Kenyans Must Demand More Progress on Democracy

After four weeks of political negotiations that were looking more and more like a stalemate, on February 28, 2008, Kofi Annan finally convinced Kenyan political rivals Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga to reach a power-sharing deal. Under the agreeement, Kibaki remains president and Odinga becomes prime minister. Further details remain to be decided.

This is not the first time Kibaki and Odinga are attempting a coalition government. They established a partnership in 2002, but it failed. Yet, with the eyes of the international community on Kenya and a global desire not to let Kenya slide into anarchy, there is hope that this agreement will give the country a measure of stability. It will be up to Kenyans, themselves, to continue calls for true, transparent democratic governance. The role of civil society in supporting such a social movement for peace, justice, and democracy cannot be underestimated.

At the same time, over 200,000 internally displaced people (IDPs) continue to rely on international aid for their daily needs -- including shelter, food, water, protection, and health care. UUSC staff is currently in Kenya talking with IDPs to determine the best way to help meet their needs. We will be updating you on our progress.
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Background
Flawed December 27, 2007, presidential elections in Kenya led to an explosion of political tensions and longstanding grievances. Over 1,000 people were killed, and hundreds of thousands were forced from their homes. Most of the people affected by the violence were already among society's most vulnerable. In January 2008, UUSC sent an emergency delegation to assess the political and humanitarian crisis.

Read more about UUSC's work in Kenya on our Kenya Crisis Portal and our human rights weblog.

Final Thoughts as I Leave Kenya

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.

We are booked on the last flight out of Eldoret on January 25 and the airport is half an hour away. Usually I feel fine getting to the airport half an hour before a flight, but with dusk approaching, fires being lit at roadblocks, and so much at stake, I’m glad to arrive at the airport an hour before our scheduled departure.

As we say our goodbyes, I have to acknowledge to myself the privilege that allows me to leave all of this uncertainty, fear, and tragedy. The commitment we have made to everyone we spoke with, or who assisted us, is to use this information in a way that will increase understanding and aid as well as contribute to a lasting solution.

Soon enough we will write a briefing for the House and Senate subcommittees on Africa; we hope to meet with their staff early next week. There may be hearings soon, and I hope the members of this delegation are asked to testify about what we’ve witnessed and experienced.

I try to think of a sentence or two to sum up our trip, as we fly away from Eldoret.

Kenya feels like it is on the edge of a precipice. Anguish and anger are pushing people into a free fall toward communal violence, which neither the leaders nor the security forces may be able to easily stop once it begins. As Kisumu, and now perhaps Nakuru (if the reports we got this afternoon are true), slip toward economic meltdown, the volatility of the situation will only increase. I fear that both Kibaki and Raila may be too insulated by hardliners to sense that they are engaged in a dangerous game of brinkmanship.

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Where Truth and Rumor End and Begin

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.

Earlier in the day, someone told me that Kikuyu gangs called Mungiki are being armed by Kibaki’s government and moving around at night dressed in police uniform. It sounded like a rumor. The source told me the Mungiki leave the IDP camps at night in their police guises and take revenge on non-Kikuyu for what has happened to them.

I was told that the burnings and killings that are taking place now seem to be revenge for the events of the past weeks, keeping the violence alive, though the attacks are sporadic compared to the initial violence.

It’s hard to know where truth and rumor end and begin.

I know men in the IDP camp fear what’s outside the camp. And I know Non-Kikuyus outside the camp are afraid that Kikuyus inside the camp are arming themselves and will seek revenge for what was done to them. It seems like a recipe for an escalation of violence.

There are no checkpoints to monitor who is entering the camp, at least in the daytime. Only six armed men in camouflage guard the camp. That’s the security force for 25,000 people, or, at least, that’s the only security I saw…perhaps there are more guards, but there can’t be many more.

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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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Vendors at the Eldoret Market

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.

It was still dark when we arrived in downtown Eldoret. The city looks entirely normal, no burned businesses. I think that must mean that few downtown businesses are thought to be Kikuyu owned, because virtually every charred home or store along the rural roads that we saw were owned by Kikuyus.

We headed downtown to see the market and meet with vendors who are members of the Eldoret affiliate of KENASVIT, the national association that UUSC has supported for several years. We found our guide -- Julius -- and met his sister, whose stall is next to his. He told us that when he started vending, his stall was on the outside of the market, on the street, where vendors sell their goods on blankets, unprotected from the sun. Over the next seven years, he slowly migrated to the central covered part of the market, where he now has a large wooden stand.

As we toured the market, Julius’s wife tended their stall, which relieved me -- we were not keeping him from earning a living. He explained that as the unpaid president of the 900-member Eldoret Urban Alliance, he taught his wife the business so he could do alliance business. As a group, they’ve successfully negotiated for greater transparency in the licensing of stalls, restrooms provided by the city, pick-up of refuse, security that protects them against theft, electricity in the covered parts of the market, and some water spigots. He is clearly well liked and has a good word for everyone.

