|
A country turned on its head
February 09 2008 at 11:23AM
By Fiona Forde
The scene at the border post in Chebilat on Wednesday summed up
the Kenyan conflict perfectly. A few dozen men and youths from the
Kisii tribe stood on one side of the town, armed with machetes,
bows and arrows, and batons, staring down the Kalenjin group who
stood about 100m back. They knew better than to charge.
Between them stood nine mean-looking soldiers armed with rifles.
On either side of the road, shacks and low-lying buildings
smouldered from the violence of a day earlier, when tensions
flared and everything in sight was set alight.
'How can they be allowed to do
this?'
Although the arrival of the army
has brought with it calm, it is not to be confused with peace. The
officers' presence won't last forever and their departure will no
doubt give way to the tensions that continue to bubble below the
surface.
The Kisii people traditionally hail from the province of Nyanza,
which lies on one side of the town, the Kalenjin from the Rift
Valley province on the other. For the past fortnight they have
battled out their differences in the wake of the killing of an
opposition Kalenjin MP, David Too, who was from the ranks of Raila
Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) and who was shot dead by
a police officer from the Kisii tribe, an ethnic group perceived
to be allies of President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu people.
His death sparked one of the worst waves of ethnic violence in the
Rift Valley area in post-independence Kenya. More than 30 people
were killed within a few days. Thousands fled to a nearby park in
the town of Kericho, where they huddled together in the first
displacement camp to appear on the town's map. Homes and
businesses were looted. Roads were barricaded.
And as the locals prepare for his funeral this morning, Kisiis
have begun to scatter in all directions, fearful of renewed
attacks.
The message is clear. "We don't want you here. That's what they're
telling us," said one Kisii at the border post. "But I bought my
plot of land. I have my title deeds. How can they be allowed to do
this?" he asks.
'They just came and trashed our
house and then told us to get out'
The answer lies in a complex ethnic
web that is divided along socio-economic lines, because what is
happening in Chebilat is no different to what is unfolding in each
of Kenya's eight provinces in the wake of the December 27
presidential poll.
Kikuyus are bearing the brunt of Kibaki's disputed victory. Since
he came to power in 2002, he is said to have looked after his
people very well, leaving all other Kenyans trailing behind. He
did what President Jomo Kenyatta did during the early independence
years and made ethnicity a ticket to economic freedom.
As Odinga rode to victory on that December day - as many still
believe he did - it was on a ticket of change. His supporters,
many of them from his own Luo tribe, looked forward to a new dawn.
The ODM leader promised them equitable distribution of the
country's vast wealth, and he pledged to reform the decades-old
issue of land and to bring all Kenyans in from the cold.
But as Kibaki was installed as president for a second term three
days later, hope turned to frustration as Kenyans began to unleash
their fury on the Kikuyus. And as reprisals followed all over the
country, Kenya was slowly brought to a halt.
They are still turning to the police for help, only to find that
ethnicity is also a factor for some guardians of the peace. They
rush to hospitals, only to find services so stretched that many
centres can no longer cope with the demand.
The anger continues to mount as Kibaki digs in his heels. Six
weeks on, his government puts the death toll at 995, but assures
that the worst is over. Aid agencies say the number of internally
displaced people is in excess of 300 000, but the situation is
spiralling out of control. One Nairobi hospital has attended to 90
children who were raped in the post-election violence, and says
the countless cases of sexual abuse it is witnessing in recent
weeks is worrying for the country's HIV problem.
In more than 40 makeshift camps all over the country, Kenyans have
left their homes and businesses, and lifestyles that seemed to
characterise the 45-year-old democracy.
Joy, a 26-year-old mother-of-two, arrived at the Jamhuri
Showgrounds in Nairobi last Sunday. She had fled from Thika, a
city that lies 60km west of the Kenyan capital.
"They just came and trashed our house and then told us to get
out," she said, but not before they gave her husband a battering
with a machete. He was taken to hospital, while she fled with
their children in the first of the getaway buses out of town. The
lunatic express, the buses are called.
She had no idea where she would end up, but Joy is adamant she
won't go back. "Never," she says. With 50 Kenyan shillings to her
name, I suggest that her options may not be many. "I'll go to my
ancestral home," she replies, "to the Western Province, the
traditional home of the Luo."
It was a line I would hear repeatedly throughout the week. Kenyans
are waking up to the reality that they will not be welcome back in
the towns and villages that only a few weeks ago they called home.
Not for now, at least. The internally displaced camps may be safe
havens today, but they are only short-term solutions to an
unsolved problem. Their tribal hometowns are the only places where
they know they will be truly free of attack. Self-imposed ethnic
cleansing is what it boils down to.
It is what is forcing the Kisiis to flee the displacement camp in
Kericho ahead of today's funeral. They say they can't risk it
anymore. "This is all we have left," said a young man as he
climbed onto the back of a lorry that was piled high with people
and their possessions making a rapid exit westwards on Wednesday,
hoping to make it to the other side of the border in time.
"It can't work," said Patrick Nyongesa, a Rift Valley aid worker.
"No country can come back from the verge of war if it divides
itself up in this Balkanised way."
Nyongesa has worked around the clock in the past few weeks,
setting up camps, ferrying relief to shelters, watching the
turmoil unfold. It was he who was called upon on New Year's Day to
do a head count of the women and children burnt to death when the
Eldoret church in which they were seeking refuge was set alight.
"I still can't put words on what I saw," he says. "But I just hope
Kenya never forces me to see anything like that again."
A few kilometres away from Eldoret, on the road to Kericho, gangs
of young men who are manning the main road would suggest
differently. The same youths just a few days ago barricaded this
main thoroughfare and set passing cars and trucks alight, robbed
and injured motorists, and instilled fear and panic in the
neighbouring areas.
The roadblocks are rolled back halfway now, a blunt reminder that
they can be rolled back out again in an instant if the occasion
arises. The men are stopping every other car, in some cases
demanding money. If not, they want to know the ethnic identity of
the passengers. They don't appear to be causing any trouble. They
just want to threaten, to make their presence felt - a reminder of
who they are and what they are capable of doing.
Nearby, a newspaper vendor holds up the daily papers that spell
out in large bold print the prospect of a stalemate in the ongoing
peace talks back in Nairobi.
"If they don't come to a settlement, we'll fight. We'll keep going,"
he says, with not a trace of remorse or fear in his 25-year-old
voice.
|
