26th January, 2008
The Kenyan Government issued a statement saying that the number of Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) in the country is rapidly decreasing and that many families are returning home. Though the basis of the information remains unclear and may be based on the closure of camps, such as Jamhuri park, information from slums around Nairobi such as the Waithaka informal settlement paint a different picture, as exemplified by the next two “family stories”.
Fleeing for their lives from the Rift Valley
Yesterday evening, David Karanja and his family, along with other families, arrived in Waithaka from Timboro in the Rift Valley Province. They came in a truck, 30 of them with seven cows and one goat. They paid Shs25,000 (USD 400) for the truck and Shs5,000 (USD 80) to the policemen who agreed to act as their official escort. Thanks to the policemen, they managed to pass through three “hostile road blocks” and finally arrived in Nairobi; tired, scared and bitter. Today they heard that friends of theirs who left after they did are now stranded, as the road has been sealed by the “hostiles”. The families that are stuck cannot move forward, nor can they go back.
David’s family came to Waithaka because his mother has been living here since 1992 – the year she left her original home to escape other “ethnic clashes”. “We came to Waithaka to save our lives,” says David.
Three people were killed on their farm, which had been cleared from a forest, and many more had been injured. In the broader area, “many, many, many were killed”, he says.
“We could not see who was in the forest, but we felt we were being observed. First some women arrived and tried to take away our cattle, and then a large group of men emerged from the forest. Everything we owned on the shamba and in the stores was looted or burned. Many of their neighbours had left for Nairobi and the safety they felt it offered.
Wambui Salome, David’s sister, arrived in a convoy that had left Timboroa a few days earlier, also with some animals. Now the broader family and their friends are all staying in the Waithaka home of David’s mother, Julia Nduta Karanja, fondly referred to as ‘cucu’ (pronounced sho-sho; meaning granny). “All in all we have been able to save one goat and 18 cows; though we had to sell some along the way,” David explains. The animals are now grazing in a friend’s field. As they have lost everything else, their new neighbours are helping them with gifts of clothes, shoes and even charcoal for cooking. Given the insecurities that persist in the Rift Valley, it will be a long time before they even think about returning home.
The fury of the “Dagoretti youth” is fuelled by the arrival of this and many other displaced families. As each narrates their ordeals, there is more resentment, more potential clashes and more vengeance and counter vengeance festering under the surface.
Dagoretti project manager John Muriruri says: “There are limited supplies coming to the market and prices therefore increase. Most people depend on casual labour to earn a living, but it is impossible to get work in the current situation. Young people are drifting into crime and are easy targets for violent gangs.”
Struggling to earn a living as tensions grow
Eunice Adhiambo is a young woman who was born in Busia, near Lake Victoria. For some years now she has been living in the Dagoretti area. Over the past four years she has been in touch with AMREF’s Dagoretti Children in Need Project as her two daughters had taken “some wrong roads”. The AMREF project has been trying to assist her family among many others in the area by paying school fees for her two daughters, Francesca, now aged 20, and Cristina, 17.Currently, Eunice is unemployed. In the past she would do odd jobs such as washing clothes for neighbours, carrying water and cleaning, but in this difficult period there are no odd jobs to be done. Also neighbours who have lived next to each other for years have now become suspicious of one other based on ethnic background, and are not as open to employing people from communities other than their own.
Eunice’s daughter Cristina is good at her studies. She gets good results and wants to get ahead. Francesca, on the other hand, has always had “disciplinary problems” and has had not been able to get decent grades.
Eunice and her daughters are from a minority community in this area, and to avoid street life in Dagoretti which would only complicate their lives, the project has been paying school fees for the girls at St Mary’s, a boarding school in Malaba, near the Uganda border. Following another disciplinary incident involving Francesca at the school, the sisters were both sent away from school and had to make their way back to Nairobi.
“Due to the difficulties of the past weeks, we have been unable to find a solution to our problems,” says Eunice. “I came to Waithaka this morning to discuss a possible way forward with the AMREF project manager, John Muiruri, and the remedial education teacher, Paul Njoroge, who will try to help me and my daughters.”
In Waithaka this morning, the atmosphere along the roads, and in particular at the usually lively Dagoretti Market, was very sullen. It turns out that the “Dagoretti youth”, furious at the displacement and sheer murder of many of their community members around the country, have decided to “kick out other communities from Dagoretti” and then march on to Kibera, to teach their “enemies” a good lesson. The local elders have been trying to placate the youth, but it seems that they are not willing to listen.
When I met Eunice Adhiambo, she was crying, but not because of the girls’ and her problems. In the last few days in Dagoretti, leaflets with hate messages have appeared warning “outsiders” that they are not wanted. Eunice has repeatedly been warned to “jihami” - to be ready, to watch out, to arm herself to defend herself.
Hers were tears of fear.
“I now don’t know where to find a school for my girls,” cried Eunice. “I don’t know where I’ll find a job and I really don’t know if my neighbours will allow me and my family to remain in our house. I don’t even know if they’ll allow me to live.”