Kenya Update from Taita

Dearest Friends and Family,

Greetings from Mwatate, Kenya. I am writing to update you on the situation in Kenya and to let you know that we are still safe and sound and enjoying life at the Taita International School in Mwatate. My research is really taking off and I have been very busy with meetings, interviews, field visits, and writing. I have been welcomed warmly by the local government officials and folks in the Dept. of Social Services and Adult Education, which work directly with women’s groups in the area. I attended a meeting at the chief’s office with local women’s groups to teach them about the new “Women’s Enterprise Fund,” a national loan program to support women’s groups and their income-generating projects. I have also met with and interviewed adult educators and others involved in extension activities with women’s groups – they say that the majority of adult learners are women since so many women were denied access to education in the past. I am discovering that adult education programs have been successful in teaching rural women skills, not only in reading and writing and math, but also in self-sufficiency and empowerment at the local level.

I have also been meeting with and interviewing members of several local women’s groups, who are involved in various projects such as basket weaving, building water tanks, farming, agroforestry, bakeries, microfinance groups called “merry-go-rounds,” and other small business ventures. One group, Mwakitutu Women’s Group, has “adopted” me and they have spent a lot of time with me and Joe over the past few weeks. I have also been “adopted” by Mama Agneta and Julius Mwakio Katuu, a couple who are friends of my professor Tom Wolf. He is an adult educator and she is a seamstress and a member of many women’s groups in the area, and they have been really supportive of my research and have helped me with the difficult task of translating my research questions into Kiswahili. They have also worked with dozens of Kalamazoo College students in the past and they even hosted a friend of mine, Elizabeth Stands, while she was doing her senior thesis research in Kenya in 1995.

I have also been interviewing Mama Mjomba intensively about her own life history as a community leader, teacher, mother, wife, the first mayor of Voi, and a longtime champion of women’s rights in Kenya. We have become very close friends and this weekend she took us to her ancestral rural home in the mountains of Mbololo, a beautiful region of the Taita Hills. We stayed at the homestead of her husband’s family, who are farmers with terraced gardens producing maize, beans, arrowroots, mangoes, avocados, bananas, oranges, limes, and other nutritious and delicious foods. I learned more about why she is so committed to agriculture as a “farmer’s daughter” and a lifelong gardener. It is really exciting and I am grateful that she has opened up so much to me and Joe.

This weekend I was invited to attend a leaders’ meeting to discuss the peace process in the Mwatate Division. Out of 80 people at the meeting, there were just a dozen women, and I was the only foreigner there. I was welcomed warmly and I even got to eat lunch next to the District Comissioner! (like our county commissioners in the U.S.) I learned a lot about peace and justice issues in the Mwatate Division at this meeting, and I met a lot of the local leaders who were supportive of me and my research. Mainly they discussed the need for justice to restore peace in Kenya, particularly relating to income inequalities, resource allocation, and land ownership. While they insisted that Taita is a peaceful place and that they doubted that violence would come here, they also said that the way to “sustainable peace” is by ensuring that all Kenyans, particularly the poor, have access to the resources that create and sustain life. They also talked about the need to engage youth in positive action for change, and they said that the primary reason for the violence in Kenya (aside from the elections and resource inequalities) is the fact that so many youths do not have access to education or employment to support themselves, and so they are easily manipulated by politicians and get caught up in violence and crime. This really resonated with me since I spent my early years in Kenya working with street children and other marginalized youth – I recalled that many of them felt so desperate that they had nothing to lose and everything to gain by engaging in crime and violence. I think that the ongoing violence in Kenya may be attributed to this problem – just like the wars in Sierra Leone, Uganda, the Congo, and other African countries have often been fought by frustrated and alienated youths looking to belong, and looking for a way to find some power and meaning for their lives.

I have been continuing with my work and am grateful to be in a place that is relatively quiet and calm. The Taita hills and the Coast Province have remained undisturbed save for a day or two of protests in Mwatate and Voi. The ODM MP for Mwatate, Calist Mwatela, has been very outspoken about the limitations placed on journalists from critiquing the government or attending government meetings. He has also been critical of decisions to ban rallies and demonstrations. He led a rally at Kamukunji grounds in Mwatate to protest the electoral results, and this was subsequently dispersed by police who shot warning shots and teargas. Since then, however, Taita has remained relatively calm and life is pole pole (slow and peaceful).

