Six months after violent elections in Kenya, the government bickers over portfolios while the population starves
'THERE IS NO ice cream. There is no milk. This is life, death and poverty. We are sitting on a time bomb here," says Sr Lydia Pardeller. We're meeting in the kitchen of the Franciscan Missionary Sisters for Africa headquarters, adjacent to the Kariobangi slum area of Nairobi.
Locals who once fed themselves now congregate outside the door begging for food, clothing, or the chance to sit in a classroom for part of the day. During the political unrest in January and February that divided Kenya along ethnic lines, the Franciscan Sisters tried to cater for the multitudes turning up at their door.
It's six months on from the violence that pitted the Kikuyu tribe of President Kibaki against the Kalenjins of former president Daniel Moi. Many of the international emergency-response teams and NGO workers have left, and the Missionary sisters here are struggling to confront the growing humanitarian crisis.
A coalition government has been formed for the first time in the country's history. Economic and ethnic divisions have deepened as a result of the clashes and for many the situation is increasingly desperate and fragile.
Walking through the Karibangi slum, the locally elected chief tells me that crime and disease are rampant and tensions remain high. He says there is little international attention focused on the aftermath of the conflict. "The briefcase NGOs came and went as quick," he says. The two tribal communities live within 270 metres of each other in this area, divided by dirt tracks and waste ground. On either side of the dirt tracks, children play in open sewers or scavenge for bits of wiring or other materials that they might be able to sell.
"There was no problem leading up to the election in this area," the chief says. "What happened is that many of these houses were burned by the people nearby because of the tribal element. This place is occupied by one tribe, and across the road, there is another tribe. So when the post-election problem came, the tribal problems came up and this area was badly affected." Some 30 per cent of the area's population has HIV or Aids, while the sharp rise in food costs makes it increasingly difficult for patients to pay for and complement HIV medicine. It's a vicious circle. Without the medicine, parents can't work and earn to feed their children. With the medicine, patients need more food to be able to stomach the treatment.
Many families are refusing to return home without government guarantees of safety. Compensation agreements for displaced families work out at €100-€250 per family. Some have had their homes and crops totally destroyed, and many have been living in temporary tented villages since January. Meanwhile, the government argues over which portfolios to divvy up.
THIRTY MINUTES' drive outside of Nairobi, at the Ngecha temporary camp, families who were forced out of their homes in Eldoret, a town in western Kenya, in January, are still in situ. They have no crops, and little access to basic supplies. Disease, such as malaria and cholera, is ever present, and now there is a water shortage. With 256 people contained in a corner of a field, and government compensation slow in coming, these people are the forgotten human casualties of the need for "democracy" at any cost.
Despite all this, local pastor Justin Nyamosi says: "The people feel more comfortable when they are here than when they are sleeping near their enemies."
Virginia and her three-month-old daughter Dorris have been living in the camp for nine months. They first took refuge in a church, having been forced from their homesteads in the post-election violence.
"The houses were burned down, even the church where we went for safety was burned with all our belongings inside," Virginia says. "Some of our children and family died there. Where we came from we were working. I used to sell artificial flowers. Now we have no water and no food. The problems in Kenya are still there because now some people are planting crops on our land. It is not going away."
When I ask how long more Virginia expects to be in the camp, she's unsure.
"We're waiting all the time for the government and spend our days sleeping in the tent. It is very slow. We are buying water with what little money we have and food is very expensive. For instance, maize flour was 54 shillings for two kilos, now it is 80 shillings. This is since January." Everywhere we went in Kenya, in areas such as Londiani and Nakuru, we came across the same story of government indifference and human struggle.
In some towns, camps still accommodate up to 5,000 people, uncertain of their future and fearful because of their past. On the ground, even the Red Cross has begun to pull out, leaving missionary workers, such as Fr Con Ryan of the Kiltegan fathers, Br Tony Dolan of the Franciscan Brothers, Sr Ann McAllister at the Centre for Love and Hope and Sr Nuala Branagan from the Loreto Sisters, struggling to cope with the scale of the rebuilding and counselling efforts.
Newspapers are already carrying headlines projecting forward to the 2012 elections, when, unless a major mindset change occurs, history looks likely to repeat itself. Some of the people who were instrumental in whipping up ethnic fever in their towns and villages are now part of the coalition government.
BACK IN NAIROBI, human-rights lawyer Mbuthi Gatenji urges me to "tell the truth about what's happening in Kenya today". A one-man practice, he works two phones, speaking a mixture of Kiswahili and English.
He feels the violence in Kenya was orchestrated well before the elections, and has more to do with land grabbing and the redrawing of electoral demographics than inherent ethnic divisions. This has occurred during every other election of the past decade, he says. The current humanitarian crisis will escalate unless the government comes good on its commitment to compensate families who have been forced off their lands.
He's not hopeful though: "This coalition government is based on a very wrong premise and by supporting it, the international community is rewarding violence," says Gatenji. "The violence in this country was planned for a long time with almost military precision, so to reward that type of planning with a place in government is difficult to understand. The UN and the west need to account for their actions on all this as much as everyone else."
With regards to compensation, Gatenji is now preparing files for families who have lost their homes. The problems run deep though, he says. "Government should give a guarantee that anyone removed from their land can now return in safety. If they do that, then compensation becomes a secondary issue. A great number of people are not going back to their land and the greatest failure of any government is not being able to protect its people. Unless those guarantees are given, the future in Kenya looks set to mimic the past."
• This trip was assisted by Misean Cara, an Irish missionary development organisation, which has allocated more than €400,000 in emergency funding to missionary work in Kenya following the violence. See www.miseancara.ie. Tomorrow is Mission Sunday