Kenyan Peacework

Oct 4 - "Assessment of IDP Return in Kenya"

2008-10-06T12:34:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka

Dear All,

The Friends Church Peace Team (FCPT) has decided to do an assessment of the situation of the internally displaced people on their return to their home communities and how the communities have received them.

Chair of the FCPT Counseling Committee, I led a meeting last Tuesday to discuss this. We decided to visit as many of the "satellite" camps (as they are called since the big camps in Turbo and Eldoret were broken up and the people moved to small camps in their home communities) as possible in the ten communities where we have been working. We have developed a set of questions as guidelines, one for the returning community members and a parallel one for the receiving community members. In each location teams of two people will go to the two communities and interview both returnees and receivers to learn their views of the current situation and what their major needs are. The Friends Church Peace Teams expects to use this information to write a report for the government. FCPT will then decide what their next steps will be. We hope to finish the interviews and report by the end of the month.

Unfortunately I will not be present for the process. I will be on a speaking tour in England and the United States. Below is my schedule in case you can come to hear me speak. In England I will be touring with my daughter, Joy Zarembka, who will be discussing her book, "The Pigment of Your Imagination".

England/Scotland Schedule --

October 5--Bristol Meeting, 1:30 PM

October 7--Westminster Meeting, 1:00 PM

October 9--Goodenough College, London, 7:00 PM

October 12--Sheffield Area Meeting, 2:15 PM

October 14--Craig Institute, Glasgow, 3:00 PM
--Glasgow Meeting, 7:00 PM

October 16--Dundee and St Andrews meetings, Scotland

October 19--Westminster Area Meeting, 2:00 PM

United States Schedule --

October 22--Wilmington College, Wilmington, OH

October 30--George Fox University,

November 1--Bainwaithe Island

November 2--Reedwood Friends Church, Portland, OR

November 4--Baltimore, MD

We have successfully finished the first seven practice HROC workshops in Kenya. Following is a brief from Florence Ntakarutimana of Burundi who was one of the lead facilitators training the new Kenyan facilitators.

-- -- -- --
"Dear David,

"The workshop I did after the AVP International Gathering was in Kisii. We were staying in the house of the chief, Francis (HROC facilitator). The workshop brought together three tribes; Kisii, Kipsigis and Masai. When we started the workshop, you could read hatred in their eyes. They were throwing bad words to each other at the beginning. Actually, they were affected by the crisis between them as in Burundi or Rwanda. But as we continued with the workshop, they started to reconcile themselves. During the time of sharing about the experiences, people had a lot of tears.

"I remember a man from Kisii tribe who stood up and shook the hands of a Kipsigis and said: 'You were my enemy, I have planned to kill you with a spear. Now you become my friend.' Everybody was glad of that. During the workshop, people continued to give testimonies of reconciliation and forgiveness. They that they are going to organize themselves, with the help of Francis the chief, to spread the word of Peace and to help others to do something on their trauma.

"At the end of the workshop a Masai called Michael, a chief of the Massai community who attended the workshop, called me and told me that he is going to talk to the chief of Masaba District about how they can stop killings between them.

"Participants requested more HROC workshops. And I saw that the need is great.

"The new facilitators were doing great as it was the first workshop they facilitated. I was with Zipora and Francis. I hope after the second phase of the ToT [training of trainers], they will be able to lead a workshop by themselves. Teresa Tyson from Brasil/USA participated in the workshop. She enjoyed it so much and said that she wants to attend the next HROC Training of Trainers in Burundi or Rwanda.

"The participants were all men, except one lady. Next time we would wish to have a mixed group. I enjoyed to stay with those people and witness their stories of committing to change.

"I reached home on Saturday 27th, tired but very glad of that work.

"Blessings
Florence"
-- -- -- --

Peace,
Dave

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

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Sept 27 '08 - Peacemaking in the midst of conflict

2008-10-06T12:29:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Saturday, September 27, 2008 7:15 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya--"Peacemaking in the Midst of Conflict"--Sept 27, 2008

Dear All,

A Brazilian English-language magazine/website, Comunidad Segura English, asked me to write a summary of our peacemaking in Kenya in 500 words!!! So it's short, but I hope it makes a point or two.

Peace,
Dave

Peacemaking in the Midst of Conflict

When violence broke out in Kenya following the disputed Dec 27, 2007 election, Quaker peacemakers moved into action while the violence continued around us. Within the first week we visited Kikuyus in displaced camps and learned that they needed more than the maize and beans the Red Cross was providing. Our local school sheltered 2,400 Kikuyu: resources were extremely limited. One hundred blankets could not cover 2,400 people; they were given to the children and elderly. A Burundian proverb says, "A real friend comes in a time of need," and, truly, our presence was met with gratitude from the beginning.

By February the internally displaced people were moved to a police station ten kilometers away; school was being re-opened. It was more difficult for us to visit, but we continued to go weekly. In time we brought forty counselors whom we had trained for the purpose of holding a listening session with the internally displaced people. We were the first (and I think only) people to listen non-judgmentally to their stories, difficulties, and concerns.

Next we turned to communities where people had been forced out. Again, we conducted listening sessions which was much more difficult since the villagers who had promoted violence were often very hostile. We listened with patience, not reacting to even absurd or prejudiced statements. Sometimes we were accused of being government spies. In the end the people were most thankful: no one else had ever come to hear their side of the story.

By June the Kenyan Government was requiring that internally displaced people return to their home communities, even if no peace or reconciliation had been attempted. In some cases we accompanied the internally displaced as they returned. Once, when we were not present, the returnees were met with violence and had to return to the camp. The local government official called us in to help and the second attempt was much more positive; the community decided they should welcome their neighbors back.

In order to involve the youth who had done much of the violence and damage we organized a bicycle race for young men who hire out their bicycles as taxis. We brought the two communities back together by organizing three-day Alternatives to Violence workshops which taught affirmation of self and others, communication skills, cooperation, and non-violent conflict resolution methods to members from the various ethnic groups. We continue these workshops in various villages hoping that when the next election or another crisis occurs, local people can respond without violence.

Have we been successful? We will not know until the next crisis erupts. We have learned that we need to interject ourselves into violent communities as soon as possible and work with all sides as neutrally as possible to bring about peace, reconciliation, and healing.

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

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Sept 24 - "Sitting Allowances"

2008-10-06T12:21:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Wednesday, September 24, 2008 9:00 AM
Subject: AGLI -- Report from Kenya -- "Sitting Allowances" -- Sept 24, 2008

Dear All,

I think it will surprise many of you that international NGO's (non-governmental organizations) are not viewed favorably here in East and Central Africa. This includes not only the big aid organizations like World Vision, Catholic Relief Services, Action Aid, the Red Cross and others, but also NGO's that are much smaller in scope. I have been collecting comments on the dissatisfaction with these NGO's. At worst these are considered the newest form of neo-colonialism and exploitation of Africa. Hopefully I'll write an essay on this another day.

Today I am going to cover only one aspect of NGO aid to the region--paying "sitting allowances" for people to attend meetings, seminars, workshops, and other activities promoted by the NGO's. This might surprise you even more than my comment in the first paragraph--people are paid to be involved in learning opportunities for their own benefit. Sometimes this pay is significant. I have heard of $35 per day payments for attendance to participants when the daily wage is $1 per day!!! No wonder people want to attend and give glowing reports of how good the workshops were.

This payment is called by many names; "transport or travel" (even though people are only walking from nearby), per diem, stipend, "chai" (which means "tea" in Swahili and is a euphemism for "a bribe"), and sitting allowance.

It is AGLI's policy not to pay any "sitting allowances." In this we are at total odds with the prevailing custom of the other NGO's and the expectations of the people here. People come to the workshops expecting to be paid. I remember when we first implemented this "no sitting allowance" policy in Burundi in 2001. The trauma healing workshop was for teachers from Kibimba Primary School and Kibimba Secondary School. The teachers from the secondary school refused to come since they weren't being given a sitting allowance so the workshop was only half full. My own feeling at that time (and ever since) is that the teachers were coming for the pay and not for the learning. AVP and HROC workshops are voluntary and that is critical to their success. If people were paid it would be an inducement that renders them no longer "voluntary." Do those other NGO's who pay sitting allowances think that their activities are so meager that no one will come unless they are paid?

We have learned to tell people beforehand that they will not be paid. Sometimes people show up and expect to be paid and then leave when they realize that they will receive nothing but a good meal. Note that in IDP camps in North Kivu for example, the fact that a good meal will be served is an inducement in itself. But eating together is part of the reconciliation process because in the cultures here only friends eat together.

We have had many testimonies from people who came expecting to be paid yet decided to stay (at least for the first day) and by the end realized that what they got was more valuable than being paid. Here is one such testimony from Jérome Birorewuname: "One time when I was coming from the workshop, going home, they said, 'Where are you coming from?' I said, 'I'm coming from the workshop.' They said, 'Oh yeah, you must have received a big stipend for three days?' I said, 'Big stipend?' One said, 'Yes, of course if you are there for three days.' I told him, 'Yes, I got a lot out of the workshop.' I gave him this example, 'You know ugali [maize meal, mush]?' 'Yes, of course, I am Burundian, I know ugali.' 'Imagine that you have a lot of ugali in front of you, but your heart is bleeding, will the ugali take away the hurt and bitterness from the wound in your heart?' He said, 'No.' 'That's why I say it's a lot of money, because I come home with peace. Even if they had given us those big, big stipends, there would be no meaning to it for me because my heart was still bleeding, but now I have my heart. So peace is more meaningful than money."

Here are my reasons for not paying sitting allowances:

1. The workshop would no longer be voluntary, but would have an inducement. In a poor country this inducement can be more important than the content of the workshop.

2. If funds were given, could we trust the positive evaluations we receive and the motivations for requests for more workshops? Is it for the workshops or the funds that they offer?

3. When compensation is given people compete to get in. The recruiters (and these can be pastors or government officials, or other HROC participants) try to fill in the workshop with their relatives and friends.

4. In some cases, when participants are selected and a sitting allowance is given, the recruiter demands some or all of the allowance for themself.

5. Giving out small amounts of money is a real hassle and destroys the end of the workshop as people jostle to be paid quickly so they can leave.

6. Who really pays? It is not the organization (at least in AGLI's case) since we have a set amount of funds we can spend and when they are finished, there is no more. I calculate that if we gave the usual sitting allowance we would only be able to offer five workshops while we are able to do six workshops without the allowance. So 100 participants would be paid using funds that could instead have provided the workshop for another 20 participants. Those 20 would-be participants are the ones who would be paying.

7. When participants are paid it implies that they are in a victim role and AGLI/HROC or AVP facilitators are the rescuers. We want people's attitudes to change and not being paid to attend is the first attitude that needs to be changed. This becomes the first step out of the victim role. In Rwanda, which after the genocide was flooded with NGO's (and still is compared to say, Burundi) this habit has been the hardest to break. We have the least problem with this in up-country Kenya where NGO's are very thin on the ground (even during the recent crisis).

I have to admit that our refusal to pay sitting allowances (and we are even judged by how good the food is that we serve at the lunch) gives us a lot of problems. NGO's have spoiled the environment and we are trying to change the environment.

I hope that this report is not too esoteric or philosophical for you!

Peace,

Dave

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

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Sept 23 '08 - AVP International Gathering

2008-10-06T12:14:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Monday, September 22, 2008 11:55 PM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya--"AVP-International Gathering."--Sept 23, 2008

Dear All,

Last week was the AVP International Gathering here in western Kenya and the AVP group from the Friends Peace Centre Lubao--Malesi Kinaro, Janet Ifedha, Joseph Shamala, Getry Agizah, Peter Serete, Dorcas Nyambura, Eunice Okwemba, and Bernard Onjala, and myself--worked very hard to make it successful. Nancy Shippen (who previously did an AVP tour in western Kenya with AGLI) did a tremendous job on the agenda and flow of the contents of the Gathering. 115 people from 23 nations attended. Bob Barns who introduced AVP in western Kenya and Nairobi and Teresa Tyson who was also on an AGLI AVP tour both attended. AVP-Western Kenya also has done/will do about 15 AVP and HROC workshops with those attending the Gathering and AVP-Nairobi will do about another 8.

Florence Ntakarutimana and Theoneste Bizimana came from Burundi and Rwanda to lead the first four HROC workshops with the Kenyan apprentice facilitators. These four workshops were on the top of Mt Elgon (in two locations) right in the heart of the conflict on that mountain. On the whole the apprentices did well. After the Gathering Florence stayed on for one more apprentice workshop at a place called Rongai in the Rift Valley Province where there was much fighting. Zawadi Nikuze from North Kivu, Congo, is also staying on to do two apprentice HROC workshops. We expect that the eight apprentices will then be able to lead workshops on their own.

Update: I just received this text message from Malesi about the first HROC workshop in Rongai: "Peace. Florence has a good kind of trouble. They expected 20 to 25 people. They have 38. She said the Masai walked one to two hours so she could not send them away and that they have great healing moments."

Nancy Shippen wanted to make sure that HROC was properly introduced at the AVP Gathering. Adrien was unable to come (he was in Indonesia for a conference supported by the Mennonite Central Committee) and Theoneste had to return to Rwanda, so only Florence and Zawadi remained to promote HROC. They had a one and a half hour plenary where they introduced the program followed by two 5 hour mini-workshops on Tuesday and Thursday. Perhaps 60 to 70 of the participants attended one or the other of these workshops. They commented that this is a really powerful Workshop.

I spent most of my time in the office answering 2,441 questions so I was not too involved with the Gathering itself. Miriam Were, Malesi's sister, and the head of the AIDS council here in Kenya, gave an inspirational presentation. Joseph Mamai, the Clerk of the Friends Church Peace Teams in Kenya, gave an overview of their work after the violence in January and February.

Joseph also showed a graphic film on the violence in Kenya. This was the kind of thing that is never shown in America because it showed burnt bodies and dead people in their gruesome detail. I have wondered if the custom not to show the gruesome details of the violence that the US promotes around the world is one of the reasons there is not more opposition to US policies. People believe what they see on TV but if they aren't shown the most gruesome reality are they not being cheated of the truth?

Everyone I spoke with appreciated the Gathering since they were able to share their experiences while also hearing the reports from others which gave them new ideas and, more importantly, inspiration to forge ahead with their AVP programs. Some participants, like the US, had very established programs, while Nepal had just conducted their first workshops. The next AVP International Gathering will be held in Nepal in 2010.

At the opening of the Gathering here in Kakamega, Kenya, a time of remembrance was held for Linda Heacock. Linda had come to Kenya three times, in 2005, 2006, and 2007, to facilitate AVP workshops when the program was just getting off the ground. In 2006 she attended the previous AVP International Gathering in South Africa. Linda died from lymphoma the Friday before the Gathering began. Nancy Shippen found a picture of Linda from the last International Gathering and projected it on the wall. Malesi Kinaro gave a eulogy and there was a time of silence.

Later, after the Gathering was finished, a memorial service was held, organized mostly by folks from AVP in Western Kenya. It was conducted much in the manner of unprogrammed Friends in the United States. Malesi introduced Linda's passing. There was then silent worship with people giving testimonies. Malesi, Janet Ifedha, Gladys Kamonya (my wife), Caleb Amunya, Margaret Wanyoni, Eunice Okwemba (my sister-in-law), and I all spoke. We are now the people who are currently the most involved with AVP in western Kenya. Two spoke of having their first basic workshop with Linda; one spoke of doing her first apprentice workshop under her. There were reports of various adventures with Linda--such as the time when late in the afternoon they were offered a ride in the back of a truck full of goats and sheep (which was declined), being stuffed into mini-buses, etc. Earlier in the year, when Linda had been feeling better, she had written that she hoped to return to Kenya again in 2009. Eunice talked of spending the last night in western Kenya with Linda in the bedroom where she vomited numerous times and they decided to send her by airplane to Nairobi. Several people spoke of how easily she had fit into Kenyan culture so that people considered her one of the family, a sister or auntie. The worship concluded with Malesi reading the 46th Psalm after which we sang a song that Linda would have liked and held hands with a closing prayer for her soul. It was a very moving memorial service.

May Linda rest in peace as the fruits of her labors ripen here in western Kenya.

Peace,
Dave

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

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2008-10-06T12:07:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Saturday, September 13, 2008
AGLI - Report from Kenya - HROC on Mt. Elgon

Dear All,

A Sad Note: Linda Heacock, who came to Kenya as an AVP facilitator with AGLI in 2005, 2006, and again in 2007, died peacefully last night at her home in Ashland, VA. Her cancer was discovered when Linda became ill while here in Kenya last September. She had been battling with lymphoma since that time. Gladys, Florence Ntakarutimana, and I visited Linda in July on our way to the Friends United Meeting Triennial and at that time the chemotherapy was not working as well as it should have. Her passing will be a great loss to AVP here in Kenya and all for those she helped train and to the Friends Peace Teams for whom she was a representative. As they say in Swahili, "Pole sana", a word that has no equivalent in English, but means "I sympathize very much with your sorrow." -- Dave Z

Theoneste Bizimana from Rwanda and Florence Ntakarutimana from Burundi came to Kenya last week to lead apprentice workshops with the HROC (Healing and Rebuilding Our Community) participants who finished a two week training in June. Getry Agizah arranged for the workshops to be held high up on Mt. Elgon where for the last two years there has been armed conflict in which about 600 people have been killed. In May or June of this year the Kenyan army moved into the area and killed the leaders of the rebel group--the Sabaot Land Defense Force. The army is also accused of torturing and killing many other men from the area. The conflict began between two clans of the Sabaot ethnic group--the Soy and Ndorobo -- over land allocation on the mountain which was done by the Government in the 1970's. Soon all other ethnic groups in the region became targets; including a Luhya sub-tribe called the Bugusu who live on Mt. Elgon right below the Sabaots (who are part of the Kalenjin ethnic group).

We learned that one of the participants from the initial HROC workshop in June 2007 has been killed. Theoneste reported that people are still being killed although this information is not reported in the newspapers. In the community where Theoneste was facilitating the workshop one person had been killed the previous week. Theoneste also noted that land distribution was so unequal--in some cases one person owned an entire hillside while others had only small plots--that it would lead to continued violence on the mountain. This is an important observation for all of Kenya.

Florence took three apprentices with her and held two workshops in Chwele Yearly Meeting. These were arranged by Joseph Mumai, the Chairman of Kenya Friends Church Peace Teams. Participants in the first workshop were mostly leaders of Chwele Yearly Meeting. We prefer to have participants in HROC groups as diverse as possible but in this case it was probably fine since this was the first workshop the new apprentices had ever led. Moreover, the apprentices were young and the participants were older. The apprentices worried whether the elders would follow their instructions. In fact, the result was positive and the workshop went well. In the second workshop there was a much greater mix of ethnic groups--Sabaot, Luhya, Teso, Kikuyu, and others. The group was also mixed in age since on Mt. Elgon we are not targeting only youth, but also leaders in the community. This workshop also went well. Florence commented that it had the same effect as in Burundi where hostile people, who would not sit next to each or talk together at the beginning, were making friendships by the end.

Theoneste and five other apprentices went to another part of the mountain for their workshops. The first was held at a place called Kalaha and the second at Kitwamba. Since both are high up on the mountain, it was cold. The team slept in tents at the IDP camps at both places. (I doubt that the media even knows that there are still lots of IDP's in places like this.) Since the conflict is really not over, the participants were at first reluctant--some not arriving until late. All the various sides were represented and the results were the same as those described by Florence of her workshops. People were quite appreciative because this was the first time anyone came to visit this conflict area high up the mountain, and actually stayed there overnight. At the end of the workshops people were so enthusiastic that they said when the community celebration of the workshops is held they will bring a cow to be slaughtered and eaten at the celebration!

Florence's two workshops were conducted mostly in English--Nancy Shippen from New England Yearly Meeting attended the first one. She commented that while the participants came to learn how to help others, they discovered how relevant the workshop was or their own personal lives. Theoneste's workshops were mostly in Swahili. However, in the second workshop three of the Kikuyu women did not know Swahili. Teso people speak a Nilotic language, while the Luhya and Kikuyu speak a Bantu language (Swahili is also a Bantu language), and the Sabaot speak a Kalenjin language. These three languages are completely different: more different than English is from Hindi (which are both Indo-European languages). So this is going to make reconciliation rather different than in Rwanda and Burundi where everyone speaks the same language.

Naturally the people all want more workshops for more people. Theoneste and Florence indicated that the apprentices were progressing well. Florence is staying in Kenya to lead one more HROC workshop for the apprentices following the weeklong AVP International Gathering which starts tomorrow. Zawadi Nikuze from North Kivu, Congo, will stay to conduct two more workshops. Florence and Theoneste think that the apprentice HROC facilitators will then be able to lead workshops on their own. In January, after they have facilitated a number of workshops on their own, we hope to have the second one-week training for the new facilitators.

I am hoping that we will continue to focus the HROC work on Mt Elgon.

Peace,
Dave

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

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Aug 26 '08 - Growing Up

2008-10-06T12:02:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Tuesday, August 26, 2008 6:47 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya--"Growing Up"--August 25, 2008

Dear All,

Growing Up:

When Gladys and I returned from our latest trip, one of our nephews, Duncan, came to see us. He came to thank us for having sent him through college. He attended Maseno University to become a secondary school Math/Physics teacher. He had finished a year ago and got a local hire position which paid him 6,000/- ($92) per month for salary! He came because he has just received an appointment as a regular government secondary school teacher and his salary will now be 25,000/- ($385) per month. He was so excited that he hadn't slept the night before coming to visit us.

The point of this bit of family information is that it illustrates how difficult it is even for a youth who does well in school and "follows all the rules" to get ahead in Kenyan society. In Duncan's case he was lucky to have relatives who were willing to support him through college. We appreciated his thanks.

But what happens here in Kenya when you don't have family to support you in your young life's journey?

As part of our contract with the United States Institute of Peace, in conjunction with the Laikipia Nature Conservancy, we just finished three Basic AVP workshops in Kitale (a town north of Eldoret at the eastern base of Mt Elgon). The participants were youth living on the streets, sex workers, drug addicts, etc. In other words, those who have no family to support and guide them. Eunice Okwemba, who was the lead AVP facilitator in these workshops, told me that one young woman (16 or 17 years old) was an orphan and already had a baby. A Pentecostal Fellowship with support from Norway was working with these youth and arranged the workshops for us.

On day one of the first workshop 57 youth showed up! They had to turn away half of them. Normally we have 20 to 24 participants in a workshop, so 30 was already over the limit. In the end we conducted three workshops with a total of 85 youth. Eunice said that the workshops were remarkable. As I listened to her stories, two aspects came to the fore. First the "respect for self and others", which they had not experienced much in their lives, gave them positive hope. Then the "transforming power" led them to realize that they had within themselves the resources to change.

After the last day of the third workshop the youth, on their own initiative, decided to have a closing ceremony. They invited the government officials and media to attend. Getry rushed over from Lubao to participate and the youth presented a petition to the government to give more peacemaking activities to the youth. Two TV stations filmed the event, although I haven't heard of anything being broadcast.

In the United States young people have so many possibilities that it is difficult to decide what choice they want to make. Here there are so few possibilities in life that the transition from youth to responsible adult is fraught with discouragement.

Peace,
Dave

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

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Aug 12 '08 - Return of the IDPs

2008-10-06T08:17:00.000-07:00

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

***************************************************

Aug 8, '08 - Quaker numbers increase in Africa

2008-10-06T08:08:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Friday, August 08, 2008 4:16 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya--"Why East and Central African Quakers are increasing while American and English Quakers are declining"

Dear All,

While I was in Rwanda I visited Gisenyi Friends Church on the shores of Lake Kivu. I went there to see how the AGLI workcampers had done at the workcamp which had just ended. They have finished the flooring, plastering, windows, and doors of a four room building. So I think, with the addition of furniture and using the church for a meeting space, the Gisenyi Peace Center can start holding residential workshops there.

To be polite, I asked Pastor Augustin Hahimana, the leader of the workcamp and the church, how things were going at Gisenyi Church. He replied that things were going very well. When he came in January of this year there were about 35 adults attending the church and this had grown to 75 in the last 7 months. There were always lots of children and teenagers. He replied that some of the increase was due to the HROC (Healing and Rebuilding Our Community) program that AGLI supports. HROC-Rwanda has done a number of workshop in Gisenyi. Augustin said that some of the participants from the workshops starting coming to the church and others who just heard about the program also starting coming. People were impressed by a church which was doing something active, concrete, and beneficial about the ills of the community. Putting in practice what it was teaching.

I had heard this often before. About five years ago in Byumba, in Northern Rwanda, AVP-Rwanda had done many workshops which led to the founding of a church there. It is now a very active church. I have seen its choir come to Kigali to sing at the large Kagarama Church in Kucikiro. I was told that in Kibungo, in southeast Rwanda, where they had also started doing AVP workshops, another church is forming. One of the results of the peacemaking work done in Kenya by the Friends Church Peace Teams after the violence at the beginning of the year is interest in the Friends Church by people who had not previously been involved with the church. For example, three Kikuyu applied to Friends Theological College this coming year and have been admitted. People are also interesting in learning about peacemaking which they closely associate with the Friends Church.

