Kikuyus are considered outsiders in Rift Valley Province, which is where much of the violence occurred following Kenya’s December 2007 elections. Although some healing has since taken place, the fact that the politicians are still squabbling could yet cause wounds to reopen

The Kenya Pentecostal Assemblies of God Church in Kiambaa, about half an hour south of Eldoret in Kenya’s North Rift, assumed a tragic place in last year’s violence when, on New Year’s Day 2008, 35 people were burned alive inside the church. The burning marked a chilling turn to the violently-disputed December 2007 general elections.


Amid the dispute over whether the post-election violence was ‘spontaneous’ or ‘pre-planned’, the burning of the church not only suggested ethnicised targeting of President Mwai Kibaki’s Kikuyu supporters, it also lent credence to claims of attempted ethnic cleansing. 


More than a year later, however, the government has only managed to bring a single case against alleged perpetrators of the Kiambaa attack, but even this was dismissed at the end of April when the judge blamed the police for their shoddy investigation. The case against four people, including two brothers, Emmanuel and Clement Lamai, was weakened by the evidence of witnesses who recalled that the brothers had in fact provided transport for some of the church’s burn victims. The police have been appealing to the public to come forward with further information about the Kiambaa burning. There is, in other words, little available evidence about whether or not the burning of the church was planned. 


Ninety-year-old Mzee Bor, the father of the Lamai brothers, reckons that his sons’ arrest was a government strategy to force neighbours to come forward with what they know. The old man is from the Nandi sub-group of the Kalenjin people, and he bought his land in Kabongo settlement, which borders the Kiambaa settlement in 1968.


“They know us,” he says of his Kikuyu neighbours. “Up until the violence we were friends. I had set aside land for a Catholic Church. Many Kikuyu would come and worship there. When the violence started, they crossed my farm while escaping because they knew it was safe.” The attackers were outsiders, he says.


No region of Kenya better exemplifies the country’s current political paralysis than Rift Valley Province. It was at the centre of the storm during the post-election violence last year. Officially, more than 700 people were killed there – half the number of all those who died during the violence – whether in ethnic clashes or in pitched battles with the police.


The vast majority of those maimed, injured or displaced (the 600,000 who were packed into makeshift camps) were people who had originally settled in the Rift Valley from elsewhere.


It becomes clear why the Rift Valley has been such an enduring source of conflict when you examine its post-independence history. Starting in the 1960s, the late President Jomo Kenyatta settled thousands of his Kikuyu people here on European settler lands, which were being claimed by the Kalenjin as their ancestral territory. It is these Kikuyu, now resident for two or even three generations, who have repeat
edly been the foremost victims of ethnically-motivated attacks in the province. Considered as foreigners and outsiders, they are easy targets for politicians looking to secure votes.


In the moments of calm between elections, the Kalenjin and the Kikuyu trade with each other and intermarry. But the boundaries erected by the outsider-insider status remain – the ethnicised churches, the shopping centres in which the names of shops assert ethnicity and the largely mono-ethnic land-settlement schemes – and these boundaries become the points of inter-ethnic conflict. For more than 40 years, a kind of superficial integration has been mistaken for peaceful cohabitation in Kenya.


A temporary calm


At Kabongo, Mzee Bor claims that soon after the Kikuyu first came to Kiambaa, he assisted them: “I gave them two cows for milk. They had nothing. We were friends, even up to this day.” Like many Kalenjin here, Bor is convinced that the attack-ers were young hooligans from elsewhere. Exploiting the general chaos, they had come to loot the settlement. He adds: “Among the Nandi, we do not kill women and children in war.”


The recent experiences of the Bor family well illustrate the confusion within the government both about how to deal with last year’s violence and how to prosecute a community uprising. Without a much deeper investigation into the causes of the violence, which would involve an understanding of post-independence historical land claims and the role of state agents in previous incidents of politically-instigated ethnic violence, it appears that the government is chasing its tail. It requires the assistance of the Kalenjin community to indict the community. 


In the Kiambaa settlement scheme, a gleaming new police station gives the false hope of added security. However, for those evictees who have returned, there is still a feeling of temporariness. Many live in tents in their old compounds, awaiting the final government payout to begin rebuilding their destroyed homes.


At the church compound, untouched since the fire, a newly-appointed pastor is trying to re-
start church services. Easter weekend, which was marked by the arrival of the long rains, provided the opportunity for his second service, for which eight families showed up. Before the violence, the church had 60 members.


“Only two of the old members came for the service. The rest returned to Kiambu [where they originally came from] or Nairobi,” says the pastor. “But they either rent out their plots or hire people to plant for them.”