I am grateful for the opportunity to be here, even in the midst of the crisis, for it has given me a new understanding of the effects of violence and has made me even more committed to working for peace and justice. We have been in constant contact with the U.S. embassy and friends around Kenya. I know that many of you are worried for our safety and I want to let you know that we are weighing our options and consulting with the embassy and others regarding what we should do. I am not sure what this means for my research or my ability to stay here as long as I had planned. Many people in the U.S. have been worried and have asked me to consider returning home soon. Joe is leaving at the end of the month, and he has asked me to come with him. Part of me thinks that I should go home, but I have some fears about having to leave early, since I feel like I have just gotten started on my research, and since the Fulbright is such a prestigious opportunity and is my only source of financial support. I also feel some guilt about leaving when all of the people I am working with will remain here, and they seem fairly confident that Taita will remain peaceful. But I also do not want to risk my safety or my life by staying here much longer than I need to, in the event that things get worse than they are. I have been receiving daily text messages and email updates from the U.S. embassy, which helps to inform me about the security situation throughout the country. I also have been in touch with the Public Affairs Section, which administers the Fulbright Program – they called me last week to check in and said that I should stay where I am for now to wait and see, and they think that I am probably safer in Taita than I would be in Nairobi. However, other embassy staff and Peace Corps volunteers have been evacuated from Western Kenya, and they are encouraging all “non-essential” staff and other American citizens to leave the country. They have offered assistance in making arrangements in case we decide to leave early. I guess the question is, what do you think that I should do? What would you do in this situation?

I am writing now to inform you of the events “on the ground” so that you can get an accurate picture of how things are developing in Kenya right now. I am sharing the burden of this knowledge with you, in the hopes that you can begin to understand the extent of the violence and that you will continue to pray for peace in Kenya. It is heartbreaking to witness such events in the country where I have spent so much of my adult life and where I have made so many friends over the past 14 years. I am dismayed to realize that every time I come to Kenya, something catastrophic happens –the street children I worked with were jailed in 1995, the U.S. embassy was bombed in 1998, earthquakes rocked the Rift Valley region in 2007. However, rather than turning away from these hardships, these catastrophes should also be featured in my research. I cannot pretend to continue with my planned business without dealing with the issues of the violence and how this is affecting women and their families and communities. I believe that women’s groups and other community-based organizations (CBOs) have a key role to play in peacemaking and reconciliation as well as providing services to people in need.

Since the announcement of the election results on December 30, violence and instability has erupted throughout Kenya in response to the disputed tallying of the votes. The dispute over the election results initially led to widespread violence, looting and burning of shops reported in Kisumu, Mombasa and Nairobi as well as smaller cities and towns throughout Kenya. Since then, the post-election violence has claimed over 1000 lives and has displaced an estimated 350,000 refugees. Many are insisting that Kenya needs a new Marshall Plan to overcome the tragedy and humanitarian crisis.

Here are some personal stories: Our taxi driver in Mombasa (the largest coastal city) told us that he spent two nights in his car in the airport parking lot because he was afraid to return home to his family in Mikindani, an estate near the airport where a number of shops were burned and looted. His wife and children were trapped in their house for four days (like everyone else that I know in Mombasa). He also reported that over 500 families had fled Magongo, a small estate next to the airport, and camped in a large field in front of the airport for several days.

Many people have been evacuated from Eldoret, Kitale, Nakuru and Kericho in the Rift Valley, where violence has been the most extreme both before and after the elections. Our friend, OU alum and fellow Fulbrighter Opolot Okia told us that a man was murdered right in front of his house at Moi University in Eldoret, presumably just because he belongs to the Kikuyu ethnic group. Opolot and his family have been on “house arrest” on and off since the violence began – we have been communicating by cell phone and email.

There has also been a lot of violence in Nyanza and Western Provinces. Our friend Martin, who is from Siaya district near Kisumu, was harassed in Kisumu and suspected of being a “Mungiki” gang member because he has dreadlocks – he has since left the country and returned to the U.S. Also, our friends Tanja and Josh were here visiting family for the holidays. They left their family farm in Western Kenya in early January in the middle of the night, and drove 12 hours on back roads to avoid the main highway to Nairobi. Although they were able to leave safely and returned back to South Africa, their family farm was later attacked, and the workers had to fight off the invaders. They are hoping and praying that the farm is not attacked again.

