Happy New Year! and the Riots in Kenya

Happy New Year to everyone! 2008 has started out on a bad foot for Kenyans, as some of you may or may not know, so I thought I would try and explain why what is happening now is happening.

On December 27th Kenya held presidential and parliamentary elections. The two front runners for the presidency were Mwai Kibaki from the Party of National Unity (PNU) and Raila Odinga from the Orange Democratic Movement (ODM). Kibaki was seeking re-election. After the election all the votes had to be tallied by hand, which ended up taking a few days longer than expected. While they were tallying the votes tensions began to rise, and the suspicion that the election was being rigged started to arise. Riots started happening in Nairobi and Kisumu on Saturday ( I think), before the results were even released. On Sunday the results were released saying Kibaki had been re-elected by a margin of two million votes.

By about that time a lot of Kenyans were angry, because it took so long for the results to be released, and also because there was a host of ‘irregularities’ that had occurred while counting ballots. Incidents such as constituency A releasing numbers on Saturday which said Kibaki had 50 000 votes, and then on Sunday upping that number to 70 000 votes without the proper signatures. I am not going to try and list all the problems that the 2007 elections seemed to have, because a lot of the facts I would quote are probably inaccurate, so it is probably best to do your own research.

In the last week there have been a number of violent acts, mostly between Luo’s ( Raila’s tribe) and the Kikuyu ( Kibaki’s tribe). According to The Daily Nation the death toll has now reached 185 and over 150 000 people have been displaced, mostly from the Rift Valley area of Kenya. The roads in and out of Nairobi were shut down at one point and are still periodically blocked by protestors. There is a petrol shortage, and also (to Will’s great sadness) grocery prices have shot through the roof in some places where the trucks have not gotten to in a while. I heard of a man who paid 500 Ksh for two loafs of bread ( that’s about 8 dollars ). As a purely editorial comment, I feel the media is slightly exaggerating what is happening in Kenya right now.

As for how the situation affects us :

We have to watch our step more carefully. As far as I know, no westerners have been targeted yet. The conflict is mainly between the Luo and the Kikuyu, so the greatest risk to us is getting caught in the crossfire. The missionary family we are staying with now lives out in the bush-bush, so no bad stuff has made its way out our direction yet. We have to pay more attention to the newspaper and the radio, and keep tabs on what is going on, and so far it has been very helpful to have those sources of information.

We are at this moment sitting on the porch of a beautiful beachfront house in Malindi, taking a mini-vacation with the Hovingh’s. I can see the Indian Ocean, and less than two hours ago I swam in it for the first time. Everything here is beautiful and I am looking forward to hanging out on the white sand beach all week!

We left on the third, early in the morning, passed through Nairobi with no problems, stayed the night with some friends of the Hovingh’s at Athi River, and finished the drive to Malindi today, again with no problems ( But we did see some elephants in Tsavo National Park…. cool !)

Well, this is getting a bit long for my tastes, so I will just say again that we are safe, and far away from the hubs of violence and the situation does, at this moment, seem to be calming down. It is a little bit strange to know that I am in a third world country in the midst of conflict, but it is a learning experience. Hope the New Year is going well for everyone back home, and thank-you for praying for us, it is much appreciated.

Love

Bethany