So the AGLI programs, HROC and AVP, are methods of increasing the number of Quakers--this is called evangelism. Wow, this is a negative result according to many unprogrammed Friends! Rather, I think, it is an unintended consequence of doing the workshops. To put this in another way, the numbers are increasing in the region because Friends are very active in addressing the problems in the community, particularly those of war and peace and its consequences. This makes the Friends Church attractive.

Awhile back, I was discussing this with the Legal Representative (General Secretary) of Rwanda Yearly Meeting. He was emphasizing the evangelical nature of the AVP and HROC workshops. But then he said that the purpose of doing them was to make "better people" and it didn't make any difference if they came to the Friends Church, to other churches, or even no church. This, I think, unprogrammed Friends can agree with wholeheartedly.

In this last tour to the US, Gladys and I spoke at Santa Rosa Retirement Center in California. The following morning an elderly Quaker gentleman made breakfast for us. He mentioned how in 1947 he was in Poland with the AFSC feeding starving children. (Some could have been my second cousins.) He said that he was feeling somewhat down over the difficulties of the work and became elated when he heard that the Quakers had been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize!

On my long trips on airplanes from the United States to Kenya, I get big, long books to read. On this trip I read "Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, the End of Civilization," by Nicholson Baker. Unlike most reporting on this period Baker (OK, he is a graduate of Haverford College) included the statements of those who opposed the war including Gandhi and the Quakers. The work of the Quakers in trying to stop the buildup to war, to help the Jews to escape, to become conscientious objectors, etc. is detailed in the book. In essence the Quakers received the Nobel Peace Prize because they were doing something of significance, were leaders contrary to the conventional wisdom and their political leaders.

I was concerned during the Vietnam War by the tepid response of Friends to that war. Friends Meetings were hardly the core, the vanguard of opposition to that war. Although many individual Quakers played an active part it was usually with other anti-war organizations. Yet I remember that the Pittsburgh Meeting, where I attended during that time, was overflowing with people opposed to the Vietnam War.

On this last US speaking tour I heard a Quaker comment that the United States is "peaceful." Really!!! Isn't the United States engaged in two major wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, let alone many minor military adventures such as the bombing of suspected Al-Qaida dens in Somalia (which you probably didn't even hear about in the US media)? Quakers opposition to these current wars is fainthearted. Quakers as a group, in England and the United States, are hardly doing anything!

That is why the numbers decline year after year. We spend our time, energy, and money arguing about tangential issues such as whether to withdraw from Friends United Meeting or if we should have a "guard" at the front door to keep out undesirable people. When a religion (or an organization) spends its resources looking inward to the exclusion of looking outward, when it examines its navel rather than looking to rectify the ills of the world, it is going to be in decline. If Friends as a body in the United Kingdom and the United States were as involved in peacemaking activities as Friends in Rwanda, Burundi, and Kenya are, then perhaps new people (many who may not be "traditional" Friends as we now see in our Meetings and Churches) would become interested in a vibrant religious body.

Peace,
Dave

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

Aug 5 '08 - from Rwanda - The Twa (Pygmies)

2008-10-06T07:55:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Tuesday, August 05, 2008 4:10 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Rwanda--The Twa--August 5, 2008

Dear All,

Identical twins can look the same on the outside, but be very different on the inside. This is the case of Rwanda and Burundi. In this report I am going to focus on one aspect of this sameness / difference -- the Twa. The Twa are short in stature, despised, severely discriminated against people that make up less than one percentage of the population in Rwanda and Burundi. While they speak the same local language as everyone else (although sometimes with an accent), they live separately in their own villages. The discrimination is based on their occupations:

1. Hunting: Twa traditionally hunted wild animals and ate them. But "real men," according to local tradition, herd cows and eat beef. I doubt that there are many wild animals left to hunt in Rwanda and Burundi.
2. Burying the dead: While this is a very necessary occupation and society ought to be grateful for those who perform it, instead it is despised work not only in Rwanda and Burundi, but in many (most?) places in the world.
3. Entertainment: The Twa are the jesters, fools (as in Shakespeare), buffoons, and dancers that make people laugh. Any decent wedding will have some Twa to entertain the guests, frequently with off-color jokes and other comments that some may think but are too polite to say.
4. Pot making: For some reason that I don't understand, in this region getting your hands dirty making clay pots is a despised occupation. In the advance HROC workshops in Burundi where they use clay, people will comment that they are now "Twa." I particularly like this in Rwanda and Burundi because it attacks this stereotype. With the rise of metal and now plastic pots, this occupation probably is also declining.

The conventional interpretation, thought up by the racist Nineteenth Century European "explorers" of Africa and taught until recently in schools in Rwanda and Burundi, is that the Twa, as hunters, were the original inhabitants of the region. They later were overwhelmed by the agricultural Bantu-speaking Hutu farmers. Later again the Tutsi arrived, from Ethiopia, as the superior herders (the ruling class in Europe are the descendants of those who rode horses). Since the Ethiopians were the southern most branch of the white race, and if the Tutsi came from Ethiopia, then clearly they were the ruling class. This became the rationale for the Tutsi domination of Rwanda and Burundi introduced by the German and then Belgian colonial rulers. During the genocide the hate radio stations told people to toss the Tutsi into the rivers so that they could return to Ethiopia--that is, float down the rivers to Lake Victoria, down the White Nile to Khartoum and then float back up the Blue Nile to Ethiopia. While this is not physically possible, it resulted in the Tanzanians pulling 20,000 dead bodies out of the mouth of the Kagera River where it flows into Lake Victoria--they were afraid the dead bodies would pollute the whole lake!

This interpretation is totally psuedo-scientific, racist nonsense which, unfortunately, has led to violence, death, and destructions in these two countries. Race theories have profound implications! Recent DNA testing has shown that the Twa, Hutu, and Tutsi are genetically closely related and therefore could not have had separate origins. The Twa are short because of a genetic difference in one of the genes that produces growth hormones. Perhaps a long time ago in the past, they were segregated because of this and in order to survive adopted occupations others did not want to do.

The HROC program in Rwanda has begun doing specific workshops for the Twa. They have found that when a Twa is in a workshop with Hutu and Tutsi, they don't participate much and are sometimes laughed at. While they have endured the trauma that everyone else has gone through in the society, they also have the trauma of being isolated and despised for
generations. In former days no Hutu or Tutsi would eat with the Twa and I am told there are still some people who will not eat with the Twa (one of the reconciliation activities of the HROC workshops). The HROC staff in Rwanda has found that they need to do separate workshops for the Twa. In these workshops the Twa are very lively and active. But there are so many layers of trauma that more than one workshop will be needed just to cover the basics.

Solange Maniraguha, one of the HROC staff in Rwanda, had just come back from a workshop with the Twa the previous week. She has hopes that the program can develop Twa Healing Companions to work with the Twa in their villages. One comment she made to me is that only three or four of the HROC facilitators can facilitate with the Twa because the others look down on them in the typical stereotyped fashion--it is always difficult to overcome the stereotypes that one has grown up with. This program is in Ruhengeri, in the northwest, where the Friends Church has two churches for the Twa.

When I had suggested to Adrien that they might also have a special HROC program for the Twa, I got a very negative reaction. Adrien thinks that the Twa should be incorporated into the normal HROC workshops. This is what they are doing in the Burundi program. He has not seen any overt discrimination against them as the other participants are polite and interact normally with them. The goal is to integrate the Twa into Burundian society like everyone else. The Mennonite Central Committee is supporting a primary school which is half Twa and half Hutu. (But I was told that someone in their infinite wisdom decided to give free uniforms to the Twa, but not the Hutu so some of the Hutu are transferring their children to other schools). Adrien related to me that in the last few months three Twa had married Hutu wives. So integration of the Twa seems to be well established in Burundi and Adrien felt that this was working well.

So should Twa be integrated into the usual HROC workshops as is done in Burundi or should they have workshops of their own as is done in Rwanda? If one is into a foolish need for consistency, then one would need to decide between these two options. But, as I began, these twins are the same on the outside, but inside there may be profound differences. What works in Burundi may not be the answer in Rwanda. The world is never a simple place.

Peace,
Dave

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

July 29 '08 - from Burundi - "Symbolism"

2008-10-06T07:47:00.000-07:00

Sent: Tuesday, July 29, 2008 6:44 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Burundi--"Symbolism"--July 29, 2008

Dear All,

Symbolism

Gladys and I spent July 21 to 27 in Burundi visiting the AGLI and other programs, HROC, the Friends Women's Association's Kamenge Clinic, the Mutaho Widows Group, the HIV+ Gitega Women's group, Kibimba Hospital, school, and church, and Mi-PAREC (Peace and Reconciliation under the Cross in Gitega.

Symbolism: In upcountry Mutaho, I heard this testimony from a HROC workshop that had just been completed. A Tutsi man and a neighboring Hutu man were invited to the workshop. It is clear that the facilitators purposely chose these two because they knew there was an issue between them. During the workshop the Tutsi man pointed to the Hutu man and said that he was the person who tracked him during the violence in 1993. With that man's help, a Hutu gang attacked him with machetes but luckily he survived. When he healed and went home, the Hutu man continued to track him and he was attacked a second time, only again to survive. Now whenever he was walking down the road or path and saw the Hutu man behind him, he would become afraid and stop or detour until the Hutu man was no longer behind him. This was discussed in the workshop. On the third day the Tutsi man gave the Hutu man a ride home on the seat behind him on his bicycle.

John McKendy from New Brunswick, Canada, has been a workcamper at the Kamenge Clinic for the last two years. John has a sabbatical next year and is planning to return, probably in January, to begin a workshop on "Non-violent Direct Action," which is what he teaches. I have suggested that he start in Kenya where there has been a great demand for teaching non-violent direct action to the youth who seem to resort to violence whenever they protest -- over three hundred secondary schools have had riots in the last few weeks, frequently destroying school property. Once he has developed the workshop he will then take it to Burundi, Rwanda, and eastern Congo. This will be a great addition to AGLI's work.

In Mutaho we visited the dynamic Mutaho Widow's Coop, led by Pastor Sarah Golobwa, the only woman pastor in Burundi Yearly Meeting. When Adrien Niyongabo was on his recent speaking tour in the US, the meetings and churches in Oregon and Washington contributed $3500 for the Widow's group to build a center. The building includes a large meeting room, a place for an income-generating shop, and three rooms for overnight guests (so in the future we may not have to sleep at the nearby Catholic seminary/retreat house). The main building was almost complete to the top of the windows and they were working on the foundations of the other two parts. Mutaho Church had given them a nice plot for this center. While men had been hired to do the construction work, the women (and other church members) did not just stand and watch. This is the dry season and as usual in this part of Africa the houses are on the top of the hills and the water source is near the bottom of the hill. So the women carried water up-hill to the site every work day. This saved a considerable amount of money as they would have had to pay people to bring water. About two years ago a goat project was started where one person in the 56 member group who was given a goat gave the first female kid to another woman--frequently one was Hutu and the other Tutsi. Now the second group who received the kids, which are now grown up, are giving their first-born female kid to other women. The big advantage of the goats to the women is that the manure is put on their gardens (rather than very expensive fertilizer). I have seen that this doubles or triples the yield. Note that except for Pastor Sarah and the secretary (who is not a widow) most of the women are literate or semi-literate; the group members include Hutu, Tutsi, and one Twa (pygmy).

Clearly Burundi is more prosperous than it was a few years ago, but the people are still much poorer than those in Kenya. I am always amazed by the small number of domestic animals -- cows, goats, sheep, pigs, and even chickens -- when compared to Kenya where there are probably too many animals. I have never even seen a donkey in Burundi, yet they are quite common in Kenya. Burundians also do not plow with oxen as is common in Kenya. I think that this is very important since men take care of the cows and oxen first, then they do the plowing and become involved in agricultural work. Gladys kept commenting on how very few men she saw cultivating. The Burundians who were with us kept trying to give excuses for the lack of men in the field ("this was building season and the men were building", "the women were carrying the hoes home for the men"), but I think she (and certainly I) were reluctant to accept these excuses. If farm work is only done by women and children, I doubt that there will be much agricultural progress.

Politically the peace deal between the various Hutu factions seems to be holding up.

Now we are in Rwanda and I'll give send a report on Rwanda when we return to Kenya.

Peace,
Dave

June 26,- Rpt 57, - "I thought it was a dream."

2008-07-10T11:54:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

Here is the latest report from John Muhanji, Director of African Ministries of Friends United Meeting, on the return of the internally displaced people to Sugoi. Here is what John said about the first attempt on June 19-- "But hell broke loose when they took the other IDPs to Sugoi from Eldoret show ground. The D.O. [District Officer] called me today and wished that I was with him. They were almost being killed by the community people who never wanted to see them back."

Peace,
Dave

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Dear Friends,

God is and has always been faithful to us in our ministry. We have continued to experience his miracles all the time since we started the peace mission in Kenya. In our smallness and humbleness we have seen mountain moving and deep valleys being leveled.

I traveled to Nairobi on Saturday 21st so that I could attend a visa interview at the USA Embassy on Monday 23rd. Before I traveled in the evening, I attended a very successful prayer meeting for all the USFW Kenya [United Society of Friends Women--Kenya] women held at Mbale Friends High School. This was a meeting that gave me hope and strength after weeks of exhaustion. I felt filled with fresh anointing of the Holy Spirit. We had a prayer meeting for peace where I gave them the problem that we had in Sugoi in Eldoret. We had women drawn from all the 15 yearly meetings in Kenya in attendance just for a one day prayers for peace in Kenya and Africa. Dorothy Selebwa the Clerk of USFW Kenya presided over the prayer meeting and led all women in praying for the Friends Church Peace Team of which she is a member. After a very successful prayer meeting at Mbale School, which was attended by over 1,300 women, I traveled to Kisumu to connect to Nairobi.

I went to the American embassy on Monday 23rd morning for the visa interview and was given the visa. I am now sure I will travel to the FUM Triennial this year [in July in North Carolina]. While in Nairobi on Tuesday 24th, I was called on the phone by the District Officer, Turbo Division, that they would like to resettle back the IDPs from Sugoi on Wednesday 25th and senior government officials would be in attendance. I informed Joseph Mamai [Chairman of Friends Church Peace Teams] to contact other members of FCPT to be present in Sugoi. I traveled from Nairobi on Wednesday morning 25th to Kisumu, then Eldoret/Sugoi.

Friends, I would like to report that the prayers that were offered on Saturday were truly answered and I thought it was a dream I was imagining. The elders of Sugoi had met after the ugly incident that happened on Thursday 19th where the IDPs were chased away. These elders rebuked themselves and vowed never to repeat such an action in their lives with their neighbors. The Kalenjin community elders went to the camp [at Eldoret showgrounds] and asked their neighbors to join them at home. They went to bring them to their land. The elders agreed to host them in their homes rather than building another camp with tents. Families divided among themselves the IDPs who had come. It was a time of joy and many shed tears of joy. It was a great reunion among the themselves.

There was a man who owned a school and an orphanage which were both destroyed badly by the villagers out of anger from the post-election violence. It is sad when you look at what used to be a home now looking like a ruin or which has been hit by a tornado. The old man, called Muchemi, talked with tears in his eyes, that he does not count what he lost in the violence, but he is happy that his old friends have welcomed them back.

When the high powered government officials arrived, it was around 5.00 pm and the people had been waiting for them patiently since 8.00 am in the morning. They came, talked briefly and left in a hurry, but we continued with our program of the receiving community taking them to their good neighbors. It was joy as they embraced each other. I felt tears in my eyes after seeing the old man Muchemi who lost 600 bags of maize [corn], 500 bags of dried coffee ready for export, a school and an orphanage for the destitute children from the area. He was very brave when he extended an olive branch to those who did the demonic act. He asked to be forgiven if ever he annoyed anybody, and many others followed.

The work of the FCPT is very much evident on the ground and both the IDPs and the elders talked as if nothing had ever happened. The community of the Kalejin and the Kikuyus have appreciated the work FCPT has done and is still committed to work with them in resettlement and organizing more peace activities for the youth. Please continue to pray that the peace we have witnessed today 25th July may remain forever.

God's blessing to all of you.
--
John Muhanji
Director, Africa Ministries Office
P. O. Box 478, Kisumu. Kenya

June 21, Rpt.#55, John Muhanji

2008-06-23T12:19:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

Here is the next report from John Muhanji, the Director of Friends United Meetings' African Ministries. A few days ago I sent you a report of the successful return at Mili Nne. Here is a report of another successful return at Jua Kali and then a significant failure at Sugoi. I'll keep you posted on developments as they occur. Again I have edited this slightly so that you can understand the story better.

Peace,
Dave

-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --
Dear Friends,

After a very successful resettlement of IDPs on Monday and Tuesday of 16th and 17th, there was a more than successful resettlement of IDPs at Jua Kali in an area which was very bad when we visited them.

The District Commission (DC) and Joshua Lilande called me and told me how the plan they had put in place was unnecessary when the receiving community took them to their houses rather than camping in their neighborhood waiting to rebuild their burnt houses. There was reconciliation sprit in the air as their neighbors received them with joy.

When the Friends Church Peace Team (FCPT) visited the Jua Kali receiving community to listen to them, they were very hostile to them and never wanted to see the Kikuyus back in the area at all. But as they continued to listen to the team they soften although they remain adamant about not receiving them, but when we visited the area with the District Office (DO) they were willing to accept them back. Therefore, on Thursday when Lilande and the DO took the internally displaced people (IDPs) to their place, the community accepted them with jubilation. This was the opposite of what we experienced earlier when we were listening to them. The good news is that the gospel of peace and reconciliation is in the air propagated by the Friends Church.

But hell broke loose when they took the other IDPs to Sugoi from Eldoret Show Ground. Sugoi had been one of the most hostile communities when the FCPT held a listening session with them. The DO called me today and wished that I had been with him. They were almost killed by the community people who never wanted to see the returning community coming back. They asked me if I was available to accompany him but I was not available. He told me the community need the Friends Church Peace Team to be back in the area. The DO had to re-route the returnees to Turbo camp where other IDPs are. But on reaching there, the IDPs at Turbo did not want to accommodate their friends at all. The DO had to return them back to the Eldoret Show Ground for safety. The DO was very frustrated to the point that the DC ran away and never came closer to help the DO. He has organized a meeting with elders and opinion leaders in the area to talk with the them and hear what they need before the IDPs can return to their farms.

The community is asking the government to release the youth who were arrested during the violence and especially those who were demonstrating against the rigged election. He is asking me and the Peace Team to be available with him to listen and encourage them to accept their brothers who are innocent return back. Please I am appealing for prayers, because the DO sounded scared because he said they petrol bombed them but nobody was hurt. The community is very hostile to the Kikuyus coming back. As we celebrate the successes, there are also challenges in the whole process.

I am encouraged by the following. So don't get tired of doing what is good. Don't get discouraged and give up, for we will reap a harvest of blessing at the appropriate time. There are many things that work to keep us from completing our life-missions. Over the years, I've debated whether the worst enemy is procrastination or discouragement. If Satan can't get us to put off our life missions, then he'll try to get us to quit altogether. The apostle Paul teaches that we need to resist discouragement: "So don't get tired of doing what is good. Don't get discouraged and give up ." (Galatians 6:9). I believe God has a purpose for our ministry here in Kenya. I am still thinking whether to join the DO tomorrow Saturday with the elders or to send others.

Please pray with me.

John

June 18, Rpt. #54, John Muhanji

2008-06-23T11:36:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

I am in the United States, but I received this update from John Muhanji, Director of African Ministries for Friends United Meeting (FUM). He is based in Kisumu, in western Kenya. I have edited and shortened his report a little, but as usual without changing the content and message.
Peace,
Dave
-- -- -- -- -- -- -- -- --

Dear Friends,

After have a very successful mission to Uganda [for Friends United Meeting--FUM], I received a telephone call from the [Turbo] District Commissioner (DC) at mid-night on Sunday asking me to join them get the IDPs from the Eldoret show ground to their homes. The DC told me that he had been to the camp and the IDPs were hostile to him because he has not been with them at all. The IDPs told the DC the only people they know who have been very helpful in ensuring that they resettle to their homes are the District Officer (DO) and the Friends Church. He was given my number by the DO and the IDPs would like to meet me from the Friends church and the DO on Monday morning. I was very tired and I needed a rest after a long week full of activities. I tried to give excuses not to go or sent someone else, but the DC said, "You have done a lot for these people and I believe you are the only person who could make this day a success. I accepted reluctantly but at the same time I asked God to give me energy and wisdom on how to deal with the situation.

I left very early in the morning on Monday 16th for Eldoret show grounds. I met the DO and DC waiting for me. We went to the camp and met with the people and when I talked and prayed for them, they willingly went and started pulling down their tents ready to leave to their new station closer to their houses which had been destroyed. Lorries (trucks) were provided which carried them to the place. As they were pulling down their tents, we went to see the place where they were relocating. We found that there were no rest rooms and water nearby for the people as they move there. At this time the DC had left us with the DO. We called the DC and asked him to provide funds for the toilets and water, but he never came to us again.

Time was moving and nothing was taking place, I felt frustrated and I called Eden [Eden Grace from FUM's Kisumu office] and asked her to send me Kshs.40,000 [$667] to use for the process. Eden responded very fast, and I started rolling things in action. The toilets were put in place, water was also connected after buying pipes that pulled water which was 200 meters from the location. I also provided food to those people who worked on it. I also enable the connection of electricity from a nearby hospital which provided light for security. got a wire that was also 200 metres and its accessories. I t was as if I had calculated the exact amount that was required for the work available. I left the camp at 8.45 PM when the camp was having water, rest rooms and lights in a very short time. The IDPs and the DO felt encouraged and supported and the people felt that indeed the Friends Church is a true peace church that cares for the people. They commented that we have been very helpful in the process and they have seen that we are the only church that has not taken the process for granted but as a duty. They saw integrity in us and wished this church could stay with them all the time. I also used the same money to buy fuel for a government vehicle the DO was using when it ran out of fuel and were using it to carry logs and other things. They could not get the money from the DC to do anything. I felt encouraged and energised to see that we could offer a new life of hope to people who have been feeling hopeless.

I slept in Eldoret unexpected because I came knowing that I will be going back to Kisumu. The following day we went to the show ground to see those IDPs from the same place who had remained. As I arrived in the camp and went round the makeshift tents, all those who had remained came out and started pulling down their tents in readiness to join their counterparts who had left the previous day. Since everything was already in place I blessed them and asked them to move in peace to the new place. At this time I was needed for another meeting in Kisumu at 2.00pm. I left Eldoret at 11.45am and I was in Kisumu for the other meeting.

The program which the Friends Church Peace team has been doing has caused a big impact to both the communities of the Kalenjin and Kikuyus. These communities had no clue before that the Friends Church had such values in peace and reconciliation. The DO continued to say, "If it was not the Friends Church which I have hidden in their wings, I would not have penetrated or made any progress in resettlement of the IDPs."

Friends, your prayers and support has been seen and heard and we encourage that we continue with the same spirit of support. There is a lot of responsibilities remaining to ensure that we continue with bonding relationship activities between the communities. The resettlement continues this week and next week.

God bless you friends.

John Muhanji
Director, Africa Ministries Office

June 13, Rpt #53, David Zarembka

2008-06-23T11:27:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

Last Sunday was the day for the Kikuyu from the Turbo IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) camp to come to Lumakanda Friends Church. About 60 people came from the camp including 13 pastors of various denominations. With about the equivalent number of local people the church was quite full and the energy level was much higher than usual.

After the service some of the pastors wanted to meet with the people from the church. After the usual "thank-yous," they indicated that they wanted Friends' help in returning to their communities. The Government is planning on disbanding the Turbo camp and returning people to their homes. This may be done by setting up mini-camps in the various communities as the people rebuild their houses. The pastors stated that they didn't want to return with the guns of the police and army, but would prefer that the Friends escort them back without weapons and uniforms. As a pacifist I was very encouraged by this realization and request. Since the Friends Church Peace Team was already planning on doing this, I told them that I would bring it forward in the next meeting (which was scheduled for the next day).

On Monday five members of the Friends Church Peace Team (FCPT), who had been asked by the local District Officer in Mili Nne (near Eldoret) to accompany the returnees back to their homes, went to Eldoret for that purpose. Alas, this did not take place because the Red Cross said that a month's supply of food would be distributed to the IDP's on Wednesday and that they should wait to receive the distribution first and then return to Eldoret on Thursday. We appointed a team to return on Thursday, but I have not heard any report of what happened.

Success leads to new issues. At the church service in Lumakanda Church, one of the IDP pastors announced that five people from the IDP camp had applied to Friends Theological College as students for the next school year and that they would be interviewed in the coming week. Friends Theological College now has course work on Peacemaking and Conflict Resolution. We also just did an AVP Training for Facilitators workshop for fifteen students from the College and hope that they will soon be conducting AVP workshops in Friends Churches. But the more difficult issue was the offer of two acres in Sugoi to build a Friends Church. We discussed this at length at the FCPT's counselors training at Lubao on Monday and Tuesday. The Peace Team is supposed to be neutral and if we planted the church in Sugoi, it would look like we were evangelizing instead of doing reconciliation. Note that at Takatifu Gardens, where we have been doing a lot of AVP workshops, the local Catholic priest was bringing 20 people for an AVP workshop but cancelled it instead because he thought that we were trying to convert their people to Quakerism. If people feel this way then the Peace Team would lose its credibility. After much discussion it was determined that Lugari Yearly Meeting (which included the area of Sugoi) would work on the development of this church, while the FCPT would continue with its reconciliation work.