I read an editorial in last week’s Sunday Nation and have done some more research about how women and children have been suffering from the post-election violence. It is estimated that at least two-thirds of the internally-displaced people are women and children. Unfortunately, as in many situations of conflict, rape has become rampant throughout Kenya, as well as forced circumcisions and genital mutilation. The Nairobi Women’s Hospital has reported record numbers of patients seeking care, including women, girls and boys. They have estimated that there are even more women in the slums and estates surrounding Nairobi who are too afraid to report their rapes, for fear of retribution and because they are afraid to leave their homes. As the police and GSU have surrounded some of these areas, women have become trapped and have been unable to access medical services or legal assistance. Groups are now forming rape crisis centres in the estates surrounding Nairobi to provide home-based or community-based care for rape survivors. It is still unknown how many other women have been raped in other parts of the country. Many women have been raped or sexually abused in the refugee camps and have no recourse or assistance to deal with their trauma.

The camps for internally displaced refugees have also faced numerous problems. There is little water and food available in the camps, and many fear an outbreak of diseases like typhoid or cholera. Mothers have given birth while displaced from their homes, and are not eating for days at a time, so they cannot breastfeed their babies. Some of the camps have also been attacked at night, with little security available for the displaced, who have had to continually flee from their settlements. Although some humanitarian assistance has been delivered by the UN, Red Cross/Red Crescent, FAO, UNICEF, and other groups, it has not been enough for the estimated 300,000 internally displaced people. Also, the Western and Nyanza provinces have also had large numbers of displaced people, and some have fled across the border into Uganda. The Ugandan military has established a border patrol and they are fearing a humanitarian and refugee crisis.

Children are unable to go to school and makeshift schools are also being formed in the camps. Some children have not been able to go to school because they are displaced, while other schools have become refugee camps and are no longer suitable for education. An estimated 4,000 schools have not yet opened due to the violence. Teachers have reported a great need for counseling and intervention with their students, particularly those who have witnessed or experienced violence. Teachers have also reported an increase in ethnic conflict, hate speech, and violence among children in schools. There is a great need for teachers to supported and trained to manage issues relating to cultural diversity and non-violent communication. I have noticed some of the high school students at the Taita International School who have been outspoken about their hatred for particular communities in Kenya. The teachers have also been preaching peace here at the school, both in the classrooms and in church services on Sunday.

As I said before, over 900 people have been killed in the last month. The media reports that most of the killings have been by the police, who have used excessive force on demonstrators, and civilian militias and individuals have also been responsible for much of the killings. Since Kibaki was declared President, the government has engaged in a crackdown on the opposition and a suspension of civil liberties. Public demonstrations and rallies organized by the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) have been banned. The Kenya Police and the General Service Unit (GSU) military police have used teargas, water cannons, and automatic guns to control the people and to disperse demonstrators. The police, military and GSU have been given orders to “shoot to kill” and have been widely criticized for using “excessive force” to break up demonstrations. One officer was caught on videocamera shooting and killing a 10 year old boy, while another has been charged with killing an opposition Member of Parliament (presumably over a love triangle). We have also seen an increase in militias of frustrated and unemployed youths, armed with bows and arrows, pangas/machetes, knives, and homemade guns. Many people claim they have been attacked for no reason and with no provocation, and have often been singled out because of their ethnicity – this has primarily been targeting the Kikuyu, Luo, Luhya and Kisii ethnic groups. The doctors in hospitals and mortuary staff are totally overwhelmed and working round the clock to deliver the needed services – they are filled to capacity with patients and bodies and are struggling to work in an atmosphere with little security even for medical staff. The wounds have been severe – deep panga cuts, gunshots, burns, multiple stabbings. The extent of this violence is intense and scary.

