Reflections on Kenya

(David Zarembka, Coordinator of the African Great Lakes Initiative program, and his wife Gladys Kamonya gave a presentation about Kenya, “Relief, Reconciliation and Healing from Violence in Kenya,” in Wilmington, DE on March 13, 2008. Their talk was co-sponsored by Delaware Pacem in Terris, Wilmington Friends Meeting, Friends Peace Teams, and Philadelphia Yearly Meeting. This article is based on notes taken by Mary Starkweather-White.)

Gladys Kamonya, who is Kenyan and the wife of David Zarembka spoke first. She said that she was sure that we have heard what happened in Kenya, but assured us that Kenyans are still praying to God. When she was born, if Kenya was bad and corrupt, she did not know it—she was a child. What happened 3 months ago showed her that Kenya is not a safe place. She grew up thinking it was a good country. The elections have made her have mixed feelings about Kenya. She lived in America 15 years, then went home to be near her 85-year old father. She went to register to vote and later voted in the elections which went okay. By the time the election results were announced, she doesn’t know what happened, but violence broke out. Some people say the elections spoiled everything. If you believe in God, He will save everything. We will pass through this, but on December 29^th and on the 30^th, the darkness befell Kenya.

When the election results were announced, she and David were 40 miles away in the countryside at her father’s house where all his children had come home for a memorial service for her mother, who had died a year earlier. As part of their mourning, they had fasted for a year. She and David stayed for about 4 days with her father, then went back to their home. When they returned they found out that most of their neighbors had run away: some had abandoned their houses; some homes were burned down, their stores had been robbed and food had been stolen. What was going on? What was happening was that the police found displaced people and took them to the primary school. Gladys and David asked them, “How can we help?” Some said: we have food, but we do not have clothes; we had to leave home with the clothes on our backs. Other commodities were lacking, too—sugar, salt, cooking oil, and rice. Corn and beans were being given by the government, but those people with small children needed more and different food, because corn and beans are too difficult for infants and young children to digest. David tries to talk to us in the U.S., so that we can help. This has brought good—some food. There are 2,400 people in one camp. Gladys and David take things to them every week. They have come here asking for our support. Gladys concluded by singing in Swahili the hymn, “He Leadeth Me” which brings her comfort when she is afraid. [Members of the audience who knew the hymn, hummed along with her.]

David told us that he is the Coordinator of the African Great Lakes Initiative (AGLI), which just celebrated its 10^th anniversary. Trying to put the problem in perspective for us, he explained that about 1,000 people were killed in Kenya in January and February. He had just gotten an e-mail that on his way home a Kenyan was killed—in Baltimore. 6,000 people were murdered in the US in January and February. The US has the highest homicide and incarceration rates in the world.

David said that he would offer us nine different interpretations of what happened in Kenya and asked us to decide which one we liked.

1) Ancient Tribal Hatreds

In the Western media, we are exposed to the theory that the conflict is due to ancient tribal hatreds. People have sent David many media articles based on that and it is the view most often given by the U.S. media. David passed around a picture of a woman lying in a pool of blood with her 15-month old son crying in the background. The caption of this picture distributed by Reuters read that it depicted the result of ethnic hatred. However, this picture does not show the result of tribal hatreds, because the woman was actually killed by the police. 43% of those killed in Kenya are killed by the police. Contrary to Kenyan and international law, they use live bullets on demonstrators and looters. Two young men making faces at the police were killed by them. The police in Kenya commit brutal violence in the big cities, in places where demonstrations are made illegal, which also violates international law. The police shot at youth who then burned and attacked others. The issue is not the tribes. Almost everyone in Kenya has mixed marriages in their families. This interpretation for Kenyan violence in the media as due to tribal hatreds is an excuse not an explanation. It is as false and as superficial as saying that ethnic tensions between Germany, Britain, and France caused World Wars I & II. It is just an excuse.

2) Coup d’etat

Some say the election was stolen by incumbent President Mwai Kibaki and David would agree. It was obvious and blatant. David was an election observer and said that at his polling place the voting went well. He was also there for the tallying which was also done fairly. But when the election results were taken to Nairobi and the final tally was run, the outside observers were excluded and the shenanigans began. The votes were tallied in such a way that President Kibaki from the Party of National Unity won by about 2,000 votes more than Raila Amolo Odinga, the opposition candidate, from the Orange Democratic Movement. Kenya is a country divided 50/50. The election could have gone either way—with the same result.

3) Class Warfare

This explanation goes over better in England—that the conflict was due to class warfare: the dispossessed rose up against the middle class and the upper class. They used the election result as a trigger for an attempt to attain economic justice. Kenya has one of the worst and most inequitable distributions of wealth in the world. Two of the President’s sons have ½ billion dollars each.

4) Youth Rebellion

The fourth explanation is that of a youth rebellion. President Kibaki has been in the government since 1963—as finance minister, vice president and president. He is now 76. Odinga, the opposition candidate, is 62 and appeals to younger voters. The new members of Parliament are younger and better educated. The young feel the election was taken away from them.

