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| Displaced: Geoffery Karanja and his daughter fled ethnic violence in Kericho, Kenya, last week. Rob Crilly |
Kenyans forced to flee violence find ways to cope
Plans for key talks toward a political solution to Kenya's post-election crisis fell through Tuesday. Meanwhile, 250,000 have been displaced by ethnic violence.
By Rob Crilly | Correspondent of The Christian Science Monitorfrom the January 9, 2008 edition
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Kericho, Kenya - Geoffery Karanja knew the column of smoke was coming from his house as he looked back over his shoulder on his way to the market.
He raced back to his simple timber home to find an angry mob armed with machetes and bows and arrows shouting and dancing outside.
"My wife was still inside," he says. "She had been cooking and was caught unawares. No one could get in to rescue her because these people kept us from getting close."
Mr. Karanja's wife was one of more than 500 people to die in ethnic clashes that spread across Kenya in the wake of the disputed Dec. 27 elections.
The spasms of violence have stopped, but longstanding ethnic animosities in East Africa's most stable and prosperous country have been piqued like never before.
Now – as diplomats step up efforts to get populist opposition leader Raila Odinga and incumbent President Mwai Kibaki to agree on a political way out of the crisis – members of Kenya's economically and politically dominant Kikuyu ethnic group are on the run.
A steady stream of buses and trucks packed with Kikuyu families has been snaking out of towns in the western Rift Valley, where the violence has been most severe, taking them home to their ancestral homeland farther east.
The United Nations estimates that more than 250,000 people have been displaced so far.
Efforts for a political solution took a hit Tuesday when Mr. Odinga, who claims that Mr. Kibaki stole the tightly contested election, rejected bilateral talks.
Odinga said he would attend negotiations only if they were mediated by African Union chairman John Kufuor, who arrived on Tuesday. But Kibaki did not invite Mr. Kufuor to the talks, which had been hailed by a range of foreign diplomats as a breakthrough.
Odinga called off nationwide protests to allow time for mediation to work, but says they will resume if it fails.
As the standoff deepens, people like Karanja are left to fend for themselves.
For now, he is camped in a bedraggled field next to the police station in the Rift Valley town of Kericho with hundreds of other Kikuyus who have lost their homes or businesses.
"I am ready to leave," he says, sitting with his daughter next to the dusty pile of possessions that he managed to salvage, "but we have no way to get out."
Kericho's tiny morgue is crammed with 32 bodies from a week of killing.
One corner of town is nothing but a blackened ruin where Kikuyu-owned stalls used to stand.
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