There were some unattended stalls that still appeared to have produce. Julius explained that the absent vendors have not returned since the violence. He said on a good day he usually can do 5,000 Ks (Kenya shillings) of business, which is about $70. He said that today he will be lucky to do 500 Ks of business, for several reasons: many people are refugees; many are afraid to be out; and people have less money because so many jobs have been lost.

We went to meet some women vendors who sell large, multipurpose fiber sacks. They approach us smiling and exuding energy. They work on the sidewalk of a street corner, where an Indian merchant allows them to sell their goods in front of his store. Before the Kikuyus became the merchant class after independence, most merchants in Kenya were descendents of Indians brought to Kenya to work on the railways or tea/coffee plantations.

Despite their vending on the sidewalk, the women said the city still collects 30 Ks per day (approximately $0.50) from them, providing no services in return.

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The Assemblies of God Church

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.

We see a lot of destruction of shops along the roads leading to town. We turn off onto a dirt road. Our driver stops to ask a man digging around a burned structure if there is any danger on the road ahead. The man says he thinks it’s safe. I ask him, through our escorts, if he would tell us what happened here.

There are about six charred vertical poles that seem to define spaces about ten-feet wide. There are four such spaces. He’s been removing corrugated tin that was nailed to the post, the last of what appear to be stalls in front of a wall with soot-covered letters that spell out SWAMP HOTEL. There are broken plates scattered in the ashes, only a handful of burned silverware remains. The man says this was a hotel, a hardware store, a grocery store, and a butcher shop. I am amazed because the whole area is no more than 40 by 40 feet. He explains that he had recently taken out a loan and was buying this “mini-mall” from its absentee Kikuyu owner. He says he will still have to pay the loan. He’s Luo, and clearly the “hooligans” who burned it down didn’t know he was the new owner. He’s stripping the corrugated tin because it will soon be stolen if he doesn’t…the silverware is all that is salvageable. He says 15 people were employed in these small stores. I thank him, and we continue slowly driving down the narrow dirt road a mile or more.

I wonder where we are going. We occasionally pass a man on a bicycle or on foot. The driver asks if everything is quiet in the neighborhood. We stop at an intersection and peer behind a thin hedge that grows around a fence. Now I know where we are without anyone explaining. We have come to the site of the Assemblies of God Church, where 30 or more people perished in a fire on January 2. Yellow crime-scene tape blocks the entrance.

The rubble appears to be virtually untouched, except the bodies have been removed and buried. Many of the victims were children. There are several bouquets of flowers, now wilted or dried, stuck in fence posts. I had intended to bring one, but didn’t know we were already en route. I guess our driver wasn’t sure we could get here until he checked it out. (There had been a number of unmanned rock roadblocks near where we turned off to come here.)

The rubble of the collapsed, burned church includes a dozen charred bicycles parked in front. In the midst of the rubble, still visible, is a wheelchair. I remember reading a news account that one of the victims had been an 80-plus-year-old woman who had perished in her wheelchair. Most of the people unable to get out of the barricaded doors had tumbled out of broken windows, escaping with cuts or burns. The perpetrators were “hooligans” who had blocked the doors and used kerosene to set the church on fire.

I ask our driver what could possibly provoke the kind of hatred that could lead someone to set a church full of women and children on fire. He said the Kikuyus in this area had been taunting their neighbors before the elections, saying that Kenya was going to be ruled by another Kikuyu (Kibaki) and that when he came to power they would rub their neighbors’ faces in the dirt. He says this without rancor, as if he were merely reporting the facts. Who knows the truth. Prior to the elections, there was little overt violence – 70 deaths nationwide – but, evidently, tensions had been rising in what was seen as a contest for spoils (with Kibaki’s PNU party) and a chance to end “feeding at the trough” and create economic opportunities for those excluded for decades (with Raila’s ODM party).

We pause to pay our respects in silence and leave quickly. The driver doesn’t want to hang around here. The car is quiet. I am engrossed, and suspect the others are too, thinking about the horror that transpired here just a few weeks ago.

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Kenya's Underlying Political Tensions

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.

For the last five years Kibaki has been giving, or selling, land to Kikuyus in places like the agriculturally rich Rift Valley, near Eldoret, often displacing people who had been squatting on the land for decades. Kenyatta, the first president of Kenya, and Moi, the second president of Kenya, had done this, Kenyatta favoring his own Kikuyus for the 13 years of his reign and Moi, his own Kalinjens, for the 24 years of his reign. That kind of unequal land distribution and economic favors, ”feeding at the trough,” sowed the seeds of this crisis.

