Preview of article to publish Feb 17 in the BEE
Photography and story by Micah Albert
As we approached a hastily constructed roadblock outside one of the violence-wracked cities of Kenya, the chaotic scene resembled a war zone.
Thousands of people were fleeing the city of Eldoret. Vehicles burned, smoked billowed from every direction, power lines dangled from poles, and a few dead bodies lay by the roadside.
People are waving to my driver to turn around.
A group of angry residents ran toward our car throwing stones, bottles, Molotov cocktails, anything within reach. I continued to photograph the crowd and didn’t realize that hundreds of people blocked us from behind.
My driver, a resident of Eldoret, jumped out of the car, ran toward the crowd and shouted, “Stop, stop, stop! I am your neighbor; I am your elder.”
They ran past him and converged on our car. In minutes, the situation went from pure insanity to an out-of-control level that is difficult to articulate. The mob overturned a small Coca Cola truck. Hundreds of people screamed as the crowd grew larger. Some wanted to set our car on fire, others wanted to express their opinion about the presidential election they feel was stolen from them. Everyone was yelling.
Then, whack!
Someone hit me in the back with a flaming 2-by-4.
This is not the Kenya I know, but I realized it was time to get out of Eldoret. I didn’t want to leave Kenya, but I also didn’t anticipate the violence would have continued more than a month after the disputed presidential elections that kept Kenya’s president, Mwai Kibaki, in power.
Ironically, the day I left Folsom for Kenya to cover the post-election violence, Congo signed a peace deal with rebels to end nearly 10 years of a bloody conflict. Kenya was the last place I expected to become enmeshed in violence. I have visited Kenya many times, and it is generally considered a beacon of hope and stability in east Africa. But after many meetings with Kenyans from all socio-economic, tribal and regional backgrounds I realized that the violence erupting from the Dec. 27 election could have happened at any time since Kenya’s independence in 1963.
Despite being a hub of tourism, a growing example of a $2 billion agricultural sector and an unusually large middle class, the unequal distribution of wealth in Kenya ranks it as one of the one the world’s 10 worst, according to a 2004 study by Nairobi-based Society for International Development. Ten percent of Kenyans account for almost 50 percent of the country’s wealth. After a get-together one evening with an affluent mix of multi-ethnic Kenyans, this disparity became impossible to miss. After spending the day working in one of Africa’s largest slums and a hot-spot of unrest, I could see how the disparity of wealth could become a catalyst for violence after those on the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder felt that their vote in the election was stolen from them.
Kenyans who live in poverty have only one hope, and that hope comes around only once every five years. They put that hope in their working Democracy and their ability to vote. And when that hope is stolen – as they believe it was – lashing out is the emotional response they chose.
The unrest in Kenya has claimed more than 1,000 lives, according to the Kenyan Red Cross. It has been written off as tribal conflict. Yet to fully understand how a long-time peaceful region with a strong nationalistic identity and commitment to democracy can explode to the degree and speed as Kenya has, labeling this to one facet is too simplistic.
Yes, this is about the tribes of the Kikuyus, who are traditionally the business owners and political leaders, and Luo and Kalenjin, who are the farmers and rural residents. The Kikuyus represent the “haves” in Kenya, and the Luo and Kalenjin represent the “have-nots.” When we were stopped at another roadblock one night in western Kenya a gang of Kalenjin threatened us with bows and poison-tipped arrows and demanded: “Give us your Kikuyus.”
Kikuyus are not the only ones targeted in the post-election crisis. Congolese and Ethiopian immigrants have lost their homes. Ekspetance Nduwayo was burned out of her home in the Kibera slum of Nairobi, where Kikuyus also lost their homes.
“My baby and I have no home to go back to,” said Nduwayo, an Ethiopian woman in her early 20s who is staying at a camp in Nairobi set up by the U.N. High Commission for Refugees. “Now they (UNHCR) are sending us back to Kakuma. … I cannot stay here (in Nairobi), I am afraid to go to Kakuma, and going back to Ethiopia would be going to a slaughterhouse.”
Nduwayo is headed for a refugee camp near Eldoret, home to more than 20,000 people, the largest in Kenya. Most of the people in the camp are Kikuyus facing an uncertain future. Thousands continue to pour into the camp, and just as many seem to be leaving. Rape and sexual violence have soared during the crisis. A Kikuyu woman named Patricia says, “Staying here is not an option, I am safe nowhere, so I might as well try to do something.”
Eldoret was once a gas-stop on the way to Uganda and has been transformed into a commercial hub for the country. Business owners and middle-class residents have not been immune to the sting of this crisis. As violence spread throughout the Rift Valley so have roadblocks, halting the supply of goods to Eldoret. Early estimates state that Kenya will lose $3 billion and 400,000 jobs before the violence wanes. Most of the middle-class are leaving Eldoret in a coordinated, military escorted convey.
James Tum, a local Kalenjin farmer, and his family have been threatened even though they are from the region. “We don’t want to get caught up in politics, we just want to farm,” he says as he loads his car with everything that would fit inside. “They want us to pick sides (politically) … we don’t know if we will return to a home or not.”
Hundreds of thousands of people living in Kenya have been displaced, thousands are mourning the deaths of family members, all are frustrated that their country is at a standstill and their nation’s image forever blemished. Don’t call this tribalism; call this a great nation that values democracy.