The pastor paraphrases Psalm 133 as follows: “People need people and that can only happen through peace. But people should return home even if they have to live in temporary structures. We should pray for peace.” His little daughter plays on the ground where the church once stood, oblivious to the violence that not so long ago consumed this place.


The dirt roads within the settlement are mostly deserted. On seeing strange new visitors, residents retreat behind their fences of kayapple (a cactus-like plant that deters animals from entering). Even the smallest thing can be a source of tension: a stray cow wandering into a boma (animal enclosure) can set off a quarrel. 


Elusive ethnic peace


It is like this in many parts of the North Rift. During a censure motion in parliament on the powerful Kalenjin politician William Ruto, in February this year, Luhyas in some parts of the North Rift were prevented from trading; this was because the motion had been tabled by a Luhya member of parliament. If it had been successful, the Luhya in the Rift Valley could have been the targets of renewed violence. For all the government’s proclamations of normalcy and the new police stations, peace in the Rift Valley is elusive. 


What is unmistakeable is the trauma of the victims. A Kalenjin woman who was married to a Kikuyu was sitting quietly as the pastor talked. Later, she revealed that she is a resident of Kiambaa. Her husband was cut up and murdered. She still does not understand how people could do this to each other.


The empty church compound has a new perimeter stone wall, built with money from “a well-wisher”, according to the pastor. He later reveals that the well-wisher is finance minister Uhuru Kenyatta, whose father many Kalenjin consider to be the root of the problem.


While the government claims to have resettled 90% of the 600,000 people displaced by last year’s violence, it is clear that the process has been both hurried and untidy. In the Rift Valley, thousands of internally displaced people (IDPs) remain in the main camps of Nakuru and Eldoret, and many others have been moved on to transit camps rather than back to their homes.


At Eldoret Agricultural Showground, which for most of last year was home to over 17,000 families, about 700 families remain. After September last year, when the government officially declared its ‘Operation Rudi Nyumbani’ (Operation Return Home) resettlement programme complete, the families that could not be returned to their former homes were left to their own devices.


“Before the elections, I was living in Rehema Scheme,” says Karimi ‘Vaite’, a 32-year-old carpenter, referring to a settlement scheme located off the Eldoret-Nakuru Highway. He had moved to Rehema from his home in Meru, eastern Kenya. His sister who had settled there earlier had told him that there were prospects. So in 2006, he left with his two children and his wife and set up a carpentry business on the settlement scheme, hived off the old Lonrho wattle-tree plantation. 


Karimi lost everything during the violence, including his carpentry equipment he estimated to be worth about Ksh100,000 ($1,250) and his house. Eventually he found shelter at the Eldoret Showground, where he has been ever since. Until September, food rations were provided by the Red Cross. When the government announced the end of ‘Rudi Nyumbani’, even the food rations ended for those, like him, who had never owned land in the Rift Valley and therefore had nowhere to go. Now, every day is a struggle. He borrowed equipment from a friend and started sawing timber and selling planks of wood for Ksh100 a piece. This is how he is able to feed his family. But his income is in no way guaranteed. Demand is low. The Eldoret economy is in the doldrums in the aftermath of the violence. 


Families living at the Eldoret Showground are beset with hunger and, now that the long rains have set in, disease. Just recently, Karimi says, an expectant woman went into labour. “She gave birth in that bush over there, like a wild animal,” he says. “She could not afford to go to hospital, and here at the Showground there is no clinic.”


“You have to find a way of living”


Those remaining at the Showground have been described as opportunists, non-genuine IDPs preying on government largesse – or hoping to benefit from a final government payout. Karimi admits that there are people like: men who came in with the IDPs, who do not live there and, in fact, work as hawkers and traders in town, and who only return to the Showground when they hear that there are well-wishers about.


Karimi’s family is in his tent on a rainy Sunday afternoon; it is four feet high and big enough for only two people, but they are now five. Karimi did not reveal whom he voted for at the presidential level, but he does say he voted for the Orange Democratic Movement candidate in the parliamentary poll. He says that he knows who burned down his house.
“

They came to me right here at the Showground and apologised. They said that some madness had gotten into them and that they were really sorry for what they had done. I have forgiven them, because what else can you do? You have to find a way of living.” 


But he cannot go back to Rehema, at least not just yet. “The only thing we are waiting for now is the Ksh25,000,” he says, referring to the government’s final resettlement payout, which has been long delayed. “When the government finally pays us, I won’t even wait to be told. I will dismantle this tent myself and we will move.”