5) Land Issues

This explanation is most accurate in the Rift Valley. In 1900 when England took over Kenya, the pastoral Masai and Kalenjin tribes who were living in rich, fertile highlands were crushed. Not only were men defeated in battle, but also villages were destroyed, and people were pushed into a marginal part of the country. The conflict ended in 1911 and the White Highlands were filled in with British settlers, each being given 10,000 or 20,000 acres. They got control of the best land in Kenya. At independence, the Masai and Kalenjin pastoral tribes thought they would get their land back, but instead it went to Kenyan politicians and the top civil servants, most of whom were Kikuyu and to other members of the Kikuyu tribe. The pastoral tribes felt they were robbed again. They are fighting to try to get their land back. In 1992 there was another election and a much worse conflict, but nothing changed.

6) Violence as Usual

This view takes as its premise that the violence you see in Kenya today is nothing new. The current violence in Kenya is being affected by increased communication, such as cell phones, internet, and digital photography. For example, in 1969 when Cabinet minister Tom Mboya, a member of the minority Luo tribe, was assassinated, the country was about to disintegrate, there were rumors, but news could not travel very fast. This time there are cell phones and the internet. There was violence around elections in 1992 and in 1997. In 1997 an assistant minister was found with a bow and arrows in his car, when the police were called in, nothing happened. In the past when a gang attacked a Cabinet minister, nothing really happened to the gang. Recently, a minister was shown on TV talking to the head of a gang and the gang then attacked another minister. Violence is allowed and Kenya has had lots of violence. The Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP) was taken to Kenya in 2003.

7) All Powerful Central Government

Kenya has a very powerful, strong centralized government. This was the kind of government that was necessary for British colonial rule in Kenya and after independence, President Jomo Kenyatta consolidated it still further. The president of Kenya now controls the executive, legislative and judicial branches as well as the electoral commission. When President Kibaki ran in 1992, he ran on a platform to decentralize the government. However, once he was elected he found that he liked the power and continued exercising and expanding it, even though it marginalizes lots of people.

8) International Inclinations

We can’t let the international community off the hook. Under the Reagan Administration funds for family planning were cut because of concerns about abortion. It meant that funds have dried up in Kenya and other parts of Africa for family planning. For example, in the part of Kenya where David lives, the western area with a population of one million people, there are only three family planning workers. The lack of resources for family planning in Africa in the ‘60s, the ‘70s and the ‘80s meant that the birth rate accelerated because their parents did not have access to birth control. The young people born during those years did not have enough teachers, since the government could not afford to hirer extra teachers or build new schools. The IMF and World Bank policies played a role through their structural adjustment policies. To satisfy the structural adjustment requirements that were necessary in order to secure loans or refinance them, the Kenyan government was required not to increase the number of teachers. By 2003 there was free public education, but the student/teacher ratio was100 pupils to every teacher. The children, consequently, do not get an adequate education. Also, when a Kenyan leader is corrupt, someone elsewhere is participating in that corruption. Five or six years ago, the government sold off 30% of SAFARICOM, its national cell phone company, to the French. Two years later it was discovered that the Kenyan government now owns only 65% of the company. The missing 5% had to have been given as bribes by a shady company, probably as a result of a deal with the French.

9) Spiritual Interpretation

On December 30, 2007, some say Satan appeared in Kenya, because individual and family greed have more importance than the community good. One can see this in evil civil servants but also in looters. When we go to a Quaker church, the message is that no Christian should take part in these activities, but it is not taken up by the larger community. Kenya needs a spiritual awakening.

David then gave an overview of the kinds of programs that are done through the African Great Lakes Initiative of Friends Peace Teams. Their Programs:

1) Alternatives to Violence Project (AVP): They offer 3-day experiential workshops in which people learn to solve problems nonviolently. They did it with judges in Rwanda who were going to preside over parts of the genocide tribunals. They also have done workshops between Tutsis and Hutus, between groups of ten victims and ten perpetrators. They put people together and tried to rework relationships between the two groups, some of whom had been enemies for 14 years. The first breakthroughs came with women. When they saw their children absorbing hatreds and fighting, they saw the conflict continuing through in new cycles in the next generation. They decided that they wanted to do something to break the cycle of violence.

2) Healing and Rebuilding or Communities (HROC): This workshop which is similar to AVP was developed by Rwandans and Burundians. The objective is to rebuild trust between people who had lost loved ones and the people who had formerly been neighbors, but who had engaged in the killing. In one workshop in northern Rwanda, there was a woman named Fideli as well as the man, a former neighbor, who killed her oldest son. The facilitator talked to both and by the end of the third day the young man, who had spent twelve years in prison, confessed to Fideli, that he had killed her son. He said that he was sorry, and asked her for her forgiveness. Fideli, then stood up and was uncharacteristically emotional. She talked about her son who had been awarded a scholarship shortly before his murder and was on his way to college. She told of her heartache and how much she missed him. Then she turned to the young man, looked straight at him and said, “I forgive you, and I want you to promise never to do anything like this again.”

