Dear All,
I am feeling very discouraged.
Over the weekend (which now seems so far in the past) I was at the Quaker
Leadership Peace Conference in Kakamega. If you would like to see the
documents from the conference, please ask Dawn at dawn@aglionline.org. It
was an excellent gathering. Almost every yearly meeting and Quaker
organization sent their representative(s). There is no doubt that Quakers
in Kenya will now give prominence to the Peace Testimony in this time of
chaos, destruction, and death. The participants were very concerned about
the situation and serious in their efforts to respond to Kenyans, to
Christians, and to all Quakers. They affirmed that the Quakers needed to
be neutral in the political situation. I was surprised to find that I was
appointed to the Coordinating Committee for current and long-term actions
since Gladys and I played a rather quiet role during the conference. But
AVP is on everyone's lips. Getry Agizah, the AVP coordinator, was also
put on the committee, along with Hezron Masitsa (AVP coordinator in
Nairobi). The committee is supposed to meet in Kakamega on Friday but who
knows if we will be able to travel.
On the way to the conference those who took the bus through Nakuru saw
the Total gas station on fire. This was the beginning of major fighting
in Nakuru which later spread to Naivasha and then on Monday to western
Kenya. This morning on the BBC news, I heard the spokesman for the Kenya
Police say that everything is calm now, while the next report was the BBC
reporter in Kisumu talking about all the tires burning, total lack of
movement, roads cut, etc. Is the Kenyan Government in the same country
that I am in?
I was going to report some news from last week when my laptop crashed.
Kaimosi (the major Quaker center in western Kenya) has been quiet as I
have reported before. It is along the boundary between the Tiriki (a
Luhya group) and the Nandi (a Kalenjin group). But on Wednesday someone
stole a cow, the other group retaliated by burning some houses including
the kiosks by the road leading into Kaimosi, and everything got out of
control. Six people were killed and at least 70 houses were burnt.
Kaimosi Hospital was receiving lots of people with cuts from machetes,
arrows stuck in people's bodies, and injuries from the violence. There is
absolutely no political explanation for this violence since both of these
groups voted overwhelming for ODM, the opposition party.
Yesterday Gladys told me that one of her relatives was going to Eldoret
to take another relative who had a broken leg. When they reached Turbo he
was forced to show his ID card (by name, people can tell he is not a
Kikuyu). He put his relative on the side of the road while he was forced
to dig up the road until he got tired. He was then required to return to
Lumakanda with the relative with the broken leg rather than proceed on to
Eldoret.
Only eight people out of 40 showed up at the listening session in Kisumu
yesterday and they were distracted by the events going on around them. We
have cancelled the workshops for today. Otherwise the Sunset Hotel where
the workshops are taking place and the facilitators are staying is quite
safe and they have not experienced any violence nearby.
We were supposed to go to Kaimosi tomorrow to talk to the Friends
Theological College students about organizing AVP workshops in their home
churches during the April vacation, but we have put this off until next
week. We have been making a weekly delivery to the Lumakanda IDP's now
living in Turbo, but I don't see how we can do this week. Florence
Machayo who lives only about 5 miles from us wants to have a meeting
tomorrow of all the AVP coordinators and others involved in peace work in
Lugari District, but I don't know if Gladys and I will be able to go even
that short distance!
So you can see why I am so discouraged.
Peace,
Dave
David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams
P. O. Box 189, Kipkarren River 50241 Kenya 254 726 590