But virtually every Kenyan who tells this story dates it to 1992, when elements of a real opposition and grassroots movement for multiparty rule began to form. Back then, Moi unleashed a similar kind of “hooligan” to those who are inciting violence, but they were armed by the KANU (the ruling party, which governed since independence) and more organized. Like today, they released a lot of pent-up resentment about ethnic privilege. Much of it was directed against coastal communities. Moi won those elections. Waves of violence, mostly directed against districts where people had voted against or were likely to vote against the ruling party, were successful in protecting the ruling party’s interest. Similar violence was unleashed again in the 1997 elections, displacing 100,000 people in the Rift Valley. Police forces also disrupted nationwide voter-registration efforts and attacked campuses. In those elections, both Kibaki and Raila ran as presidential candidates, finishing second and third respectively to Moi, who was elected to his last legal term as president.

It took a tremendous effort and many lives lost to get Moi to finally loose his grip on the one-party state in 1992, and a broad coalition, which included almost every ethnic group, gathered forces to finally defeat his party in 2002. To hear people describe their emotions, it as if the “wicked witch was dead,” and Kibaki and Raila were the heroes in this epic struggle to defeat the ruling party -- no matter that Kibaki was Kikuyu or Raila was Luo. Their party was the National Alliance of the Rainbow Coalition (NARC), which issued a written pact that had helped unify the opposition. The party also issued a memorandum of understanding, which defined a power-sharing arrangement whereby Kibaki would be president and Raila prime minister under a revised constitution that would weaken the presidency in favor of the newly created prime-minister position. There was also a commitment to end corruption. There was great excitement that the “feeding at the trough,” which according to many sources left Moi one of the richest men in the world, with several billion in Swiss and other offshore accounts, would finally end. The ethnic groups that had been neglected and the poor, the majority of Kenyans, would finally be listened to and responded to.

Kibaki defaulted on the pact pretty quickly. Raila was sidelined, and “feeding at the trough” became “engorgement at the trough.” The power of incumbency in Kenya is enormous, and yet another nationwide coalition came together with the intention of overturning the incumbent Kibaki. The coalition was committed to creating a Kenyan government that would be both transparent and accountable. Because Kikuyus represent nearly 30 percent of the population, the Kikuyus don’t require an alliance with other tribal groups to have a majority -- this is how Kibaki intended to maintain his grip on power. As we had heard all week, it was a heated, but relatively nonviolent presidential campaign (compared to the 1992, 1997, and 2002 elections). A number of commentators viewed this election as the best exercise of democracy in the country’s 50-plus-year history – from all standpoints, from voter education, to get out the vote efforts, to numbers of people registering to vote, to numbers who actually voted. An election official said the turnout in each district varied between 68 and 75 percent.

Raila led in polls by a substantial margin before the election. A fairly sophisticated American NGO did exit polling that showed Raila with a substantial margin. Raila led the tallying with a substantial margin until suddenly the regional tallying apparatus closed its doors, wouldn’t communicate for some time, and then announced Kibaki had suddenly made up a 1.3 million-vote deficit to win. Even more suspicious was that there were no accompanying parliamentary or municipal office votes, which should have been cast at the same time as the “newly gathered” presidential votes. These are the big irregularities, and I gather that there were many other gross irregularities that have also been well documented.

After the surprise announcement of Kibaki’s victory, he was quickly sworn in as president in a backroom ceremony, closed to the press and the public. There was no time to object or challenge the legality of the election. As intended, it was a fait accompli and the cause of much of the violence we see today.

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The IDP Camp in Eldoret (or the Eldoret Show Grounds)

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.

In Eldoret, we were met by two individuals associated with UUSC program partner KENASVIT (Kenya Association of Vendors and Independent Traders), an alliance of market vendors from around the country. Our first stop was the Eldoret Show Grounds, which included a large and very rickety appearing wooden grandstand. We could smell smoke from hundreds of wood-burning fires in this tent-city of at least 25,000 Kikuyus.

Sarah Elliott, a freelance photojournalist, and I wanted to climb to the top of the grandstand to get a vista and perhaps a photo. Our guides cautioned, “No photos without permission. There is a lot of anger here that can quickly be misdirected.” We knew that everyone here had fled for their lives when their houses or farms were ransacked or burned. The grandstand turned out to be much more rickety than it appeared, and we were quickly joined by a smiling boy of about ten named Walter, who guided our ascent. On top, the view reminded me of photos of civil-war army camps. Instead of canvas, though, these tents are made of heavy, white plastic. They are now home to Kikuyus.

