A Lone Kikuyu Vendor in Eldoret

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 of December 2007.

The women vendors led us to a wide alley where large trucks come to be repaired. There, in a shaded corner, was a man with a sewing machine. He cuts open the large fiber sacks and sews them into awnings and other items.

Despite his ready smile, he had a sadness about him. He told us that he’s Kikuyu and that he and his family are living at the show grounds, where we just visited, because their home was burned by a mob. He said he only feels alive when he comes here to be among his colleagues. Yet, his working is not without risk: he has to come after 9 a.m., when some of the roadblocks and small bonfires along the roads are not manned, and return to the IDP camp before dark. The women told me he is one of the few Kikuyu traders around.

One of the women said of him, “He’s our friend and we have to protect him,” even though she had her home burned down by Kikuyu. I asked if she was living in the IDP camp. She said no, that neither she nor her three children would be safe there because it is a place only for Kikuyus. She and her family are staying with friends.

The back alley is also where the women’s sacks are stored, on pallets. I asked them what prevents the sacks from being stolen. They said that during the recent spate of violence, they took their stocks home with them. They also collectively pay for security to patrol the alley. So much of what appears to me as random and chaotic is, in fact, very carefully orchestrated. The pallets of empty bags are large and heavy, appearing very unwieldy for even a strong man to carry. These women are plenty strong and are used to fending for themselves.

A big and burly man, who dwarfs me, came up to me, asking for something, probably money, in a non-Swahili language. The women immediately protected me by surrounding him, like a rugby scrum move, and pressing a coin into his hand. It was done so quickly, so graciously. They were nice to him, but firm. I wondered if the lone Kikuyu vendor felt similar to the way I just did. I had a sense that these women would surround and protect him in the same way.

The Kikuyu vendor was wearing a baseball cap that was labeled “LUCK” in large capital letters. I wondered if he felt lucky to still have his business, which most Kikuyus don’t. Did he feel lucky to be alive? He and his family were being fed in the IDP camp, so I don’t think he was taking the risk of working in the market just to make money. I think that these are his friends, his neighbors, his colleagues, and that his life has some normalcy when he’s around them.

For him, sitting around the IDP camp means being unemployed, hanging out with bruised and angry men who have lost all that they own and now trade horror stories about how someone they knew for decades suddenly turned on them. Worse still for him would be sitting in a small, unventilated plastic tent, feeling hot and claustrophobic.

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