Alas tomorrow Gladys and I will be leaving Lumakanda on our way to the United States. Our first speaking engagement will be in Nairobi where we will speak at Friends International Centre, Ngong Road, about the reconciliation work here in western Kenya. Here is our speaking schedule while in the US:

June 17-Blueberry Hill, Northern Virginia

June 19-Loyola University, Chicago

June 25-Sacramento Friends Meeting/Friends Church joint presentation in the evening

June 26-Santa Rosa Friends House

June 27-Berkeley Friends Church or International House

June 28-Palo Alto Friends Meeting

June 29-San Francisco Temple United Methodist Church, session with AVP trainers

June 30-Grass Valley Friends Meeting

July 1-Davis Friends Meeting

July 2-San Francisco Friends Meeting

July 8-Richmond (VA) Friends Meeting

July 9 to 13-Friends United Meeting

If you would like details of any event, please email me.

We will return via Burundi, Rwanda, and North Kivu (Congo) where we will see the AGLI programs and the results of this summer's AGLI workcamps. I'll send you reports from these countries when I get a chance, but I can only send you reports about Kenya if I receive information from Kenya while I am away. In one sense I am sorry that I am leaving since there are likely to be many developments in reconciliation while we are away. We will also continue holding many AVP workshops with youth, including a number in the Lugari area connected with the people returning from the IDP camp, and we will start the first practice Healing and Rebuilding Our Community (HROC) workshops with two lead facilitators from Rwanda.

Peace,

Dave

June 5, Rept. 52, David Zarembka, Obama's candidacy

2008-06-10T20:33:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

The newspaper gets to Lumakanda town about 9:00 AM, so at 10:00 AM I went to get my daily paper. It was sold out! Why? OBAMA. Everyone wanted to read about his success as the Democratic candidate for US president. In Kenya, as far as I know in all the cultures, descent is through the father. Therefore Kenyans consider Obama a Kenyan regardless of the fact that he has visited Kenya only a few times and hardly knew his father. I heard that in Siaya, where his father came from, there was a big celebration on his victory yesterday.

I was impressed by Obama's last visit to Kenya in 2006. When he was in Kisumu, in front of everyone, he had himself and Michelle tested for HIV/AIDS. When I asked why Kenyan politicians didn't join him, I was told, "They are afraid that they are HIV positive." People in Kenya don't want to be tested because they don't want to know their status--an interesting stance psychologically. So I was impressed.

In the paper today (I had to read it on-line) one columnist noted that the elation over Obama's victory is so great that you would think he was running for president of Kenya or even all of Africa.

Peace,
Dave

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

June 1, Rept 51, David Zarembka, Hard job!

2008-06-03T07:45:00.000-07:00

----- Original Message -----
From: David Zarembka
Sent: Sunday, June 01, 2008 4:09 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya--June 1, 2008

Dear All,

I hope you are interested in finding out what happened to the listening sessions that the Friends Church Peace Team (FCPT) counselors have been doing for the last two weeks in the local receiving communities.

To remind you, for seven week days the FCPT counselors went to seven different locations (local communities) with the Nandi (a Kalinjin group) on the Uasin Gishu (Rift Valley province) side of the main road. Then we were going to do one listening session and an ecumenical service the next day on the Lugari side of the main road.

How did these go? The visits varied. One was cancelled because the President was visiting Eldoret and it was inappropriate to have a meeting with him so close by. Another one succeeded past our expectations. Mili Nne (Four Miles--meaning it is four miles from Eldoret) was extremely successful. The people were willing to receive the internally displaced people (IDP) who were at the Eldoret showground. The team there escorted the local District Officer and Chief to the IDP camp to talk to the people there about returning -- this is the first time since January that these officials had gone to the IDP camp in Eldoret to visit the IDP's who came from their community.

At the two worst -- Kipkarren River and Sugoi -- the people said that if the Kikuyu returned they would kill them.

The Sugoi people had an interesting story. Sugoi is the home town of William Ruto, the leader of the Kalinjins in Parliament, and one of the main members of the ODM opposition. His house was about half a mile from where the meeting was held. One older woman got up and said that on December 30 when the violence escalated, two of her sons armed themselves to go out and hunt the local Kikuyu (kill them?). She barred the door and, crying, told them not to do this. She called some elders and together they decided to rescue and hide the 15 Kikuyu in their community. This they did for three nights moving them from place to place. Then they became afraid that they would be discovered and so they escorted the Kikuyu to the IDP camp at the Turbo police station. They said that they had helped out the Kikuyu, but if they returned, this time they would kill them! My thought: everything is a shade of grey.

Yet in Sugoi, and also at another place called Kapsabey, the people asked FCPT to come and hold peace seminars! At Kapsabey the people said that no other church had done anything like what the Friends were doing, asked them to build a church in the community, and offered two acres of land for the church! The team members said that they would tell the church leaders (Lugari Yearly Meeting) and they would have to come another time to discuss the idea of building a church there.

Even at Kipkarren River, in the end the people decided to form a committee of ten elders (men), ten women, and ten youth to discuss on these matters. They met without FCPT for the first time last Thursday, but at present no one has a report of what happened.

At a place called Jua Kali ("Hot Sun" for a place were workers manufacture things in small scale enterprises) the people asked for a joint meeting with the IDP's. This was arranged for the following Thursday. Unfortunately this did not go very well. The local people gave all their complaints to the Kikuyu, but when the Kikuyu spokesman began to respond, the crowd began to leave, interrupted him, and shouted him down. The next day I talked to George Njoroge, the Turbo IDP camp leader who had been the speaker, and he was very upset, indicating that reconciliation and return was a long way off.

The other three listening sessions were in-between. In each of them there was a lot of hostile talk. Yet on the other hand, in every case even the most bitter were pleased that someone (Friends Church Peace Teams) had come to listen to them. There were a few negative comments--at one meeting someone (the son of a Quaker) said that the FCPT was bad because we were being sent by the Government to trick the people into receiving the Kikuyus back. At Kipkarren River I understand there was a sign which said, "Peace Team don't come back." In another case we were challenged why we didn't bring any Kikuyu with us.

On the Lugari side of the border (where most people, like the Friends, are Luhya), the meeting was also quite hostile. The listening session was at a place called Mbagara, the most hard-hit interior part of Lugari District. In this case I understand 5 Kikuyu were killed by the community and at least 9 youth from the community were killed by the police. The people attacked the Kikuyu and carried off their maize (corn). A few days later some of the Kikuyu returned with the police, pointed out where they suspected their stolen maize to be hidden, and the police then confiscated all the maize--stolen or otherwise--so that now the people in the area are short of food.

The hostility from all of this was clearly expressed in the listening session and most people did not want to welcome the return of the IDP's. This was attended by 13 members of FCPT including Gladys and myself and perhaps 40 leaders of the community including many pastors. Most of the speakers were not the pastors. The most sensible representation was from the youth leader of an organization (I think promoted by Florence Machayo, a leading Quaker politician in Lugari District) called "Youth Forum for Peace and Justice." Among other things, he said, it was the older men unable to carry the bags of maize that gave money and alcohol to the youth to steal the maize for them and carry it to their storerooms. Therefore the youth should not be blamed. The ecumenical service the next day was attended by many more people. It really didn't end up being much of a "service," but rather another listening session.

Here are some of the kinds of comments heard at various of the listening sessions. Remember you are "listening" and not judging.

1. "Good" Kikuyu will be allowed to return, but the bad ones can't. "We will tell the District Office which are the bad ones who can't return."

2. The Kikuyu can't return because we have their cooking pot and if they return they will ask for it back. Another said that he had taken the door, windows, and iron sheets (roofing) from a Kikuyu house and if they returned, "They will point at my door and want it back."

3. Kikuyu have long tongues and they should cut their tongues to be short. ("Long tongue" means that they talk rudely to others).

4. One quoted a passage from Acts (sorry, but I can't remember the chapter and verse) which indicates that this land is ours and others should not come into our land. There were other examples where participants quoted passages in the Bible to justify their expulsion of the Kikuyu. For example, the Jews were 400 years in Egypt before they left so the Kikuyu have only been around for 40 years before they left.

5. Kikuyu who had title deeds to land would be allowed to return but the "squatters" (those who have no land and therefore have to do petty trading or work as day labors for others to earn income) would not be allowed back. Note that this contradicts the concept that the Kikuyu are all rich from being good businessmen.

6. I heard one man describe how three of his nephews had been beaten or killed by the Kikuyu in Naivasha and Nakuru. When families are as big as they are in Kenya--particularly in the days before 1980 when Kenya had one of the highest birth rates in the world--everyone has hundreds of close relatives (siblings, parents, cousins, etc) and thousands of distant relatives (2nd, 3rd, and 4th cousins which in Africa are still all considered "cousins"). Therefore when one person is displaced, beaten, or killed, thousands of relatives know this story and take it personally.

7. Many complained that the Government gave aid to the displaced people but not to the local people who were also affected by the violence.

Yesterday we had a debriefing session at Friends Peace Centre-Lubao. After we covered the material above (and much more), we assessed how we did. Here is what we said:

1. We succeeded because in every case people were willing to talk to us even if they were somewhat cautious at the beginning. We went out to listen and that is what we did.

2. While we had hoped that this would lead to acceptance of the returning community, this was not the goal of the listening session. The fact that in one case the receiving community was willing to bring back the returnees was an extra success.

3. Even though those who were most bitter and said that they would not accept (or would even kill) the Kikuyu if they returned, our listening was not in vain since they were expressing their feelings and this in itself is a step towards healing and reconciliation.

4. As I noted above, the Friends Church and its FCPT was received with gratitude even in the cases that we felt were most negative.

5. The requests for a meeting with the IDP's at Jua Kali, the two communities who requested peace seminars, the committee formed in Kipkarren River, and the escorting of the local government officials in Mili Nne to the IDP's in Eldoret were all resounding successes.

Is the task finished? Obviously not, as it really is only beginning.

In the way forward, the Friends Church Peace Teams counseling committee has decided on the following activities: We will

(1) write a report (as requested at many of the sites where we listened) of what we learned, for the Government, NGO's and others,

(2) develop the peace seminars for the two communities that asked for them,

(3) be ready to accompany the returnees if and when they have to return to their communities--whether this return is voluntary or forced by the government,

(4) prepare the Kikuyu for dialogue with the receiving communities,

(5) conduct another Bible session in the Turbo IDP camp for children, youth, and adults,

(6) do AVP with the youth at Mbagara,

(7) develop sport activities for the youth in the various communities,

(8) with the help of the local government officials, promote dialogue between the two communities, and

(9) easiest of all, buy a portable bullhorn!

On June 9 and 10 we will have another training session at Lubao focusing on how we can skillfully implement these activities.

Please keep the Friends Church Peace Team, the returning communities, and the receiving communities in your thoughts and prayers.

Peace,
Dave

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

May 22, Rept 50, "Juicy material", David Zarembka

2008-06-03T07:23:00.000-07:00

Dear All,

I wasn't expecting to make another report so soon, but events have given me some "juicy" material.

Robin and Christine Dunn are from Australia and with two other Australians they have built a nice retreat center called Takatifu (Spiritual) Gardens in Shinyalu about 8 miles from Kakamega. They are working with Central Yearly Meeting of Friends, and have held 15 AVP workshops in their center during the last two months. Christine sent me this in an email today:

Yesterday Robin went into town by himself to do a little shopping when something happened. He was out the front of Midland's hardware store (which is owned by some Indians) when a badly injured man ran right past him down into a side street, with a large crowd of people chasing him. The man attempted to get into Midlands and they rushed to close their shutters so the guy (and the crowd following him) couldn't get in.

Robin felt he should try to find out what was happening. So he went around the corner and saw that the man was now on the ground and was being flogged with something like a fan belt. People were also kicking him and Robin had the impression it was only a matter of time till they killed him. He was suspected of stealing, but I imagine very few people in the crowd knew the actual story. The son of Midland's hardware store came out the back of the shop too and commented to Robin on how terrible it was. Robin told him that they should do something about it.

Then, to the Indian guy's surprise, Robin walked toward the crowd. As Robin approached people kind of backed off from the "thief" and some comments were made which made it clear that people were a bit embarrassed about what was happening. Rob went straight to the guy and picked him up off the ground. He put his arm under the guy's shoulder and supported him to walk back towards the main road. The crowd didn't quite know what to do. Once Robin was on the main road he felt he was safe from being beaten himself, as the general public became very aware of what was going on and the mood was a lot more positive. The large crowd followed him, with most making positive comments about Robin saving the guy, but some also mocking him, calling him "Kofi Annan," etc. Robin decided to take the guy to the police station, but felt it would be a bit dangerous to put him in the car. So he walked the guy to the police station about half a mile away.

It seemed to him that all of Kakamega stopped to watch him walk with this man bleeding profusely and a large noisy crowd following behind him. By the end, the guy was not able to hold his own weight, so it was quite a task. Once at the police station, there was a bit of bureacracy. The police arranged to get the guy to hospital, and didn't seem interested at all in arresting him for stealing. I guess they figured he'd been punished enough already. Later in the day, Robin visited the guy in hospital and was able to confirm that he was getting some care. Rob thinks he'll survive, although he's in a bit of a bad way.

Then I got another email from Patrick Mureithi who is producing the documentary film, "Icyizere: Hope," on the Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) program in Rwanda. (If you go to the AGLI website at www.aglionline.org you can see a five minute segment of the film.)

"This is Patrick Mureithi. I am now back in the US after an AMAZING experience in Rwanda and Kenya. I managed to show "ICYIZERE: Hope" to thousands of people at the Rwanda Film festival, on Rwanda Television during the official week of mourning, at the Gisenyi Central Prison, and at the National University in Butare.

"In Kenya, I got the chance to share the documentary with students and faculty of the Aga Khan Medical University and Hospital, staff and guests of the Kenya Film Commission, the Kenyan National Association of Nurses, the Great Lakes Parliamentary Forum on Peace, the Nairobi Peace Initiative and the Kenya National Commission on Human Rights. I was also interviewed by The Sunday Nation newspaper and by Citizen Television during their popular Power Breakfast Show.

"All this to say that I am very very grateful for all of the people that contributed to make the film possible, and for all of the emotional support I received from family and friends alike. I will soon be editing the final version of the film which, funding permitting, should be done in 5 months. I will keep you posted on developments as they come."

Then the last item is from the Sunday Nation. The front page headline reads "Raila factor in Obama contest." In other words Kenya is being used to influence the presidential election in the United States. Raila Odinga and Barack Obama are both Luo. Here are some lines from the story:

"Right-wing activists in the United States are attempting to use Senator Barack Obama's Kenyan links to discredit him. The activists, most of them Christians, claim that Mr Obama is a relative of Prime Minister Raila Odinga, whom they describe as a "socialist who plans to introduce Sharia Law in Kenya.

"Right-wing activists desparate to derail his White House bid peddle falsehoods about him and Raila.

"Mr Davis and his wife [missionaries who are promoting these claims], noting Mr Odinga's contention that the December 27 presidential voting was rigged, said in their message, "As we watch Obama rise in the US we are sure that whatever happens, he will use the same tactic, crying rigged election if he doesn't win and possibly cause a race war in America."

I guess this is enough "juice" to swallow in one day.

Peace,
Dave

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

May 30, Report from Adrien Niyongabo in Burundi

2008-06-01T06:05:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Friday, May 30, 2008 3:27 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Burundi--May 29

Dear All,

Below is a report I just received from Adrien Niyongabo, the coordinator of HROC (Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities) in Burundi, about a recent HROC workshop.

Dave Zarembka

- - - - - - - - - - - - -

HROC WORKSHOP IN RURENGERA

A HROC workshop took place on May 13-15, 2008 in Rurengera. Rurengera is in Mutaho commune, located in central Burundi.

The particularity of this workshop was that participants were next door neighbors from one community mixed with IDP [internally displaced people] camp residents who normally come from that same community but are now staying in Mutaho IDP camp. 21 participants attended though only 20 were invited. They were 10 men and 11 women. Fivefacilitators (Joseph, Sebastien, Dorcas, Pascasie, and Eraste) conducted this workshop.

On day one, it was so obvious that participants did not want to express themselves too much and some could not even smile or laugh. As the workshop went on, they started not to fear each other any more and their faces were brighter.

When we entered in the "Loss, Grief and Mourning" session, tough matters came to the surface. We need to remember that all these participants know each other because they belong to the same community even though some are now staying in the IDP camp. In fact, whatever was done or happened to one of them was known by almost everybody. That is why the sharing became so fluid and deep. They mentioned their relatives who got killed, their belongings which got stolen or destroyed in 1993. It was expected that a workshop of this kind would be this emotional as folks are gathered close to where the horrible events took place. Consequently, the facilitators provided needed services for those who struggled with their emotions.

There were two participants (one from the IDP - a Tutsi and another from the village - a Hutu) who conjointly asked for more time to work on the issue that was between them since the 1993 war. Here is what happened. When the war started, the Hutu man came to the Tutsi family. He had been sent by a group of other Hutu who were hunting Tutsi to check if there would be still Tutsi males hiding in the house, especially the brother-in-law of the Tutsi woman. In case there would be any male found, he had to catch him and take him to the group. Only the woman and her kids were there. So, when he arrived in front of the house, he pushed roughly on the door, his eyes open like a monster. The woman and kids got terribly frightened. Shocked by the act and trying to protect the kids, the woman took her hoe as a weapon and went to fight against the man. As he was too strong, he took away the hoe and started beating her. Leaving her rolling on the ground, he checked in the rooms and nobody was found. He went back furious!

Well, the two folks asked for a special time (they were taken to another location for more privacy) and one of the facilitators led the dialogue. They finally succeeded to reach a common agreement. It was with big smile that they came back to join the group, sharing that they are healed from carrying such a big burden for years.

Anyway, there was another shivering that occurred in the room when it was revealed that it was Pastor Sebastien (a Tutsi and HROC facilitator) who was wanted that time and he was among the facilitators of that workshop!!

On the last day of the workshop, participants were more open, joyful, and interactive. They even expressed that they would feel happy to stay for one more day. Below are some of the many quotes from participants.

- "These teachings have helped me so much for I had become that careless because of what I lost. I could not undertake any activity that would inquire effort from me for I was saying that there was no need. Since the war took away my dear loved ones, I decided to get drunk every single day. It is painful, I tell you! It is now that I have been in this workshop that I stopped this bad behavior because I understood what was wrong with me. I promise you that I am going back to work instead."

- "Alcohol had become my refuge. Every single night I came home, my wife and kids had to hide themselves. Breaking the pot on fire (before the food would be ready) had become my easy thing to do. You know, I deprived several meals to my family. I am ashamed! It is time for me to change and I am going to do it. I want to be a tree of trust for my family. More, I will tell those with whom I shared beer to stop and plant the tree of trust".

- "I enjoyed the games. I am not shy any more!"

- "The time I spent in this workshop will remain unforgettable for me. Those I used to fear and get afraid from have been the ones I talked to, shared food with and at the end we were good friends. It is possible to rebuild again our neighborhood as people who remained in the village and those who are in the IDP camp".

- "I gained very consistent skills to help myself and especially my children".

- (The woman talking is a Hutu woman married to a Tutsi) "The example from our two friends touched so deep my soul that I feel I want to pull out my own stuff too. When the war was hot and we were fleeing in the bushes, a Hutu woman told me: 'Why are you still tying that evil child on your back (meaning that the child whose father is a Tutsi is an evil). Take him down and throw him away!' Did she forget that he was my child? Did she mean that my loving husband was an evil? Since that time, I decided not to be with that woman and had been holding such hate, anger against her. But, this workshop taught me how to let it go. I want to meet with the woman and tell her how what she said wounded me and that I have been able to forgive".

We closed the workshop with a demand from participants to be invited again. It was also asked that many workshops would be conducted for more folks in Rurengera.

May 6, Rpt 46, David Zarembka - A film called HOPE

2008-05-31T16:57:00.000-07:00

( I just checked on the 5-minute short of the film reviewed below - see par 1 - and it is no longer available. Mary)

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Tuesday, May 06, 2008 4:30 AM
Subject: Fw: AGLI--Report from Kenya, May 6

Dear All,

Patrick Mureithi, a film-maker from Springfield, MO, has made a film called "Icyizere-Hope" about a Healing and Rebuilding Our Community (HROC) workshop in Gisenyi, Rwanda last August. If you look at the AGLI webpage (www.aglionline.org), you can view a five-minute short by clicking on the presentation on the upper-right of the home page.

Patrick has a draft of his film which he showed in Rwanda during the commemoration of the genocide. Here is Theoneste's report:

"Icyizere-Hope: During this time of remembering the victims of the 1994 genocide the film Icyizere has been shown in different cinema centers and many times on Rwandan television. The film chronicles a HROC workshop in Rwanda. It was shot last July and August by Patrick Mureithi of Springfield, MO. The film, which is based on Rwandan culture and focuses on the inner power of healing and peacebuilding of Rwandans, has helped people to believe that there is hope, that Rwanda can become again a peaceful society where there is no hatred, fear, and mistrust between Rwandans. Even though the film is not yet entirely completed, Icyizere will be a very important tool for HROC; we will be using it to achieve our goals of healing and reconciliation in Rwanda and other countries that have had similar experiences."

As you might have guessed from his name, Patrick was born in Kenya. After his recent trip to Rwanda, he came to Kenya for a few days to visit his relatives. While here he was interviewed by the Sunday Nation, the largest paper in Kenya, for their Lifestyle insert in the Sunday edition. Patrick just called me about this. He says that the articles will talk extensively about HROC, AGLI, and the fact that we are bringing the program to western Kenya.

You will be able to read the article online by going to www.nationmedia.com on Sunday and clicking on the left where it says "Daily Magazine." (This would have been Sunday, May 11. Mary)

Peace,
Dave

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

May 20, Rpt 49,

2008-05-22T17:17:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Tuesday, May 20, 2008 12:51 AM

Dear All,

Yesterday for the first time since January I met the Red Cross official responsible for Lumakanda on the street here. Later I saw two Red Cross Land Rovers and then a UN vehicle racing through town. (Why are they racing through town stirring up so much dust?) I speculate that there was a meeting at the government offices of Lugari District to plan the return of the internally displaced people at Turbo to their home communities! We will see.

How is the reconciliation work going?

Yesterday, Monday, Gladys and I went to the Turbo IDP camp to settle up matters with a meeting that the Friends Church Peace Team (FCPT) had on Saturday. It was to be a Bible study meeting arranged by the 32 pastors at the camp. Before we took the food last week we were told that there would be 60 people. When we took the food, we were told that there would be 102. So we left them with funds to buy more soda and the Red Cross said that they would provide more rice. At the actual meeting on Saturday there were 170 people! The pastors themselves collected sufficient funds to buy sodas for the extra, extra people. The presentation started about 11:00 AM and went to 4:00 PM and people still wanted to continue but the presenters had to leave for home. People did not want to break for lunch. There was rapt attention as no one left. This was the first time that something like this had been done in the Turbo IDP camp since it began in January. It is amazing how such a simple thing could be so effective.

The presenters were three women, Rose Imbega, Lydia Bokassa, and Jodi Richmond and one man, Joshua Lilande. Margaret Fell, Mary Dyer, Elizabeth Frye and all the other Quaker women ride again. At our meeting yesterday, one of the pastors commented that they didn't know that women could speak so well about the Bible and its issues. Most churches in Kenya are male-dominated and many do not allow women pastors.

Last week we had two AVP workshops here in Lugari District. One was for youth from the Turbo IDP camp. Here the interesting point was one person who had fled the violence on Mt Elgon coming to Lugari District and then had to flee again during the post-election violence. There was also a workshop here in Lumakanda. One of the participants was a 27 year old Kikuyu man who had rented a room in town, but his parents were still in the IDP camp. His shop and house had been destroyed during the violence. His wife of six months had been a Luhya and they separated during the violence. This is very common; the stress of the violence destroyed many mixed ethnic marriages and their families.

Next week we will be doing two advanced AVP workshops at Lumakanda Friends Church. For each workshop we will bring ten Kikuyu youth from the IDP camp and ten Luhya youth from the community. This will be the first workshop where we will be bringing the two sides of the Kenyan conflict together as we do in Rwanda and Burundi. I think this will work out fine.

Last Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, Gladys and I were at the Quaker Peace Network--East Africa (QPN-EA) meeting held at the Friends Peace Centre -- Lubao. This consisted of mostly Kenyans with two Tanzanians, and four people from Uganda (including Barbara Wybar, AGLI representative currently at Bududa). The most interesting point I learned was that a high percentage of the youth in Nairobi who participated in the violence and were killed by the police were Luhya. Also in certain parts of Lugari District it was the Luhya youth who did all the damage. In western Kenya there was a tendency to think that it was the other groups -- Kalenjin, Kikuyu, Luo, etc--who were the more violent ones. Is it a natural tendency to think that "others" are more violent than your own group? We shared our activities and those from Kenya discussed how we could work together in our peacemaking and reconciliation activities.

