Apr 21, Rpt 43, David Zarembka - In the IDP camps

Dear All,

Today was an interesting day, as the counselors from the Friends Church Peace Teams (FCPT) visited the internally displaced people's (IDP) camp at Turbo.

About a week ago, Jodi Richmond of Friends Theological College did a training at the Lubao Center for about thirty plus Friends who had some counseling skills. The plan was for them to then go to the Turbo IDP camp and counsel some of the 4,000 people still at the camp. About thirty of these counselors (six were experienced AVP facilitators plus three youth from the IDP camp that we trained as AVP facilitators just last week) showed up at the Turbo post office and were taken to the IDP camp. The counselors were divided into four groups--children, youth, women, and men.

While the concept was that each counselor would have five people in his/her group, the reality was that most groups had about fifteen. The number of children was overwhelming. They were divided up into three or four age groups and still there were 100 or more in each group. The counseling sessions were done out in an open field. People just stood or sat down on appropriate ridges or rocks - a few school benches were brought out. All told, I think that including the children there were at least one thousand people participating. The youth and adults talked in their groups for at least two hours!!!

As part of the program the FCPT brought some food for distribution. Gladys and I (with others) had gone there the previous week to make the last distribution of the relief supplies we had for the Lumakanda people. We were told that we could no longer give relief directly to the Lumakanda people. What we brought each time was a very small amount for 4000 people. Instead we are now to give it to the Red Cross who will distribute it to a select group--elderly people it was determined. So today the FCPT relief supplies had to be given to the Red Cross, and so it was done. During the counseling time, one group of men required me to come speak to them. Their concern was that if the food was given to the Red Cross it would be sold off and not given out in the camps. At another time two men had told shared the same concern with me. They wanted us to distribute the food right then and there ourselves because they said that those bringing the food would not be stealing it.

Will the Turbo IDP's receive the goods the FCPT gave them? We left the list with George Njoroge, the camp's IDP chairman. I'll ask him and others when I see them next.

On March 22 The Daily Nation had a four page advertisement placed by the Red Cross telling of their work during the crisis including and long lists of everyone who had contributed.

Okay, let us see how the Americans did.

-- American Red Cross--3,250,000/
-- Netherlands Red Cross--147,000,000/ (45 times more than the Americans)
-- Canadian Red Cross--6,876,228/- (more than twice as much).

Under "Governments" they listed
-- USAID--12,543,600/
-- British Government (DFID)--135,000,000/ (11 times more than USAID).

Is American generosity for places in distress really only a myth? Americans, by this measure, were sure far from generous in the relief in Kenya!

But then the Red Cross reports in this advertisement: "This has enabled humanitarian aid to reach each person in IDP camps countrywide." Yet all the previous distributions by the Friends Church Peace Team were made to IDP's who had not been served by the Red Cross. Person after person reported that the Red Cross trucks passed them by and never helped them out. The IDP's who are not Kikuyu claim that the Red Cross (at least in Western Province) only served the Kikuyu and neglected anyone from other ethnic groups.

As part of this effort, Kaimosi Hospital rented an ambulance and sent their head nurse, Irene Gulavi, with some medicines. I wasn't sure if this was necessary because the Government had a clinic at the camp. How wrong I was! She had a long line of people waiting for her services and she was still working away when the rest of us left after 3:00 p.m. This clearly indicated that the Government clinic was not working properly. When I asked folks whom I knew, I was told that the Government clinic had no medicine and so they just wrote a prescription for people to go buy the medicine. But since the refugees didn't have any money to buy the medicine, they didn't. So, in the end, I was sure glad that Irene came.

I talked with a number of the FCPT counselors following their sessions with the IDPs and I heard the following:

1. The youth were still very bitter and could easily be goaded into attacking and killing others.

2. The young women in the camp were being solicited by some of the policemen in the station, and with few other sources of income, some of them were falling into prostitution.

3. Almost no one wanted to go back to their home communities because they knew the people who destroyed their houses; they could see their possessions in the houses of their neighbors. Whenever they visited their former home, for one reason or another, they were asked why they were coming back. When I asked some where they wanted to go, they responded that they wanted the Government to buy land for them in places like Nakuru--which, in my opinion, was perhaps even worse than the Lugari area!

4. One person asked the FCPT counselor why there were no Nandi (the local Kalenjin group that did much of the trouble in the area) in our team. Another asked why the Luhya (the group that most Friends belong to and most of the counselors were from, and the majority population in Lugari District) did not help them out when they were attacked. Interesting questions!

5. Many of the IDP's were very angry with certain Nandi politicians whom they claimed incited people to force them out of their land, homes, and businesses.

I think that the day was a real eye-opener for the thirty or so Friends' counselors. Everyone is supposed to make a report of what they did and learned and on May 2 there will be a committee meeting to discuss this and to discern the way forward. Then the following week there will be another two-day retreat for all the counselors.

I have been asked to be the Chair of the FCPT counseling group!!! I asked them to get someone else, but they ended up selecting me anyway. I didn't think I could really refuse since this is the work I am supposed to be doing.

For me the most poignant time of the day was when we were in the field and I noticed a small toy compound obviously made by the kids. It was built solely of dirt, rocks, and twigs! Quite neatly and nicely done--much more like the home they fled than the IDP camp.

Peace,
Dave

David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams

Apr 17 - Rept 42 - David Zarembka - AGLI UPDATE - Multi-ethnic trainings have begun

Dear All,

After writing so many words on the political, social, and economic conditions here in Kenya, I thought I would to update you on what AGLI is doing about all this.

Through our partner, Friends for Peace and Community Development and their Friends Peace Centre-Lubao, AVP in western Kenya plans on doing at least 200 AVP workshops (mostly with youth) in the next six months. We plan on doing ten to twenty workshops in a community so that the program can make a useful impact. We will focus on Western, Nyanza, and northern Rift Valley provinces. This is a huge undertaking as it means an average of 33 AVP workshops per month--the most we had done in the past was during the AVP program with the gacaca judges in Rwanda when we did about 6 per month. Not counting this week, we have done 15.

