NEWS FROM KENYA (MATHARE CAMP ETC)
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From: Joyce O.
Date: Friday, February 22, 2008, 5:42 PM
Subject: News from Kenya (Mathare Camp etc)
ID: 259836

Dear Friends,

It has been a while since we "talked". Today I will not give you TMI (too much information), as I know and appreciate how everyone is swarmed with information right now.

When I last gave you my up date, we were planning to take a group of IDPs from the Tigoni Camp, near Nairobi, to Western Kenya.

On the 9th February, we hired 18 buses of a capacity of 65 each, and ferried over 800 people to Kisumu City. We also hired 4 40 foot containers to carry luggage. We did not expect this to be such a huge task! Well, on that morning, we went to the camp at 5.30 a.m. to allow us to leave early so that we would be in Kisumu before dark. It took us almost five hours just to get people ready to board the buses. The previous day Red Cross had given the IDPs foodstuff, and everyone wanted to carry several sack loads into the buses. I have not seen such confusion in my life in a long time (of course apart from the mayhem experienced after the elections!). Anyway, we managed to get everyone into the buses and started off at 12 noon.

The buses did not get to Kisumu until 8.30 p.m. as we had several punctures on the way, and the buses had to travel in a convoy because of security.

The Anglican Church in Kisumu did a brilliant job of receiving, registering and feeding the IDPs. The Red Cross organized for sleeping places at the stadium, but only for 100 people, so the men had to sleep in the buses (much better than the cold in Limuru). It took us another 3 hours to have everyone settled in their sleeping place, and by the time we were going to bed, it was 2 a.m. On Sunday the 10th, we were up at 6 to check on the logistics for proceeding people on to their various ancestral homes, and this went on until 12 noon.

On the evening of our arrival, there were so many sad stories, especially of IDPs who had originally come from Naivasha (one of the worst hit areas in the country). One young man of about 17 had been circumcised by force with a machete. We referred him to a hospital in Kisumu. There was a woman with a two week old baby, born in the Limuru Camp, whose husband could not be traced. She was so tired and in such a daze she was hardly coherent. Luckily, we had almost two dozen counselors on the ground.

When I came back to Nairobi after almost all the IDPs had left for their ancestral homes, I felt that I had accomplished something. I say almost all because there were some people who could not leave immediately because they had nowhere to go. These are people who, like four elderly women in their late 60s, had left their homes when they were young, and had been working in tea, coffee or flower plantations and had never been back to their ancestral homes. They had lost contact with their relatives. Their cases will be handled through the Red Cross.

I am back in Mathare camp, where I have been working for two months now. We have been waiting for the IDPs in this camp to be relocated to a new safer site, and every day we hear that "they will be moved maybe tomorrow", but this has not happened. There has been a lot of tension building within the camp, and we feel as if we are sitting on a time bomb. Yesterday there was a big fight when a drop-in from a different community came to the camp and lined up for food, only to be physically thrown out by the IDPs, who first beat her up very badly. When one of our young lady volunteers went to find out what was happening, she was also almost beaten by the IDPs who accused her of siding with one community.

We have been concentrating our efforts in counselling for children and young people, and on talking about peace, reconciliation, prejudice and tolerance. We are organizing a major games tournament for Saturday 1st March, where we will have several young people talk about co-existence. This will be held right in the middle of the slum, and youth from several different communities have been invited to participate. We are holding onto every little strand that can help bring sanity back, and we hope this will help our young people in Mathare see each other as brothers and sisters, the way they did before this.

I did an interview with BBC, and if you have a moment, you can listen to it by going to their web site, Africa page, latest Kenya story on bbc.co.uk. There is an audio link on the left called "What went wrong in Kenya".

Amani,

Joyce