Civil liberties have also been a casualty of the conflict. The Kenyan constitution protects freedom of assembly, freedom of association, and freedom of speech and press, and yet all of these rights have been curtailed in the national emergency. Some journalists have been killed or harassed or had their equipment stolen, while others have been prohibited from attending and writing coverage of public meetings due to their criticism of the government. Although the Kenyan media is usually very reliable and robust, the government has censored the media, banning all live broadcasts on TV and radio. After live hearings by the ECK were broadcast after the elections, all future hearings were pre-recorded and edited before being broadcast. KBC, the government-controlled TV channel, which is the only station available in most remote rural locations, lost its sound for 4 crucial days and has regular technical difficulties. The other public TV stations of KTN, NTV and Citizen were also censored. Fewer copies of newspapers have been available in remote locations since fewer papers have been printed and transported due to the fuel shortage in Kenya. It has been very difficult to get information, in rural areas especially. On the other hand, I have found that the information about the crisis in Kenya available online or sent via email from the U.S. and European media has been sensationalized and decontextualized – focusing primarily on the ethnic dimensions of the conflict and ignoring the political and economic dimensions, or the dispute over the electoral results.

Moreover, Parliament has been postponed from meeting since the MPs were sworn in and Speaker of the House chosen in early January. Since half of the MPs and the Speaker and Deputy Speaker are all representing ODM, their power could overwhelm the President. In fact, when Parliament convened on Jan. 10th, the 95 ODM MPs refused to stand when the President entered the room. Some people guessed that Parliament might decide to put forward a vote of “no confidence” in the president. In the 12-hour Parliamentary session on Jan. 10th, many of the MPs debated the elections and discussed the need for redress. The session was broadcast live, and the new Speaker Marende promised that all Parliamentary sessions would be broadcast live during his leadership. As a result, their power has been limited and they have been prohibited to meet for all of January and February. This is also seen as the President’s interference in the Legislative branch and a limitation to the checks and balances promised by the Kenyan constitution. In this atmosphere of limiting civil liberties, many people are becoming even more angry and suspicious of the government’s motives and are insistent that they are holding on to power illegally.

Nevertheless, there has been a surge of renewed violence rocking the Rift Valley and Western Kenya over the past two weeks. Killings, beatings, burning of homes, property destruction, looting, and internally displaced refugees are the product of this violence in Nakuru, Eldoret, Naivasha, Kisumu, Busia, Siaya, and Nairobi. Illegal roadblocks have been put up on the Nairobi-Nakuru-Kisumu highway, and roads and bridges have been destroyed. There has been a disruption in traffic and transport of goods not only to Western Kenya but throughout East Africa, which has disrupted the volatile regions of Sudan, Uganda, Rwanda, Burundi and Eastern DRC. Kenya has always had relative stability in the region and has played a key role in keeping goods flowing and in peacekeeping as well as providing a safe haven for refugees from these countries. The port of Mombasa, the highways and railroads in Kenya have been essential to bringing goods into these countries as well. Kenya’s instability affects the livelihoods of people in the whole region.

Meanwhile, the Kenyan economy is also suffering, with billions of shillings in estimated property damage, job losses, and businesses ruined. An estimated 400,000 jobs have been lost in the past month of violence, and many people have lost their livelihoods. Farmers’ crops have rotted in the fields and drought has not made matters any easier. The food security of many communities is really threatened. Tourists have mostly left the country during the peak of the season, which has devastated the coastal areas that are dependent on foreign exchange provided through tourism. Many hotels have had to lay off their staff and have closed early. Foreign investors are also pulling out and the Nairobi Stock Exchange is really suffering from divestments. Aid agencies and foreign governments that previously provided assistance are threatening to impose economic sanctions if the two parties of Kibaki’s PNU and Raila’s ODM cannot agree to settle their disputes and work towards reconciliation. This is devastating particularly for the majority of Kenyan people who are living on less than $2 per day and who are now living in a heightened atmosphere of tension and insecurity and poverty. Many people are afraid that Kenya will be unable to bounce back economically from the devastation of the past month.

Claims that Kenya is on the verge of another African civil war or Rwandan genocide have been largely dismissed by the Kenyan media and people, but some remain fearful that things are not improving as fast as they had hoped. Many Kenyans insist that this violence is temporary and that peace and justice will prevail. In fact, many people believe that ethnic conflict has been overplayed too much in the international media. They insist that the reason for the conflict is not ethnic differences but rather the anger that Kenyans feel about the rigging of the election and the alleged corruption of the Kenyan government. Many people feel that this conflict could either lead to more violence or, if resolved peacefully and thoroughly, could lead to a more robust, transparent, accountable, and democratic government. Many Kenyans feel that they are ready for a change and that the increased awareness about the faulty electoral system is exposing a long tradition of corruption and conflict in Kenya to the global community.