This sea of white tents stretches right and left many football fields wide and probably two hundred yards deep to the distant tree line. As a public-health physician, my first thought was about how many latrines and water points were required to provide for minimal sanitation needs. My second thought was the staggering number of trees being cut down to feed these fires and the logistics of getting the wood to the camps. This tent-city had grown quickly, and soon we learned that another 300-plus internally displaced persons (IDPs) arrived yesterday as the violence has slowed, but still continues.

As we descended from the grandstand and headed for the camp offices, people began to cluster around us. We didn’t have to ask them any questions; they were all too eager to tell us their stories. The first man I spoke to was in his early forties. He was born in Eldoret, after his father bought land here in the 1960s, just after independence, when Jomo Kenyatta was president. He and his father are farmers. He said his farm was set on fire by individuals I referred to in yesterday’s blog as “hooligans.” He said it didn’t matter that he voted for Raila. The mob assumed he was a Kibaki supporter because he is Kikuyu. He’s living in the camp with one son, and his wife is somewhere near Nakuru with their two other children.

Within an hour, someone called me from Nairobi to warn us to avoid Nakuru, the provincial capital of Kenya's Rift Valley province, which we hadn’t intended to visit. We were told that buses are being burned there, and a dozen people had already died. This man would have learned about the unrest at about the same time I did. I suspected his feelings of helplessness (because it’s dangerous to leave the camp) were compounded by anger about what’s already happened and fear for the rest of his family. I explained to him that one of the functions of the Kenyan Red Cross was to trace and help reunite families. But I’m sure that addressing the basic needs of these IDPs and stabilizing the situation in the camps were greater priorities at the moment and that family reunification would come later.

For the last three days, Kibaki has been urging IDPs like this man to vacate camps and return to their homes. He’s been saying that the government will provide security. I asked what he thought about that notion. He looked at me like I was crazy and said with some emotion, “I cannot ever return to that place. Even though I’ve never had problems with my neighbors…until now. How could I ever place my family in this kind of danger again? There’s another election in five years, and it will be the same thing.”

It took thirty minutes to make our way to a second-story, kind-of-open-air office, which I later figured out was probably a “grandstand box,” where the privileged watched races or events in the shade, protected from the elements. There I was introduced to an elderly man whom everyone referred to as “M’zee” or ”old man,” which is a very respectful title. He and about a half dozen of his colleagues, men and women, who are the board of directors of the camp, asked me questions, and then I probed for their stories. They wanted to know who I was, why I came, what I intended to do with the information I gathered, and where else I had been.

I would estimate that we ended up speaking to 20 people, and not a single one either wanted to or felt like they could return to their homes – ever. This is a very different situation from most “refugee” camps, where people long to go home (…in the case of Palestinians, fifty years and three generations later). Their answers, as well as the certainty of their responses, caught me by surprise.

When we regather to leave the Eldoret Show grounds, I find that Walter has accompanied Sarah and become her photographer’s assistant, even taking some photos of her. He is here unaccompanied. Before the violence broke out, his mother had gone to her hometown over the Christmas holiday, leaving him with his father, who is a “casual worker,” meaning a seasonal worker who was hired to dry corn. During the first outburst of violence, he was separated from this father, whom some fear could have been injured or killed. Though he’s never been to his mother’s hometown, he does know its name. It could be weeks or months before he’s reunited with her. Already the IDPs have set up a make shift school and he’s in the fourth form. He likes school and clearly likes us. We hate to say goodbye.

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Arriving 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.

Today, Friday, January 25, our fifth and final day in Kenya, we had to split the mission because too many tasks remained unaccomplished. We are in the city of Eldoret, which has been hit hard by the violence.

We began the day with some optimism as the "president elect" Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga (or Raila, as he is referred to here) agreed to a joint appearance late yesterday afternoon with Kofi Annan, where they shook hands and affirmed their commitment to dialogue. Their speeches and images were on all Kenyan television stations last night and on the front pages of all papers today. Both made sincere pleas to stop the violence, but, sadly, there were code phrases or words in each of their speeches intended to stiffen the resolve of their bases.

There was another ominous headline in another paper yesterday: “DEATH THREATS – Ten Civil Society Leaders Go Underground.” Some of the targets were from organizations we met with earlier in the week. In the Kibera slum, where we were earlier in the week, youth have mounted roadblocks and charged motorists 20 Ks to pass. One bus line cancelled its services, making it harder for residents to get to work. Another blamed the “road toll” of 50 to 100 Ks. As I looked at a photo of the large rocks and bonfires blocking the road, I didn’t anticipate we would be seeing the very same thing later that day. Newspapers also reported that residents of Kisumu, where we were yesterday, angry that “mass actions” (or demonstrations/protests) had been called off, built large bonfires on many corners, blocking traffic.

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Arriving in Kisumu, Part 1

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.

