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FROM THE FIELD

Kenya: Displaced people return home in uncertainty
26 Jun 2008 20:24:00 GMT
 Source: Church World Service-USA
Micah McCoy/CWS

Website: Website: http://www.churchworldservice.org

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KENYA--Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)--made homeless by post-election violence--pack up tents at Koru IDP Camp in Nyanza Province.
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KENYA--Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)--made homeless by post-election violence--pack up tents at Koru IDP Camp in Nyanza Province.
Photo: Micah McCoy/CWS

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June 24, 2008

Editors: Photos to accompany story can be downloaded at http://www.churchworldservice.org/media/

Church World Service (CWS) is a member of the Action by Churches Together (ACT) alliance working to address issues raised in the violent aftermath of the December 2007 presidential elections, which forced hundreds of thousands of Kenyans from their homes, businesses and communities. Micah McCoy of CWS East Africa files this update.

After five months of languishing in the hundreds of overcrowded, understaffed, and undersupplied camps, most of Kenya's Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are finally returning home.

In early May the Kenyan Government launched an ambitious resettlement program known as "Operation Rudi Nyumbani" (Operation Return Home) that aims to resettle the more than 100,000 people still displaced by the violence that followed the December 2007 presidential elections. The sprawling IDP camps that once collectively sheltered more than a quarter million people are now nearly empty. Deserted fields checkered with patches of bare ground where tents once stood are now the only evidence that thousands once lived there.

At Ekerengo IDP camp in Nyanza Province, home to 1,400 displaced households, a convoy of Kenyan Army trucks is being loaded with people carrying only their few possessions and a two-week ration of food in a burlap sack- the last aid they will receive. Alongside the convoy, hundreds of men, women and children wait to finally return home after five months of waiting. However, not everyone is rejoicing at the prospect of returning home. For many, home is now nothing more than a pile of cinders in a hostile land.

Joseph Moenga is one of those dreading the return home. When the post-election violence exploded in his hometown of Nyamusi, a band of young men came to attack him and his family. After narrowly escaping death when an arrow grazed his face, Joseph ran blindly to the bush where he lived without food for a week. After finally finding refuge at a local police station he was transported to the nearby town of Ekerengo where he reunited with his wife and eight children. Now five months later he is standing in line waiting to be shipped back home, deeply troubled by the idea of returning.

"I don't want to go," confesses Joseph. "I am being forced to go. My home was burned and I have nothing to return to and no one has given us anything to help us restart our lives! Now is not a good time to return, I fear that it will just happen again. I saw some of my friends butchered like hogs. I still have dreams about the incident."

Most of the returning IDPs share similar apprehensions about going back to places where they watched neighbors murdered and homes burnt. One of the major concerns is that there has been no real resolution to the conflict. The underlying issues of land ownership, economic inequity, and political manipulation of ethnic prejudice have yet to be addressed in a serious way. Without attention to the underlying causes, reconciliation between communities, and reparation for lost property many fear that the stage is being set for another flare up in the not too distant future.

In Uasin Gishu, the Rift Valley district hardest hit by the post-election violence, IDPs already have been resettled from the huge sprawling camps to smaller "exit camps" nearer to their homes. This transitional arrangement enables the returnees to access their property, plant their fields, and begin the slow process of rebuilding their homes and lives. However, the host community's attitude towards their return demonstrates the challenges that Kenya faces concerning the unresolved nature of the conflict.

The returnees report that, while they haven't been physically attacked again since they returned, their neighbors have made it clear that they are not welcome by various acts of aggression and intimidation. Some are forcibly grazing livestock in their fields, destroying their newly planted crops, and refusing to provide essential services such as the grinding of grain.

Challenges faced in these transitional camps are compounded by a variety of other factors. Few people were able to return to their farms in time to plant maize, the most important food crop, forcing most to rely on less lucrative but faster maturing alternatives. These problems are exacerbated by below average levels of rainfall throughout most of Kenya and skyrocketing food and fertilizer prices, casting the shadow of famine over displaced farmers who are already at their most vulnerable.

The food security situation in some of the more remote exit camps, especially in the troubled Mt. Elgon district, has become dire. The two-week supply of food they were given upon leaving the IDP camp was exhausted several weeks ago and the newly relocated families are now barely surviving on immature vegetables dug from their gardens. The scattered and isolated location of some of these camps has made it increasingly difficult to distribute emergency food aid. In times of bad weather some areas are simply inaccessible due to extremely poor road conditions.

Some of those most reluctant to return are the small businessmen and women who had their shops looted and destroyed. They have no fields to cultivate and no capital to reestablish their businesses.

"Just because the tents are gone doesn't mean that we are," says Phyllis Mwangi, whose restaurant was destroyed in the violence. "Our businesses were looted and our homes were torched. Now it's hard to get housing because I have no money to pay rent. I sold part of the food the government gave me to afford rent but now I have nothing for next month. They want to push us back home, but we can't go. We want to see how things go before we try to reestablish again."

Having provided vital support to IDP populations all over Kenya throughout the post-election crisis, Church World Service's Kenya office and ACT Kenya Forum (AKF), are currently mobilizing to help address the daunting challenges that are developing as a result of the resettlement and reintegration of the displaced back into their home areas. AKF is in the process of creating separate regional forums comprised of the implementing partners at the ground level to monitor the resettlement process and identify problems and populations that are being overlooked by the government and other relief agencies.

With extensive religious networks from the grassroots up to the national level at its disposal, CWS and AKF will advocate on behalf of those still suffering while initiating and facilitating the reconciliation and healing process that Kenya so desperately needs.

One of those on the front lines in the struggle for peace and reconciliation will be Charles Masese, a volunteer with AKF partner Evangelical Lutheran Church of Kenya (ECLK) in Kisumu. A victim of the post-election violence himself, he and his family lost their home and narrowly escaped being killed when their neighbors - members of the "enemy" tribe - risked their own lives to hide and shelter them. Now he and his family have returned to their land and are currently living in a CWS/ACT donated tent while they rebuild their homes and lives.

"I am convinced that peace will prevail," he says. "But it won't depend on politicians, it will come from the neighbors...when you forgive you go back and reconcile with the people that did these things to you. So my conviction is that running away will not sort out this problem because your children will know this story and they will start hating that community. And even when we are gone this thing can blow up later...But if we do now a reconciliation and proper forgiving it is good; you forgive, forget, and come back and reconcile with the local people you were staying with. That is my conviction."

Media Contact: Lesley Crosson, CWS/New York, 212-870-2676; lcrosson@churchworldservice.org Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526; jdragin@gis.net


[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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[ Any views expressed in this article are those of the writer and not of Reuters. ]

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