I did not anticipate the responses I would receive from so many of you expressing your interest in and appreciation for the updates. No one has yet asked me to remove them from the mailing list, in spite of the fact that since early January, the messages have become longer and less entertaining, perhaps, reflecting the humanitarian crisis to which we have turned our attention. Now, I find that I look forward to writing for several reasons. First, writing helps me process the, for me, unusual and often emotionally charged experiences to which I have been given a front row seat. Second, writing is a way to stay connected to you at home, especially since John is no longer here, and to share with you my perspective on what is happening in a country that many of us have come to love. Third, part of the mission of FKSW is to help raise awareness about Africa, and what better way to do it than by sharing with you what I am living here in a most critical time for Kenya, for Africa and for the world. Thank you for your responses, and with your encouragement, I'm offering here the next installment.
It's Sunday morning, and since dawn, voices from the many churches in the valley below Michinda Boys Primary School, where I am staying, have been rising in song with the sun. It's now just after noon, and still, preachers are preaching and congregations are singing and the wind continues to carry the mingled sounds through my windows. The wind is cold, and I'm wearing a jacket against the chill. For the past week, the weather has been changing from hot, dry summer to the beginning of the long rains which are due around the first of March. The mornings dawn clear and bright, but by midday, the winds have come and the sky is gray, and the ominously dark clouds promise rain soon, if not today. It hasn't rained yet, so the farmers, those that still have their shambas, are digging up their fields in preparation for planting. As soon as the first good rain comes, seed will go into the ground and a new season of growth will begin.
Some of those who have been driven away from their farms by the conflict return to their fields during the day, if they're close to town and the area is safe. Those whose farms are in unsecured areas farther away feel the frustration of not only being unable to prepare their fields and plant their crops, but of knowing that last year's crops still have not been harvested. Or if they have been, that others have carried away the stores of potatoes, maize and onions they left behind.
There are now about 12,000 internally displaced persons (IDPs) in the 9 camps in Molo town, with more coming in every day. It's been relatively quiet here in the past week. I've only seen two large fires on the ridge east of town, probably houses that had been torched, and there have been no gunshots after dark for the last 4 days. Still, the areas farther from town and away from the police patrols are experiencing conflict. People say that things have never been this bad here before. The last really bad time was in 1992, when, just before the presidential elections, many of the farmers were chased from the area by the neighbors who had hopes of diminishing the Kikuyu vote enough to assure that their own preferred presidential candidate received the majority. In Kenya, there is no such thing as an absentee ballot, so if you are not at the place where you're registered to vote at election time, you don't vote. Apparently, that's when the problems began. The major issue here is the inequitable distribution of land, and for the past 16 years, the pattern of one group being chased from land they own, or in most cases lease, losing their houses, and then returning later to rebuild, has been consistent. But never to this extreme.
Last Monday, Samuel, John Munene, Karangathi and I visited 3 of the IDP camps in Molo, and on Tuesday 4 more. These are 7 of the 9 official camps in Molo with which Samuel and his team are working, but several new camps have opened in the past two weeks, and there are a number of others out in the "hinterlands" that are virtually oases of safety in the midst of danger. These camps have very little communication or contact with the outside and are faring much worse than the camps in town. Six of the camps that we visited have been located at churches whose pastors and congregations have welcomed those who have fled their homes. The 7th camp has been set up at the site of the Pyrethrum Board of Kenya, the organization that usually buys the pyrethrum flowers from the very farmers who now live in its empty warehouses. The pyrethrum flowers, from which is distilled a natural insecticide, are harvested all year long, but now, even though the flowers are ready, there is no one to pick them.
The camps vary in size. The largest camps accommodate between 1000 and 1600 residents, and the smallest around 500. Altogether, there are about 12,000 people living in close quarters and uncomfortable conditions. During the day, the numbers swell, as the lucky ones who have found lodging with friends or relatives in town come to the camps for meals, and to receive their share of any donations of clothing, soap, shoes, etc., to which they are entitled. The smaller camps, and those whose managers are successfully organizing the residents and coordinating activities well, are calm and relatively clean, while others, especially the larger ones with weak management and inadequate space to accommodate the hundreds of residents, are not very welcoming places to be.
The women and children sleep in the churches or any available building, and the men sleep outside, sometimes in the few tents that have been donated, but more often on the ground in the open. There is a shortage of mattresses and bedding and most people, even the elderly, sleep on the dirt or concrete floors on empty plastic sacks that usually hold maize and rice. The women and girls cook the donated maize, beans, potatoes, carrots and cabbages, along with rice and other commodity food, much of it from the U.S., in large /sufurias/ (pots) outdoors over 3 stone fires. They must go daily in search of firewood, which is in short supply. In all the camps, dry corn stalks are also serving as fuel for cooking. With so many people living and carrying on their daily activities outdoors, there is great concern about the coming rains.