We flew into Kisumu this morning on a half-filled commercial jet. Driving here from Nairobi, I’m told, is a six-and-a-half hour marathon over very bad roads. The flight, by contrast, takes 20 minutes. Security measures didn’t slow things down: I never had to show identification to get a ticket or a boarding pass or to board the plane, and the luggage screening was haphazard, at best.

Kisumu is a port city of 300,000 on Lake Victoria, near the Ugandan border. It is the birthplace of Raila Odinga, the man who was defeated, or cheated, depending on your viewpoint, in the recent election. When the rioting subsided, there were more than 120 bodies in the Kisumu morgue, more than in any other city.

Kisumu feels more tropical than Nairobi; perhaps it’s the humidity that slaps you in the face. As we waited for a taxi just outside the small airport, I looked up and saw a tree full of ripe passion fruit. I pocketed one that had fallen and resisted the urge to grab a branch to shake.

It couldn’t have been more than half a mile until we were in a business district. We stopped next to a large car and industrial-truck dealership, where the show room still had new vehicles that had been torched by rioters last week. Many businesses were boarded up because their windows had been broken. Five minutes later, as we neared what might be called the downtown, where our hotel was located, we saw the shell of a large, burned-out multistory building. This structure had been the largest grocery store in the city, a private hospital, and a shopping complex.

We’ve been told -- and we’ve read -- that Kisumu and Eldoret have been the Kenyan cities most affected by violence and rioting. The opposition has been calling for a day of mass action tomorrow (January 24). People here are nervous, despite the fact that a large public memorial service for victims of the recent rioting was held without incident. Odinga spoke at the ecumenical ceremony, held in a stadium to accommodate the crowd. It was the first and only public gathering that the government has allowed since the convulsion of postelection violence.

We checked into a large, old hotel, where one of the staff apologized for the slow service at breakfast, explaining that the staff generally numbers 100, but is now down to 30. Many have fled in fear. Kikuyus and their close allies, the Mehrus, have been the target of much of the local violence. Some of the workers may have been laid off.

Our Sit-Down with Local NGOs

For the next six hours, we met with a variety of people from this region. The first group represented mostly Kenyan NGOs. Since most of them provide human services, they should have their finger on the pulse of the community. There were supposed to be 10 participants, but 24 people showed up. As they introduced themselves, they apologized for coming uninvited, but said they wanted a chance to talk about what they were seeing and experiencing. After our discussion, our delegation met with a group of religious leaders – Catholic, Episcopalian, Pentecostal, and Muslim -- and we were invited to join the next group of community leaders and victims of the violence.

The meeting style was very informal. We introduced ourselves and told them why we are here and what we hope to do with the information we gather. We advised them that we will be writing a report, doing media work, and speaking to elected officials in the United States so that they should tell us if they share something that is sensitive or needs to be off-the-record. Then, they each introduced themselves, telling a little bit about the institutions they represent. They described their own recent experiences or those of their institutions and suggested how we, and other international NGOs, might be helpful. This was followed by a general Q&A session, in which a dialogue was held. Each session was supposed to last an hour and a half, but they generally lasted at least two hours. For many, these sessions represented their first chance to speak about their own or their community’s trauma, which can be emotional for everyone present.

What became apparent within moments of our gathering of NGO leaders was that Kisumu faces a looming economic collapse. (I had written “crisis,” but changed it to “collapse” to better convey the magnitude of what’s happening.) Vegetables that cost 300 Ks (Kenya shillings) only a week ago now sell for 2800 Ks (a more than 900 percent increase), but almost worse, they are hardly available. The markets where they were formerly bought and sold, where vendors function as wholesalers, were all destroyed in the riots. Food production has also been affected in the region, because farms were burned or farmers were told that they had five minutes to gather what belongings they could carry and flee.

“There is a lot of heat,” said one NGO leader. “People are not afraid to kill, not afraid to destroy property. Our youth are asking for guns.”

Another said, “Food distribution to internally displaced persons (IDPs) is survival of the fittest, with anyone disabled or elderly being pushed aside. It is embarrassing, but the desperation and fear are so great.”

When we asked if things were improving or deteriorating, because this is a time of relative calm, we were told, “This lull gives people time to prepare, to gather their energy, to become more organized…to be more angry.”

More to her colleagues than to us, an NGO leader warned, “As more and more people find themselves without food because of scarcity and skyrocketing prices, without money because they are unemployed and have exhausted their meager savings, and without hope because our political leaders are in gridlock, the poor will turn on the middle class and this will become class warfare.”

Kenya has one of the highest disparities between haves and have-nots of any country in the world. Sixty percent of Kenyans live below the poverty line. The aspiration of the have-nots to have someone who cares about them leading the government is one of the issues underlying this crisis. Kisumu, itself, is one of the poorer regions of Kenya, with 49 percent of its population living below the poverty line.