This goal presents numerous challenges.

First, we need to have a sufficient number of facilitators. We have increased the AVP staff at the Friends Peace Center--Lubao from one, Getry Agizah, the AVP coordinator, to five, by adding Peter Serete, Bernard Onjala, Eunice Okwemba, and Caleb Amunya. These are the lead facilitators who can go off with two other facilitators and conduct a quality workshop. We are already in the process of developing additional lead facilitators, but we also need more regular facilitators. In some cases we have "re-found" facilitators that we had trained in the past.

We are beginning to correct one of our problems. Almost all Quakers in Kenya are of the Luhya ethnic group and of the above facilitators only Bernard Onjala is not a Luhya (he is a Luo). AVP had already trained a group of Luo facilitators in Nyanza Province from the organization that Onjala is affiliated with--ARO, which is sponsored by Norwegians. The AVP group there has just turned in enrollment forms for 360 youth, that means 18 three-day basic AVP workshops, in Bondo, and in Kisumu, the city on Lake Victoria most hard-hit by the violence. Next week they will begin conducting four workshops per week.

We have no Kikuyu facilitators in western Kenya. This week we are also conducting another Training for Facilitators (T4F). We have invited three Kikuyu youth from our first training at the Turbo IDP camp, together with three of the youth from the village AVP here in Lumakanda (two Luhya and one Luo), to participate. All of these youth took the advanced AVP workshop last week and we received reports indicating that all of them were very "active" (the word used here to indicate that they will be good facilitators). Of course not everyone works out, but this will be a start. We have already started using multi-ethnic teams as much as possible, but this is an area where we need to drastic improvement. The T4F will include five students from Friends Theological College who will be graduating in June and whom we hope to use to meet the increased demand for AVP workshops among Kenyan Quakers .

It is most important that we carefully monitor the quality of the workshops. Conducting this large number of workshops with many new facilitators, we need to do our utmost to insure that the quality of the workshops does not deteriorate.

There is a group of four Australians who have built a small guest house in Shinyalu, about 10 miles from Kakamega, called Takatifu (holy) Gardens. It is affiliated with Central (Kenya) Yearly Meeting. We have made an arrangement with them to use their guest house and are now holding two AVP workshops per week there. These can be residential, meaning the participants can stay overnight and do not have to travel home and return each morning. Therefore we have a new plan. We do the basic AVP workshops out in the community and then bring 4 of the most "active" participants to a residential Advanced Workshop at Takatifu Gardens. In rural areas most people are of the same ethnic group, so basic workshops tend not to have an ethnic mix. Bringing together people from various areas will allow us to have multi-ethnic advanced workshops. A nice part of this arrangement is that AVP supplies the facilitators and materials, while Takatifu Gardens supplies the space, food, and when needed, lodging.

I could go on and on, but you get the gist. Getry Agizah is an amazing organizer. Moreover in a culture where everyone wants to "negotiate" (i.e., overcharge), she is adamantly frugal. We have developed a menu for the workshop meals, are in the process of costing out the menu precisely, have established a limit ($300) on expenses for each workshop, etc. We do not pay for space. If the community wants the AVP workshop, they must provide the space.

While we have received a good response for funding these workshops, additional donations are still needed. If we receive even more funds, beyond those needed for workshops currently planned, then we will be able to offer additional workshops. Donations can be made by writing a check to FPT/AGLI with a memo of "Kenya Reconciliation" and mailing it to Friends Peace Teams/AGLI, 1001 Park Avenue, St Louis, MO 63104 USA or using a credit card on our webpage, www.aglionline.org. Thanks for the consideration.

Peace,
Dave

David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams

Apr 8 - David Zarembka - Update on AVP activities

This is David Z's summary of approximately 150 workshops AVP is currently doing in Western Kenya. It's a huge and laudable undertaking. Read on! (Mary)

AVP – Kenya

David Zaremka

Here are activities that we have done and are doing here in Kenya

1. Takatifu Gardens: "Takatifu" means "holy." This is a group of four Australians who are semi-Quakers. They somehow got connected with Central Yearly Meeting (that is here in Kenya, not the one in the US). About two years ago, they started building a small place in a town, Shinyalu, about 10 miles from Kakamega. It is very nicely constructed. Before the violence their place (which can sleep 24 with six to a room) was used for volunteers from overseas and from Kenya itself. Their program was a lending library of mostly Christian books to the children in the schools in the area.

During the violence there were almost no volunteers to host, so they got the idea of doing AVP workshops in their space. We quickly agreed. They have already done eight basic workshops, mostly for people in their community. Our arrangement is that they cover all the participants' costs (food is the biggest item) and AVP covers the facilitator costs.

We have used the workshops there to give additional experience to some of our beginning facilitators. Already three have moved from beginners to experienced. Next week we will have two residential advanced workshops. We have changed the concept here. Formerly we would do some basic workshops in an area and then do an advanced workshop with the best participants from the basic workshops. We now plan on doing some of the advanced workshops at Takatifu and bring four or five people from various basic workshops we have done in different communities so that people from different parts of western Kenya will be brought together. I think this is a nice development.

2. Buchifi Community Center: Brad Ogilvie, who works at William Penn House in Washington, DC., has connected with us. He has an organization called the Mosaic Initiative. It's goal is "Through our three initiatives, we bring together people from all walks of life, and touch on near and far corners of the world. We work with these individuals and groups to identify common goals aimed at preventing the spread of HIV and promoting unity in our communities. The creative partners and coalitions are committed to working closely with treatment and care organizations to insure that the newly and previously diagnosed people with HIV receive compassionate and appropriate services, while also working diligently to overcome the economic and social conditions that feed the perpetuation of HIV and other preventable diseases."