It is the Friends Church Peace Team which has been most active here. On Thursday thirteen of the FCPT counselors held a listening session at the Turbo District office in Uasin Gisu District. This is on the Nandi (a Kalenjin group) side of the road from Lugari, which is mostly Luhya. Many government officials, local politicians, church leaders, community elders, etc., participated.

At first they were suspicious of the mostly Luhya group that they were meeting with, but in time they began to open up. They mostly complained about the Kikuyu -- some of it true, some false, some stereotyping, some bitterness, and some excuses for the violence. They were not very happy to have them back unless the Kikuyu were willing to fit into and accept their Nandi culture. There was little of that "live and let live" concept needed for diverse people to co-exist peacefully. By the end of the meeting, the decision was for the FCPT counselors to visit seven Nandi communities to meet the people at the village level. On Sunday we had a debriefing/organizing meeting at the Peace Centre and for seven weekdays, between Monday (yesterday) and Tuesday (next week), four or five person teams will visit the seven villages for grassroots listening sessions. I was most surprised to learn that in three of these villages, in the interior of the district, people may not know Swahili! We have one women counselor who is a Nandi (married to a Luhya) and knows the language of the Nandi. So she will go to the three interior meetings to translate if needed. Note that if a person does not know Swahili (or English) he or she cannot talk to a Nandi or Luhya without a translator.

On Friday of last week, FCPT had a listening session on the Lugari (Luhya) side at the boundary. Again the team of nineteen heard many accusations against the Kikuyu. The result from this meeting is that next week, on Thursday, the FPCT listening team will go to Mbagara, the place with the greatest violence in Lugari District, for a listening session with the community. In this case the whole team will go and hopefully the crowd will divide up into smaller groups as we did at the Turbo IDP camp. The next day, May 30, there will be an ecumenical healing service open to everyone. People from the Turbo side will come. Gladys and I talked to the pastors at the IDP camp and they plan on coming. This is what real Christianity is all about!

Unfortunately, and as much as I would like to, I have not and will not attend any of these gatherings except the ecumenical service. As an Mzungu (white person) I would be a distraction from the issues at hand. My presence might give rise to added suspicion.

At the QPN-EA meeting, Eden Grace of FUM commented that this was the most exciting thing that Quakers were doing in the world! Do you agree? Or are there wonderful other things going on around the Quaker world that are just as exciting? We are just a group of ordinary concerned Quakers trying to bring about healing and reconciliation. What is most interesting is that we don't really know what we are doing as we move forward step by step as "the way opens." We trust that God will lead us and give us the right words to use. We had to become accustomed to using the neutral words "returning community" for the Kikuyu from the IDP camps and "receiving community" for the Nandi and Luhya whom we used to call "aggressors."

Today, back at Lubao, Malesi Kinaro, Getry Agizah, and Joseph Shamala are conducting a basic Healing and Rebuilding Our Community (HROC) workshop for people from diverse communities (including the Turbo IDP camp). Next week the two-week long Healing Companion training, which had been postponed in January, will start. We will be bringing Adrien Niyongabo from Burundi, Theoneste Bizimana and Chrisostome Nshimiyimana from Rwanda, and Zawadi Nikuze from North Kivu, Congo to lead the training. We hope to have ten people from the Mt Elgon conflict, who formerly participated in the HROC basic workshop, and also the best candidates from the present training.

Peace,
Dave

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

May 14, Rpt 48,

2008-05-22T17:05:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Wednesday, May 14, 2008 3:06 AM

Dear All,

Outside of our house is a small plot of corn (maize) that our neighbor has planted. It is a luscious green, about 18 inches high, and growing like wildfire. The owner planted this corn around April 1. As we drive around the countryside, those who planted their fields about that time, likewise
have lush green fields. But many others planted much later -- some are still planting. In these fields the corn is just breaking through or only six inches high. When I used to be in agricultural development, one of the rules we tried to teach farmers was "early planting" -- as soon as the rains came. I am afraid that those who planted late will have a poor crop. Then as we drive toward Eldoret, where there are large farms growing corn, many fields have not even been plowed let alone planted. Normally Kenya is self-sufficient in corn.

Then there is another problem. The cost of fertilizer has skyrocketed to three times what it was last year. This is a worldwide problem as the price of oil used to make the fertilizer and to transport it has risen so much. The fertilizer importers say that they imported the usual amount of fertilizer, but they have large stock on hand since people did not buy it. This is the fertilizer that is put on the field when planting. A second top dressing is put on after weeding. The Government has agreed to subsidize the cost of the top dressing. Yet since the farmers have not used the recommended amount of fertilizer on their corn when planting, the yield will be depressed.

The Government has given hybrid corn seed and fertilizer to some of the internally displaced people. On the one hand some of the IDP's have sold their seed and fertilizer because they can't return to their plots to plant and on the other hand local people are complaining that the Government is showing favoritism to the IDP's. I heard that when a shipment of fertilizer was brought to Turbo for the IDP's, the local people snatched the fertilizer away and severely beat one man from the IDP camp.

Reports indicate that almost 4 million 200 pound bags of corn were destroyed during the violence--a little over 10% of the crop. The price has shot up and even though we live in the Kenyan corn belt, we are unable to buy anything but small quantities (less than a bag) of corn. The Government expects there to be a shortage of 4 million bags by August and therefore will import this amount from South Africa--at what cost I don't know since corn is now at a record world price and there will be transportation costs on top of that.

My opinion is that this is only the beginning of the food shortage. Predictions are that the harvest this year, if the weather is good, will be down by 40%. If this holds true, then another 14 million bags will have to be imported in the coming year.

This increase worldwide in food prices as already caused riots in a number of countries. Is this being reported in the American media? Then one of the major causes of this price increase is the diversion of food into making of ethanol. I think you have seen large price increases in the US in meat, poultry, and dairy products--I was amazed at the increases when I was in the US in March.

In Kenya, who is going to suffer? Naturally it is the poor who are already reported to be spending 50% of their income on food. The elite and middle class will be able t pay the increased prices. Will the plight of the poor be ignored? This will be one of those tests to see if Kenya is
changing or not. If the plight of the poor is ignored, then we are back to the same old Kenya which gave rise to the violence after the election.

In the long run there is also a possibility that the rural farmers will benefit. In the past almost all countries in the world, including Kenya, have favored the urban centers by keeping food prices low. The rural folk are then unable to make a living off their land and so, many flock to the slums of the cities to try to make a living. Will high food prices make it less advantageous to live in the city and more advantageous to live in the rural areas? Will this be enough to reverse the flow of people from the countryside to the cities? Will higher food prices lead farmers to use better production techniques that increase yields?

Peace,
Dave

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

Mon, May 5, Rpt 45 - Training expands

2008-05-22T08:31:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka

Dear All,

Here in Western and north Rift Valley provinces, upcountry Kenya has returned to the normal pre-election bustle. The roads are full of vehicles, the matatus (mini-buses) are full, and people are scurrying about their business as usual here in Kenya.

The Government is pushing to have the remaining 150,000 internally displaces persons returned to their farms, which many of the displaced people are reluctant to do. Except for President Kibaki and Prime Minister Raila Odinga visiting the camps in the Rift Valley (which
resulted in a farce about whether the Vice-President or the Prime Minister was "second" in the protocol pecking order) almost no work has been done to bring about any kind of reconciliation between the folks displaced and those who displaced them. Politically of course, if the internally displaced people (IDP) can return, then there will less need to support them, but one of the questions is how are these folks going to get back on their feet? Then, the question is, what will guarantee that this violence will not occur again during the next election as it did in 1992, 1997, and 2007? Tough issues.

One of the reasons to get the IDP's back on their farms is because the country is now looking towards a food shortage. As we drive from Lumakanda to Eldoret, we find that many farms have not been plowed. Years ago I worked in agricultural development in Tanzania and one of the rules in this part of the world is to plant as early as possible. Those who planted by April 1 now have nice green fields. But many did not plant until later and I think that their yields will suffer. While the talk in the newspaper is to return the IDP's so that they can plant, I think that
the planting season is over for this year.

Even farmers in the area who were not displaced have not plowed and planted all their fields due to the uncertainty. Fertilizer prices have tripled. This means that farmers here will put less fertilizer on the crops they have planted, which again is going to lower yields.

Let me remind you again that here in the corn (maize) belt of Kenya most of the crop is consumed by people and not by cows, pigs, and sheep as is true of the American corn belt.

Lastly, while the rains have been sufficient for Lugari District, they are below average. This means that in less well-watered areas, there is another drought coming on. This has already begun the drier parts of Kenya.

As to our AGLI work, last week we had a gathering at the Friends Peace Center--Lubao for the 36 active AVP facilitators we have in westernKenya. I texted Getry that it was a nice 2 day gathering. She texted back, "I am very excited about it too. Happy AVP life. Thanks for making it a success and the support. Pass my appreciation to Mama Gladys."

Perhaps two of the facilitators were in their 50's, 3 or 4 more in their 40's, and the rest (30 or so) in their 20's and 30's. Were they lively!!! The Lubao Center has only 20 beds. Where did the other 16 sleep? On the floor on mattresses: no complaints. Gladys and I (being old fogies)
did not spend the night there, but I was told that they stayed up until midnight doing role plays on transforming power. We have worked to expand outside of the Luhya group and here perhaps half were Luhya, a little less than half were Luo, and 4 were Kikuyu. We are still missing Nandi (Kalenjin) but we are working on this from a few different angles. Later this week we will do the first AVP workshops with the Sisters of the Assumption. They are based in Eldoret, but the workshop will be at their house in Turbo on the Kalenjin side of the border. They want AVP for their 125 nuns and then perhaps we can do AVP with the Kalenjin communities with which they are working. After the AVP Facilitators Gathering last week we did 7 AVP workshops including another one here in Lumakanda. This week we have nine workshops scheduled.

Like Getry says, "It's exciting!"

Let me end with two brief cow stories. Now that the rainy season is here the grass (and everything else) is shooting up like it does during spring in America. How do we cut our grass? We invite four local cows into the compound to chomp away for a while!

The second story concerns one of the workmen who built our house. Last year one of his cows was stolen. Five months later the cow walked back into his compound. Was he astonished!

Peace,
Dave

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

May 1, Rpt. 44, Update, + "releasing" a Friend

2008-05-22T08:15:00.000-07:00

Date: Thu, 1 May 2008 09:26:00 -0400
Subject: Kenya Peace and Reconciliation work update - Malesi Kinaro

Dear all of you,

It's long since I wrote. I love writing and reading from people so the fact that I have not written means I have really been kind of overwhelmed. As our leaders, Kibaki and Raila, and their teams engaged Koffi Annan we in the peace world were busy in the communities because we know that peace agreed up there does not always bring changes down in the grassroots.

The demand for reconciliation work is immense. Because I am in three places at the same time, yaani no fixed abode, I have an overview of what peace work is being done in my cycles and sometimes I just smile because the demand on everybody is immense. I have been mainly concentrating on Uzima work. We have carried out several one-day workshops in Kibera for Uzima youth. This is a curriculum we developed that combines trauma healing; a look at violence; then a way forward for healing by the participants. It is based on the AVP model and uses a number of exercises from AVP. We find this useful because the demand on us is high and this particular workshop really challenges the participants.

In Kibera we have come face to face with the youth who battled police; whose friends were gunned down as they ran or while uprooting the railway line, or when they had gone "shopping without money", as they call looting there. We have come face to face with intense mistrust and hatred as we have put Kikuyu and other tribes together. In Western Kenya we began with two 2-day mediation workshops for chiefs, divisional officers, youth leaders and a few pastors. Participants from the Kipsigis tribe had to share experiences with those from the Kisii tribe. This was intense. These are people right on the front line of great hostilities that have not yet erupted. Chiefs shared how they felt so pressured. The government was pressuring them to ensure that violence did not happen in their areas. Their people were running to them for shelter or for advice on what to do. Their own lives were in danger with 9 of them losing all they had when their homes were burned by angry youth who perceived them to be government supporters. They were surprised to realize that they faced similar challenges. One chief shared how he had cried when he saw 8 year old kids going to battle with arrows .

We then started a series of one-day workshops for the 120 youth leaders that form the border committees. Here we heard about participants having seen people dying with arrows lodged in their bodies, those who burned tires to block roads, those who made arrows, those who purchased, those who threw arrows at others, those who stoned, those who killed, just name it. Picture a situation where people are screaming and running, others are throwing stones and arrows, whistles and trumpets are blowing, gun shots and tear gas everywhere, dead bodies lying about with heads cut off, cows running all over, people singing war songs; etc.

Our aim is to let these young adults talk with no fear of victimization. Then we look at trauma, its causes, effects and consequences. We look at violence and how we can react nonviolently to violence situations. We look at cycles of violence and how the graph moves up every time root issues are not addressed. We look at the AVP themes of Affirmation, Communication, Cooperation, and Community based on trust and Creative Conflict resolution. We challenge ourselves: can we build a different society where we affirm each other, rather than think of Kikuyus as thieves, Luos as arrogant and violent, Luhya as cooks and watchmen, Kalenjin
as cattle rustlers and Kisii as violent? This is normally a very interesting time because it is towards the end. People get to hear what others say about them (their group) and the whole issue of stereotypes.

In all these workshops the difference at the end of the day has been tremendous. In Kibera, which began with Kikuyu youth walking alone and Luos and Luhyas alone, they were going for lunch together. In one workshop with Kisii/Kipsigis, the Kipsigis youth had to be escorted by the chief, 2 assistant chiefs and one armed policeman. This was a tough one and it really made us very tired. But my joy is that by the end of the day we were being asked to come back, this time to hold the workshop on the Kipsigis side. My fellow facilitators (the youthful Uzima staff - 3 Kisii and one Kipsigis) tell me that during this workshop I was not the person they knew as I threw one challenge after another. I was just so deeply hurt looking at these young people perceiving each other as enemies.

At the end of this particular workshop we heard exchanges like" I am so glad we came. Now we can come to your market to buy maize. We are starving." Or, " Now we can bring our maize and beans over at your market. Our people buy then at such throw-away prices". We are asked over and over to help the youth to form joint groups where they will carry out joint income generating activities, sports, etc.

But I know that one such workshop cannot really heal the deep mistrust and hatred that exists in Kenya. All participants want peace, as shown by their expectations at the start of the workshop. Most do not know how to do this. The need for sustained interaction is so very very crucial. So if you have anybody who can give us funds please don't hesitate. The need for income generating activities is SO HIGH. In Kibera our youth lost their businesses and need to reactivate them. Indeed the harvest is great but the harvesters are few.

I sometimes join the Nairobi AVP for their workshops here. The demand here is also overwhelming. Next week I will be in Western Province. I will join the team there for one-day workshops with the vulnerable youth, then attend a gathering that brings Quaker peacemakers from East Africa together. After this I go to a very exciting and very different program. My sister, Professor Miriam Were, who is also the co-founder of Uzima Foundation, was given an award by the Japanese government for her involvement in Public health programs in Africa. This is a very prestigious award and it includes cash to the tune of 1 million US dollars. She has received many prestigious awards but none with cash. The Japanese cited her work with Uzima Foundation as part of the award so Uzima is sending me to accompany her. I think AMREF
[African Medical & Research Foundation] is picking up the bill since they too will be going. So we leave Kenya on the 25th of May (my birthday) and come back on 2nd June. The Ministries of Health and Foreign Affairs will put up a big celebration when she comes back so I will be carried on the wave and I look forward to dancing my legs off that day.

For me this is a wonderful way to end my journey with Uzima as it Executive Director. I will continue to work with Uzima but in a different capacity.

What a long letter! Did I tell you that I will travel business class to Tokyo? Just imagine; and in our journeys among the Kisii/Kipsigis we have been climbing on top of a FULL matatu where sometimes it drizzles and drenches us!! God is good and His mercies endure forever. Does anybody have an old car they can ship to us? Or sell it and bring the cash? Climbing on top of a built-up pickup that is fully packed and twisting round those many Kisii bends is like playing with your life in the driver's hands!!

Malesi

>From Dave Z:
Upon consideration of Malesi's leadership and creativity in this time of crisis in Kenya, the Working Group of the African Great Lakes Initiative decided it was appropriate for her to become a released Friend. This concept had not been introduced among Quakers in Kenya previously but it clearly seemed to fit the situation. Malesi feels called to pursue peacemaking activities during 2008 and has been released to do so. A Support Committee has been appointed in Kakamega to help her with her activities.

Part of the support given to a "Released Friend" is the provision of financial resources to enable them to undertake the ministry to which they have been called. AGLI is committed to raising $5,000 for this calendar year to support Malesi. I hope that you will become part of this effort by sending a check made out to "Friends Peace Teams/AGLI" with a memo line of "Malesi Kinaro's Release."

11 May, Rept. 47, AGLI written up in newspaper

2008-05-22T08:14:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Sunday, May 11, 2008

Dear All,

Below is an article from today's Sunday Nation, the largest paper in Kenya. The first part is about three PM's from the Rift Valley talking about reconciliation, then the last part -- which I have put in red -- is about AGLI!!!! There are a few small mistakes (we are doing up to 20 rather than up to 2 workshops in each place).

[Note from Dawn: When this is sent our using our listserv the color will probably disappear. The section about AGLI begins with the 9th paragraph after the heading "Conflict Resolution." There are also misspellings of Gladys Kamonya's name and Kipkarren River.]

Since he did not put our website address in the article, I don't see how people can contact me since I doubt that folks will drive to Lumakanda to look me up.

[Note from Dawn: Well Dave, maybe they will "google" your name!]

Peace,
Dave

----------------------

Leaders accuse state of hurrying settlement drive to please the US
Story by STEPHEN MBURU
Publication Date: 5/11/2008

The home-bound internal refugees have had mixed fortunes.

While many had a warm reception in places such as Molo, the same cannot be said of other areas in the Rift Valley.

The icy relations that sparked the flight from their homes in the aftermath of the election dispute last year are still manifest in some areas.

Many say they fear returning home to live with their "enemies". Indeed, some have told the government to resettle them elsewhere.

Largely unplanned

Special Programmes minister Naomi Shaaban, who is playing a key role in the settlement drive, has assured the displaced families that no one will be forced to return home.

But some MPs from Rift Valley Province, which was mostly affected by the violence, argue that the programme is being implemented in a hurry, and is largely unplanned. They say that although they embrace the return of the IDPs, there is need for reconciliation first before settlement.

The MPs, Franklin Bett (Buret), Julius Kones (Konoin) and Isaac Ruto (Chepalungu) want the government and other groups to be involved in a reconciliation programme that will help people live in peace.

The leaders argue that the most important thing now is to reconcile the people instead of using the provincial administration to force the IDPs' neighbours to welcome them back home. They say armed police escorts and more police stations in the violence-hit areas will not help reconcile the people.

Mr Bett says he is for planned and not "false" resettlement of IDPs. "Resettlement," he says, "must be in a manner that will give us a permanent solution. That solution is first through reconciliation, development of forgiveness between communities and reawakening of the spirit of love among the people. That will make resettlement meaningful." "I will not be party to false resettlement," he told the Sunday Nation on telephone.

Mr Ruto accuses the government of hurrying the programme to please the international community, especially the United States.

"The government is in a hurry to remove an eyesore so the international community can give it accolades. It is what we call in Parliament playing to the gallery. "The government wants to be in good books with the international community," he says.

The MP says the government should involve local political, religious and civic leaders in the province. It should also respect the wishes of the IDPs.

"We MPs from the region are ready and willing to provide leadership for reconciliation," he told the Sunday Nation at Parliament Buildings. "The IDPs," he says, "are in anguish. They are scared to go back home. It takes two to tango. They should feel happy and safe. There is need for reconciliation.

Conflict resolution

"The provincial administration should not be involved in reconciliation. They are very poor in conflict resolution. To them, reconciliation is force. " He suggests that sociologists be involved in any programme to help heal the wounds among the affected people.

"University of Nairobi should provide experts to address the issue. This should be done after a proper census to identify genuine IDPs. We may be dealing with professional IDPs." He also wants a solution to unemployment among the youth "to avoid a new cycle of violence."

Mr Kones says settlement needs proper planning. "People need to be resettled, but there is no proper planning. Let there be a process. Let people get to know why they are going to live together," he says.

"The reconciliation process should have started first, where we bring together elders from different communities. This looks like a forced resettlement. I feel most (IDPs) were caught off-guard," he says.

The MP says the underlying emotive issues, including land, should be addressed to find a lasting solution to ethnic conflicts. The land problem, he says, was compounded by the high rate of unemployment among the youth.

The government and the other organisations involved in the programme may need to borrow a leaf from the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI) of the Friends Peace Teams, a non-governmental organisation which organises reconciliation workshops in Rwanda to help heal the wounds among the perpetrators and survivors of the genocide in the country in 1994.

The workshops, dubbed "Healing and Rebuilding our Communities (HROC)" have helped reconcile Rwanda's main ethnic groups, Hutu and Tutsi, following the genocide that left nearly one million people dead.

AGLI was founded by David Zarembka, an American. Its main office is in St Louis, Missouri. However, Mr Zarembka operates from Lumakanda in Lugari District where he lives with his wife Gladys Kimunya. Mr Zarembka is also AGLI's coordinator and the organisation has started reconciliation programmes in Western and Rift Valley provinces.

AGLI says on its website that it plans to conduct more than 100 basic and advanced workshops in various communities, many of which will involve young people who were involved in much of the violence. They will cover Bondo in Nyanza Province; Takatifu Gardens in Shinyalu, Lumakanda, Kakamega, Lugari District, and Vihiga District in Western Province; and Ndalu in Rift Valley Province.

"Each site will have up to two workshops so that each area can be adequately impacted." AGLI is reportedly supporting reconciliation efforts on the border between the Kipsigis (Rift Valley Province) and the Kisii (Nyanza Province) where more than 30 people were killed and where hundreds of homes, a school, and numerous businesses were burnt down.

Mr Zarembaka seems to be doing what Bett, Kones and Ruto are agreed on: making efforts to reconcile communities.

"I have been at a meeting since Thursday with the Friends Church Peace Team determining how we are going to meet with the IDPs-Luhya and the Nandi in Turbo, Mwamba and Kipkappen River near where I live in Lumakanda. These were all hard hit. There are still 4,000 unhappy IDPs at the Turbo Police Station," he told the Sunday Nation via email on Saturday.

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

2008-04-23T12:18:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-23T11:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-04-08T15:41:00.000-07:00

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?

2008-04-05T09:44:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-31T08:31:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-30T06:48:00.000-07:00

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

2008-03-27T14:04:00.000-07:00

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

March 23, Report 36, David Z is back in Kenya, others plan US visits

2008-03-26T15:40:00.000-07:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Saturday, March 22, 2008 11:07 PM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya--March 23

Dear All,

As you may remember, I have spent the last three weeks in the United States participating in the Friends Peace Teams annual meeting and making 15 presentations on Kenya including one radio interview. The presentations went well and there was a larger turnout than expected at most of the talks. Many of the people who attended received my emailed reports from Kenya, others were long-time AGLI supporters, and a number of Kenyan nationals came (and approved most of what I said). The talk included my nine interpretations of the events in Kenya. I hope to get a chance to write it up, in which case you will receive a copy.

Gladys and I will be returning to the United States from June 15 to about July 15 so anyone who would like to arrange for us to address a group during that time, please let me know.

Adrien Niyongabo who directs the HROC program in Burundi is currently giving talks in the US. He will speak Tuesday, March 25 at 6:30 pm at Fifteenth Street Meeting in New York City: contact Anna Crumley-Effinger via anna.crumleyeffinger@gmail.com From April 3-5 Adrien will attend the FWCC Section of the Americas Annual Meeting near Indianapolis. Along with Adrian Bishop, clerk of Friends Peace Teams Council he will present an evening interest group. On Sunday, April 6th Adrien will speak at Adelphi Friends Meeting in Maryland.

Florence Ntakarutimana, also from the HROC program in Burundi, will be in the United States on a speaking tour from June 11 to July 13. She will attend Illinois Yearly Meeting from June 18 to 22 and will be the evening speaker on Thursday. Then Florence will travel to Urbana-Champaign MonthlyMeeting in Illinois, and Inter-Mountain Yearly Meeting June 11-15 at Ghost Ranch in Colorado. Florence will attend both the Friends General Conference Gathering in Johnstown, PA and Friends United Meeting Triennial. Following this the plan is for her to travel to Colombia, South America, to introduce the Healing and Rebuilding Our Community program (HROC) along with Theoneste Bizimana from HROC in Rwanda.

Theoneste will then come to the United States where he will attend Iowa Yearly Meeting (Conservative) from July 29 to Aug 3. He will be the evening speaker on Wednesday, July 30th. Afterward he will join the sessions of New England Yearly Meeting.

This fall, in October/November, we plan to bring Getry Agizah, the AVP Coordinator in Kenya, to the US for a speaking tour.

