Jan 19, Report 20, David Zarembka

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Saturday, January 19, 2008 7:11 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya--Jan 19


Dear All,

I have not written for the past two days because mostly I stayed home. This was partly
because I needed to catch up on my email and other work at home and partly because with
the continued demonstrations by ODM, many people were not going anywhere as travel
was so uncertain. My son-in-law who is a motorcycle taxi driver here in Lumakanda told me
yesterday he earned only 200/- while he usually earns 800/- to 1000/- on a normal day!
[NOTE: /- is the symbol for Kenyan Shillings.]

I did go for a walk with Gladys yesterday to her sister's house about two miles down the hill.
We passed the house of Silas Njoroge who is the Kikuyu leader at the IDP camp. His house
was looted, but not burned. Further down the road his brother's house was looted and burned
including all the maize (corn) he had in storage. They are considered the "richest" Kikuyu in
the area, but neither one had a particularly fancy house--much like many of the people around
here.

Ray Downing is a Mennonite doctor working at the hospital in Webuye (the largest town to
the west of us, towards Uganda). He asks this question: Why was there no destruction of Kikuyu
shops and homes in Webuye? (This is also true of Bungoma and many other towns in the country.) He asks: "Why did these towns escape the violence? Who is studying the reasons why some places did not have violence?" I think these are really interesting questions--any students out there needing a research topic?

AGLI and FPCD (Friends for Peace and Community Development, our Kenyan partner) will be
doing 40 one-day AVP-style listening workshops with the 900 employees of the Center for
Disease Control (CDC) from the US which has a major presence in Kisumu. The conflicts in the
country have brought out latent ethnic feelings among the staff. We will be doing 2 workshops
per day for twenty days. We are bringing one HROC facilitator and one AVP facilitator from
Rwanda to be part of each 3 person facilitator team. It will be really interesting to see how this
goes. Sessions begin on Wednesday of this coming week.

Friends United Meeting (FUM)--Africa Office has spearheaded the arrangement of a Consultation for Quaker leaders in Kenya next week to consider the Quaker response to the current violence and crisis. The consultation starts Thursday evening and will go through Sunday. Gladys and I will be there (so don't expect any reports during that time). This will be an opportunity for the Quaker leadership in Kenya to really assert themselves as a peace church. I hope they "grab it."

The ODM has not scheduled any more demonstrations but rather is now turning to an economic
boycott of institutions controlled by Kibaki and associates. I don't know how that will go. The 3
days of attempted demonstrations resulted in 21 more deaths--all but one, I think, killed by police including some clearly innocent people (a mother sitting inside her house). While there are always ups and downs about some kind of dialogue, I don't see anything significant happening yet so the stand-off continues.

Peace,
Dave

David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative/ Friends Peace Teams
Box 189, Kipkarren River 50241 Kenya--phone 011 254 726 590 783
Office in US--1001 Park Avenue, St Louis, MO 63104--phone 314/621-7262