One of these initiatives is to support Buchifi Community Center here in Kenya. Their contact person is named Eluid Ojenge. What I find interesting is that unlike most AIDS prevention programs, which focus only on prevention, the Mosaic Initiative sees that AIDS will be best prevented by solving many problems in a community, including poverty and, in the current situation in Kenya, peace. As such Brad, who was receiving my updates from Kenya, asked if we could do AVP workshops with youth in the Buchifi community. The Mosaic Initiative has sent us funds to do some workshops and we will be starting with the first two next week.

3. AVP-Turkana: WE have been trying to introduce AVP to the Turkana and Pokot in northern Kenya. These are pastoral peoples whose youth frequently steal each other’s cows and engage in running battles. Due to various circumstances we were unable to implement the program. Finally at the end of March we were able to do the first two AVP basic workshops which went well. We will now be bringing three Pokot and three Turkana to one of the advanced workshops next week at Takatifu Gardens and then for a training of facilitators at the Lubao Center.

4. Lugari District: Here we have done one AVP basic workshop with youth from the Lumakanda community, and as I write we are doing the first AVP basic in the Turbo Internally Displaced Persons (IDP) camp nearby. We plan to do another basic in the community and another in the IDP camp, and then do at least two advanced workshops bringing the two groups together. We will also do AVP workshops in other areas of Lugari District.

5. ARO: This is a center near Bondo in Nyanza Province (Luo rather than Luhya). Getry, Eunice and I visited it yesterday. This center is supported by the Norwegians, and its purpose is poverty eradication and peace-building. They have done a lot on the poverty eradication with many interesting projects. They have outreach branches in the communty around them. Our AVP staff member, Bernard Onjala, is affiliated with this organization. Recently twelve of the AVP participants went to an IDP camp in Kisumu, mostly of Luo who were attacked in Naivasha and Nakuru, to counsel them. They have a picture, with all of them and an about five-year-old boy who watched the attackers cut of the heads of both his parents! Their AVP program is to do the workshops with youth in five of their branches. This ought to start in about two weeks.

6. Chwele Yearly Meeting: Chwele Yearly Meeting is right below the conflict on Mt Elgon. The conflict is coming down the mountain and already has impacted their area. We have approved a proposal to do ten AVP basic workshops with youth in ten different Friends churches in the yearly meeting.

7. Uzima Foundation: Janet Ifedha, who is the Uzima Foundation coordinator in Western Province and an experienced AVP facilitator, has given us a proposal to do 20 workshop with the bicycle taxi drivers in three communities near Kakamega. These will begin as soon as they are arranged. Uzima had developed their own youth facilitators.

8. Lubao Peace Centre: The week after next we will hold a Training for Facilitators at the Lubao Centre. We will be bringing in the best participants from the various places we have done AVP, including Friends Theological College. Since we are doing so many workshops, we need to have more facilitators. Here is the advantage of having our own center. Normally a residential workshop would cost us around $1000 or more, but I expect that this one at Lubao will cost about $500, so this is saving us at least $500.

We badly need the office building that the workcampers started last summer. Barbara Myers and Dawn/Mark Amos have collected $6,000 to continue with the construction. The last rows of the bricks are being put on and then the roof. This will probably take all these funds, so we will still be needing others for doors, windows, plastering, etc.

At Adrien's request, because he would have just returned from his highly successful tour of the US, the HROC Healing Companion training has been postponed until the end of May. This will be at the Peace Centre.

9. Others: There are a number of other groups that are developing proposals for AVP with youth in their community. In Gladys's home village of Viyalo, the Rafiki Mwema (Good Friends) Women's Group, which is supported by Right Sharing of World Resources, is planning some AVP workshops for their members and then the youth in the area. The Friends Church in Eldoret will sponsor 20 workshops with youth. Twenty are also planned for Malava and 20 for Kimilili, which is also on Mt Elgon and the place from which many of the displaced people come. Not counting the workshops at Takatifu, Buchifi, and Lubao, the total is about 150 workshops. We also have one proposal expected from Kitale.

Comments: When people want to do a series of AVP workshops, we ask them for a proposal (we give them a form) which includes the venue, who the workshops are for, the responsible person/group, etc. and a budget.

Peace,

Dave

David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams

Apr 4, Rpt #40, David Zarembka, Will present greed lead to future violence?

Sent: Friday, April 04, 2008 7:56 AM

Dear All,

Last week Val Liveoak sent me an email asking about an article she had read which told of the frenzy in Kenya to buy Safaricom shares. Since this really is an indication of what is wrong with Kenya, let me discuss it in detail.

Safaricom is the most profitable company in East Africa. It is a cell phone company that just passed the 10 million mark in customers. Celtel, the other cell phone company, has 2 to 3 million subscribers. Since there are only 34 million people in Kenya, at least one out of three people has a cell phone. You can buy a cell phone for $30 now (and probably much less if you get a stolen one). Calls are billed by the second and only the sender is charged. The charge is high at 21 cents per minute (but there are lots of plan variations). To call the US is 38 cents per minute. So they make a lot of profit. On the other hand they have been a very creative and innovative company. I think that they were the first company in Africa to enable people to send money through their cell phones.

Currently the Kenyan Government owns 60% of the company shares. They are selling 25% of the shares at 5/- each (7.5 cents) and the minimum purchase is 2,000 shares for a total cost of $150. The total for sale of 25% is then 50 billion shillings or almost $800 million. Presently there are 800,000 Kenyans who own shares on the Nairobi stock exchange. The prediction is that this offer will be oversubscribed by 4 times -- 3,000,000 Kenyans. If you have a job, you can go to any bank (big ads in the papers) and borrow 10,000/- or more to buy shares. The banks never say what the costs of these loans are. [NOTE /- is the symbol for Kenyan shilling.]