If you would like to host an event with any of these speakers, please let me know. Sooner is better. You can learn more about each of these African Partners on our new website at the same url, www.aglionline.org.

We returned to Kenya on Friday (3/21) and came back to Lumakanda on Saturday. As I move around I will have more comments on the situation--we hope to visit the internally displaced people from Lumakanda in Turbo tomorrow. The mood in Nairobi didn't seem quite as buoyant as the reports I was reading from Kenya on the internet. While everyone is relieved that a seemingly successful power-sharing agreement has been reached, the concern is now that all three major political parties are in the government, all cooperating together so nicely, perhaps the bad old days of one-party dictatorship can easily return in the form of a three party dictatorship. This remains to be seen.

As we traveled up-country through Naivasha, Nakuru, Timbaroroa, Burnt Forest, Eldoret, and Turbo--all hard-hit by the violence-- we could see the plastic huts of many displaced people still in the camps alongside the road. There was the same destruction of houses, shops, and farms as we could see before, but seeing all this again was discouraging since it all seemed so unnecessary.

After a year of delays, AVP-Western Kenya conducted the first two basic workshops with the Turkana and Pokot. The first was with older participants while the second had younger ones. There were only three women in the first workshop and two in the second, which Getry was concerned about. Since I had been told that the men would not want women to attend until they had "checked it out," this seemed a step forward. There were a total of ten AVP workshops while we were away including a good one here in Lumakanda. We are going to do some advanced workshops so that we can conduct another "Training for Facilitators" so we will have additional facilitators available to conduct workshops.

When we left for the US, it was still the dry season and dust was everywhere with four months of almost no rain. By the time we returned the rainy season had come to Lumakanda so the air and atmosphere is very different. After the dry season, the first rain is like the first snow for a five year old in America. Here everything stops for that first rain. The dogs bark, the cows jump up and down, the children go run in the rain and wiggle their toes in the mud, and everyone looks forward to planting of the new crops. It's a different kind of spring.

But the rainy season also means a lot of clouds so I don't know how much electricity my solar panel will be generating. My time on the laptop may become limited. But the day before we returned, the electric company finally put the poles and wires to our house (we applied in September). Of course they haven't put in the electric meter yet. So communication will be touch and go (or rather "sun or meter").

Peace,
Dave

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

Celebration! Sukie Rice (ME)

2008-03-20T08:27:00.000-07:00

I've received nothing new yet from David Zarembka, but here is a message from Sukie (in Maine) reporting on things in Kakamega, where she has close ties to the care Center for AIDS orphans. The Dorothy she mentions is Dorothy Selebwa, clerk of the United Friends Women (all the Kenyan Yearly Meetings) and runs the Care Center.

Mary

----- Original Message -----

From: Sukie Rice

Sent: Thursday, March 20, 2008 12:09 AM

Subject: Kakamega Up-Date March 18

Dear friends,

Well, today is a day to celebrate. The Kenyan National Parliament has voted to accept the new constitutional changes which will create the position of Prime Minister who will have 50-50% power sharing with the President. Thus, President Kibaki and Raila Odinga (who will be the new Prime MInister) will be working together on an equal footing.

As you know many, many delicate and difficult steps have been taken to get to this point. It was Kofi Annan who pulled off the miracle of bringing these two men together and getting them to put their country before themselves and their party/tribe. What they came up with addresses not just power sharing, but also

--- A Truth and Reconciliation Commission to address the recent violence and longer term injustices.

--- An ethnic relations bill that promotes tribal tolerance in Kenya.

--- The major area of continued conflict in the Western Province near Mount Elgon where there have

been long-time land clashes between peoples because the same land has been promised by the government to two different tribal peoples.

The agreement was brought to the National Assembly and approved unanimously today. People throughout Kenya are singing and dancing in the streets. It was just a few weeks ago that Kofi Annan almost walked out because President Kibaki would not sign what he had previously agreed to. But just as it seemed that the country might go up in flames again, pressure from everywhere poured onto Kibaki and he signed, making it look like he was indeed the leader in bringing forth this agreement. You could hear an audible corporate "whew" from all of Kenya and Africa on the day that he and Odinga put their signatures to the agreement. At least 1000 deaths and 600,000 displaced people have borne the brunt of the misery of this struggle. What is hoped for is that Kenya will now move forward in a far stronger, more socially and politically just manner. And that these events will be viewed in the future as the turning point for Kenya taking essential steps toward greater equality and cooperation.

In Kakamega

Meanwhile, things have cooled down in Kakamega and life is proceeding very close to normal with the children all back in school and laughter once more heard in the halls of the Care Centre.

New girl, Sharon and Clinton getting new shoes for school.

--- The walls, ceiling and flooring of the boys dorm are COMPLETE. Painting, windows, and wiring are left to go. It is anticipated that the boys will be moving into it in April. When they do, new girls will be brought into the Care Centre to the vacated bedrooms. It has been very challenging at times to do the

construction as the political crisis made it difficult to get materials, water for the cement, etc. But they have persisted and are very excited by the progress.

--- The rains have begun and so has the planting. We have two new acres that are being planted. Some of the previously planted acreage is getting cover crops and sweet potatoes to help enrich the soil.

THANK YOU to ALL of you who have sent contributions during the past two months when things were so hard for everyone. Extra food has been given for all the home-based sponsored children. Food costs at the Care Centre have gone way up. Plus, they have been cooking extra meals during the day for "refugee" children who are staying in the "Internally Displaced Persons" (IDP) camp. Your extra contributions have been invaluable.

Emergency Relief Work

Dorothy and other Quakers have been coordinating weekly Emergency Relief trips to areas where the IDP refugees are staying. They report thousands of people who are living in areas where there is no place for them to go and no way of knowing how to build their futures.

At Cheptulu IDP camp

When Dorothy goes with the other Friends, they pray and encourage the people, then the long lines form to receive the grains, cooking oil, soap and blankets. Although the Red Cross has brought tents and food (enough for one meal a day) to the larger of the camps, Dorothy says that very often the food stuffs get siphoned away by men who use it for their personal benefit, often selling it for profit. Thus, the Friends are careful to stay until the last of the grains is apportioned out so it is really the women and children who receive the food.

A corner of the kitchen at the Mt. Elgon relief camp

--- They have been a number of times to the Mt. Elgon area where the land-clash violence continues.

--- They have been to camps where Kikuyu have suffered from the violence of Luo and Luyha.

--- They have been to camps where thousands of Luyha have been transported into Kakamega towns from Nakuru and Naivasha areas to be "safe." But as these people have no homes or relatives in these towns, they have no where to go and it is pitiful how hopeless they feel and is a terrible stress on all the people around. The Care Centre has been the central location "jumping off place" for these relief trips --- for gathering the rice from Kisumu, maize from Kitale, beans from Eldoret and blankets which Dorothy buys in town. At the Care Centre they load these things into a large lorry and take it off to the IDP camps. They thank God and all the people in the US and Canada who have sent funds to make their Relief work possible.

Loading up the lorry with grain bags and blankets.

In Closing

Well, my friends, it feels like a much needed rest is due and can come now. Of course the on-going support of the Care Centre is needed. I'd be very happy to help you in any fund-raising ideas you might have that you'd like to do. We still have a couple of openings for people to join the Service Project trip this August. It should be a powerful experience following this time of turmoil and violence. If you are interested, please contact me.

Dorothy and others ask over and again to thank you for caring for the Kenyan people. You should know that you all have quietly formed a very important community of support and caring for the people in Kakamega. I have often felt an awe of the spiritual kinship we have developed and I can only say that I, too, am very grateful to have you all as an extended family.

Blessings to each of you,

Sukie

Feb 25, Dave Z in USA next week

2008-02-26T13:51:00.000-08:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Monday, February 25, 2008 10:48 PM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya--Feb 26

Dear All,

On Thursday Gladys and I will be flying to the United States for three weeks. Thus you will not be receiving any reports from Kenya (although I might send out a "Report from the US" if something worth saying occurs). I will be speaking in many places. Here is what I have lined up so far. If you need more details about a particular event, contact me or Dawn Rubbert (who sends out these reports for me).

Dave's Speaking Schedule in US for March 2008

Arrive in DC Feb 29, 7:20 AM

Sunday, March 2 - William Penn House, DC--6:30 potluck
515 East Capitol Street,
SE Washington, D.C. 20003
Phone (202) 543-5560
http://williampennhouse.org/

Monday, March 3 - Cincinnati, Ohio - 7 - 8:30 pm
Community Friends Meeting
3960 Winding Way
Cincinnati, OH 45229-1950
(513) 861-4353
http://www.quaker.org/ovym/com.htm

Saturday, March 8 - Portland, Oregon (evening)
Multnomah Meeting
4312 S.E. Stark Street
Portland, Oregon 97215
(503) 232-2822
http://www.multnomahfriends.org/stark_street.html

Monday, March 10 --St Louis, Missouri - Light repast 6:15 / Presentation 7 - 8:30 pm
St. Louis Friends Meeting
1001 Park Avenue
St. Louis, MO 63104
(for info call Dawn at 314-647-1287)
http://www.stlouisfriends.org/

Thursday, March 13 - Wilmington, Delaware 7 pm
Westminster Presbyterian Church
1502 West 13th Street
Wilmington, DE 19806
(303) 654-5706
http://www.wpc.org/
Rt. 52/Delaware Ave. at 13th / free parking beside the church

Friday 3/14 - Wilmington Friends School (individual classes) 8 - 11 am

Friday, March 14 - Haddonfield, NJ - 7 pm
Haddonfield Friends Meeting
Friends Avenue & Lake Street (One block west of Kings Highway)
Haddonfield, NJ 08033
856-428-6242
http://www.pym.org/haddonfield-qm/haddonfieldmm/index.htm

Saturday, March 15, - Haverford, PA - Noon to 3:00 pm
Lunch with David Zarembka - Presentation/discussion afterward
Haverford Friends Meeting
855 Buck Lane
Haverford, PA 19041
http://www.haverfordfriendsmeeting.org/

Sunday, March 16 - Bethesda, Maryland - 12:30 pm
Bethesda Friends Meeting
7415 Beverly Rd
Bethesda, MD 20814
(301) 986-8681
http://www.bethesdafriends.org/

Monday, March 17-New York City, (tentative)
Tuesday, March 18-New York City, (QUNO), Tentative

Wednesday, March 19-Leave for Kenya

Friday--March 21-arrive in Kenya

Hope you have enjoyed my thoughts and experiences to date. I will resume the reports after I return to Kenya in late March.

Peace,
Dave

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

Feb 24. Rpt 34, Whom to blame? - David Zarembka

2008-02-25T15:19:00.000-08:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Saturday, February 23, 2008 11:54 PM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya-- # 34 Feb 24

Dear All,

The team lead by Kofi Annan was supposed to release the details of the power-sharing agreement between the two sides on Friday. That didn't happen. It seems like the Kibaki/PNU side is again procrastinating (they feel that time is on their side). So the Raila/ODM side has called for mass action on Wednesday (Feb. 27). Rather than just demonstrations, as in the past (which were broken up violently by the police), ODM is calling for what I would describe as a general strike. No one is to go to work; roads will be blocked, etc. Due to the recent history of violence this action will be extremely effective--everyone will be afraid to travel or to go to work. Everyone will stay home and the country will shut down. On Wednesday we were planning to go to Nairobi for our flight to the US on Thursday. If the action is not called off by Monday, we will travel to Nairobi on Tuesday. See how effective this threat is!

Yesterday Gladys and I went to Kakamega for a meeting with CAPP (essentially peace committee members) and AVP members from the various yearly meetings. During this meeting a woman from Chwele Yearly Meeting, which is right below the fighting on Mt. Elgon, told us that the previous night a member of one of the Quaker meetings was attacked by the Sabaot Land Defense Force (SLDF) which is responsible for much of the destruction and death on the mountain. His head was cut off and has not yet been found. (Note: Is it more "civilized" to attack people, say in Iraq, with heavy weapons so the body parts are all over the place?) Most of the Sabaot, who live higher up on the slopes of the mountain, have been displaced, so the SLDF is now moving further down the hill to steal cattle and goods, killing people in the process. This area is very heavily populated by Quakers; every mile or two is another Quaker school. As the violence increases--and the current political crisis has been a great "cover" for increased attacks and ethnic cleanings in the area--the Quakers there will be more and more affected. Will the larger Quaker community in Kenya and the world take note of this and respond?

Yesterday we also bought goods in Kakamega for the internally displaced Lumakanda people who are now at the police station in nearby Turbo. We picked up four members of the Church including the pastor, James Majeta. As usual we delivered the food. There has not been significant rain in this area for almost four months. The IDP camp is at the top of a hill on fields that grew corn last year. The place is totally dry. The soil is very loose. The wind blows much of the time, sometimes very hard, and the dust blows everywhere. In an hour my hair (like everyone else's there) was covered with dust. They told me that a cow dies almost every day because there is not sufficient grass to feed them. As I looked at the cows I could see that many were thin with ribs showing. Although some of the people have moved back to their houses (see the comments about Silas Njoroge below) and some have returned to Central Province (the Kikuyu "ancestral home"), those who remain do not have homes to return to and perhaps do not even know where their "ancestral home" is.)

Here I will tell a story. You have to figure out the moral of the story. Gladys has a distant relative who works in Nairobi; but his wife and children live near us. These people are therefore Luhya, the dominant group in Lugari District. They are the ones who supply us each morning and evening with milk for our tea (and other uses). There are two older sons, Anthony, 21, and Nivan, 20. Both have completed secondary school and, as even they themselves say, are part of the "idle youth" who have nothing to do. About two weeks ago Nivan brought the evening milk about 6:00 pm. He went to the road, saw his brother and another friend, and they decided to walk over to Anthony's girlfriend's house. As they walked near the hospital and police station, there was a group of three Kikuyu boys following them. One of them came up to Nivan and started to attack him. The attacker then pulled out a machete and tried to strike him on the head. Nivan put up his left arm to ward off the blow and the machete cut through one of his arm bones and half way through the second. They rushed Nivan to the nearby hospital. About 8:00 pm the hospital called and told us to come and see him. This we did. By the time we reached the hospital he had been stitched up, given an antibiotic, and was doing fairly well considering the circumstances. Gladys paid the hospital bill. (It cost a little over $5. What would this have cost in the US?). Neither Anthony nor Nivan knew the attacker, but they did know the boys he was with. At this point it looked like this was an ethnic attack with a Kikuyu attacking a Luhya.

So then we went to the police station to report the incident. As soon as we arrived, the policeman said this was a case of a love triangle. If this is correct, then this is not one ethnic group attacking another, but "ethnic love" as two boys are fighting over the same girl (who is a Luhya). The only problem with this interpretation is that the girl is Anthony's girlfriend, yet Nivan is the one who was attacked. Moreover, as Anthony said to me, "If I had a rival, I didn't know it." So you can decide, "Is this ethnic hatred or ethnic love?" As I have said before, if one investigated the details of many of these incidents, the results would not be too clear.

Last Monday Gladys called the Anthony and Nivan's Mom and asked her to send them up with the evening milk. We talked with them more about the incident--Nivan is recovered well enough. ("I don't want to be a cripple," he sometimes says. Then other times he talks about how lucky he was to put up his arm to ward off the blow since he probably would have been killed.) The attacker has fled Lumakanda area and no one knows where he is. One of the other Kikuyu boys had been put in jail but he was released since he hadn't actually done anything that was a chargeable offense. We discussed with them the idea of doing AVP with the youth. Would they be able to assemble a group of 20 youth, male and female, of various ethnic backgrounds to have a workshop? They said they could so we arranged for five or six of them to come back on Friday to meet with us and Getry, the AVP coordinator; and they came. Five youth (2 female, 3
male; 4 Luhya and 1 Luo) came to discuss the situation with Getry. The result is that on March 3, Getry and two other facilitators will begin an AVP workshop with them which will include Luhya, Nandi (local Kalenjin group), Luo, and Kikuyu. They said they have known each other since they were kids in school.

But another interesting thought came out of the discussion. Getry had introduced the idea that the youth were being blamed for all the violence. Anthony responded that on Dec 30 (the evening the election results were announced and the violence started) many adults were telling the youth to attack the Kikuyu. In particular, the adults said to attack Silas Njoroge whose house was looted but not burned -- perhaps because it is close to the town and the police station. (He has now returned to his house.) If the youth killed someone, they were told they could come back for a reward. Anthony said, and the others agreed, that there was a lot of peer pressure to join in the attacks and the youth really faulted the older people for promoting this.

Ray Downing, a doctor at Webuye Hospital, (who formerly worked at the Quaker Lugulu Hospital up the mountain from Webuye) asked the question, "Why don't we study those areas (such as Webuye and Bungoma) where there was no violence?" In other words, rather than focusing only on the bad areas, why don't we try to understand the good areas? At one point I replied that I thought the Webuye/Bungoma area had not erupted into violence because the people there voted for Kibaki rather than Raila. (This voting was really anti-Raila, who they didn't like, rather than pro-Kibaki. Nonetheless, it got Kibaki the votes he needed. Ray
Downing replied that the older people in the area voted for Kibaki, but that the younger people voted for Raila. Later I was in a meeting where two parents said they had voted for Kibaki while their children had voted for Raila and that this had brought great tension into the family.

This led me to realize that it is the elders (Bush, Cheney, et alter) who send the youth to war in Iraq. It is the Kalenjin elders who send their warriors to attack the Kikuyu and the church which was burned down in Eldoret. It was the elders here in Lumakanda who encouraged the youth to attack the local Kikuyu. Where the elders did not encourage the youth, or perhaps discouraged the youth from attacking, the youth were not violent. If this interpretation is correct, then it is the older people who are responsible for the violence, death, and chaos in Kenya and not the youth who physically did the damage.

I guess this is enough thoughts for one day.

Peace,
Dave

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

Feb 21, Rpt 33, Not looking good - David Zarembka

2008-02-25T15:11:00.000-08:00

Sent: Wednesday, February 20, 2008 10:26 PM
Subject: AGLI -- Report form Kenya -- #33 Feb 21.

Dear All,

Politically things are not looking good. The Government (PNU--Kibaki) side, after immense pressure from the US, Britain, the EU, and many others, has not compromised hardly at all. They are continuing to say much of what they said right after the election--Kibaki is in power and the Constitution cannot be changed to accommodate any settlement. The Opposition side (ODM--Raila) is planning to start holding demonstrations again after a week if Parliament is not called into session to vote on the Constitutional changes needed for a settlement. The Government then says they (ODM) are bringing on violence and ODM responds by saying that it is the Government who is violent when they forbid peaceful demonstrations as allowed by the Kenya Constitution and international law. The tear gas, water cannons, and live bullets are what is making the demonstrations violent. For some reason, the authorities in Kapsabet had allowed demonstrations before and they were peaceful and the youth blew off their steam. The Kibaki side wishes to procrastinate as long as possible since with each passing day they remain in power.

Noah Weksa, a PNU Member of Parliament from Western Kenya, a Quaker, and Minister for Science and Technology, has called for a power sharing agreement--this is at some variance with
the PNU hardliner stance. It will be interesting to see if some of the PNU, non-Kikuyu MP's start to break away to form that moderate middle that will be necessary for a resolution.

On Tuesday Gladys and I were at the Friends Church Peace Team (FCPT) meeting and I heard this interesting story. There are still about 1000 Kikuyu camped at the police station in Kakamega. On Sunday 350 Luhya who had been displaced from Naivasha, Nakuru, and Central Province and returned to their "ancestral land" as is the phrase here (i.e., ethnically cleansed) arrived in their truck at the police station, but the police turned them away--presumably because the Luhya would have problems staying with the Kikuyu. When the truck returned to town, not really knowing where to drop the people, the bicycle taxi drivers got aroused. In mass, as they do during the rioting, they returned with the truck to the police station and demanded that the Luhya be allowed to stay there (or they would begin attacking the Kikuyu). The police backed down and the Luhya stayed with the Kikuyu in the police station, both as internally displaced people.

In the reports on the FCPT distribution which I missed when we were in Uganda, a number of people commented that the internally displaced people would see the Red Cross vehicles pass them by, but never stop to help. FCPT is distributing to those who have not been serviced by the Red Cross. These people are ethnically mixed, but none are Kikuyu. It seems that the Red Cross is servicing only Kikuyu. People I know in Lumakanda have stopped me in the streets here to complain about the Red Cross not helping the Luhya. This should be investigated and if true, the Red Cross should be taken to task for this discrimination.

Our 42 one-day listening workshops for the 496 staff at the Center for Disease Control in Kisumu have been completed. I talked to the Director and she was very pleased with them as she had heard many positive reports from the participants. We had brought Chris, one of the HROC facilitators from Rwanda, to help out. The HROC program in Rwanda is planning listening sessions for survivors of the recent earthquake in Cyangugu at the southern end of Lake Kivu so Chris will be able to bring the Kenya experience back to Rwanda.

Peace,
Dave

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

Feb 18, Solid progress, David Zarembka

2008-02-18T08:03:00.000-08:00

Dear All,

I'll not repeat any of what I have been sending in my "Reports from Kenya." Since the Kenya situation is taking most of my time and thought I will report on it first.

AGLI has already received over $16,000 for our Kenya Relief and Reconciliation Fund from the US and almost $7,000 from England. (Note that relative to size, we are doing much better in England where I have made no special effort. You can draw your own conclusions.) With these funds (and hopefully more) we have lots of plans.

We are just finishing the 42 one-day AVP-style listening sessions with the Center for Disease Control. They seem to have gone very well even though many were during most difficult circumstances--participants showed up, an MP was assassinated, and the workshop was in turmoil as the people didn't know how and if they would get home. I will be reading the daily workshop reports soon. I am expecting to have a "surplus" from these workshops as the CDC paid us for our services. These will be used to further the AVP program.

The US Institute of Peace (who have twice given AGLI grants and we have another under consideration) hooked us up with Kuki (mother) and Sveva (daughter) Gallmann who run a 100,000 acre game preserve near Lake Baringo. They were bringing 40 youth for a week from the slums of Nairobi and they really needed help with the peacemaking component of their project. So we dispatched Getry Agizah (AVP coordinator who is only 28 years old), Peter Serete, and Martin Oloo. They did essentially the basic AVP in the morning and in the afternoon the preserve had art, drama, music aspects (which is what they do, besides nature conservancy). It went really well. So USIP has asked us to submit a joint grant application for up to $50,000. I have sent Kuki and Sveva a general plan. This application would be separate from the one we have in the pipeline (we are supposed to learn by the end of March).

We have done AVP at Friends Theological College. Half the students have gone through advanced. We have a plan to have all the 80 students (and some staff) complete through advanced by Easter break (almost a month long). Then we will do 4 Training for Facilitators at one time, with as many apprentice workshops in their Quaker churches as we can handle afterwards. This should then give us a large group of beginning facilitators. Half will graduate in June and so we can start using them in our regular workshop.

There is a place near Kakamega called Takatifu (Holy) Gardens which is a small retreat center. Starting on Monday Feb 25, we will be doing two AVP workshops there per week, hopefully mostly with youth. The Gardens will supply the site, food, and accommodations when necessary, while AVP will supply materials and the facilitators. We will continue with this as long as it continues to work out.

Then our regular AVP facilitators will be doing at least 100 AVP workshops (basic and advanced) with youth at various sites where we can organize. I am hoping to do one or more here in Lumakanda where a distant relative of Gladys's (a young Luhya man) was attacked by a Kikuyu with a machete and badly cut in the arm. (Was this an ethnic attack or a dispute over a girlfriend?) I hope I can get both sides to come to a workshop. I am also going to try to arrange for AVP workshops in the IDP camp where the Lumakanda Kikuyu went--when I go I notice many youth just hanging around doing nothing.

To do all of this for this year we have hired two assistant AVP coordinators, Peter Serete and Bernard Onjalo, and a part-timer, Eunice Okwemba (who is my sister-in-law, but one of the most active AVP facilitators). The funding for these will come out of the Kenya Relief and Reconciliation appeal.

Malesi Kinaro has been in the forefront of peacemaking here among Quakers in Kenya. She was the first to visit the IDP camp in Kakamega (when others were still too shocked and afraid to go), did listening sessions with the youth in Kakamega who participated in the violence, arranged for
> peace-making sessions between the Kipsigis and Kisii elders where 10 to 20 people were killed and hundreds of houses, shops, and schools were burned, and helping with the first 8 day of our listening project at the CDC. AGLI has agreed to make her a released Friends (which is a new concept here in Kenya) to continue to pursue her peacemaking endeavors as the way leads her and her support committee. AGLI will be raising specific funds for this from the Kenya workcampers, AVP facilitators who have come from overseas, people she met on her 2004 AGLI tour in the US, and others who know her work.

This past week Gladys and I went to Bududa, Uganda to see the situation there and visit/support Barbara Wybar who is there for 8 months. The technical institute has moved to a new site and given the name Bududa Vocational Institute. It opened on Feb 4 and has 32 students (plus two more the day we were there) which is more than the low 20's the school had in December. The new head, Paul Balidawa, has hired two new qualified teachers for the three programs--nursery school teaching (the most popular), tailoring, and bricklaying. They are hoping to get electricity (perhaps with a diesel generator) so that they can start teaching computer skills and a secretarial course (these will be extremely popular). The capacity of the building is 80 students so they have to start thinking of how to plan for the future.