The political resolution remains fragile at best. Initial hopes of mediation by South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu and Ghanaian President and African Union Secretary-General John Kufuor were fruitless. Kibaki’s government refused to acknowledge that there were any problems with the elections and his Minister for Foreign Affairs Wetangula said that these mediators were not invited by the government and so they could not intervene in the sovereign affairs of the Kenyan nation. Kufuor was also said to be Kibaki’s age-mate and colleague and he could not therefore intervene – he was just here to have a “cup of tea” with Kibaki before returning to Ghana. After this fruitless effort, the African Union decided to appoint a team of mediators comprised of eminent persons – including: Kofi Annan, former secretary-general of the United Nations from Ghana; Graca Machel, former first lady of Mozambique and South Africa and the current wife of Nelson Mandela; Benjamin Mkapa, former president of Tanzania; Kenneth Kaunda, former president of Zambia; and the former president of Mozambique. At the same time as their visit, President Yoweri Museveni of Uganda also arrived in Kenya to meet with the team and with President Kibaki. The team has been here for two weeks and they have been meeting with leaders as well as ordinary citizens to assess the situation. They traveled to the Rift Valley and visited several refugee camps, which they described as “heart-wrenching.” Graca Machel had a tender moment with a bereaved and grief-stricken woman, whose face she held in her hands as they cried together. The teams’ greatest achievement so far has been to bring Kibaki and Raila together for a face-to-face meeting and to begin discussing the negotiations. The two were filmed shaking hands and smiling, and many Kenyans became hopeful to see a beginning to the end of the political impasse. However, the way ahead is long and it will be difficult to convince the two leaders to make the “hard choices” necessary to move beyond their entrenched positions and to try to compromise a settlement that might bring peace and justice. ODM leaders are already criticizing the African Union eminent persons team for being too focused on peace and humanitarian efforts, and for not addressing the issue of the rigging of the elections and the need for electoral reform. They claim that the government is trying to control the mediators’ movements too much and is directing them to dealing solely with the humanitarian crisis - and diverting their attention from the political crisis of the elections which sparked the violence.

Many are now insisting that the violence that has been rocking Kenya for the past month goes far beyond the elections. Many claim that this has opened up festering wounds that reach deep back into Kenya’s history. While Kenya has been hailed as a beacon for democracy, economic growth, stability and peace – the tensions of ethnicity, sexism, violence, economic inequality, and injustice have been the roots of violence throughout the country’s history. Indeed, crime, terrorism, land grabbing and disputes over wealth and ownership of property have always been very present and prevalent in Kenya. Since multi-party elections were introduced in 1992, the Rift Valley has been rife with election violence and with incidents of land-grabbing, cattle-stealing, ethnic cleansing, armed militias, etc. Kofi Annan and others have insisted that the solution to Kenya’s current crisis must reach beyond the disputed election results, beyond a re-tallying or repeat of the elections, and must address the fundamental problems facing Kenya’s existence as a nation of different peoples with often conflicting interests and divergent identities and histories. Many are beginning to question Kenya’s ability to remain united as a sovereign nation without being divided into majimbo, or different states with decentralized governments. This is seen as a lesson in the problems inherent in the post-colonial African state and the struggle for democracy.

Many are criticizing both Raila and Kibaki for failing to address the needs of the people while they are protected in State House and in a palatial mansion in the Karen suburbs. They are arguing that these elites have more in common with each other than with the majority of Kenyans, and that their children and families continue to live life undisturbed, to go to school, to eat 3 meals per day, while the regular wananchi are suffering so much. Many feel that they are being used by the political elites as pawns in a game of political one-up-man-ship, and they resent being the fodder for their political careers. The unity of the nation is really what seems to be at stake now.

Meanwhile, life continues for the majority of people in an atmosphere of instability, insecurity and anxiety. The whole country seems to be suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. It is difficult to discuss any matter these days without referring to the violence and the need for unity, prayer, faith, and hope. Although Kenya is a nation full of God-fearing people, many are afraid that God has forsaken them, or that God will never forgive the nation for what has been done. It seems that many people’s faith is being tested, and yet they still are coming together to pray, to talk, and to support each other.

Thank you for taking time to read and understand more about the crisis in Kenya. I hope that you all are doing well and I hope that you will join me in praying and working for peace and justice in whatever corner of the world you are living in right now.

Take care and keep in touch,

In peace and justice,

Cat Cutcher