One woman said NGOs were losing credibility. They, the NGOs, keep getting asked to do surveys by agencies or the government. They do them and then, from the point of view of the people they’re supposed to be helping, nothing happens.

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Arriving in Kisumu, Part 2

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.

Chronic Water Deficiency

As a public-health physician who has been involved with water and sanitation issues, I was most alarmed by reports about the water scarcity in the area. I was surprised to learn that Kisumu, despite being next to Lake Victoria, is chronically water deficient and that its water utility has a very small customer base. Only 13 percent of Kisumu residents have piped water in their homes.

The Lake Victoria water utility is adjacent to one of the largest slums in Kisumu. When youth poured out of the slum in anger on December 30, they climbed right over the fence into the water utility’s facilities. A community resident told us that the youth, thinking there was money in the water-utility building, broke in. The police responded with force, surrounding them and firing repeatedly, killing 18 young men.

The next day, there was a massive retaliation by youth from the slum. They occupied the water-utility compound and torched the three-story building -- a feat that could not have been easy as it was largely constructed of concrete and plaster. Then they torched about 20 vehicles, including water-delivery trucks. We saw the burned trucks still sitting in the compound later that afternoon. There are no water-utility officials to speak to because they’ve set up headquarters elsewhere.

During the riots, many water points (outlets), which are sources of water for poorer neighborhoods in and around Kisumu, were vandalized. Where the outlets were destroyed, water is now delivered in “jerry cans” to many neighborhoods, and the price has escalated from 5 Ks to 20 Ks for 20 liters.

There are legitimate concerns that the water utility, now privatized, could decide that it does not want to pay the expenses to fix the current problems or invest for the future.

“Protestors” vs. “Hooligans”

Security seems to be a universal concern or as one community leader put it, “Security may be our biggest need.” The “protesters” have used the pretext of dissent to commit a lot of common crimes, which are on the rise. (I put protesters in scare quotes (“…”) because these incidents of theft, vandalism, and other crimes like battery are not related to the postelection events per se.)

A prime example is what happened to a school that was supposed to open today. The principal was warned that if the school opened, it would be targeted. It remains closed. We are told that people are not seeking medical care for chronic conditions at clinics because they fear for their safety while walking in some neighborhoods. Young people are reported to be stealing from the few market vendors who are still selling. We heard about a woman whose fingers were chopped off with a machete when she denied a demand for sex from one of the hooligans.

Perhaps that is the word I will use now, “hooligans.” Throughout these many testimonies, the perpetrators of one kind of violence have been called “protesters,” “young people,” “youth,” “rioters,” etc. I’m going to refer to those who are using the pretext of dissent to commit crimes as ”hooligans.”

There is also police violence, as well as violence committed by so-called militias, which I think of as being organized. Militia, here, refers to illegally armed groups that are usually associated with a political party or official and can be mobilized to commit crimes, such as the ethnic cleansing, which we’ve heard about, or start fires at specific homes. Then, there is the kind of mob violence that may not necessarily be planned or controlled.

We are not claiming to be taking away from our trip a complete, balanced picture given the short period of time we’ll have spent in the country. However, it does seem that the vast majority of incidents that occurred just after the announcement of election results and the swearing-in ceremony were more likely to have been planned. [A recent New York Times report seems to confirm this view.] As things have appeared to calm down, the number of incidents related to organized violence seems to be increasing.

I should also apologize to any youth or young-adult readers for, until now, having parroted back what I‘ve heard, rather than taking the time to clarify and rename those responsible. In the kind of forums we’ve been attending, Kenyans refer to those persons who are directing violence against them as “youth,” “protesters,” or “young people.”

If asked to sketch out who’s behind that label, they would suggest it means someone between the ages of 15 and 25, who is most likely a resident of a slum like Kibera, unemployed, with few prospects in life. They may or may not have finished secondary school, but even if they did graduate, they are not likely to be working as a full-time wage earner. They are young people who were angry before the election. They are frustrated by their plight in life. The prospect of Raila being elected led them to hope for change.

I have not heard anyone we’ve talked to speak about leadership these young people can turn to, which, I think, suggests the absence of any organized outlets for their frustrations. Far more youth and young adults are not hooligans, of course, but we don’t hear much about them because they’re not newsworthy.

It is clear that a just and lasting solution cannot be reached unless these young people are actively engaged in the process. I sense that if either Odinga (the opposition) or Kibaki (the government) ignores them, it will be at their own peril…and everyone else’s. Ultimately, much of their behavior could be interpreted as stemming from desperation.

An alarming number of incidents of violence attributable to the police in Kisumu appears to be what might be referred to as “collateral damage.” As one religious leader said, “The manner in which police chased people into neighborhoods and began to shoot through walls or pursued young people into their homes caused one woman to be struck by bullets in her home as she cooked and one woman to be struck while washing clothes on her veranda.”