These 3,000,000 Kenyans (almost 10% of the population) are the middle and upper classes of Kenya. The reason for the frenzy here is GREED. People think that they can get the shares now at 5/- and sell them when they can be traded on the stock exchange in June for 10/-, 15/-, 20/- or even 200/- and make a tremendous profit without doing anything except pay back their loans if they have them.

Here are the problems with this reasoning.

First, this offer is gigantic in terms of the economy of Kenya. The 50 billion shillings times 4 (if oversubscribed) will sit in banks for the next three months while the offer is being processed. This is a huge amount of money that the banks are/will be sitting on, but which is not lendable. Therefore interest rates will rise.

Second, people are selling shares in other companies in order to buy Safaricom shares so the Nairobi stock exchange is depressed. (Frankly, if I were in the stock market business, I would not buy Safaricom shares, but the other companies whose shares are now undervalued. But I lack the GREED that Kenyans have.)

Safaricom has big, full-page advertisements in the paper. These include the risks involved which are not insignificant. First, the cell phone market in Kenya is now almost saturated so Safaricom cannot in the future grow at the rate it has in the past. Second, a third mobile phone company is entering the market sometime soon and will create more competition that may lower the costs to customers (as it should), but will also depress Safaricom's profits in the future. There are about twenty other risks mentioned, including the return of chaos to the country.

At the price of 5/- per share the impression is that the stock is cheap. But with 10 billion shares, 5/- may in fact be an overestimate of the value of the company. If you read the financial analysis of the offering in the business section, as I do, you will note that the shares may be vastly over-valued. In other words, what if in June the shares turn out to trade at only 3/- per share? Or 1/-? People will not be able to pay off their loans with the profits from their GREED, but will need to use their regular income to pay back the loan and its expenses. If this doomsday scenario happens much of the middle class will be in hock. If this happens they will think that they have been deceived by the Government, they will demand redress, and these demands could again turn into violence as the entire economy goes into real shock.

Raila Odinga and the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) are opposing the sale at this time. Their reasoning is as follows. A number of years ago the Kenyan Government sold 30% of their shares to Vodafone, a big British telecommunications company. But somehow or other a company called Mobitelea Ventures, which was registered in an offshore haven, ended up owning 5% (now it seems like it is 10%) of the shares of the most profitable company in East Africa. No one knows the identity of the officers or shareholders of Mobitelia. It seems clear that the owners of the Safaricom shares in this company are those politicians and high level civil servants who received bribes to complete the deal. This means that they are worth at 5/- per share, $160 million ( if 5% of the shares) or $320 (if 10% of the shares). This is Kenyan corruption on a grand scale. ODM wants the directors and shareholders of Mobitelea Ventures to be made public before the Safaricom shares are sold. It is easy to see why some people in the Kenyan Government did not want to give up their offices to the opposition which, during the election, promised to investigate this scandal and many others.

Do you remember the looting, burning, police repression, and death in January and February?
Kenya is back to normal, where GREED rules. This Safaricom sale is a clear indication that fundamentally, at the level of what needs to happen to reform this society, the conflict has already been forgotten. This is what happened in 1992 and 1997 when various politicians were assassinated, and what happened with the other simmering conflicts in the country.

As I noted in the last of my nine interpretation of the conflict here, this is a spiritual crisis. If people from top politicians and civil servants down to the many buying the Safaricom shares continue to put their own selfish interests ahead of the interest of the society and the country as a whole, then my friends, I think we will see another round of violence in a few years. Kenya needs to practice "Love your neighbor as yourself", "do unto others as you would have them do unto you," and other spiritual concepts that put others, society as a whole, ahead of GREED.

In response to the question that I posed in my March 30 report, Kenya's gift to America is
Barack Obama.

Peace,
Dave

David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams

March 30, Rpt 39, David Zarembka, IDP's attend Friends Church

Dear All,

The whole front page and four interior pages today in the Sunday Nation were titled "Kenya's Gift to America". What is this gift? The correct answer will appear in my next report. (Since the conflict has calmed down, I need some gimmick to keep you reading my reports!)

On Friday at 3:00 p.m., Gladys and I along with two others started off to take another delivery of goods to the internally displaced people in Turbo. By the time we got to Turbo, it had begun to rain and soon it was pouring. Since the IDP's cannot distribute the food and blankets in the rain, we returned home. On Saturday morning we set out again before the rains which might start in the afternoon. As usual we were greeted and thanked by the people; there were speeches, prayer, and song. As we were leaving Gladys suggested that they come to visit the Friends Church on the following day(Sunday).

We then returned home where I got a speeding ticket going 78 kilometer an hour when I was supposed to be going 50 kilometers per hours (roughly 50 mph and 30 mph). Since there was no sign and it was between two towns, I don't know how I was supposed to know. Almost everyone was being stopped because the police clearly had a new toy, a radar gun to check speeds. So we paid 2,000/- bond ($30) and I have to go to court on Tuesday in Eldoret. Bummer.

This Sunday morning we got up and went to Lumakanda Friends Church for the 8:00 a.m. service. About 50 to 60 people were there (a little below average) plus perhaps 30 to 40 children in the Sunday school. The Service lasted about an hour and fifteen minutes and after greeting people and buying the newspaper we went home. The electrician showed up. Now that the rainy season is in full swing and it is cloudy most of the day, I am only getting about 3 hours of laptop time per day--way under my needs. But while we were away in the United States, the electric company finally put the two poles and wires from the road to our house. We had ordered this in September and paid the require $500+ fee (you can easily see why only about 10% of Kenyans are hooked up to the electric grid). Yesterday they installed the meter, but we needed to have the solar power system disconnected and the regular power connected--later we will have an automatic switch installed so that when the power goes out as it often does, the solar will be a back-up.

