From: David Zarembka
Sent: Tuesday, August 12, 2008 4:17 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya--"Return of the IDP's"--August 12, 2008
Dear All,
Return of the IDP's.
When Gladys and I were still in Rwanda, George Njoroge, the leader of the IDP camp (internally displaced persons) at Turbo, called me to say that he had returned to his home at Mbagara and that all the IDP's from Turbo had returned to their home communities.
As we rode home from Uganda and crossed the border into Kenya, we passed Musimbi, a small roadside village on top of a hill overlooking the Kipkarren River valley. Here we saw about 25 small houses built with plastic sheeting and salvaged mabati (corrugated iron sheets) just like the ones in the IDP camps. Clearly the people had just taken down their houses in the IDP camps and re-erected them on a plot in town. Further down the road we saw another plastic house on a plot and three men were building a mud and wattle house nearby. Mud and wattle means posts in the ground about every two feet, with straight branches tied to them horizontally, and then filled with mud. This is the simplest type of house in the region, but even here, for a small house one would need about $500 for doors, windows, and the mabati for the roof.
In Kipkarren River itself I saw that a major commercial block of buildings that had been destroyed was being rebuilt.
On Thursday last week when I was taking my walk around town, I ran into one of the returnees (as we have been calling those who are returning from an IDP camp). He told me that he had returned about July 15 and was now living on the plot of Njau, one of the more prosperous Kikuyu near Lumakanda. The Red Cross (or the Government) had provided transportation and a ration of maize (corn) and a little cooking oil, only. The papers say that the Government is going to compensate those who were displaced with 10,000/- ($150) which is not even enough for the roof of a small house. None of these displaced people had seen even this 10,000/-.
So on Friday Gladys and I decided to visit Njau's home to see how things were going. He has a large plot and some of the returnees were living on various parts of it. His own home had been completely destroyed, but he seemed to lament the destruction of his maize storage bin which was full to the top from the recent harvest. I t had burned for three days, the corn sometimes popping with a bang. He had a matatu (mini-bus) which was sitting in his yard, burned. He did say that he drove away his "tinga-tinga" (a great Swahili word meaning "tractor"). He had returned to plant his maize, but he was late (I remember when I saw him plowing his field at the end of April) so that it did not do as well as the maize of those who planted earlier, but it will be enough for him and his family to eat. He had repaired one of his smaller two room houses, which had not been so badly damaged, and was living in that.
There were two other interesting things about this visit. He told us that now the local people were suffering because they burned down his storage bin. He said that each year he would save 8 to 10 bags of maize and when the time of food shortage came--May, June, and July before the new harvests came in-- old women (these would include those from other tribes) from the neighborhood would come and ask him for some maize. He would give each about 5 pounds plus a few shillings to grind the maize. This year, of course, he had no maize so he was unable to help those in need.
The second surprising point for us was that we found that "Professor" was living in his compound. Professor is one of the crazy people of Lumakanda--someday when I have time, I'll write you a little essay about the crazy people in Lumakanda. Professor always carries around some notebooks and that is why he is called "Professor." Njau told us that Professor had once been his tractor driver before he went crazy. Njau had taken him back to his home in Maragoli (that is to say, he is a Luhya), but he had then walked for two days back to Lumakanda. So he is a fixture in our town.
Both these stories illustrate how much a part of the Lumakanda community Njau is --he was born here-- without much regard to ethnicity as he, although a Kikuyu, is helping out Luhya.
Then, of course, this is Africa. Because we had visited him, he had to give us a present. He gave us about 20 avocados and then, cut down a banana tree, and added a small stalk of eating bananas. So who is the victim and who is the rescuer? Does this not destroy these roles? Is this not important?
On Sunday Gladys was in Maragoli, her original home in Luhya area, attending the memorial service (the women of the family get together and stay up all night, talking, singing, and dancing) for her aunt who had died just before we left for the United States. I went to visit the twenty-five returnee homes I had seen at Musimbi. As I walked into the mini-camp, two little boys came up to shake my hand. When we had started visiting people in Lumakanda in January, in order to seem friendly, I had started the custom of shaking hands with all the little kids. So these kids, although only about 3 years old, still remembered me. Naturally I was warmly greeted by all the people in the camp. I found out that this mini-camp had 400 people! There were more houses farther inside which could not be seen from the road. They had returned on July 7. They also were given transport and about a two weeks supply of maize and a little cooking oil. One of the younger men, who had been born right there, showed me the destroyed houses. Most had been build with either mud and wattle or adobe bricks. So the houses, which had been stripped of their doors, windows, and mabati roofs, crumbled in the rain and were already back to the earth from whence they had come.
They had already started planting some greens and vegetables on the rubble. My host took me back into the interior a little and I saw a field that they had just plowed with oxen (so different from the men in Rwanda and Burundi!) and were planting beans. If they are lucky and the rains hold up into October and early November, they will get a decent harvest. If the rains do not hold up, then this will be a wasted effort.
I asked them how they were received by the local community. The response was essentially "cordial, but distant." I am not certain that this does not describe their interactions with the rest of the community even before the violence. The children had no problems when they returned to the local school.
Plastic houses have no insulation. It is raining a lot right now, sometimes at night. According the thermometer in my house, which is insulated, the temperature gets down to 55 degrees Fahrenheit during the night. I asked them if it was cold at night in their plastic sheeting houses and they responded in the affirmative. They also commented that this meant that their children got colds--without knowing what we were talking about, two small children then coughed in the background.
They are wary of rebuilding. First, I am not certain how they will get the funds to rebuild even the simple houses. Moreover they are worried that this will all happen again during the next election in 2012 or the next crisis.
On Monday, Gladys and I went to Eldoret. On the way we saw the same plastic sheeting housing and people rebuilding in some places, but not in others. On the way home, when we got to Turbo, we stopped at the Blue Line Inn. This is a Kikuyu establishment that had been sacked during the violence, but the hotel (which is what a small restaurant is called in Kenya) was open and we ordered some snacks. The walls had been repainted and all seemed to be going well. On the other hand, the two stores next to them, had been completely destroyed and gutted by fire. The owner was not there but at home so we did not see her. Why did we stop at the Blue Line Inn? Because when we spoke in Palo Alto, California, on our recent tour of the US, Margaret Muchemu, the daughter of the owner, had come to hear us speak!
Peace,
Dave
David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams
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