The Children of Hope orphans program (which will be given a new name) is under "new management." They had there first session on Feb 9--I have reported on this in my regular reports. The most significant innovation will be rather than have the hierarchical all-powerful head (the "big man" method of administration so common in Africa and the cause of much mismanagement including the Children of Hope program), the staff (mostly school teachers) will run the program cooperatively with everyone having an assigned duty. If this works, it will be a good model for others.

Fortunately we have great, highly functioning staff in Rwanda, Burundi, and North Kivu because I have been unable to give much attention (and focusing on the other countries is difficult for me at this time). They are just continuing with their work. To put it another way, since there are no problems, I don't hear much. Both the Burundi and Rwandan programs have bought small cars as getting around to remote areas is difficult and frequently very expensive. Adrien's tour is turning out very well and he will be with us at the FPT meeting in Portland. Gladys and I will be there too. We will arrive in the US on Feb 29 and I have a lot of speaking engagements until we leave on March 17.

Peace,
Dave

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

Feb 13, calming down, Sukie Rice (in ME)

2008-02-15T15:58:00.000-08:00

Dear friends,

It is with real relief that I can write that the reports we are getting from Kenya is that there has been a continued calming of things all around and in the Kakamega area. With Kofi Annan working with Kibaki and Odinga, the political process is moving forward and people are holding their breath that progress will bring some serious resolutions to the crisis. With schools and shops re-opening, people are trying to return to "life as normal" (as if there can be a "normal" again with so many shops in town burned and thousands of people in the refugee centers). The calm is like tip-toeing on egg-shells with violence flaring up for moments here and there (especially after a member of parliament was shot and killed a week ago). And everyone is very cautious, but very grateful that things are quieting down.

Friends Emergency Relief Work

The major effort of the Friends in western Kenya right now is the relief work they are doing... and Kakamega is currently the center for their efforts. They are working in very close coordination with one another, choosing the sites they will visit together and how best to purchase the supplies they bring. The Care Centre is being used as the central location to bring piles of blankets and the large bags of maize, beans, rice, cooking oil and soap. These things are purchased from the places where the best prices can be found, brought to the Care Centre and then loaded into a lorry to be taken to the camps where the refugees or IDP (Internally Displaced Persons) are staying.

The International Red Cross is getting to many of the larger camps, bringing tents and food enough for one meal a day. But they are not reaching all the areas by any means, and there is serious lack of food, blankets and sanitary needs in all the camps.

Mt. Elgon area

Last week they filled a large lorry full of supplies (such as the forty 200-pound bags of maize) and then loaded up the Care Centre van and a truck full of Friends to go to a couple of places north of Kakamega. After dropping off a lot of supplies and a group of Friends at a camp near Kitale, the rest then continued west toward the Mt. Elgon area (Trans Nzoia District) where 4000 people are in camps with NO assistance being brought to them. (The IRC trucks passed them by to deliver food and supplies to another IDP camp down the road where there were Kikuyu refugees. As the Mt. Elgon refugees are non-Kikuyu, people saw this as another example of the government?s favoritism of Kikuyu over others in the country).

It is mostly Luhya and Sabaot people here who have had to flee their homes over a land distribution conflict that has been active for a year and half, and has flared up especially since the election. Over 400 people have been killed there and many thousands displaced. Women with children have been separated from their husbands and fathers when "rebel soldiers" came in and they have no idea where they are. Although many areas of Kenya are calming, this area definitely is not with significant violence and many new displaced people each week.

Dorothy and other Friends spent the day with them distributing blankets and food and praying and encouraging them. It is these visits that have become so important. As one Friend, David Z. says, "In this kind of work, one cannot get discouraged by the unmet needs, but must focus on what you have accomplished. If people only eat well for a few days, it is still better than having to scrounge around for a little food and going to sleep hungry. Moreover, as I have learned in the past, visiting people who have been the victims of violence is perhaps one of the most important peacemaking activities one can initially do. As the Burundians say, "A real Friend comes in the time of need"

Next Stop

They are purchasing more food and blankets now and tomorrow they will take another truck load of relief supplies to an IDP camp in Cheptulu, which is south of Kakamega near Kaimosi. This camp is filled with Kikuyu who have been victims of the ?violence in Kisumu, one of primary centers of the violence.

Dorothy (Selebwa, who runs the Care Centre - MG) says there have also been truck-loads of people who are Luhya who come from other parts of the country but have been "shipped" to the Kakamega area because it is Luhya and therefore safe. "But they are just dropped here. And they have no homes or family here. So what are they to do?" she asks. People take them in. All over Kenya, people are reaching out and taking people in. Stretching. And stretching some more.

Happy Birthday

You wanna hear a fabulous story? You betcha! Well, one of the Friends at New Haven Meeting turned 60 last week and had a lovely celebration with a number of her friends. She asked people not to give her gifts but instead contribute to Friends of Kakamega, especially for the relief work. One of her guests had gone on our trip to Kakamega last summer and showed pictures and talked about the Care Center. Well, she just sent me $900 in checks from her friends! Happy Birthday, Barbara! What a great birthday present! Thank you!

And thank you to all of you who continue to hold Kenya in the Light. Here is a prayer which Eden Grace (staff of Friends United Meeting in Kisumu) has sent out.

Please join us in praying for

His hand of calm to stay the angry hearts,

His hand of comfort to bind up the wounded in body and spirit,

and His hand of wisdom to guide all of us

who seek to do His will today and every day.

Mirembe,

Sukie

Friends of Kakamega

51 Hunter Road

Freeport, ? ME ?04032

207-865-3768

Feb 11, Rpt 31, Calming down, early trainings, David Zarembka

2008-02-11T11:10:00.000-08:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Monday, February 11, 2008 1:55 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya -- #31 Feb 11

Dear All,

On Friday Kofi Annan announced that an agreement was being reached between the two sides and the details will be available early this week. People are guardedly hopeful that some accommodation will be reached. But, as they say, the devil is in the details. (One of my favorite explanations of the current crisis is from a woman who said, "On Dec 30 Satan came to Kenya.") I would not be surprised that the agreement when announced might lead to another round of violence as the "hardliners" on both sides will feel that they have been sold out by the compromises. Hopefully I am wrong.

The changes are supposed to be far-reaching. I have some qualms about the fact that 8 negotiators and their political parties are chartering the course of the country, meaning that women, youth, the religious community, NGO's, and the business community are all, as usual, left out. This was the case with the compromise in Burundi and the result has been a squabbling, ineffective government. When will the world develop a system where all parts of society negotiate the conditions for a country's existence and well-being? I am certain that both political parties will see that their interests are properly served before those of the other actors in the country. It is possible that the "compromise" made lead to a political storm (rather than a violent storm) by those who have not been consulted. Or perhaps everyone is so tired that they will accept anything handed to them.

Lumakanda town, this morning (Monday), has been more like a normal day than any other since Dec 30. Many people are in town going about their various businesses, the motorcycle taxi drivers are busy, and I can easily buy a newspaper!

What the Daily Nation (Kenya's largest newspaper with a circulation of over 1,000,000!) covered today was all those affected by the violence--children not in school, children in IDP camps, colleges and other institutions who have lost their staff, manufacturing businesses that are closed, hospitals and other government offices which are understaffed as the employees fled, roads that aren't being built, lost employment, and the other costs of 6 weeks of violence and stalemate. A Quaker in Nairobi whose wholesale establishment was looted says he will re-open, but not now. A large-scale farmer I know says he is cutting back on the acreage of maize (corn) he will plant next month because he does not know if he will get seeds and fertilizer, or what price he might have to pay. The cost of travel has almost doubled--for example, a matatu from Lumakanda to Kakamega has gone from 120/- to 200/- ; and the price increase does not seem like it is going to go down to where it was before. I have seen people wanting to get a ride in a matatu asking for the price and, seeing that it is more than they have, not making the ride.

[Note: /- is the symbol for Kenyan Shilling.]

Okay, I need to report some good news. There is a place in Kenya called the Laikipia Nature Conservancy (www.gallmannkenya.org). It is a 100,000 acre preserve next to Lake Baringo in the drier parts of the Rift Valley. They have a 60 person education center and they have done peacemaking activities there in the past in addition to their normal purpose of conservation education. Right now they have 40 youth from the Nairobi slums, many of whom were involved in destruction, there for a week of "healing". They needed some help so the United States Institute of Peace [USIP], which has supported both AGLI and the Conservancy in the past, recommended us to them. As a result Getry Agizah, Peter Serete, and Martin Oloo, all young, experienced AVP facilitators, are leading these youth through the AVP course on esteem, communication, cooperation, and non-violent conflict resolution each morning. In the afternoon others lead sessions on art, drama, music, etc. The three facilitators had problems getting there because the bus broke down. I asked Getry if she was happy and she reported, "We are very happy and glad to have the Nairobi youth. Life is simple and peaceful. Just finished the sessions. We are on the truck going around the forest (where there is much wildlife)."

Likewise we are continuing the daily listening sessions with employees at the Center for Disease Control in Kisumu. As the situation in Kisumu has calmed down these trainings seem to have become routine with the participants being energized at the end of each day with the training activity that is called "On the Way Forward."

Peace,
Dave

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

Feb 8, Report 30, David Zarenbka

2008-02-09T12:26:00.000-08:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 3:32 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya-- # 30 -- Feb 8

Dear All,

I have not made a report for the last three days because each day I have been on the road. Tuesday Gladys and I went to Kakamega to buy relief supplies for our Lumakanda IDP's who are now in Turbo. On Wednesday, I went to Kaimosi to the Friends Theological College to work out a plan for them to do AVP in their churhes during April vacation. On Thursday, Gladys and I went in the north Rift Valley to distribute relief supplies with the Friends Church Peace Team; I have reported on this in another email.

While others think Kenya is calmiing down, I don't. I think that it has entered another stage where the dramatic headlines of burning buildings and multi-deaths is over and a more subdued,
but perhaps a more destructive and deadly mopping up, has begun. I can call this "reaping the harvest of the prior violence."

Tuesday on our way to Kakamega we stopped by Florence and Alfred Machayo's house to deal with the maize (corn) that needed to be bagged for delivery in the North Rift. Alfred was not there because he was escorting a Luhya friend of his who was a magistrate in the Nandi (Kalenjin) area. The magistrate had been told that he had to leave Nanci in a week or his house would be burned down. So, he was looking at the plot he has in Lugari District and determining how he can live there with his family. In other words, one family quietly (as far as the media is concerned) displaced. I suspect he will be out of his job also.

In the last few days another home was burned near Kipkarren River. In this case the old Kikuyu had died, but his daughter lived in his house, which was burned down, and his nice cassava field was completely destroyed. In my report on the visit to north Rift Valley, I mentioned the considerable violence on Mt Elgon. The paper reports that over 1000 teachers have not reported for work in North Rift Valley and that many students have also not returned. When we visited the Lumakanda people in the camp at Turbo, they told us that their numbers have been increasing. Two communities in Lugari District, which formerly had not been attacked, were attacked last week during the unrest and more people had fled to the camp.

In other words, houses will be burnt here and there. The violence of the past will compel people to flee as soon as they feel that they are being targeted. The targets are no longer only the Kikuyu in the western provinces, but anyone who happens not to live in his/her home area; i.e., who do not speak the local language.

I has occurred to me that the situation in Kenya is exactly the same as in the region of Rwanda, Burundi, and North and South Kivus. But in this case the issue is within one nation while the other is international. Let us compare the Rwandans with the Kikuyu. Rwanda is over-populated and so the Rwandans immigrate to North and South Kivu (and also Tanzania and Uganda) where they are considered "foreigners" by the local people and by the Governments of the region; and therefore, by the international community. Almost all the wars in the region since 1990 have been based on whether the Rwandans have the right to live as citizens, with benefits and privileges, in one of these countries. The answer is "No," but the Rwandans don't want to leave so fighting erupts.

In Kenya, the Kikuyu were originally confined to Central Province which is much smaller than Rwanda. The number of Rwandans in Rwanda is more or less equal to the number of Kikuyu in Kenya. Since 1900 the Kikuyu have moved out of Central Province to other parts of Kenya under the assumption that they were Kenyan citizens moving within their own country. But others, particularly the Kalenjin and Maassi groups take the positioin that Kikuyu were given land that was stolen from them by the British and therefore they don't have "rights" of land ownership in these areas.

Since Kenya is itself a nation supported by the international community, the regionalists don't have the legal right to expell the Kikuyu as the Congolese, Tanzanians or Ugandans have with the Rwandans. I read in the paper today that Tanzania is expelling 220,000 Burundians who have been in Tanzania since 1972; 36 years! Burundians do not seem to be very welcoming of these returnees because they really have no place to put them.

In effect our concepts of who belongs to what nation needs to be questioned/considered, while at the same time we have to address the issue of whether a group that historically occupies a certain territory has the right to exclude others. And then there has be fights over the boundaries of these "indigeneous territories"--this is essentially what is happening in the conflict on Mt Elgon. I am certain that almost everyone reading this report will come down on the side of the right of a person to live anywhere "in his/her own nation." But one must remember that the great "ethnic cleanizing" happened at the end of World War II when millions of people were relocated to their "home country" whose boundaries had changed substantially so that Poland, Germany, Ukraine, Latvia, etc. all became ethnically homogeneous and the multi-national countries of the Soviet Union and Yugoslavia had to be broken up into ethnic enclaves. The American (and now European) efforts to keep out illegal immigrants is no more than this same issue--if Americans don't like Mexicans in their borders, while shouldn't people from North Kivu not like Rwandans, or Kalenjin's not like Kikuyu, Luo, Luyha, and others within "their borders?" There have been suggestions (not considered seriously) that Kenya ought to be divided into two new countries with the Rift, Western, and Nyanza Provinces becoming Kenya II.

These are all hard issues. I don't see anyone in the international community addressing them at any depth. Surely the United Nations and all its constitutent governments are committed to the current status quo. I would like to see some considerations of better alternatives.

Peace,
Dave

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

Feb 8, Report 29, "Feed the Hungry"- David Zarenbka

2008-02-09T11:47:00.000-08:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Friday, February 08, 2008 12:58 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya # 29 -- Feb 8

Dear All,

"Feed the Hungry."

Two weeks ago Kenyan Friends held a conference in Kakamega sponsored by the Friends Church in Kenya, Friends United Meeting--Africa Office, and Friends World Committee for Consultation--Africa Section. At that meeting, it was decided to form a committee which has been titled "Friends Church Peace Team" (FCPT). I was appointed to the committee which has now formed an "Emergency Relief and Reconciliation Programme." As its first major activity, yesterday, about 30 Friends visited a number of internally displaced people in the Trans Nzoia District next to Mt. Elgon in the Rift Valley. With funds donated from the United States, England, and elsewhere, a truck filled with food, maize (corn), beans, rice, sugar, salt, cooking oil, blankets, and soap, was be to delivered.

Gladys and I were assigned to provide the forty 200-pound bags of maize; here in Lugari District maize is cheaper since this is the maize belt region of Kenya and there is a surplus for export elsewhere. Gladys and two youth spent Monday and Tuesday bagging the 40 sacks at Florence and Alfred Machayo's home. Then on Wednesday she waited all day for the truck she had hired to take the maize to Kakamega. It never showed up so she arranged for another truck to come at 5:00 a.m. on Thursday morning. When it had not shown up by 8:00 AM, we called John Muhanji of FUM who was organizing the distribution. He decided to have the truck which was coming from Kakamega with the rest of the goods drop by the Machayo's and pick up the maize (and us as we had travelled the five miles or so to her house). This worked out well and actually saved the transport costs.

The people who had gathered in Kakamega came up north in three vehicles and together with the truck we drove to a junction near where we were going to distribute the food. Henry Mukwanja who works for the National Council of Christians of Kenya in that region had identified about ten places where approximately 4000 people had not received any assistance from either the Red Cross, the Government of Kenya, or the World Food Program. These people noted that the Red Cross trucks passed them by to deliver food and supplies to the Kikuyu who were in an IDP camp down the road-- as non-Kikuyu, theysaw this as another example of the Government's favoritism to Kikuyu over other people in Kenya.

Gladys and I joined the third group with a Seventh Day Adventist Church which was going to a small shopping center, 5 or 6 small shops on the side of the road, at Misemwa where officially there were 259 families totaling 1600 people; an average of about 6 people per family. The amount of food we unloaded seemed massive--14 two hundred pound bags of maize, for example. Yet each family was given only about 10 pounds of maize, 2 pounds of beans, a blanket, a cup of sugar, a half cup of salt, a few ounces of cooking oil, and the families with children received some rice. This would be enough only for a few days! Of course the place was packed with people waiting patiently for the distribution--many women. I estimated that 2/3 of the families were headed by women; there were many small children (the older ones, I hope, were in school), old men, youth, etc.

These people were not Kikuyu, the group usually targeted in the violence in western Kenya, but mostly Luhya and some Sabaot (Kalenjin group). There was no internally displaced persons camp like we are go to in Turbo; the people live in houses in the area. For example, in the small Seventh Day Adventist Church, eight women were living with their children. Others had rented a room in the area and a few were staying with relatives. One woman told me that she had moved with her husband and four children--and a fifth was well on its way--to live with her sister who also has four children and there was not enough food for this suddenly, vastly expanded, family. All the displaced people had come with nothing more than what they could carry.

As usual when one delves into the details of conflict, the situation is different from the usual simplistic explanation of Kibaki versus Raila, Kikuyu versus Luo. The people here had fled from Mt. Elgon where there has been an active conflict for the last year and a half. Human Rights groups in Bungoma had tallied 400 dead and 150,000 or more displaced before the election violence began on December 30. Note that this compares to the official count of 1000 dead and 300,000 displaced from the election violence. In other words, some conflicts are "more important" than others. But the fact that this conflict was not properly dealt with when it occurred indicates why so much of Kenya could erupt into similar violence.

[NOTE: David and others visited Mt. Elgon in early November 2007. AVP workshops had begun there prior to the election. David wrote a report about the history of the area and the violent conflict which had already been going on for over a year.]

The conflict in Mt. Elgon was between two clans of the Sabaot group, the Soy and Ndorobo, over land. The first group, which thinks that they have not been dealt with fairly in the land distribution by the Government have formed the Sabaot Land Defence Force (SLBF). They have automatic rifles and retreat into the forests on Mt Elgon to hide. We had seen an area on Mt Elgon where every house on the hillside had been destroyed. The election results were used by the Sabaot Land Defence Force as a reason to attack anyone in their area from another group. This included Kikuyu who fled to the camp nearby, as well as the Bugusu of the Luhya group. I had heard of a case where 11 Bugusu were executed by the SLBF and the bodies thrown into a latrine. While I have never heard any reference to this massacre in the media (compare this to the 17 who were burned to death in the church near Eldoret), this was confirmed by a doctor at the Webuye Hospital where the exhumed bodies were later taken. So it did not take much for the Bugusu to flee. Then the Ndorobo, who were supplied by the Kikuyu in their trading across the border into Uganda, attacked the Sabaot for attacking the Kikuyu. So, Sabaot also had to flee to Misemwa.

I talked at length with Mildred, one of the 8 women living in the church. She has six children, the
youngest was on her shoulder as we talked. Her husband had left for the day when the SLDF came in red uniforms (ie, this is an organized rebel group) and told them to leave. So she did. She has no idea where her husband is and there is really little way for him to find out where they have fled. She does not want to return to her farm on Mt. Elgon, where she had lived for 12 years, but has little idea what the future will bring for her.

Andrew and his wife and four children (he was also holding his youngest child on his shoulder) were attacked in the middle of the night and fled down the mountain with nothing but what they had on. He lives in a room in a house nearby. He says that he survives by doing day labor when he can. He also told me he did not want to go back. When I asked people, they told me that the land on Mt. Elgon is very fertile and well-watered and that is why they had bought plots there in the past.

While the media, both internationally and locally, reports (as the Government would like them to) that the situation in Kenya is calm and returning to normal, this is clearly not the case on Mt. Elgon. The previous night there had been some killings (unconfirmed) and hundreds more had fled down the mountain. These newly displaced people were not on the list of 259 families to receive the aid we had brought.

After three hours distributing the relief supplies at Misemwa and talking with the people, after a short sermon and prayer, we left and joined the other people at a small "hotel" where we all got a snack and discussed the pro's and con's of what we had done for the day. For example, in our case, since the site was not a "camp" and this was the first time that the group had received any assistance, there was no distribution system in place as occurs with the Lumakanda IDP group in Turbo. On Saturday Gladys and I will go to Kakamega to meet with the Friends Church Peace Team to decide what we will do next.

Although the food seemed to be little in relationship to the need, I still felt good knowing that we had helped as we were able. In this kind of work, one cannot get discouraged by the unmet needs, but must focus on what has been accomplished. If people only eat well for a few days, it is still better than having to scrounge around for a little food and going to sleep hungry. Moreover, as I have learned in the past, visiting people who have been the victims of violence is perhaps one of the most important peacemaking activities one can do initially. As the Burundians say, "A real Friend comes in the time of need" (I am the one who capitalized the "F" in friend).

Peace,
Dave

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

Feb 4, Report 27, Ancient Tribal Hatreds, David Zarembka

2008-02-05T07:46:00.000-08:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 7:02 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya--Feb 4

Ancient Tribal Hatreds

As I indicated in a previous report, most of the international reporting about Kenya is based on the assumption that "ancient tribal hatreds" explains what is going on. Evidence which does not fit into this framework is ignored. Let me give some examples.

A Luhya woman from Lumakanda Friends Church is hiding a Kikuyu woman who gave birth on Dec 30 when the violence started.

I know a Luo (who are supposed to "hate" Kikuyu) whose brother is hiding a Kikuyu in his house.

I have never seen an interview with anyone who is doing this, even in the local Kenyan press. 3000 people in Kibaki home constituency in the center of Kikuyuland voted for Raila. There were 7 other candidates to vote for including other Kikuyu if they didn't want vote for Kibaki. Raila continually says (but its never reported in the international press) that a lot of Kikuyu voted for him. There is a hit list out with 25 Kikuyu who have "betrayed their tribe." They are
> the human rights advocates and leaders of NGO's who have criticized the government over the election tallying, the use of live bullets, the restrictions on press freedom, and, the right to hold demonstrations. In other words, some of the most vocal critics of what is happening are Kikuyu.

Some of the violence in Naivasha was Kikuyu gangs fighting other Kikuyu gangs. Since this does not fit in -- it has been ignored. There are large areas of Western Province (perhaps over half of the area) and possibly also parts of Nyanza and Rift Valley provinces, but I don't have as much information about those regions, where the Kikuyu have not been forced out, their houses and shops have not been looted and burned, and they are still living peacefully with their neighbors. Many non-Kikuyu have been in the forefront of visiting and bringing relief to those Kikuyu in IDP camps. The Red Cross volunteers who were helping at Lumakanda were mostly local Luhya.
I have heard one sermon and heard reports of other sermons that a good Christian does not loot, destroy, and/or kill ANYONE. One can explain both WWI and WWII as "old tribal hatreds" between the Germans and the French/English. From before 1066 to 1914 European history can be explained as "ancient tribal hatreds" between the English and French. As you can see, this doesn't explain anything, but rather is an excuse to avoid develving more deeply into root causes of conflict. So when you see articles about ethnic animonsities (to use the current more polite term) in Kenya, please realize that you are being served only icing.

Peace,
Dave

Feb 4, Report 28, from David Zarembka

2008-02-05T07:37:00.000-08:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Monday, February 04, 2008 11:19 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya -- # 28 - Feb 4

Dear All,

While burning houses and deadly violence fills the news here in Kenya, AGLI has played a part in a great peacemaking activity!

The Kipsigis are a Kalenjin group around Kericho in the Rift Valley. The Kisii are their neighbors across the border in Nyanza Province. As soon as the election results were announced, the Kipsigis began targeting the Kisii; they were incorrrectly perceived as having supported Kibaki in the election. Last Thursday [1/21] when a Kipsigis Member of Parliament [David Kimutai Too] was killed by a Kisii policeman, extensive violence broke out on the border between the two groups. Between ten and twenty people were killed; many, many wounded; and tens of houses burned.

Jared is an AVP facilitator in Kisii and coordinator of the Uzima Foundation program there (Uzima works with youth empowerment). He is married to a Kipsigis woman who had to go into hiding in order keep from being attacked.

Malesi Kinaro wrote a proposal to AGLI to support negotiation/reconciliation meetings between the Kipsigis and Kisii elders. Naturally I agreed.

I just received the following text message from Malesi:

"Jared is walking in the air. He just finished chairing a meeting that brought together District Commissioners, Members of Parliament, and elders from Kispsigis and Kisii. He says it went so well he doesn't think fighting will continue. We have been working to see this day when we make the first step. AGLI, through FPCD (Friends for Peace and Community Development), AGLI's partner in western Kenyan, gave 108,000/- ($1550) for this and Uzima gave 40,000/- ($575). The journey is still long and much money needed. The Lord reigns!" [NOTE: /- is the symbol for Kenyan Shillings.]