As this was going on Gladys got a call from the pastor of Lumakanda Friends Church. The people from the IDP camp in Turbo had come for the second church service. The first service (mostly in Swahili) is for the older people and kids, while the second one (mostly in English) is for the youth. So we went back to Church. The forty people who came from the IDP camp outnumbered the 30 or so regular people. The service was already underway and lasted over two more hours--with all those guests, the singing was better, more songs were sung, the sermon was energetic, and the prayers were fervent. It was the most lively that I had ever seen this Church. (I consider Lumakanda Friends Church to be a "tired" Church.)

At one point they had people from the IDP camp who wanted to do so to make presentations. Five did, thanking the Church for remembering them and helping them out. These were the internally displaced people who had initially been housed Lumakanda Primary School, so these were our neighbors. The first man who spoke indicated that he attended the PAG (Pentecostal Assemblies of God) Church which is located right next door and where the congregation right at that moment was singing robustly through a loud speaker. Did this increase his feeling of alienation? I had mixed feelings--it was nice for him to be in the Friends Church, but it was sad that he was not in the PAG Church because they had not done any reconciliation or relief work.

Then they asked me to give a presentation. I started with a Kirundi (the language of Burundi) proverb, "a real friend comes in a time of need," although I translated this into Swahili as "a true friend comes in a time of trouble". Next I told one of my favorite stories which I will repeat for you here. In Kampala, Uganda, there is an association of HIV+ women who hammer stones into gravel and get paid the equivalent of about 75 cents per day (if they are lucky). I have seen these women alongside the road pounding away. When Hurricane Katrina hit New Orleans and the surrounding area, these women collected about $900 among themselves to send to the US for relief. They said that they had heard that people had lost their houses and everything and had to flee and it was an African custom to help out those who were in need. So they were only helping those who needed it. I went on a little bit longer, but I tend to speak succinctly.

Then there was more singing, the sermon (which was not succinct), the offering, and the final prayers. Then the pastor, James Mugeti, who had really done a good job of warmly welcoming the internally displaced people, asked that they come again, but he asked that they give notice so that the Church could be better prepared to welcome them. I think this will happen.

After the break up of the service, Gladys and I had to shake hands with many and talk to some. I found out that a truck had brought them, that is, the forty of them rode in the back bed of the truck.

Is this not a wonderful piece of reconciliation work?

When we got back, the electricity was all hooked up. But as I wrote this report, it already cut off once!

Peace,
Dave

David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams

March 27, Rpt 38, David Zarembka, Discussion of 9 possible factors behind Kenya's recent violence

Here David Zarembka gives a good discussion of the complexity behind KEnya's recent history. He says to "choose one or more" of what he calls interpretations. I choose all except the first. Mary

Nine Interpretations of the Violence in Kenya in Early 2008
By David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams

People like simple explanations for world events. When I was young, "Godless Communism" explained US foreign policy and now "Al-Qaeda" serves the same purpose. I will be giving you nine interpretations of the recent events in Kenya. You may choose one or more of those interpretations that you feel comfortable with and reject others. As you will see I have some opinions.

First we need to understand the context. In about sixty days following the announcement of the election results on December 27, 2007, approximately 1000 to 1500 people were killed by violence in Kenya. This compares with 850,000 who died in the Rwandan genocide in a hundred days, 300,000 who died over twelve years of civil war in Burundi, and the estimated 4 to 5 million who have died in the eastern Congo since 1996.

Early in March I received an email from Hezron Masitsa, the AVP-Coordinator in Nairobi. He wrote that a Kenyan named Joran Shijenje had been shot and killed on his way home from work. In Baltimore, Maryland! During the two months of conflict in Kenya, when 1000 to 1500 were killed, there were 5,000 to 6,000 homicides in the United States. I also just read in the paper that one out of every hundred Americans is now in jail. Something is clearly wrong with American society-but that is not the topic of this report.

1. "Ancient Tribal Hatreds”: Almost all international coverage of the crisis in Kenya was based on the interpretation that the conflict was due to "ancient tribal hatreds". For example, on January 27, Reuters, the wire service, distributed a picture of a woman lying dead on the floor in a pool of blood with her baby boy crying on a chair behind her. The caption read, "The body of a woman lies on the floor as her child cries during ethnic clashes in Naivasha, after members of Kenya's President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe fought running battles with the Luos and Kalenjins who back Kibaki's rival Raila Odinga." The problem with this interpretation is that the woman, a Luo married to a Kikuyu, was killed by the police! In fact 43% of those killed in Kenya were killed by the police and not in any ethnic fighting. Contrary to both international and Kenyan law the police used live bullets against demonstrators, rioters, and looters.

While the international media was focusing on those burnt to death in a church outside of Eldoret, the Kenya media was focusing on those killed and wounded by the police in Kisumu. Of the 82 people killed in Kisumu, the home city of the Luo, how many were Kikuyu were killed by the Luo? Zero, all 82 were killed by the police. In fact the Luo and Luhya (the ethnic group of most of the 139,000 Quakers in Kenya) do not kill people because they believe that the spirit of someone killed would haunt the killer with a guilty conscience. They may beat them and push them out of their homes, but they do not kill them.

Raila Odinga says that the election was not about ethnic divisions since many Kikuyu voted for him including 3,000 in Mwai, Kibaki's home constituency of Central Province. More to the point, one of his daughters-in-law is a Kikuyu. There are many, many ethnically mixed marriages in Kenya.

To understand the situation in Kenya as "ancient tribal hatreds" is to understand World War I and World War II as "ancient tribal hatreds" between the Germans on one side and the French, English, and Russians on the other. This interpretation explains nothing.

