of assistance in the search for truth and justice, without which there won’t be lasting peace.

All day long, we heard warnings that leaders and politicians “should not mistake the relative quiet of Nairobi and Kenya today for peace” or as one woman said, “Don’t confuse calmness with justice or we’ll see an even larger bombshell.” People told us that, in part, all of this was a response to the hard-fought gains of civic empowerment of the 1990s, which left ordinary Kenyans really believing that “my vote must be counted and count.” Whether it happened at tallyings at polling stations, within constituencies (districts), or at the national offices of the Electoral Council of Kenya, people told us that vote totals were announced that blatantly contradicted what they had just witnessed or heard.

They said the public’s anger was further fueled because “this was the best electoral process since independence (1963), whether in terms of registration, campaigns, mobilization of voters, preelection violence, voter education, or turnout.” We were told the lines everywhere were endless, but tolerated, because voters were both excited and patient. Participation has been estimated at more than 70 percent of those eligible to vote.

Schools in Kenya were supposed to resume last week after the long holiday, but they were not considered safe. One advocate told us that youth are largely being portrayed by the media as perpetrators, but, in fact, are the most affected victims. “They can never look at each other in the same way – their ethnicity is altered forever.” We were told that some secondary schools may never reopen and superintendents are flooded with requests for transfers because students’ ethnic identity is a source of fear. Schools in 6 of 10 provinces are still not open, and we were told of one school threatened today with being burned down if it began classes.

Stories of courage

Despite all we heard, there is hope. Again and again, we were told that this crisis is not primarily about ethnicity. It is about fraud. It is about decades of politicians “feeding at the public trough.” It is about illegally armed militias who were intentionally set loose to incite violence. We were told that the “crisis could be an opportunity to finally resolve the largely ignored issues of ethnicity.”

And, finally, we heard stories of courage that always seem to get squeezed out of news reports in favor of morbidity and mortality. A man told us about driving with his friend in a rural area near Eldoret, unaware that the catastrophic elections results had just been announced. They were both active in the campaign for the opposition candidate, Raila Odinga. Raila supporters stopped their car, “Do you have a Kikuyu in this vehicle?” they asked. The crowd around the car was agitated and carried spears and machetes, as well as bows and arrows. “No,” he lied, “My friend is Mehru.” “That’s worse,” they said. They held a machete against the throat of his companion and said, “You drive on. Your friend stays here.” He knew his friend might not survive if he abandoned him. The driver said he could not leave without his friend, at which point the man with the machete hit him in the mouth with its handle, knocking out a tooth. (He paused to show us his new bridge; we were on the edge of our seats.).

“Look he’s wearing a Raila t-shirt,” he told them. They both were. He convinced them that his friend was involved in the Raila campaign, which was true. They had a box of t-shirts in the back of the car. The armed men asked in disbelief, “But no Kikuyu can be supporting Raila?” They loosened the machete against his throat and the man explained why he was campaigning for Raila. Satisfied, the armed men said, “We believe he is part of ODM (the Orange Democratic Party, the opposition), but you cannot travel here without safe passage.” The armed men hung an ODM t-shirt on the mirror, and one of them offered to travel with the car to their destination. Courage, quick thinking, and t-shirts had saved his friend’s life and cost him a tooth. There are plenty of villains on both side of this issue, and heroes as well, but we hear almost nothing about the latter. Stay tuned and we’ll tell you about more.

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