If this has saved the life of even one person, our efforts have been rewarded. Thanks to Jared for this great effort!

Peace,
Dave

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

Jan 30, update & photos, from Sukie Rice

2008-02-05T06:57:00.000-08:00

January 30, 2008

Dear friends,

There have been alternating waves of encouraging signs and horrible
violence over the past two weeks. Just as I begin to write an Up-
Date, something new happens. So I have to start over in my
writing. Now I'll try again:

AT THE CARE CENTRE

Things had began to cool down in Kakamega and ALL the children have been brought back to the Care Centre, plus some new children. For many of them this has been a very frightening time and some have seen things that children shouldn’t ever see. There was much joy of
being back with friends and having enough food to eat. Food costs have doubled, as has fuel, making it very hard for poor people to buy food or get around at all. Friends of Kakamega sent over extra money so that Homebased-sponsored children would have extra so their guardians could buy food.

Elementary schools opened, but many of the teachers at the Kakamega Primary Schools have not been able to “report to work” (either because they could not travel because traveling has been too dangerous, or because they are of the persecuted tribe). During the first week of school, with only 50% of the teachers present, classes were 100 children per room instead of 50 and it was chaos. (Never thought I'd think of "only 50" students in a class as reasonable.) So the children were attending only in the mornings, being sent home each day at noon. Just yesterday the school began its full day, but many teachers still are not there because they are of the
"wrong" (Kikuyu) people. It has a long way to go to become normal.

VIOLENCE IN KENYA and KAKAMEGA TOWN

I am sure you heard on the news last week about Kofi Annan's visit, and the "famous hand-shake" between Odinga and Kibaki. Unfortunately not an inch did either one budge from their intransigent positions and neither did much of anything to quell the violence. Then
retribution violence erupted last week in Nakuru and Naivasha as well as continuing in Kisumu which has become like a ghost town. Raymond Ojiambo (the Care Centre van driver and computer man) says that the burnings have set Kisumu back 60-70 years of progress. (All photos are by Raymond.)

Shops in Kisumu

You have probably heard that the violence in the Rift Valley is continuing. And perhaps you have heard that it broke out again in Kakamega. It seems that some young men from Kisumu (Luo tribe) decided that things had become too settled in Kakamega and they decided to go and heat things up. And so on Monday morning a bus- load of youth arrived in Kakamega and the town went "wild" again. Right away the men began slashing and burnings in town and everyone
ran in terror. Kakamega had been heavily policed but as things had quieted down there recently, many police had been relocated to more violent areas, and so there was not a strong police presence.

A Kikuyu owned electronic shop (where we got a CD player for the Care Centre) and other shops next to it in flames.

Meanwhile truck-loads of people have come pouring back into the police station compound for safety. Dorothy was going to see if some of the women and children might be moved to the Care Centre as a dry place with food and friendship. But they would have to have armed guards accompany them as the Care Centre and Friends Church on the compound would need protection. The Care Centre is a mile away from the center of town and so things are not burning there. But they are very cautious and it is terrifying to know this all happening in their own town.

EMERGENCY RELIEF

The call for Emergency Relief from Friends of Kakamega that we sent out 10 days ago has been answered by many of you. Over $12,000 for relief work has been received!! plus money for increased food costs for the children. We are STUNNED. And EXTREMELY GRATEFUL.
Gifts of all sizes (including one enormous gift which came in a small, simple envelope-- such a Quakerly thing to do!) all add up and we want to thank each and every one of you for reaching out at this time. We are sending it over right away.

Dorothy has brought hundreds of blankets and food to Displaced Persons camps, the largest being in Lugari where 18,000 people have been held for safety. She says people are so grateful for the help and encouragement. They do not know how they will be able to rebuild their lives. But knowing that other people are reaching out to them has been as important as the material goods. We are wire transferring the money we receive from you through our bank in Maine
to their bank account at Standard Chartered Bank of Kenya. Thus, the money is safe in the sending. Once it is withdrawn, it is up to Dorothy and the USFW to be safe as they purchase what is needed and then to deliver it. Please keep your prayers with them as this can be difficult and potentially dangerous work.

The Emergency Relief Fund will be continuing for a long time now so if you know anyone who might be interested in helping, please send them this file. One check came in today from a lady who had heard about it from her mother ... who heard about it from a friend.... who heard about it from a Quaker in Vermont. So PLEASE get the word out!

Women and children at the K. Displaced Persons Centre

QUAKER PEACE CONFERENCE IN KAKAMEGA

Last week, a 4-day Peace Conference of 60 Quaker leaders from all over Kenya (who were able to travel there) took place in Kakamega to seek guidance from the Spirit as to how they might best work together at this time. They developed 7 areas of focus and an Action Plan around each. I will send that to you in a separate email. The presence of Friends has already had an effect, both as people committed to non-violent conflict resolution (thru the Friends Peace Teams/Alternatives to Violence Project) and their direct assistance to people in the Displaced Persons camps. The Friend's testimony that "There is God in EVERY person, and they should be
valued as one of God's children" is very relevant here.

EVENTS and ANALYSIS

Today a second Parliament Minister was shot and killed. David Too was from the Eldoret area (east of Kakamega) and of the ODM Party, as was the other minister in Nairobi. ODM leader, Raila Odinga, says these killings are political motivated and designed to reduce the numbers of ODM members in Parliament.

Kofi Annan says some progress is being made but it will take many months and probably a year to put together the political "apparatus" that can help lead Kenya out of this morass. The Kenyan system is set up so that "winner takes all" and we mean ALL. So when they have a close election, those who loose, loose everything. Thus the desperation to be "winner." This has to change and a new constitution needs to be drawn up to reduce tribal/ethnic disparities and spread the representative power around to all the people.

Ethnic Cleansing: I do not agree with Bush's envoy Frazier that this is ethnic cleansing. Yes, It does fall on ethnic lines. And it certainly does fall on party lines. And now there is revenge and
old scores that are being settled. But it is primarily an economic/social class struggle. You see in Nairobi very wealthy Kenyans and you see millions in some of the worst slums in the world. There is a middle class, but it is very small; instead the biggest picture is the dramatic differences between the very poor and the rich. Clearly it is the young men who are poor, disenfranchised and without hope (and faith) who are doing the violence. Yes, there is ethnic
hatred of the haves (Kikuyu) by the have-nots (Luo and others) and years and years of rage is pouring forth. (We know about this in our country.) And now revenge killings are making it horribly worse. There are also old land disputes being "settled." (The government has in the past given people's land away to others and, especially in Eldoret area, these old land-ownership disputes are the cause of much of the fighting.)

But ethnic cleansing and genocide are terms for when a government and it's ethnic people set forth to wipe out another grouping of people. This is not the case in Kenya.

Arrests are being made of people who are burning and looting. Human Rights groups and others have rightfully pointed their finger at police who have been shooting indiscriminately. Usually killing people from another tribe. Kibaki has to be the one to stop this.

Looking for relatives

Odinga and Kibaki are supposed to be the leaders in all this, but I question leadership that puts all its energy into positioning for power and does not respond to the horror that their people are going through. Both men have encouraged their tribal groups in "showing their strength", i.e. how much violence they can do. Both have been extremely weak in insisting that that violence be stopped. Yesterday, at the beginning of the talks, Kibaki's men spent well over an hour just insisting that Kibaki should be seated in the middle because he's president, rather than Kofii Annan as the mediator. While 500,000 people's lives and an entire country's well-being is at stake, this kind of positioning for power is obscene.

Harboring refugees

Meanwhile Quakers (and I believe others, but don't have confirmation on it) in the western part of Kenya are hiding refugees in their homes from the violence. Some are doing it in secret, afraid of retribution. Others are doing it openly as a statement that they will not desert their neighbors. (But with armed guards to protect them.)

Eden Grace, staff of the Friends United Meeting in Kisumu, (who has just been evacuated from Kisumu with her family and other Americans to Nairobi) writes:

Please, please continue praying for peace in Kenya. Things have reached a frightening "tipping point", where we can envision a truly horrible future. But at the same time, we know that God is a miracle-worker, and that He has not abandoned Kenya, so we remain hopeful. Please join us in pleading for His hand of calm to stay the angry hearts, His hand of comfort to bind up the wounded in body and spirit, and His hand of wisdom to guide all of us who seek to do His will today and every day.

Praying for peace, hope and reconciliation,

Sukie

P.S. I have struggled over sending the last photo. Please forgive me if I have offended you in adding it to the email. If photos have not appeared in your email and you wish to receive them, please write
to me and i can send them individually.

Feb 3, Report 26, David Zarembka

2008-02-04T11:06:00.000-08:00

Sent: Sunday, February 03, 2008 6:16 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya-- # 26 - Feb 3

Dear All,

Moses Musonga is the General Secretary of the Friends
World Committee for Consultation--Africa Section. He
just buried his brother-in-law who was killed with six
arrows in his body in the conflict around Kaimosi between
the local Luhya and Kalenjin groups who both supported
the opposition candidate.

One of our brother-in-laws, Wilson, is an over the road
truck driver. He carried cement from Mombasa to the Rift
Valley and returns with tea for export. In the Rift Valley,
he was beaten up and all the cement stolen, but fortunately
they did not burn his truck. Again both Wilson and the
Kalenjin who attacked him were politically on the same side.

On Friday I attended a meeting of the Quaker Leaders
and yesterday (Saturday) I clerked a meeting with the AVP
facilitators from the western provinces. At this point no one
thinks that the situation in Kenya is about politics--that is,
about who won the election. The election was no more than a
"trigger" that unleashed all the hidden, covered-up
resentments that have built up over the years and decades.
Although the media (including the international media) seem
to report that things are calming down (ten people now
being killed is reported on page 8 of the Daily Nation), there
was no one in either of those two meetings who felt that this
was true. Perhaps things are calmer in the cities (but not really
in Kisumu) or perhaps the death of ten people is no longer "news."
Or perhaps they are tired of saying the same thing over and
over every day. Many doubt that a political agreement will calm
the escalating violence.

It was heart-wrenching to hear person after person tell of the
violence and destruction in their community. At least two people
in the AVP meeting talked about how they had voted for Kibaki
while their children had voted for Raila and this had brought a
great deal of tension into the family. Rather than the usual "tribal
explanation" for the voting, there is another one, that the older
people wanted to stay with Kibaki while the younger people
wanted change with Raila. But at least in the rural areas, it doesn't
seem like the youth voted very much (while their elders did). I saw
a statistic which said that 81% of the population in Kenya is below
31 years of age. Hard to believe, but with the rapid population
increase of the 1970's and 1980's this is a possibility. Of course it is
this younger population who feels left out of Kenya's future. There
is no doubt, by the way, that the MP's elected on Dec 27 last year
are much younger and better educated than those from the
previous parliament. Many "old" politicians who have been elected
decade after decade were defeated. In a breath of fresh air
(compared to the US where a politician remains in office until he
retires or moves on) only 80 out of 212 PM's were re-elected
(this includes the leaders such as Kibaki and Raila).

There were seventeen facilitators (including Gladys and me)
at the AVP meeting. After we finished the de-briefing mentioned
above, we discussed how we could reach the youth. We then talked
about the kind of programs we would like to do. My goal for the
next six months, pending raising sufficient funds, is to do 100 AVP
workshops with 2000 youth in at least five sites. We learned from
Rwanda that it is better to concentrate in a few areas with lots of
workshops to impact a community rather than spread them out
everywhere with little impact in any one community. We hope that
in the next week or two the facilitators will go back to their
communities and develop concrete plans for AVP workshops with
the youth (or as one person suggested, with the police!).

I guess I need to end with a good story. Henry Mukwanja, a Quaker,
works for the National Council of Churches of Kenya (NCCK) in the
North Rift Valley. On Dec 30, when the violence began, he and two
co-workers were in a remote place and they stayed inside for two
whole days. On the third day they ventured out but ran into a
menacing group of youth who were doing violence in the area. Henry
called out, "God loves you." One of the youth responded, "No, he
doesn't." And then what? Everyone started laughing and the tension
was broken and all was well with Henry and his companions.

Peace,
Dave

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

Jan 31, Report 25, David Zarembka

2008-01-31T15:01:00.001-08:00

Dear All,

This morning things seemed to be calming down after the
violence from the assassination of Mugabe Were, an opposition
MP, Monday night. But today a second opposition MP, David
arap Too, was assassinated by a Kisii traffic policeman in
Eldoret. The Kisii are perceived to be allied with the Kibaki
side so now there is already great retaliation against the Kisii.
This is clearly politically motivated since now with two deaths,
ODM has lost their majority in the parliament. A second
motive is to wreck the negotiations that Kofi Annan is
facilitating. Will the Kibaki Government stop at nothing to
remain in power???

Through Malesi and Uzima Foundation staff in Kisii (which
is part of Nyanza Province), AGLI is supporting the following
dialogue between the Kisii and Kalenjin (Kipsigis): "Jared,
the Uzima field officer from Nyanza, and his deputy George
had begun the week in high hopes. He had met elders and
administrators from Borabu and Sotik districts. Meetings
were planned for today and tomorrow. Then the Kipsigis
warriors struck in the night killing many Kisiis. Jared ended up
being involved in ferrying the injured and dying to hospital. I
talked with the PC Nyanza because the Sotik DC was being
very uncooperative. Today they have been doing some shuttle
diplomacy. 6 Kisii people died from the clashes and many are
still in hospital. I am so impressed by the way my staff are
insisting on dialogue for the 2 tribes in spite of extreme
provocation. I really thank God for that."

Tomorrow we were planning to go to Kakamega for the first

meeting of the Quaker Emergency Peace Committee. Gladys
was to go on to visit her father for the day. Then we were
going to sleep in Lubao at the Peace Center where on Saturday
all the AVP facilitators were going to meet to discuss the way
forward for AVP in western Kenya. At the moment I doubt
we will be going anywhere tomorrow.

Time for many more prayers for the situation in Kenya!

Peace,
Dave

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

Jan 30, What is True? Report 24, David Zarembka

2008-01-30T12:00:00.000-08:00

Dear All,

One of the major problems of life here in Kenya at this time is to
know what is true from what is rumor. I formerly reported on
the 30 Kikuyu that were reported to have been thrown into the
Kipkarren River (even though covered by AP, CNN, and Time,
it was not true). Today we got a call from Janet Ifedha (AVP
facilitator from Kakamega) if the Kipkarren River bridge was
being destroyed by youth. It is not--we just went over it.

So the events of yesterday were hard to tell truth from fiction.

We were told that Nandi (Kalenjin group across the road from
us) youth were coming up the road to attack Kikuyu and burn
Kikuyu houses up here in Lumakanda. Police were at the small
bridge coming up the hill to Lumakanda, fired shots at them,
and they fled. I didn't think this was very plausible since they
would not know where the Kikuyu lived or had lived. Then
today we went out for a short trip (5 miles) to Florence
Machayo's house for a meeting of Lugari AVP facilitators. At
the Lumankanda junction, all the signs (except the Jehovah
Witnesses) were destroyed. Two tires had been burned on
the road as we could see where the tarmac was burned and
large potholes beginning to form. So what is the truth?

Then about 2:00 PM yesterday a man was walking by our
house and talking on his cell phone. He said in Swahili, "A Luo
has been killed in Lumakanda." Wow. So Gladys went out to
find out. She was told that some Kikuyu had come to shell
their maize (corn) off the cob and that they were suspected
that they would spend the night and attack the local people.
This is not really feasible as I think it would be certain suicide
on their part. But this is what people might believe. The
violence in this region is frequently enhanced by the concept,
"You are trying to kill me, so I will kill you first." Of course the
other side thinks the same thing so preemptive violence
occurs. A crowd of local youth then collected at the house
and the police disbursed them, killing one.

Then today our electrician told me that the person had been
killed by the police when he was taking some things from his
house and the police mistakenly thought he was a looter.

I am not even certain if someone was killed.

Our electrician also told me that a person was also killed by
the police in Kipkarren River yesterday. When we passed
through Kipkarren River today, the normally very busy
town was almost deserted. Is this evidence that someone
was killed?

Then the violence has reached a member of the family. The
brother of Gladys's brother-in-law was arrested in Chavakali
(near Gladys's home area) for setting vehicles on fire. What
is difficult to understand is that he is not a youth, being
somewhere around 50 years old. I'm certain we will hear
more about this as time goes on.

There were about 12 people from Lugari District at Florence
Machayo's house. They were there to discuss the situation
and what they might do. It was quite interesting to hear the
various people's take on the local violence. Most seem to
think that they knew who the attackers were although they
said that local people were sometimes put in trucks and
taken elsewhere to do the violence and others were trucked
into Lugari area to do the violence here. If this is correct,
this means that there is significant preplanning of the
violence.

In Chekalini, the area where Florence lives, the high school is
now the internally displaced person's camp for about 1000
Luhya who have fled the violence in Nakuru and Naivasha.
Like the Kikuyu IDP's here, they have lost everything. More
are coming all the time as they are being forced out of Central
Province as being non-Kikuyu. So soon we are having another
humanitarian disaster. A man stopped me on the road during
my morning walk through town and said that it was not fair
that the Kikuyu were getting relief and the others were not.
At that time I did not understand since I did not know that so
many internal refugees had showed up in Lugari. Lugari is
the closest Luhya District on the main road through Eldoret
so I suspect that many of these people will stop here.

None of this, of course, is reported by the media since no one
has reporters of any kind in the area. Are those who have
died in Lugari District accounted for in the national total which
is now officially 850? I doubt that many of them are. There are
hundreds and hundreds of little places like Lumakanda, Turbo,
and Kipkarren River. What is the real truth of what is
happening in all these communities?

While Eden Grace and her family have been evacuated from
Kisumu to Nairobi because of the violence in Kisumu, the
media reports that things are becoming calmer. Perhaps this
is true in Nairobi, but my step-son, Douglas, who lives in
Nairobi reported, "Some skirmishes early today. Life seems
not to be usual because most people appear worried about
their security. Leaflets were dropped warning some
communities to get out." Has the media gotten "used" to the
violence and a few people killed in Kisumu and a few more
in Eldoret and some more in Kibera is no longer "news?"
Yesterday definitely was the worst day in Lumakanda
since we returned (we were not here the first four days after
the election results).

So truth, the reality of what actually is happening around you
is difficult to grasp because all those normal markers you have
about your surroundings are suspect. It is so easy to be
"sucked in" by rumors. And yet to understand the dangers
around you, you have to listen to others.

Enjoy the Super Bowl if it hasn't happened yet!!! There you can
watch reality on TV and get instant replay from many angles
on anything dramatic or controversial. Here we live in a state
of unknowing.

Peace,
Dave

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

__,_._,___

Jan 29, Report 23, David Zarembka

2008-01-29T14:58:00.000-08:00

From: David Zarembka
Sent: Tuesday, January 29, 2008 4:28 AM
Subject: AGLI--Report from Kenya--Jan. 29

Dear All,

I am feeling very discouraged.

Over the weekend (which now seems so far in the past) I was at the
Quaker Leadership Peace Conference in Kakamega. If you would
like to see the documents from the conference, please ask Dawn at
dawn@aglionline.org or by reply email.

[Note: you have received the two documents pasted into one of
these emails dated 1/27. If you would like the documents as an
attachment then contact me, Dawn.]

It was an excellent gathering. Almost every yearly meeting and
Quaker organization sent their representative(s). There is no
doubt that Quakers inKenya will now give prominence to the
Peace Testimony in this time of chaos, destruction, and death.
The participants were very concerned about the situation and
serious in their efforts to respond to Kenyans, to Christians, and
to all Quakers. They affirmed that the Quakers needed to be
neutral in the political situation. I was surprised to find that I
was appointed to the Coordinating Committee for current and
long-term actions since Gladys and I played a rather quiet role
during the conference. But AVP is on everyone's lips. Getry
Agizah, the AVP coordinator, was also put on the committee,
along with Hezron Masitsa (AVP coordinator in Nairobi). The
committee is supposed to meet in Kakamega on Friday but
who knows if we will be able to travel.

On the way to the conference those who took the bus
through Nakuru saw the Total gas station on fire. This was
the beginning of major fighting in Nakuru which later spread
to Naivasha and then on Monday to western Kenya. This
morning on the BBC news, I heard the spokesman for the
Kenya Police say that everything is calm now, while the next
report was the BBC reporter in Kisumu talking about all the
tires burning, total lack of movement, roads cut, etc. Is the
Kenyan Government in the same country that I am in?

I was going to report some news from last week when my
laptop crashed. Kaimosi (the major Quaker center in
western Kenya) has been quiet as I have reported before.
It is along the boundary between the Tiriki (a Luhya group)
and the Nandi (a Kalenjin group). But on Wednesday
someone stole a cow; the other group retaliated by burning
some houses, including the kiosks by the road leading into
Kaimosi, and everything got out of control. Six people were
killed and at least 70 houses were burnt. Kaimosi Hospital
was receiving lots of people with cuts from machetes,
arrows stuck in people's bodies, and other injuries from
the violence. There is absolutely no political explanation
for this violence since both of these groups voted
overwhelming for ODM, the opposition party.

Yesterday Gladys told me that one of her relatives was
going to Eldoret to take another relative who had a broken
leg. When they reached Turbo he was forced to show his
ID card (by name, people can tell he is not a Kikuyu). He
put his relative on the side of the road while he was forced
to dig up the road until he got tired. He was then required
to return to Lumakanda with the relative with the broken
leg rather than proceed on to Eldoret.

Only eight people out of 40 showed up at the listening
session in Kisumu yesterday and they were distracted by
the events going on around them. We have cancelled the
workshops for today. Otherwise the Sunset Hotel where
the workshops are taking place and the facilitators are
staying is quite safe and they have not experienced any
violence nearby.

We were supposed to go to Kaimosi tomorrow to talk to the
Friends Theological College students about organizing AVP
workshops in their home churches during the April vacation,
but we have put this off until next week. We have been making
a weekly delivery to the Lumakanda IDP's now living in Turbo,
but I don't see how we can do it this week. Florence Machayo
who lives only about 5 miles from us wants to have a meeting
tomorrow of all the AVP coordinators and others involved in
peace work in Lugari District, but I don't know if Gladys and
I will be able to go even that short distance!

So you can see why I am so discouraged.

Peace,
Dave

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

Jan 28, Bad news report from David Zarembka

2008-01-28T09:51:00.000-08:00

Dawn, please send out to the AGLI listserve and the AGLI working group. Dave

Dear All,

On Thursday when I was going to send you an update, my laptop completely crashed. Later in the day Gladys and I went to the Quaker Leadership Peace Conference in Kakamega. Getry Agizah (AVP coordinator) has lent me her laptop and so I am back in communication. But I can't respond to the emails I got before Thursday and I don't have any names in my address book. But Dawn sends these reports out and I can remember her email address.

Things are getting really bad. At 8:00 AM this morning, Eden texted me, "I'm hearing that they are already burning and slashing near the stage [bus station] in Kisumu." Five minutes later she texted, "Hearing gun shots now." By 10:00 AM she wrote, "They have closed all the roads and the airport. We are hearing much gun fire." Florence Machayo came by early this morning because we were going to visit one of the more hard-hit villages in Lugari District. When she got here, she said that people were already congregating in Kipkarrer River and she had been told that in Turbo the youth had dug a trench in the road stopping all traffic to and from Uganda, Rwanda, and beyond. Gladys called the leader at the IDP camp in Turbo and he said that the IDP's were fine, but that the road was closed. Later Florence called an told us that the youth in Kipkarren River had cut down a big tree and blocked the road. So we are not going anywhere!!! (Lumakanda is between Turbo and Kipkarren River.) We also heard that a Kikuyu house in Malava was being burned (this is on the way to Kakamega) and that Kakamega is "wild." Getry says that they burned a Kikuyu's house (but were able to rescue the three children in the house) right next to where she had fled, a school in town, and many other buildings.

This is all in response to rising ethnic gang fighting over the weekend, first in Nakuru and then in Naivasha. The paper says 90 people have been killed. This is mostly Kikuyu "revenge," but also included Kikuyu on Kikuyu violence in Naivasha as one gang accuses the other of voting for the wrong political party. The police are reported as just standing by as all this happens as they are unable to control the events. The army has been brought in to Nakuru to control the town. In Lugari I had heard that the army had been deployed in some areas and as soon as I was told this, I was told they were abusing people. They would accuse someone of having a looted bag of maize (corn) and then would take all that person's maize. Nobody knows where the maize goes! The army is not supposed to be involved in internal policing, but clearly as the police have become overwhelmed, the army has been brought in.

Gladys has a good friend, Jacinta, who has started an orphanage and school in Campi ya Moto, a small village near Nakuru. This is in the area where the violence is most extensive. Gladys lived there for four years while working for Jacinta's brother. She therefore knows everyone in the community. Campi ya Moto and all the houses around the orphanage have been destroyed. All the neighbors Gladys knew (and I met on our two visits last year to the orphanage) are gone to "who knows where." The orphanage which normally had 40 children now has 200. It survives only because it is being guarded by the police. They have no water and little food.