Most camps finally have clean water, but in some, the women are still collecting water daily from a nearby river. The Red Cross has brought in "water bladders", huge long rubberized water tanks that look like giant yellow pillows. Each bladder holds 500 gallons of water, and hoses connected to the bladder are attached to portable taps. The one or two available squat toilets, at each camp, built to accommodate church congregations one day a week, are woefully inadequate for the daily, continual use by hundreds of people.
At this point, the greatest needs are for firewood, equitable distribution of adequate and nutritious food, including food for people who cannot digest or tolerate the maize and beans and people with diabetes, mattresses and bedding, soap and disinfectants, assistance for the disabled and elderly, counseling services, assistance for pregnant and nursing mothers, equipment to set up nursery schools in the camps for the 1000+ children of pre-school age, cooking utensils and diapers, clothing and blankets for the new born babies. The children have no toys or recreation equipment except for the wonderful little homemade cars, trucks, push toys and balls they create from trash like plastic bags, old flip flops, lids from plastic containers, medicine bottles and wire. They are remarkable creations. A local NGO on Friday promised to bring enough tents to all of the camps to accommodate people for sleeping, to cover outdoor kitchens and to set up nursery schools where space is available. I'm also trying to get some of the ShelterBoxes from Rotary International which include tents, cooking utensils, flashlights, and other items. One of the greatest needs that we were able to meet last week was for sanitary pads for over 1600 women and girls. Our friends in Oregon and elsewhere donated almost $1000 to purchase enough pads to last for, we hope, two months. Asante sana to you all!
The families in the camps are people whose lives, through no fault of their own, have taken a sudden devastating turn. They have been self-sufficient, working hard to educate their children and to build comfortable homes for their families. Many of them have supplied residents of this district with the food they eat. They are farmers, teachers, business owners, pastors, musicians and accountants. John Wachira, one of the NECOFA staff is among the IDP population. Used to taking care of themselves, it is so sad to see them reduced to the level of begging and dependence on others for all of their needs. Now, they are just sitting, most of them with nothing to do. Many of the adults have lost spouses, children and parents, and children have lost parents and siblings and grandparents. They literally have nothing left, and little, if any control over their current situation.
Samuel describes the work that he and his team are doing as trying to "fill in the gaps"..... left by the local government, the Red Cross and the Disaster/Crisis Team in Molo. The team is attempting to coordinate the efforts of the NGOs, the government, the relief agencies and at the same time, assist the residents in the camps to generate data that will give an accurate assessment of who is in the camps and what the needs are, and to advocate for themselves with all who are trying to assist them. One of the greatest challenges is to give people hope and encouragement, and to empower them to do as much as they can to get through this difficult time and back to a normal life. I've attended two all-day meetings led by NECOFA with the camp managers and camp committees that Samuel has helped to organize. Last Friday, the purpose of the meeting was to hear from the representatives of each camp about their situation and needs and how they are working to address those needs, to hear from the invited NGOs and other supporting organizations, to hear about the coordination structure that NECOFA has put in place to try to establish communication, coordination and relationships among all stakeholders, to revisit the GAPS that have been unidentified and action points, and to work together, without overlapping, duplicating efforts or usurping the mandates of each other, to find the best way forward for the residents, not just in survival mode, but also identifying short term actions and the long term goal of returning to their homes, or "life after camp". It was a great meeting and I think everyone left feeling good about the progress that has been made in a short time.
On Valentine's Day, Samuel's wife Mary, some of her friends and the staff from her office planned a meal for the children from all 9 camps. They also included the nursing and expectant mothers and the elderly. Sixteen hundred people arrived at the Pyrethrum Board Camp, one of the largest, at the appointed time, and for over an hour, these wonderful women served a stew made of of cabbages, carrots, tomatoes, onions, maize and beans with rice. Some of the children came back 3 and 4 times.
The meal for 1,600 people cost them approximately $85. Mary told me yesterday that they had just received a donation of 50# of rice for the next meal, and now were waiting for donations of the other ingredients. The rice is the most expensive at $30 per bag. It was so easy for me to pull 4000 Kenya shillings ($57) out of my bag and hand it to her. John and I spend more than this when we have just a few people to dinner and sometimes, even for a meal out just for the two of us. Next week, they will prepare the next meal, and this time, I'll help cook and serve.