2. Stolen election: The second interpretation is that the conflict was a result of the election’s being stolen by the Kibaki Government. On the election day of December 27, I was a poll observer in Lumakanda where I live. The voting itself was excellent. People waited for an hour or two in the sun to vote (the lines were much shorter in the afternoon) and the voting for president, member of parliament (MP), and local county council was very orderly and well done. I watched as the votes were counted and the observers from the various political parties signed the results. Well done. It was in Nairobi during the counting that the fraud took place. As soon as the results were announced, the appropriate form was taken by the Head of the Electoral Commission to Mwai Kibaki. The Chief Justice just happened to be there to administer the oath of office - this is usually done a few days later with foreign dignitaries present.

Those people who supported Raila Odinga and his Orange Democratic Party (ODM) felt that the election had been stolen from them. They had gone to the polls to vote patiently and properly and then the results were manipulated. ODM planned a rally at Uhuru Park in Nairobi and a million of his supporters were expected to attend. Although freedom of assembly is one of the freedoms people have, the Government blocked the park by ringing it with riot police who used tear gas, water cannons, and live bullets to disperse those who planned to attend. Naturally many of the tear-gassed youth rioted, and thus began the destruction in Nairobi. Other cities where demonstrations were planned had the same result. For some reason the authorities in Kapsabet, in the volatile Rift Valley Province, allowed the demonstration which took place peacefully; the demonstrators blew off steam, went home and there was no violence.

The Government, again contrary to international standards, clamped restrictions on the media. I had to listen to BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) to learn what was really happening in Kenya. Twice people in the United States informed me of developments in Kenya before I had heard of them myself.

The difficulty with this interpretation is that, suppose that Raila Odinga did win and should in fact be the President. The problem is still the same - a sharply divided country-with only the faces having changed.

3. Class warfare: A third interpretation is class warfare. The election results were no more than a trigger for decades-long tension due to economic inequality. During the five years of the first Kibaki Presidency, after years of stagnation, the economy had grown robustly. The GNP increased by 7% in 2007. But this growth in income has gone almost exclusively to the wealthy. Kenya (along with the United States) is a nation with one of the highest rates of inequality in the world. Former President Moi's two sons are reported to have fortunes of over $500,000,000 and none of this is inherited since their father is still living. And Kenya is supposed to be a poor country. The Kenyan elite is extremely wealthy. Many of these elite are Kikuyu, so the average person who has no contact directly with the wealthy elite took out their pent-up rage on their Kikuyu neighbors who, really, were no better off than they were.

Another aspect of this inequality is that Government funds, economic development, and business opportunities were confined to Nairobi and Central Province, the home area of the Kikuyu, while much of the rest of the country was starved for funds. People everywhere paid taxes, which were disproportionately spent in the center of the country. The violence was a response to this economic injustice.

4. Youth rebellion: Another interpretation is that the violence was a youth rebellion. Many youth felt alienated in that they had no stake in Kenyan society and no hopes for a better future. While older people tended to vote for Kibaki, the youth tended to vote for Raila. I was at a meeting where two parents said that they had voted for Kibaki, while their children had voted for Raila, and this had created tensions in the family. When the youth voted for Raila they were voting for change and a better future. They felt that their vote had been stolen after they had gone, naively it turned out, to the polls to vote for change.

There is no doubt that the newly elected members of parliament are much younger and better educated than the previous parliament. Note also that in this election only 80 out of 222 MP's were re-elected! Many of those who lost were the old, old members who had been in government and politics since the time of independence in 1963. The youth also wanted this change at the top-Kibaki is 76 and Raila 62.

5. Land issues: Particularly in the Rift Valley, but also in other parts of the country, the issue was ownership and control of land. When the British came to Kenya at the beginning of the twentieth century, the Kalenjin and Maasi groups in the Rift valley opposed the British militarily. As a result the British crushed them, which in those days meant not only defeating the warriors in battle, but burning their villages, killing their animals, and destroying their crops. The surviving Maasi and Kalenjin groups were then pushed north and south to the more marginal areas of the Rift Valley, leaving the fertile, well-watered land in the middle mostly vacant.

In this now mostly vacant land the British created the "white highlands". They gave large estates to British settlers. We are not talking about the 160-acre quarter section given to American settlers (one fourth of a square mile). Karen Blixen, author of Out of Africa, had 6,000 acres. Others were given 10,000, 20,000, and even 100,000 acres. This is in a land where today there are only 1.5 arable acres per person. The Mau-Mau rebellion of the 1950's was partly a protest against this great inequality.

When Kenya gained independence in 1963 the Kalenjins and Maasi thought that the lands seized from them would be returned. What happened was that many of these large estates were transferred from the departing British settlers to the new ruling Kenyan elite, who were mostly the loyalist supporters of the British during the Mau-Mau rebellion. Others of these estates were bought up by land companies, divided into plots and sold to those who could afford them - in most cases this meant Kikuyu from Central Province rather than the original owners of the land.

These land issues have not been resolved but allowed to fester. At the time of the 1992 elections there was violence in the Rift Valley during which an estimated 1000 people were killed. Folks in Lumakanda tell me that it was even worse than the recent round of violence. At the time of the 1997 election there was violence again. On Mt. Elgon, since June of 2006, over 500 people had been killed over a land dispute between two clans of the Sabaot, a Kalenjin group. Note that this total is one-third to one-half the number killed in the recent post-election violence. There were other deadly disputes in Molo, Rongai, Laikipia, and elsewhere. The election 2007 election results triggered additional violence in these areas.

6. Violence as usual: Although Kenya had a reputation as a peaceful, calm country -- unlike many of its neighbors, I had always considered it otherwise. On May 5, 1969 I was in Kenya when the powerful Luo Minister for Economic Development, Tom Mboya, was assassinated. Kenya felt then just as it did during the recent crisis. The glue that had been holding the country together was no longer working. One didn't know if the country would descend into chaos. The difference this time was the existence of cell phones and the internet. In 1969 we had to rely solely on word-of-mouth rumor. This time we could use our cell phones to phone or text people in other parts of the country and ask them what was happening. Then, as I did, we could report events as we saw them to the outside world via the internet.