Another determined soul that we met was a 71-year-old carpenter. When the riots started, he had just arrived at his carpentry shop. Hearing some noise in the street, he went out to bring in his bicycle. He felt a sharp pain and was surprised to see a bullet wound in his left thigh. He feared he might bleed to death before he could reach a hospital. He walked to our forum very slowly, on crutches, but with dignity; he introduced himself with the story above. He said he could not afford medicine for his pain, but is more concerned that he may not be able to continue his work.

He concluded by saying, “Thank you for inviting me to this forum. I never imagined I would participate in such a gathering. The most important thing is that I thank God I am alive.” A quiet murmur of “amens” went around the room.

The community leaders told us there were many more patients stuck in the their homes who could not travel to where we were. An imam told us the story of a 10-year-old found dead beside the door of his house. He was shot after putting his hands in the air as instructed by a policeman. He, like many others, the imam said, died without medical care.

As we ended one session and asked for closing remarks, someone said with great hope, “I think Bush can do something for us. If they [the Americans] could have gone at the speed of the British, Kibaki would be gone by now.” He was referring to strong statements by the ambassador from the United Kingdom, who stated publicly that a grave injustice had been done to both the Kenyan people and the Kenyan democracy. He said it must be put right, and threatened that millions of dollars (read British pounds) could be at risk. That got the attention of the government!

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“They Deserve More than Life Has Dealt Them”

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.

We visited a young man in the slum of Kibera who on January 9 was shot in the forehead by police as he rode on his motorbike-taxi. As he turned a corner, he was suddenly in the midst of a police chase. He was shot in the forehead. It is astounding that he is still alive. He was the only breadwinner in his family.

On his release from the hospital, he was told the doctors couldn’t do anything more for him. As we all crowded into the room and introductions were made, I told him I used to be a family physician and asked how he was doing. I assumed his young wife would answer, and I was dumbfounded when he explained in English that the doctors in the provincial hospital said they did all they could and he should go home. I looked at his x-ray and the bullet appears to be resting about where his pituitary gland would be. The hospital staff probably decided it would be more dangerous to attempt to remove it than to leave it in. There is a large, mostly healed hole about one-inch deep in his forehead. When he moved to point to the x-rays, I could see that he was hemipalegic (meaning, being totally or partially paralyzed on one side of the body) on the left side.

I asked if he had access to physical therapy, and he said no because they could not afford the $5 (300 Ks) cost per session. I asked if he was in pain or had other symptoms. He said he had some discomfort and that he was concerned that he still bled a little bit, mostly at night. I explained that this was probably a fistula and that it might take some time to close.

He and his wife both nodded vigorously when I said that I thought it was a miracle that he was alive and doing so well. I said that there was no way of knowing for certain, but in some cases, this kind of wound results in neurological damage similar to a stroke. Some stroke patients recover function as their brains reestablish different nerve pathways, but this recovery is almost always attributable to regular physical therapy. I told him we would leave sufficient funds with his church so that he would have 3 physical rehabilitation sessions a week at the provincial hospital for 4 months (50 visits), with travel by taxi included.

This young couple has already displayed such tenacity and courage; they deserve more than life has dealt them. Maybe this will be the start of another miracle for them.

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Scenes from Kibera

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.

Nairobi’s Kibera, the second largest slum in Africa after Soweto, South Africa is virtually a ghost town after riots last week burned much of it. People are still hesitant to return to their homes because they may not exist, there is virtually no place to buy food, or they feel insecure as tensions about the electoral fraud continue to simmer.

The delegation was invited to visit a community of jobless vendors in Kibera on a day when one headline in Nairobi read, “500,000 Workers Lose Jobs.” We were met at the edge of the charred, five-acre Toi Market by several leaders of the Toi Market Traders Society. The president of the society, Ezekiel Rema, said he worked last Wednesday, but that there was little he could do to protect his place of business, or those of his colleagues, when a gang of approximately a thousand men descended on the market, creating mass panic as they set kiosks on fire. He said they were armed with pangas (machetes) and “metal” (meaning heavy iron rods that are often used for digging post holes).

He showed us how sturdy the kiosks are, as we looked at several being rebuilt. A woman named Kamane stood behind large piles of leafy greens, one of which was kale. She was unprotected in the hot sun, as was her produce. She said a plastic covering used to shield her produce, which had already completely wilted by midmorning. Across from her kiosk stood a large fallen water tank, already marked – “PEACE” -- by a ubiquitous graffiti artist, who seems to use any flat surface as the voice for these almost one million residents. She said she has to walk more than half a mile now to get water to dampen and preserve her produce.