*On the lighter side....* I've had several visitors this week, including the boys who visit me at unexpected hours of the day and night. Last Sunday afternoon, several of the boys from the 4 K Club who have learned to spin and weave with the support of FKSW and who have made some of the wonderful animals we are selling, came and found me and we spent a couple of hours carding and spinning wool and silk, which they had never seen. They took time out to play with my camera and did things with it that I didn't know it could do. They made short videos of themselves, and audio recordings of themselves singing their favorite songs. They're amazing! This afternoon, Samuel's nephew, John, who is a student here, came by and gave me a little wall hanging he had woven for me this week, and then came back with Kevin, who was here last Saturday night. I showed them photos on my lap top of the hot air balloon fiesta in Albuquerque, our home, my family and whatever else they wanted to see. They were so interested in everything and asked lots of questions about America.
My other visitors were not so much fun. A few nights ago, I suddenly awakened at midnight. Several dogs were barking loudly outside and one sounded like it had been injured...it was yelping rather than barking. I immediately imagined the worst...that the raiders had broken through the police security and were attacking the faculty houses, one of which I was in, and in the process had shot a dog with their bows and arrows. I /knew /that was highly unlikely, but still...I lay there with my heart pounding, wondering how sturdy the wooden shutters on the windows were and if I had securely fastened the bolts on the doors before I went to bed. When the dogs quieted down, I was a bit relieved, until I began hearing noises from the kitchen...a quiet clicking sound which I couldn't identify. The raiders...they were scratching on the shutters and doors to see if they could break in....after about 10 minutes, when the sounds didn't get more aggressive, I knew I was wrong again, but there was definitely something in the kitchen and I didn't even want to /know/ what it was. I thought that maybe if I lay really still, whatever it was would go away. It didn't, and finally, tired of feeling like a total wuss, I /made/ myself get my flashlight, get out of bed, and go to the kitchen. The clicking was coming from several places in the kitchen, but I didn't have my glasses on and couldn't see anything. Deciding that I wasn't in any immediate danger, and still not wanting to see anything, I decided I'd just go back to bed and try to to sleep.
Fat chance!! About 10 minutes later, the clicking started in the bedroom. I tried to convince myself that I was imagining things, but I wasn't. The clicking was louder and it was close. I got up again, having no idea what I would find and not wanting to see "it" but at the same time, not wanting to lie in bed with whatever it was staging an invasion on my room. And it was an invasion...of /siafu,/ safari ants. They had come through the crack under the kitchen door, and several wide, steady streams of them were circling the perimeter of the kitchen on the floor and on the ceiling, climbing all over the counters and climbing up and down the walls. Some of them had broken away from the main group and crawled along the wall to my room, and the end wall of the bedroom was a solid mass of ants, going up and down and in and out of the molding. It was amazing! There were big ants, the soldiers with the big pincers who were protecting the little ants. I'm not quite sure what the clicking was, but with that many creatures in a confined space, there was bound to be some kind of noise.
Compared to my fears of the raiders, ants were nothing! I could deal with this! I remembered one day when John was here, he had unknowingly set his chair in the middle of a pile of these ants in the back yard. They hadn't been there the day before so I knew it wasn't a nest. He moved his chair, shook the ants out of his pant legs, and in a short while, they had all disappeared. A few days later, they were crawling up and down the wall and on the doorstep outside the front door, and when I came back later, there wasn't a sign of them. So I figured these guys were on their way to somewhere else and thought they'd take a spin through my house to see if there was anything interesting or yummy. I went out to the living room, which didn't seem to interest them, with my book, read for about half an hour, and when I got up to check out bedroom and the kitchen, they had apparently not found anything either interesting or yummy and had moved on. There was not a single ant to be found anywhere.
My diet has improved with the addition of pumpkin leaves, tomatoes, onions and kale from the roadside markets, all of which I purchased the other day for about $1.50. Yesterday, Samuel and Mary invited me to go to Nakuru with them to attend their grandson's boarding school's parents' day. For these events, the parents bring the meal, and the families eat together with their student. Mary had been up until midnight the night before, cooking vegetable stew, chicken, beef, pilau rice, chapatis, roasted potatoes and mandazi, a deep fried pastry. There were also bananas, mangoes, tea and soda. The various containers and thermoses filled the trunk of the car. What a feast! She gave me bananas and leftover chapatis to bring home, which I have just finished with my pumpkin leaves and other vegetables in a simple stew.
Tomorrow, we go back to the camps to take the supplies that Samuel purchased in Nakuru for the nursery classes and I'm not sure what else he has on his agenda. But delivering the supplies will probably take the better part of the day.
A few final thoughts...I hope to find out tomorrow whether or not we'll be able to begin the Baringo water project tomorrow; none of our other communities or the work of FKSW has been directly affected by the violence; the FKSW board has agreed that for now, we will focus on relief efforts for our partners in Molo who have been affected by the conflict and take contributions for that purpose; I still haven't decided on a date for departure for home; the peace negotiations seem to be moving painfully slowly in the right direction. This morning a dove flew in my open window...I'm wanting to interpret its appearance as a sign of peace.
Salama,
Gwen
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