There is a glue that holds a society together. It consists of many things--customs, culture, respect for others and their property, laws and their enforcement by the police and courts, etc. The glue in Kenyan society was always weak. There was much on-going violence before the voting--for example, the clashes on Mt Elgon that AGLI had begun working on, another in Molo/Rondai, continued deadly conflicts in the pastoral areas, many violence acts including the common practice of lynching suspected thieves. The police are noted for being very corrupt--I watch them collect bribes from the matatu conductors every time I am in a matatu. The courts are also known as being corrupt. The culture also has a great jealous for any one or any group which seems to be doing better than others.

I am afraid that the little glue that Kenyan society had is disintegrating and that chaos is overtaking normalcy.

Much was made last week when Kofi Annan got Raila and Kibaki to shake hands. While this was a good, positive first step, my feeling now is that the situation is "out-of-control" of everyone. As the Open Letter to Leaders and Citizens of Kenya from the Quaker Leadership Conference I just attended states (I report more on this at another time):

"We invite you to join us in praying for deliverance from evil spirits which are at work in our country, and continue to intercede for

Kenya."

Peace,

Dave

Jan 27, Biblical refs for teaching peace, from Conf.

2008-01-28T09:50:00.000-08:00

Biblical themes for Peace and Justice

resources for preaching and teaching

Biblical themes

n Jesus’ own teaching, for example in the Sermon on Mount

n The universal love of God, not just for one community.

o John 3:16

o Ephesians 2:13-22

o Galatians 3:26-28

o 2 Corinthians 5:17-18

o Luke 4:24-30

n The prophetic vision of a world of peace and justice for all people

o Isaiah 2:2-5

o Isaiah 65:17-25

o Micah 4:3-5

n Transformation of power from worldly power to Godly power

o Exodus 14:13-14

o Kings 6:8-23

o Kings 7:3-7

o 1 Samuel 26:8-9

o Judges 7:1-24

o Ephesians 6:10-17

o 2 Corinthians 10:3-4

n Redemptive suffering, the mystery of the cross

o Isaiah 53:1-12

o Luke 9:22-27

o Philippians 2:5-11

Pathways to Peace

n Truth

o Be committed to the Truth. John 8:31-32

o Cease fire. Ephesians 4:26-32

o Use non-violent means. Matthew 5:9, 39

o Negotiate in good faith. Matthew 5:8. 37

o Accept mediation. Matthew 18:15-16

n Justice

o Fairness, lack of exploitation. Psalm 12:5

n Peace

o Biblical vision of a society with both truth and justice. Isaiah 65:17-25

o Psalm 85:10-13

Developed by the Kenyan National Quaker Peace Conference, January 2008

Jan 27, Open letter from Conf. to Leaders & People of Kenya

2008-01-28T09:44:00.000-08:00

FRIENDS CHURCH IN KENYA REG. NO. 13113

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS (QUAKERS)

“You are my Friends if you do what I command you” (John 15:14) P.O. BOX 465

KAKAMEGA

Our Ref:______________________________

Your Ref: _____________________________

27^th January 2008

OPEN LETTER

To the Leaders and Citizens of Kenya

The Quaker leadership of Kenya gathered together in Sheywe Guest House in Kakamega between 24^th and 27^th January 2008.

The Friends Church in Kenya and Friends around the world are concerned with what has befallen Kenya in the last one month. As a peace church, we are horrified by the continued wanton destruction of human life and property.

Kenyans need to learn that any violent action they take against their neighbours is an act against God’s way. Our actions and thoughts therefore must be rooted in the Gospel of Jesus Christ. In our last communiqué to the leaders, we implored upon them to uphold the principles of truth, justice peace, simplicity and humility (Psalms 85:10) and to forgive each other.

We cannot be blind to what is happening to this country and its citizens. During the deliberations and reflections, representatives of the Friends Church realized that the underlying causes of the current conflict have been present since long before the general elections of December 2007. We note in particular: economic injustices, youth disempowerment and frustration, and cleavages of religion, ethnicity, class, gender and age.

To our leaders:

We thank our leaders for starting a process of negotiation, and we believe and trust that they will follow up in earnest with a negotiated settlement. In this context therefore we say to our leaders:

n We do understand your anguish at this time, and we ask you to approach the situation prayerfully. We urge you to relax your “hard line” political demands and dialog more deeply for the benefit of the country, that no segment of Kenyan society emerges as “losers” but we all may “win” in a peaceful society.

n We urge you to reopen schools that have not opened, in order to allow students to continue with their education.

n We urge the leaders and elders of various communities not to incite or manipulate their youths to perpetuate terror among the citizenry, but to encourage and guide them to act responsibly.

n We denounce the instances of excessive force used by the police against the citizens.

To our fellow Kenyans:

n We appreciate the courage and passion that you, our fellow Kenyans, have shown since the beginning of the post-election violence by contributing and supporting the victims of violence, and we urge you all to continue with the same spirit.

n We appeal to you engage in reconciliation among and rehabilitation of displaced people, integrating them back into the places from which they were displaced, not sending them to other parts of the country.

n We remind you that this country and its land belongs to all of us. Let us not destroy it for by doing so, we put our own future generations in jeopardy. We need a negotiated social contract to live together as Kenyans.

n We urge you to resolve problems in a peaceful way, because we know that there is hope for peace in this country.

n We warn you to desist from rumour-mongering which increases hostility and uncertainty, and urge you to use modern means of communication for positive ends.

n We know that those most affected by this conflict and violence are women, children, disabled and the aged. We must address their suffering, and protect and care for them.

n We encourage every Kenyan to look for “that of God” in every person and to treat life as sacred.

n As Kenyans, we urge you to uphold our core national values, practice forgiveness and embrace reconciliation.

To our fellow Christians and other Religious groups:

n As people of faith, we must not engage in violence and revenge because if we do so we betray our faith in God.

n We invite you to join us in praying for deliverance from evil spirits which are at work in our country, and continue to intercede for Kenya.

As a peace church, we are involved in humanitarian, spiritual and social/economic empowerment of our people. We urge everyone to take time to assist his/her neighbour in order to bring normalcy to the affected people, affirming truth, justice, peace and reconciliation in our nation.

Signed,

Jacob Neyole

Presiding Clerk

Jan 27, Kenyan Quaker Peace Conf Action Plan

2008-01-28T09:09:00.000-08:00

Kenyan National Quaker Peace Conference

Plan of Action

27 January 2008

Coordinating Committee

The Conference appointed the following Coordinating Committee to implement immediate measures and to put steps in place toward the longer-term actions.

Henry Mukwanja

Henry Apencha

Getry Agizah

Rose Imbega

David Zarembka

Seth Chayugah

Wesley Harun Sasita

Henry Mkutu

Joseph Mamai Makokha

Lydia Bakassa

Chrispinus Sifuna

Hezron Masitsa

Eric Lijodi

ex-officio:

John Muhanji

Eden Grace

Gladys Kangahi

Dorothy Selebwa

Jacob Neyole

Moses Musonga

Sammy Akifuma

Immediate crisis-intervention measures

Political crisis:

Issue a public statement from this Conference

Use the media to publicize messages of peace and reconciliation

Document and disseminate stories of people acting in courageous non-violent ways

Engage in non-violent direct action to stop violence and retaliation in our communities

Humanitarian crisis – internally displaced people:

Shelter, accommodation

Food, water, fuel

Clothing

Medication, first aid, health care

Security and safety

Sanitation

Trauma counseling

Bible distribution

Activities, games

Access to schooling

Inter-communal crisis:

Mediate in situations of acute conflict

Assist in reconciliation between displaced people and those who threatened them

Reintegrate displaced people into the community; rebuild trust between neighbors

Psychological and spiritual crisis:

Crisis-intervention counseling

Train primary school teachers on the effects of trauma on young children

Offer trauma counseling for IDPs

Reach the “disaffected” youth, e.g. boda boda drivers, touts, the unemployed

Scale up AVP to reach as many places as possible

Establish “listening programmes” for people to tell their stories in a safe environment

Preach the gospel of peace, educate our own people on the teachings of our church

Crisis of youth in this country:

Begin a pilot programme for civic and peace education in Quaker schools

Organize youth work camps to help with humanitarian work and rebuilding

Organizational capacity:

Establish a national coordination body for the short-term work

Address need for personnel, including placement of volunteers

Networking and communications

Guarantee integrity and transparency in use of funds, to maintain our good reputation

Possible cluster areas for longer-term work, and potential activities:

Youth Empowerment

Create a fund for youth empowerment

Youth programmes, e.g. volunteer training and action, work camps, vocational training

Seriously examine the involvement of youth in the structures of the Friends Church

Re-engage with our Quaker schools

Peer-mediation and AVP in the schools

Economic Development

Income generating activities

Teach practical business skills, entrepreneurship

Humanitarian Relief

Relief Fund for future disasters

Peace, justice and non-violence – a movement for social transformation toward a culture of peace

Peace Research Institute (at the University)

Peace Radio, other publications

Workshops, mediation, trauma healing, AVP, listening

Restorative justice movement

Peace curriculum through the Ministry of Education

Training for non-violent direct action for social change

Advocacy

Establish an organization which can organize the Friends voice on Public Policy matters

Build the capacity of Friends to be involved in the civic agenda at all levels

Use the model of QUNO “quiet diplomacy”

Spiritual development of the Peace Testimony

Review and improve the content of the membership class curricula

Strengthen the peace and justice programmes at Friends Theological College

Organizational capacity

National Management Committee – develop institutional capacity

Network with other peace organization in Kenya and around the world

Resources

Friends United Meeting and Friends World Committee for Consultation are both active in raising overseas funds for relief and reconstruction. The Conference urges all Kenyans to raise local funds and to deposit them in the account of Friends United Meeting, Barclays Bank, Kisumu Branch #2007332. All money will be used efficiently and effectively, with transparency and integrity.

Jan 26, 2nd day of Kenyan Q. Peace Conference

2008-01-26T17:55:00.000-08:00

Seven themes for the Peace Conference

26 January 2008

By Eden Grace

Yesterday, the sixty delegates to the Kenyan National Quaker Peace Conference worked throughout the afternoon and evening in Sections, analyzing in depth and seeking ways in which Kenyan Friends can make an impact in their context. The seven themes that were explored encompass the many facets of Friends ministries in Kenya. As each group reported to the plenary today, Friends heard a powerful call to faithful witness in these days.

1. Peace and non-violence as central to the gospel – or as the group suggested “the Gospel as central to peace and non-violence”. This group looked at the biblical principles of peace, justice, truth and non-violence. They acknowledged that Kenyan Friends have been inadequate in their teaching and preaching, in their formation of their own members and in their public witness. The group articulated the biblical framework for our peace work, and proposed that it be circulated to all Friends pastors as a resource for preaching in the present crisis.

2. Trauma healing and post-conflict ministries. This group analyzed the meaning of trauma, its causes, symptoms, and consequences. The current crisis in Kenya will require both short-term and long-term interventions for trauma healing. Friends are fortunate that there are already “tools” in the Quaker “tool box”, namely the Alternatives to Violence Programme and its various activities. The Conference saw the need for a massive scaling-up of these programmes in order to impact on healing Kenyan society.

3. Humanitarian needs, Internally Displaced People and vulnerable populations. There is a tremendous humanitarian crisis unfolding in Kenya right now. This group collected informal data on numbers of displaced people, and discussed their various physical and psychological needs. It was clear to all Friends present that one of the calls upon the Friends Church is to meet the urgent humanitarian needs of their fellow Kenyans, regardless of political or ethnic affiliation. An essential aspect of resolving the current crisis is to mediate between those who are displaced and those who displaced them, so that people can be reintegrated into multi-ethnic cities and villages. In a longer-term perspective, Friends may want to develop pro-active capacities for addressing both natural and man-made disasters.

4. Ethnic conflict and reconciliation toward a harmonious society. This group discussed the ethnic aspects of the Kenyan political crisis, and acknowledged that it is a complex matter. Contributing factors include unjust land distribution practices, unequal development throughout the country, corruption of some leaders, excessive concentration of power, various cultural practices, and attitudes of prejudice. The group also noted that the Friends Church has traditionally had an ethnic identity, as a church for one community only. The Conference felt very strongly that our church must move beyond this exclusive identity, to see itself as a church for all people.

5. Preaching and evangelism in the present context. This group recognized that the work of preaching is essential in this time, to proclaim the message of Christ as the One who can bring change, who can bring healing, hope and peace. Where there are hopeless, hungry and angry people, the practical gospel of Christ can address their needs. Our church has not been active enough in this kind of holistic outreach.

6. The mission of our institutions of education and healthcare. The Friends Church is well known for its centers of excellence in education and healthcare, although the Conference recognized that in recent years, internal politics in the church have weakened our commitment to schools and hospitals. Considering that young people are particularly involved in the current violence, there is an urgent need to strengthen peace education in our schools.

7. Global partnership and the role of our international/ecumenical partners. This group discussed the linkages between Kenyan Friends and the global Quaker community, and also made proposals for how the many ideas from this conference could be organized and coordinated at a national level in Kenya.

Two important facets of the current Kenyan crisis were not specifically listed in the group topics, namely economic injustice/disparities of wealth and poverty, and youth disaffection/hopelessness, but they were raised by every group in their reports. Conference participants have recognized that these two factors are largely responsible for the incredible explosion of anger witnessed in Kenya since the election. In discerning long-term action toward a culture of peace in Kenya, these will inevitably form two crucial areas of focus for the work.

The Conference will spend the rest of its time together collating and organizing the recommendations of the Sections, in order to develop a coherent strategy and coordinated action plan for both the immediate and long-term witness of Kenyan Friends.

Jan 24, Kenyan National Q. Peace Conf. - day 1

2008-01-26T14:07:00.000-08:00

Good morning,
This and the next message are in very Christian language as suits
the Kenyan Friends. I am ready to learn from their struggles
with all that the message of Jesus means in a time of violence.
Nancy

-------------- Forwarded Message: --------------
From: Eden Grace <graces@fum.org>
Subject: article on the Conference so far
Date: Fri, 25 Jan 2008 18:53:28 +0000
> Dear Friends,
>
> Attached is an article on the events of the peace conference
so far, namely the two keynote addresses. Please circulate as
appropriate. I will follow up with other articles as the
conference progresses.
>
> Blessings,
> Eden
>
>
> Eden Grace, Field Officer
> Friends United Meeting/Africa Ministries
> PO Box 478 Kisumu 40100 Kenya
> phone: +254 735 479174
> email: graces@fum.org

Mary Lord and Oliver Kisaka address Kenyan National
Quaker Peace Conference

25 January 2008
By Eden Grace

Approximately sixty Friends from all Quaker organizations
and Yearly Meetings in Kenya gathered in Kakamega yesterday
for a three-day conference to focus on responses to the social
and political crisis currently unfolding in Kenya.

The opening session was devoted to listening to personal
stories of how the violence has touched conference participants,
and to praying together. Recognizing that Kenyan society is on
the brink of chaos, it was movingly stated by one participant --
“We are praying that this cup may pass us by, may pass Kenya
by. Yet even Jesus bore the cup and went to the cross, but in a
way that broke the cycle of violence and transformed all creation.”
Another Friend reminded the conference of II Corinthians 4:8-10
-- “We are afflicted in every way, but not crushed; perplexed,
but not driven to despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; struck
down but not destroyed; always carrying in the body the death
of Jesus, so that the life of Jesus may also be made visible in our
bodies.”

The Conference heard inspiring and informative keynote
messages from Mary Lord, recently-retired Assistant General
Secretary for Peace and Conflict Resolution at American Friends
Service Committee, and Oliver Kisaka, Deputy General Secretary
of the National Council of Churches of Kenya.

Mary Lord spoke about the Biblical Basis and Practical
Application of the Friends Peace Testimony. She emphasized
that the Peace Testimony arises from the direct experience of God
in each person’s life, as an expression of faith rather than as a rule
to follow. Early Friends considered that Jesus meant what he said
in the Sermon on the Mount. Mary reflected on her early years
among Friends, when she felt that the ethic of the Sermon on the
Mount was unrealistic and not likely to result in successful movements
for social change. She eventually realized that she had been assuming
that she herself understood human nature better than Jesus did, and
was able to embrace the teachings of Jesus as a matter of faith. She
decided that “Jesus wouldn’t have told us to live in a way that wasn’t
possible.”

Implied in the affirmation of Peace as a matter of faith, is the
realization that it is not by our own power or knowledge that we
make peace. It is the power of the love of God, of Jesus, of the Holy
Spirit. Mary stated that if we do not begin from faith, our peace
work will not be effective. If we do begin from a life-changing faith,
then we have no other option but to be peace-makers.

In living this Testimony over more than 300 years, Mary said
that Friends have become “researchers” of peace, experimenting
and finding effective ways to witness in various contexts. She then
gave several examples of ways Friends have given expression to
the Peace Testimony.

During the 20th century wars in Europe, Friends provided
humanitarian relief to victims on all sides of the conflicts – a move
which was highly controversial at the time. Mary remarked on the
fact that the Friends most directly involved in this work felt that
their efforts were inadequate, and struggled with fatigue and
despair, but that the world community recognized their work by
awarding them the Nobel Peace Prize in 1948. Their seemingly-
inadequate effort became a beacon to others about the way to
make peace.

Mary mentioned instances in which Friends have served as
mediators and negotiators. She shared how Friends have
established safe-havens for dialogue in the midst of violent
contexts, and have offered leadership to various movements
for social justice. Friends have increasingly been taking the
role of supporting and training, and of lifting up voices and
truths which need to be heard in the public discourse. Mary
closed by remarking that, although we often despair that we
are not making a difference, the reality is that the world is a
more peaceful place because of the work of Friends.

In the discussion which followed, Friends used Mary’s
historical examples as a way of approaching the current
crisis in Kenya. Participants spoke of reaching out to the
youth, offering meaningful activities to counteract the
temptation to violence. They spoke of reintegration of
displaced people, and of creating centers for dialogue
without fear. They urged Friends to take action “on the
ground” and to persist in prayer that the power of Jesus
may overcome the “demons” of violence in Kenya right now.

In his message, Oliver Kisaka gave an analysis of the post-
election disturbances and their root causes, and helped to
put them in a Christian perspective. He started by recalling
Romans 8:28 -- “We know that all things work together for
good, for those who love God, who are called according to
his purpose” -- and challenged us to believe that this is true,
that now is an opportunity for God to do a powerful work for
the good of Kenya.

Oliver spoke movingly about the breakdown in the electoral
process and the seeming betrayal by the Electoral Commission
of the trust placed in them by Kenyans. According to both
domestic and international observer bodies, the voting itself,
and the initial counting at the constituency level, were conducted
according to the highest democratic ideals. However, the process
then broke down such that the country is left in a situation in which
there is no public confidence in the legitimacy of the government.
After working for years on civic education, and seeing the positive
results of such efforts, Oliver felt deeply disappointed by the
performance of the Electoral Commission. He also reflected that
many young people who engaged in the election with enthusiasm,
now feel bitter and disillusioned.

Oliver remarked that, at a deeper level, Kenyans do not have a
healthy relationship to their political institutions and personalities,
and that this is reflected in a flawed Constitution and a “winner
takes all” mentality toward governance. He felt that many Kenyans
went to the polls looking for a “saviour” rather than a president.
Kenyans put all their hopes and aspirations into one political figure,
and began to believe that life would not be tolerable if that leader
were deprived of victory. The rhetoric of the campaign period was
so exaggerated, it would have been impossible for any government
to fulfill the expectations of the people.

Oliver noted that the heightened aspirations of the people were
further manipulated during the campaign period when candidates
encouraged voters to believe that they are poor because someone
else is rich, that they are disenfranchised because someone else
has consolidated power in their own community. The reality is that
the gap between wealth and poverty exists in every community,
and the benefits of power always accrue to the powerful themselves,
not to the average citizen. In this way, the political elites of Kenya
have seriously abused and manipulated voters, and created the
situation which is upon us now.

Oliver went on to address other causes of the current crisis,
besides the specifics of the election itself. He noted particular
historical injustices which have not been resolved and which
contribute to the situation today. For instance, the distribution
of settler-owned land at the time of independence created deep
resentment on the part of some communities. The unequal
investment of development resources throughout the country
has led to a feeling that the home region of the president will receive preferential treatment. Oliver remarked most powerfully that class
issues play a large role in the current anger in the country.

From a Christian perspective, Oliver stated that the spiritual life of
Kenyans is too compartmentalized, too divorced from economic
and civic engagement. He praised Friends for gathering in this
conference to ask what is our responsibility, and encouraged us
that “the Quaker light should shine!” He reflected that Friends
have strengths to offer at this time. Our Testimonies are a strength
to guide us. We have strong capacities in non-violence training,
and we should broaden these to look also at training for business
and entrepreneurial participation. Finally, he challenged Friends
to engage in advocacy on behalf of those who are suffering and
oppressed.

Oliver concluded his message by remarking on the deep cleavages
in Kenyan society which underlie the current crisis – cleavages of
religion, ethnicity, class, gender and age. These divisions threaten
the unity and peace of Kenya, and directly contradict the Christian
ethic of love of neighbor. He remarked that if you put your hope in
anything less than God, you are going to differ with other human
beings. “People will kill people over something like football teams,
if that’s where they focus their attention. We will be divided as long
as we focus our eyes on men rather than God. To stay in unity with
other people, we must look to the God who created us all, rather
than the differences between us.”

“None of our leaders and politicians are saviours. We have one
Saviour, Jesus Christ. If this is true, we will forgive each other
unconditionally. If Christ is Lord, then the things he taught are
practical -- we can turn the other cheek, forgive, and love our
enemies. These are not suggestions, they are requirements. In all
things, God works together for good, even if we don’t see and
understand it. If we have faith in God, there is no alternative.”

Having heard these two inspiring speakers, the conference
participants broke into seven working groups. The conference
will conclude on Sunday 27th January.

__,_._,___

Jan 21, Emergency Relief Fund

2008-01-26T14:00:00.000-08:00

From: the Board of Friends of Kakamega

Dear friends,

Greetings and thank you for your all prayers and encouragement over these past troubled weeks. We just spoke with Dorothy Saturday morning and she says that having us all behind her has been keeping her strong at this time. Like everyone else in Kenya her life has been turned upside down by the political crisis and violence. She says she never expected that Kenyans could do this to one another.

EMERGENCY RELIEF FUND

The Friends of Kakamega Board has decided that we would like to help in the effort to assist the tens of thousands of people who have had to run to refugee centers for safety, like those holed up in the police compound in Kakamega town.

Friends of Kakamega is creating an Emergency Relief Fund for this purpose. We are beginning this by immediately sending $3000 that a donor has released for us to help people in the refugee centers. ?Many of you have asked how you might help. And so we are making it possible for you to send money to Friends of Kakamega specifically for the purpose of emergency relief; ?the funds will go to the Friends United Meeting (FUM) Quaker office in Kisumu where they will oversee the distribution of aid.

Dorothy has already had success in bringing blankets and mattresses to the refugee centre in Kakamega Town. She has also gone to the Lugari refugee centre which has swelled to 18,000 people!

Lugari is northeast of Kakamega, near Eldoret where the church was burned with people in it. Kalinjin tribal men have been attacking Luhya (Dorothy's tribe) as well as Luo (Odinga's tribe) and Kikuyu people (Kibaki's tribe). There have been terrible massacres around there. Dorothy and her husband Evans brought blankets, food, soap and medicines. She says blankets are still available for purchase. And some food stuffs are becoming available (grains, not vegetables) but the price has doubled and tripled. She says the people at Lugari need so much prayer and encouragement as they despair of how they will ever put their lives back together with nothing to start over with. And they fear the violence and retributions will not end.

United Society of Friends Women (USFW)

As you know, the Kakamega Orphan Project and Care Centre is run by Quaker (Friends) Women. The USFW is a highly organized and decentralized organization run by women with an excellent reputation for their honesty and ethic of trying to do God's work. It is the USFW women who will purchase the blankets/food, etc and distribute the aid to refugee centres. One-third of the money we send over will be for refugee centers in and near Kakamega; two-thirds will be used by USFW groups in other parts of Kenya that are in desperate need. All will be carefully overseen by the FUM Quaker office in Kisumu . The Kenyan and American staff working at that office will have fiscal responsibility for funds coming in.

A shop burned out in Kakamega, down the street from the bank.

Later this week a conference for all the Kenyan Quaker groups in westernKenya will be held in Kakamega to consider what their political and humanitarianresponse to the crisis should be and how they can work best together. This is a timefor them to really lead with the Friends Peace Testimony and find ways to carry that Testimony out.

A Kikuyu owned maize mill and shop in Kakamega.

Please help them bring a little relief and hope. ? You can send money to:

Friends of Kakamega

51 Hunter Road

Freeport, ME ?04032

All donations are fully tax-deductible. ? No administrative overhead costs will

be taken from the donations.

We thank you for whatever help you can give. It will be sent over immediately. We are happy to answer any questions you might have about this. I'm also happy to send you a more detailed information/understanding of the situation.I just don't want to flood everyone with more emails than I've already been sending.

Please continue to hold the Kenyan people in the Light, that there may bea political settlement that begins to unfold and that there be a reduction inthe extreme levels of inequity, corruption, frustration and violence.

Thank you for being our friends,

The Board of Friends of Kakamega?