The electioneering period before December 27 was also very violent. At least 25 people were killed. An assistant minister was discovered to have "traditional weapons" (machetes, bows and arrows, clubs, etc) in his Government-sponsored vehicle and nothing happened to him, although he did lose the election. A prominent minister who had controlled the Kisii area for decades was shown on TV talking to the leader of a gang with a bow and arrow in his hand. Two minutes later the gang leader attacked members of the opposition who were alighting from a helicopter. One of the major leaders of the opposition, William Ruto, was put in the hospital for a week or more. Again nothing happened to this minister, but he also lost the election. At the local level, our electrician was the leader for the ODM youth here in Lugari District and he and four other youth, while putting up posters of their candidate, were attacked by youth from a rival candidate. He had to go to the hospital for treatment and two of his friends were hospitalized.

Roughly every few days one reads in the newspapers of people killed by mob justice. This occurs because the police are corrupt and when people turn in a thief, within a day or two, he has paid a bribe and is out on the streets again. I have seen this myself in Nairobi, where a large crowd runs after an alleged thief, who survives only if the police are able to rescue him. The attitude that makes this acceptable is the same attitude that allows a person to attack a neighbor because they happen to be from a different ethnic group.

7. Centralized government: The nature of colonial rule is that everything needs to be controlled from the center by the colonial power. Consequently when the British gave Kenya independence they also passed on a very strong central government. While Jomo Kenyatta was president, this centralization was increased. He was an icon that could not be challenged. As a result, the president of Kenya controls not only the executive branch, but also the judicial branch, the legislature, the electoral commission, the police, and the army. For example, President Kibaki had appointed all 22 members of the Elector Commission of Kenya which announced that he had won the Dec 27 vote.

The results of this highly centralized government are that winning the election is crucial, as the candidate either wins "everything" or nothing. It also allows for the control of wealth and power by the group that controls the presidency. Kenyatta was a Kikuyu who started the trend to reward the Kikuyu over others. When Kenyatta died and Daniel arap Moi became president he quickly accommodated himself with the Kikuyu elite power structure and survived for twenty-four years until Kibaki defeated him in the 2002 election. Part of Kibaki's platform during this election, where he was supported by the Luo and other ethnic groups, was to decentralized the government and make the distribution of resources more equitable. But as soon as he gained control of that centralized power, he refused to give it up. As a referendum on centralized power, Raila won six of the eight provinces, 99 members of parliament, and control of almost all the cities outside of Central and Eastern provinces which were won by Kibaki. So the violence was a demand for what is being called "devolution" of power.

8. International Community: We must not let the international community off the hook. I will give three examples of how actions of the international community have adversely affected the situation in Kenya.

The first is birth control. Remember back around 1980 when there was a big debate about abortion in the United States and the Reagan administration cut off funds for family planning accusing them of promoting abortion? In Kenya this came to mean opposition to birth control. When I was in Kenya in 1970, in Machakos District, the family planning clinic had three people to serve a population of almost 1,000,000. It is the large number of children born at that time who are the youth (youth in Africa is defined as anyone under 35) that participated in the violence after the 2007 election. At that time Kenya had one of the highest birth rates in the world. It dropped considerably in the 1990's but I understand that the birth rate in Kenya is again increasing because of the emphasis on HIV/AIDS.

The second is the structural adjustment program placed on Kenya in the 1980's by the International Monetary Fund. For our example here, this meant that the Kenyan Government could not increase the number of public servants, including teachers. So as the population of school-aged children was increasing rapidly, the number of teachers was not. Moreover, in 2003 the Kibaki government declared free primary school education and about 1,000,000 additional children showed up for school. The result is classes of up to 100 students with few resources for their education. So the large numbers of children born in the 1960's, 70's, and 80's have not received adequate education.

Lastly there is the issue of corruption. The former dictator of Zaire (now the Congo) is reported to have said, "I know I am corrupt, but who is corrupting me?" The centralized form of government in Kenya also allowed for gigantic corruption at the center. Kenya is known as one of the most corrupt countries in the world. In almost every case of this grand corruption there were international partners involved - businesses, governments, NGO's, and the UN agencies. I will give only one example.

Safaricom is the most profitable company in East Africa with 8.5 million cell phone subscribers. At one time it was owned totally by the Kenya Government. A few years ago they sold off 30% of its shares to Vodafone, a large British telecommunications company. Later it came out that the Government had only 65% of the shares left because 5% had been given to a mysterious company called Mobitelea Ventures. The public does not know who the officers or shareholders of this company are. It is therefore is assumed to be the "bribe" that Vodafone paid for buying the Safaricom shares. The Kenyan Government is now selling off another 25% of their remaining holdings in Safaricom.

9. Spiritual/religious: The zeitgeist of Kenyan society is Hobbesian economics -- if everyone does things in their own interest, society will function for the best. This has long ago been determined to mean that the fortunate few exploit the many for their own interest. In Kenya personal and family greed is more important than societal prosperity. This is true from the rulers at the top to those at the bottom who believe that stepping on others is the way to get ahead. Rather than praising Kikuyu for their hard work and emulating their success, the violence after the election was an attempt to bring them down to the level of everyone else because of the perception that they had succeeded.

The Biblical injunctions that one should love one's neighbor and do unto others as they have done unto you have been largely ignored. Within a few weeks after the violence began, I heard a sermon at the Lumakanda Friends Church which stated that a true Christian would never loot property, burn a home, or kill someone - and this was from a woman who had to move out of her house in Eldoret because it was owned by a Kikuyu. I have heard that this message has been preached in many other churches of all denominations.

