Kenyan Bloggers Speak Out Against Violence

As the tiny coffin was lowered into the ground the mother collapsed in the dust and began weeping uncontrollably. I was in Nairobi and attending the funeral of two-year-old Mary. The infant had been murdered by a mob from a rival tribe just a few days before.
 
Her plot stood amongst a sea of freshly painted white crosses at the Langata cemetery. Over 1000 people have been killed in violence that has swept through Kenya since the disputed presidential election in December 2007. An estimated 300,000 have been displaced from their homes in the turmoil.

When I left Nairobi for Nakuru to visit people displaced by Kenya's post-election violence, I intended to stay just two days. I arrived there on January 23. That night all hell broke loose. It was sad, scary and out of this world. I hardly recognised my country anymore.

Unfortunately, since I wrote on the situation in Kenya last month, the prospects have not improved and the country appears to be headed off a cliff.
A series of mediators have failed to achieve any productive talks between the two parties. Neither South African Bishop Desmond Tutu nor the U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Africa Jendayi Frazier could even bring the two parties together to meet in the same room. Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan managed to arrange a largely meaningless joint meeting between opposition leader Raila Odinga and President Mwai Kibaki, at the end of which Kibaki used his closing statement to assert his legitimacy as the “duly elected president of Kenya.” This was followed by howls of protest from Odinga’s camp; Odinga then issued a statement rejecting any political compromise and demanding a new election. Meanwhile, Kenya burns and the mediation continues.

While others think Kenya is calmiing down, I don't. I think that it has entered another stage where the dramatic headlines of burning buildings and multi-deaths is over and a more subdued, but perhaps a more destructive and deadly mopping up, has begun. I can call this "reaping the harvest of the prior violence."  
Tuesday on our way to Kakamega we stopped by Florence and Alfred Machayo's house to deal with the maize (corn) that needed to be bagged for delivery in the North Rift. Alfred was not there because he was escorting a Luhya friend of his who was a magistrate in the Nandi (Kalenjin) area. The magistrate had been told that he had to leave Nanci in a week or his house would be burned down. So, he was looking at the plot he has in Lugari District and determining how he can live there with his family. In other words, one family quietly (as far as the media is concerned) displaced. I suspect he will be out of his job also.

History is repeating itself in Kenya. After a disputed elections on December 27 2007, a disputed presidency and a month-long crisis, violence, ethnic evictions and economy grinding to a halt, the Annan-led mediation team is finally prescribing a political solution to a political problem - a power sharing agreement between Kibaki and Raila.