Healing and Rebuilding our Communities (HROC) is based on an underlying philosophy and a set of six key principles:

Principle #1: In every person, there is something that is good.

Principle #2: Each person and society has the inner capacity to heal, and an inherent intuition of how to recover from trauma. Sometimes the wounds are so profound that people or communities need support to reencounter that inner capacity.

Principle #3: Both victims and perpetrators of violence can experience trauma and its after-effects.

Principle #4: Healing from trauma requires that a person’s inner good and wisdom is sought and shared with others. It is through this effort that trust can begin to be restored.

Principle #5: When violence has been experienced at both a personal level, and a community level, efforts to heal and rebuild the country must also happen at both the individual and community level.

Principle #6: Individuals healing from trauma and building peace between groups are deeply connected. It is not possible to do one without the other. Therefore, trauma recovery and peace building efforts must happen simultaneously.

3) AIDS Project: The African Great Lakes Initiative works with the Friends Women’s Association to help 120 women with HIV/AIDS in the slums of Bujumbura, Burundi. The project explored why it is that the Burundian women with HIV/AIDS die so much sooner than the men. They found that Burundian men traditionally get the milk, meat and medicine, so women die more quickly. When he visited the project, David met a woman who was the fourth wife of a husband whose three previous wives had died of AIDS. They found that the husband was HIV positive and was transmitting the disease. Gender discrimination creates health problems for women.

4) Work Camps: For 5 weeks in the summer there are work camps in Rwanda, Burundi and Kenya. A team of six internationals and six local people will first do AVP work together and then engage as a team in building schools, peace centers, etc. There is a lot of physical work and no skills required. Anyone can come; they have had participants as young as 8 and as old as 84.

5) Missionary Work: Through this program they bring Africans to the US to missionize us – to tell us about the work that they do. The African Great Lakes Initiative brings three or four African partners here to give talks. It is increasingly difficult to get visas for young people to come to the US, especially if they are unattached and have no property. Pretty much only the elderly can get visas. The U.S. government denies younger people visas, because it thinks they are coming to stay.

In the AVP program in Kenya, several experienced facilitators are planning to do 100-200 workshops in the next 6 months at the rate of 4-8 per week. This will be done with young people who may have been engaged in violence (like the bicycle taxi drivers, who are the shock troops of violence). Caveat: they like to make the workshops half men and half women, although most women do not participate in violence. The work is being done in the border area, where there is violence. In one area a policeman from one tribe assassinated a member of Parliament from another tribe. AVP organized a peace meeting with both sides, and although there was more burning afterwards, there was no more killing. They have held 42 one-day Listening Workshops with 900 employees from the Center for Disease Control to talk about the problems they are facing because of the recent violence. This came about when one CDC supervisor found that his staff was alienated and disturbed, and needed a way to talk about the problems and the way forward. The head of the CDC was pleased and recommended the AVP program to another CDC center in Nairobi that has 120 workers, so they will be doing more workshops.

Friends United Meeting runs a relief program through the Kenyan Friends Church. They are only giving aid to areas that did not receive relief aid from the Red Cross and other outside groups. The Red Cross only gives out beans and corn. The Friends Church is going to smaller camps where there is no other assistance. For example, at one camp where there are 2,400 internally displaced people, there is not enough soap, rice or sugar. They can only help a little, but they feel that giving relief is the first step in building peace. The people in the camp had their lives destroyed, so they need people to come and commiserate with them. Commiseration is a strong concept in Swahili, because it leads to healing. The Quakers have done a lot with displaced people and have helped to alleviate some of the conditions for them. For example in one area where more than 3,000 people sought refuge at a police station, the Quakers helped out by digging more latrines. On January 6, 2008 David and Gladys went to a Friends Church where a woman stood up and prayed. After the service when they were alone, Gladys told David that that woman had been protecting a Kikuyu woman in her home. The woman who was a neighbor of her rescuer had gone into labor and could not flee when the violence. The rescuer is from a different ethnic group, but she took in the young woman and her infant to protect them. If the youth who had rampaged through the town had known that there was a Kikuyu being harbored there, they would have burned down her house. Such acts of courage offer hope for a more peaceful future.

David Zarembka is the Coordinator of the African Great Lakes Initiative of the Friends Peace Teams, P.O. Box 189, Kipkarren River 50241 Kenya. He and his wife Gladys Kamonya were giving speeches on the U.S. East Coast for two weeks in March and they spoke in Wilmington on March 13, 2008. David writes a blog from Kenya that can be read at www.quakerservice.blogspot.com [The editor expresses her deep gratitude to Mary Starkweather-White whose excellent notes comprise this article.]

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