The Toi Market is home to roughly 3,000 vendors, who have a cooperative savings scheme and a loan program. Rema asked us if we want to see his office, and he took us to a two-story corrugated tin building on the edge of the market. It, too, had been ransacked, but there was little to burn. The furniture was trashed, and an employee was picking up loan applications and savings books from off the floor. Rema said the rioters emptied the society’s files onto the floor, trashed any furniture they didn’t carry away, and then broke most of the windows. He said there were 1,200 open loans for which they now have little documentation.

I explained we would be briefing donor institutions on our return and that it would be helpful to know his most urgent need. He didn’t miss a beat, saying ”Capital for a loan fund.” He told us that these women and men need to buy materials to rebuild their kiosks and that they need to buy new inventory. Many will not be able to rebuild their livelihoods without it. He mentioned that the members of the society have had reliable loan-repayment records over the years.

He was grateful that only one of their members had been killed. I asked about the circumstances, and he said the woman had wandered unexpectedly into the path of rioters. He said she was identifiable as a married Kikuyu because of a certain way she had tied a scarf across her shoulders. Later, we met with a male nurse who works in a clinic in Kibera. He saw seven gunshot-wound victims, all allegedly shot by police, none fatally. The injured had to wait hours for transport because there were many roadblocks that ambulances wouldn’t or couldn’t pass. I noticed a nearly intact building, which Rema said was the police office -- in return for not trying to halt the destruction, the police station was spared.

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The entire area looks like ground zero of a firebomb explosion. Even the once-stately trees have been set on fire. The kiosks for which they provided shade served as kindling. We pass two large churches and an elementary school that are now just shells. We then drive down by the railway lines, which usually carry freight from the port of Mombasa through Nairobi to Kampala. News reports today said that a dozen Kampala-bound trains were waiting for the tracks to be repaired to pass Nairobi and that a half dozen were stranded heading in the other direction. This shutdown is one of the chief causes of food and fuel shortages in parts of the region…literally, this slum, home to a million people, is the crossroads of East Africa.

We watch as a crew of perhaps fifty men lift heavy crowbars in unison to the call and response of a tall man in a doctor’s long, white coat. He’s the foreman and performs a function similar to a coxswain on a rowing shell. Undoubtedly, there are construction cranes elsewhere in Nairobi that could lift these massive loads, but no one would dare bring them to Kibera.

The graffiti of Solo is ubiquitous – “No Raila, No Peace.” Some of it almost shouts and seems like the angry voice of the slum – “Don’t kill Kenyans, they voted peacefully.” And finally, the one that makes us all catch our breath – “No Raila, No Justice, No People, No Kenya.” He signs some of his work Solo 7, but his neat hand is unmistakable, even when he doesn’t sign his messages. Later, I learn he was born on 7/7/77, the seventh child in his family, both of his names have seven letters, and he’s an artist with a shared studio in the middle of Kibera, protected somehow from the police, who must not like him, and from fires, which have destroyed entire neighborhoods, but have not silenced the community’s voice.

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We met with religious leaders today – Muslim, Catholic, and Protestant. They acknowledged that while strong voices from each faith have spoken out, they’ve eroded their own moral authority because they’ve failed to speak as one. They trace the historical roots of this crisis to the birth of Kenya and Kenyatta’s aggregation of privilege and land to the Kikuyu.

The opposition has called for another day of mass action on Thursday, and the internal security minister has said publicly that the police are instructed “not to use live bullets on demonstrators.” He said that police are under strict orders not to use excessive force. His comments follow widespread television coverage of a policeman shooting an unarmed demonstrator in Kisumu and then kicking him as he lay dying. At first, the police claimed the video was a fake, generated by computers.

There is growing anger here about what the United States is not doing. The United States is still wiping egg off its face for being one of the first nations to congratulate Kibaki on his victory. That gaffe was compounded by the U.S. ambassador’s platitude that whatever the Kenyans worked out would be fine. Our country’s misguided policy was not assisted by the visit of the Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi Frazer. Compared to the pressure being applied on the government of Kenya by the United Kingdom and the European Union, the silence of the United States is deafening to ordinary Kenyans. The message being received by Kenyans is that the United States does not want to risk the alienation of Kibaki…or as Kenyans are saying, the United States seems to be interested in peace, but not justice. Solo says it explicitly on walls and curbs in Kibera: “No justice. No peace.”

The imminent arrival of a team of prestigious African leaders – Kofi Annan, Graca Machel, Yoweri Museveni -- to attempt mediation has inspired hope. Tomorrow, we travel to Kisumu, where a massive interfaith memorial service was held in a stadium for victims, with permission of the government. It was the largest public gathering since the violence began and it was peaceful. Maybe things are moving ever so slowly in a better direction.

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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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