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NEWS
Licking blood
by Charlene Smith 12/01/2008

School resumes for children and university students on Monday in Kenya in a situation that is far from normal. (School never did resume, people were too frightened and universities have been close ‘Until further notice.’)

At least 300 000 people have been displaced, with 600 families as an example, living in the nursery school and primary school of the Star of Hope Academy in violence torn Muthare North in Nairobi. Principal David Gathura was on Friday moving them to sleep in the open air of the grounds of the school, to make way for his 250 pupils.

“We need food, bedding, tents, this is hectic. People fled here from Kijiji-Chachewa a village across the river (five minutes from downtown Nairobi) when it was attacked by Luo's two weeks ago. The villagers include Kikuyu, Kamba, Kisii, Taita…” He sighs and standing on a hill, waves his hand across a vast open space where the village once stood, now only soil and bits of plastic remain.

In that small refugee camp alone, there are nine newly orphaned children ranging in age from two to 15, with an average age of nine. The severely overstretched Red Cross has only delivered food to them twice, the last time six days ago and starvation is setting in.

Teachers and children across Kenya have been profoundly traumatised. Schools in some areas will not reopen. The Kenyan Counselling Association and the Kenyan Psychologists Association have stepped up calls for voluntary or trained counsellors.

Lilian Kasarani (35) is not Kikuyu but her husband, a teacher, is, when their home in the Rift Valley was attacked along with others, she and her husband, picked up their two small children and ran, leaving the house they worked hard to build and even their car. They now live with relatives in Nairobi, too frightened to return.

Her six year old son, Bob, sits motionless with vacant eyes, she says, “he wakes up screaming at night, saying, ‘have they cut daddy up? Is he dead.’” He refuses food.

Her 18-month-old daughter too, refuses food and has gone back to being breast fed. Lilian, a master’s student in engineering, sobs, “We have nothing, everything we worked for has gone. I wish I was dead.” She does not know how Bob will cope at school; he is a second grader, or her husband whose hands now tremble.

There is possibly not an individual in Kenya who has not been touched by the violence either directly or through a family member or friend.

More than 1 000 children (at conservative estimates by the United Nations Children’s Fund – Unicef, which has yet to provide assistance) have been orphaned or separated from their parents, some are now being subjected to rape in refugee camps (which have sprung up in churches, schools, mosques and sports arenas) and on the streets.

Horrific ongoing revenge killings are taking place even in central Nairobi. The estimate of 1 000 killed is probably low. In one instance a group of young men were abducted at 6.30pm on Monday on Jogoo road in downtown Nairobi, by a Kikuyu gang. They were taken to a house, and then called into a room where one by one they were hacked to death. The only person to survive was allowed to live because he had a card showing he was a volunteer with a relief organisation, but the skin was partly removed from one hand with a scalpel, he was badly beaten, made to lick the blood of those hacked before his eyes and had to open his mouth while attackers urinated into his mouth. He too, is profoundly suicidal.

Rape statistics have at least trebled with few able to go to hospitals for help because of erratic public transport in Nairobi and dangerous road travel in rural areas – military convoys escort those on roads outside cities. Most factories remain closed and many tour agencies with thousands of bookings cancelled are laying off people, which means the wage earning economy has dramatically been cut. People without money not only have no money for transport, they are starting to starve.

In one instance this week in Nairobi, eight women were abducted by a gang and taken to a burnt out building where they were repeatedly raped, some with their daughters. A tampon was removed from a menstruating woman and attackers squeezed her menstrual blood into the mouths of those they raped.

Counsellors and medical workers are burnt out and profoundly traumatised. Jane Mburu, a social worker said, “I can’t take anymore. This is not the country I know. I can’t sleep. I want to leave this country. I can’t bear it.”

The Nairobi Women’s Hospital is an outstanding example of how Kenyans are rallying to help. CEO Dr Sam Thenya has daily personally visited refugee centres, listing those needing medical treatment and sending in ambulances, medical personnel or counsellors to help. They have diverted funds from a US$60m building project for a desperately needed new hospital to send assistance in the form of medical staff and counsellors across Kenya. The country is awash with angels, like him and his staff, among profound horror and deepening misery.

Medical personnel know that if long-delayed rains come a potentially significant health crisis faces them with hundreds of thousands of Kenyans living in the open with little or no sanitation and a plague of flies and mosquitoes already in some refugee camps.

There is no government assistance to a massive but haphazardly co-ordinated relief effort led by non-governmental organisations that are facing huge demands with minimal foreign donor support. The bags of cast off clothes left by middle class Kenyans at relief centres or food items donated by some supermarkets are simply not enough to cope.

President Mwai Kibaki visited one relief area, under heavy security, in Kachibura, Kitale East District and promised to build houses for those who have lost their homes – a promise no one believes, with severely rutted, very badly congested roads in Nairobi that haven’t seen any upgrades in years and scant maintenance.

There is scant trust in the mediation process initiated by Ghanaian president, John Kufuor and former UN secretary general, Kofi Annan. Late on Tuesday, the day before the process was due to begun – Kibaki appointed his new cabinet in a move widely seen as contemptuous of the mediation process. Media coverage has been critical of the ruling party with Jaindi Kisero writing in The East African this week, as an example: “In Kenya, winning and losing elections is a high-stakes affair because it means exclusion of the losers from power and distribution of resources for five years…Members of the Kalenjin tribe of former President Daniel arap-Moi voted massively against Mwai Kibaki. (They feel) too many of their tribesmen were sacked when Kibaki took over in 2003. A nascent Kalenjin business class that had emerged during Moi’s regime disappeared overnight, their links to sources of patronage having been suddenly cut off.”

Anne Karandu, a business manager was asked if this ragged peace could hold. “It seems quiet but that is the surface, things are happening underground, there is too much anger and hatred. I fear that trouble could still easily begin again.”