*****

So you may select those interpretations that seem most logical to you. I would say that a viable solution to the violence requires much more than a political settlement by the two sides. Rather it means a major restructuring of Kenyan society addressing the underlying causes mentioned above. Kenyans are well aware of these issues and the need for corrective action. Unfortunately in the past in Kenya, whenever there has been a crisis, the tendency has been to ignore the underlying causes as the country returned to "normal". But "normal" in Kenya means the building up of pressures which will again explode into violence unless they are addressed. It is still too early to determine if fundamental changes will be made or all will soon be "back to normal", if there will be significant improvements for all or another round of violence, perhaps during the next election in 2012 .

David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams

March 27, Report 37, A good story is wonderful! David Zarembka

Dear All,

A good story is wonderful.

Chapter 1: Perhaps you remember that my email of February 24 concerned the two sons, Anthony and Nivan, of a distant relative of Gladys, who bring us our daily milk. They are Luhya. One evening after Nivan had brought the milk to our house about 6:00 PM, he and Anthony and another friend were walking in town when a Kikuyu youth attacked Nivan with a machete. He put up his arm to keep the blow from hitting him in the head and one of his arm bones was broken and the other bone badly cut. We saw Nivan and Anthony in the hospital and then went with them to the police station. Here we were told it was a case of a fight over a girl. I asked then if this was a case of ethnic hatred or ethnic love.

Before we left for the United States we talked with the two youth about doing an inter-ethnic AVP workshop here. They organized their friends, came to talk to us, and we arranged for an AVP workshop to occur while we were away. Getry Agizah, the AVP Coordinator, and two other local Lugari District facilitators conducted the workshop, which went very well with 23 youth of various ethnicities (but no Kikuyu).

Chapter 2: When we returned, we asked to meet with the organizing committee for the workshop. Monday evening they came to our house for a discussion. I first asked them what they learned from the workshop and their responses included the use of I-messages, transforming power, and one young woman said, "Even thugs have good in them." So they had learned the lessons well. I then asked them to give an example of when they had used something they learned from the workshop.

The first young woman said that when her sister came into her room all angry and upset, instead of arguing with her, she used I-messages which calmed down her sister. The second was a young man who said that a neighbor's cows had come to eat his napier grass (grown to feed the cows during the dry season). Instead of going over to argue with him about the incident, he used I-messages which he felt had better effect in keeping this from happening again. The third, also a male, gave two examples. Two youth had been fighting for a long time and he brought them together and used transforming power to get them to resolve their hostilities. His second example was a young man with a grave problem--he had "strong homosexual tendencies." So he talked with him, advised him to be positive (another AVP principle). He said that they now talk frequently. Moreover he said that before the workshop, he would have avoided this youth as being "bad and sinful." Nivan was the fourth and talked about resolving a long-standing dispute between two youth over 5 shillings (7 US cents). The last, a female, had great difficulties with her mother who was working her very hard, but always criticizing and yelling at her. So she used I-messages with her mother and this calmed down the situation and began to repair the relationship with her mother.

Note that all the males' testimony (except one) were resolving arguments between two macho males, while the two young women's issues were family concerns. I speculate that the young women are using the I-messages as a method to assert themselves without antagonizing the other person. It is amazing that one three-day workshop could be this effective. The examples recounted here are sufficient to justify having held the workshop and there were 18 more participants and even these five young people may have used the skills learned at other times than these examples which they shared with us.

Next we talked about what they had done since the workshop. They have been meeting twice a week and have developed a play on ethnic differences which they are going to perform on April 10. They also wanted more basic workshops because they had to turn down others who wanted to come to this workshop --they had to actually send home potential participants to keep the workshop at a tenable size. [ Note the ideal number of participants is 20.] A second AVP workshop will take place soon. They told us that they wanted to visit the IDP camp (of Kikuyu) in Turbo. I said, "Let's go tomorrow" as Gladys, Getry, and I already had plans to visit the camp to see how they had been doing since we left for the US.

So yesterday afternoon about 2:00 PM we headed off to the IDP camp. All five of the youth showed up. At the camp we found that there are still 4,000 people. Their chairman, George Njoroge, told me that they had settled in. The school (which has almost 700 students plus another 200 in nursery school) was going nicely although a teacher had just died (I did not ask what he died of). The Red Cross was bringing maize (corn), beans, and now flour for porridge for the children. Since the rainy season had begun, there was no more dust. On the other hand the people in the camp (from all over Lugari District) were unable to go back to their plots of land to cultivate and plant. Njoroge gave us a list of the things which he considered most important--the list really hadn't changed much except that there was now no need for flour for porridge.

We walked through the camp, surrounded by a horde of children, many of the young ones wanting to hold my hand (most young children are afraid of an Mzungu and shy away). The women, in particular, came to greet Gladys warmly. At one point we gathered together, the chairman made a short introductory speech, all eight of us greeted them, there was a song and prayer of thanks. Two camp leaders, Gladys, Getry, and myself then went into our "office"--the back of the pick-up truck where we then discussed the idea of doing an AVP workshop (which we explained) with the youth. Njoroge responded most positively to this suggestion as he said it would be a step towards getting people to be accepted back into their home community. The workshop was arranged for the following week. He promised to recruit youth from each of the ten locations (small administrative units) in Lugari District, half male/half female, find a room and chairs, and two women to cook lunch. Our prior visits to the IDP camp (the first steps in peacebuilding) made these arrangements very easy as the camp leaders were very willing to help with arrangements.

But a good story (real or fiction) needs a surprise ending. While Nivan was walking around the camp, he met the parents of the youth who had slashed him. The parents apologized profusely about their son's behavior (he is no longer around). They asked Nivan if he would forgive their son. Nivan replied that he had already forgiven him since his wound (a large scar on his arm which will never go away) was now healed and he wanted to get on with his life.

Peace,
Dave

David Zarembka, Coordinator
African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams