Two steps forward, too many steps back

It's been a wildly winding road toward the establishment of a functional government in Kenya.

As Kenyans watch the post-election confusion and violence in Zimbabwe, things are not much brighter at home. Although there are agreements in principle on powersharing in Kenya, the actual act of sharing power seems to be difficult.

The sticking points in the current round of talks are the size of the shared cabinet, and which party will control which portoflios.

As recently as last Friday, there seemed to be an agreement. The cabinet would include 40 seats: 20 for ODM, 20 for PNU. The posts were doled out.

But a meeting on Sunday to finalize the details over five key posts broke down. The questions were over who will run Foreign Affairs, Cabinet Affairs, Local Government, Transport and Energy. The parties did not agree and this week Kenyans are back to: Cabinet, question mark.

As the leaders retreated from face-to-face talks to memos and envoys, protests in a few isolated parts of Kenya turned violent yesterday. Once again, PNU is pointing to the constitution while ODM is protesting that Kibaki's party must abide by the deal signed a month ago. PNU is threatening to dissolve parliament and call for new elections.

As in February, international figures are making public statements calling for a resolution to the dispute.

The Kenyan shilling is falling against the dollar. In a country where inflation is ongoing - where a cabbage that cost 20 shillings in December is now selling for 60 - the political instability is bad news for Kenyans.

If you want to keep track of what kind of agreements have been made, and the reconciliation efforts, here is the site to visit.

8 Months and then some

The mosquitoes woke me up at two and five this morning. Our hot water heater exploded a couple of days ago; I haven't washed my hair since Monday. The frozen shrimp I bought for dinner last night were slightly off. My dinner guests and I are on the watch for food poisoning.

My ever-overloaded backpack just exploded all over Yaya Center. The bottle of sunscreen I was carrying popped out and wheeled through the air, leaving sticky white goo all over me and the counter of the coffee shop where I'm sitting. The French ex-pat down the counter from me is drinking his first Tusker of the morning and looking at me like I couldn't be more crass. 

It's one of those days. You know, the days when Murphy's long arm is meddling in all your business.

And still, somehow, I am laughing. This is what Kenya has done to me. I am just happy here.

Despite political turmoil. Despite not being able to walk safely on the roads at night. Despite being constantly overcharged for fruit and taxi rides. Despite no access to fresh seafood. Despite an ever-expanding network of fine lines, a product of fair skin and the equatorial sun. Despite horrific traffic on bad roads. Despite a steadily shrinking bank balance and no steady income.

I am just happy here.

I came to Kenya seven months ago. Journalists for Human Rights sent me here to "build the capacity" of Kenyan journalists to report on human rights abuses. I had never been to Africa before. I took a leave of absence from a fun job as a news producer and fill-in host for the Maine Public Broadcasting Network.

I expected culture shock. I expected professional frustration. I expected sunburns and a lingering sense of groundlessness.

But this happiness, I didn't expect it.

This blog is called 8 Months, but I've decided to extend my time here indefinitely. My work for Journalists for Human Rights and the African Woman and Child Feature Service is over. I have no guaranteed income. I am staying anyhow, and not just for the inexplicable happiness.

I am staying for the myriad professional and personal challenges I face here every day.

It's not only bad shellfish. Every day I find out how little I know: about this country, about reporting, about myself. Every day I have to negotiate unexpected circumstances: attempting to file audio clips when all the Internet connections in Nairobi are slowed to a snail's pace, trying to find an electrician to fix the blown hot water tank, sweet talking security guards who want to confiscate my equipment before a big interview.

I am never bored in Kenya.

Every day there are more juicy stories on my want-to-cover list. Sometimes I wish for more hours in the day. Sometimes I wish I needed less sleep. I have never been so professionally stimulated.

I look at the list of want-to-cover stories taped to the wall above my little desk and my blood pressure spikes. It's not stress. It's excitement. There is so much work to do here. There are countless stories going untold.

As a freelancer, I am free to focus on the stories behind the stories. I am able to spend time on multiple, long interviews with one person who is not a news-maker. I can assign myself a story about local musicians, another about new agricultural technology and a third about international business. I can choose to ride my bicycle around the city for a day because, after seven months here, I know a great story will find me if only I keep my eyes and ears open.

That's why I'm staying in Kenya.

I have so much to learn. My Swahili is elementary. Kenyan political history is a tangled knot of tribe, party and corruption that I am only beginning to understand. But somehow, being an ignorant white woman works for me here. It gives me license to ask elementary questions, to play dumb, to be consciously oblivious.

And now that I am beginning to figure out how to be a reporter here - it requires a different skill set than North American reporting - I can ask those elementary questions of all sorts of people. I trust my intuition, and my naivete. I also trust my ability to bring notes back to my little desk, pump out a decent story and cross one more idea of my want-to-cover list.

As long as that list keeps growing, I will stay here. As long as I continue to be elated at new story ideas, I can't imagine why I would choose to be anywhere else.

Sometimes my joy here does leave me feeling guilty about not feeling guilty. Why should I be so happy in a country where many people are struggling on multiple fronts?

I soothe my conscience by reminding myself that Africa is still a 'dark continent' as far as much of the world is concerned; there are still people who think Africa is one country.

There are countless people in this country and this region whose stories are going untold. In some small way, I can help carry a few of those voices around the world. I can use my pen and microphone to help us understand one another a little better.

The art of coalition

We are learning all sorts of things about coalitions and democracy here in Kenya these days.

This weekend's East African had a great interview with the German ambassador to Kenya. Walter Lindner talked about the utility of so-called grand coalitions when major national changes are underway that require broad consensus.

He spoke of Germany's recent experiences with a grand coalition: the hiccups, the tentative cooperation, the pull of party versus broad reform.

One of my favorite quotes was a response to a question about who oversees government when there is no official opposition.

"I guess the press will have to play a crucial role in keeping the government in check. Secondly, public opinion will be very important and things must be done in a way that everybody knows what is going on. But most of all, Kenya needs internal checks and balances within the coalition. This could be done with proper balancing of ministerial posts..."

One young woman, changed

March 8 is International Women's Day.

In preparation, the reporters of the African Woman and Child Feature Service have been traveling around the country, gathering women's stories about the post-election violence.

I went to Eldoret, a community that was briefly in the international spotlight after dozens of people were killed in a church where they were taking shelter from post-election violence.

I talked with women who are living in camps for displaced people, Kalenjin women who are married to Kikuyu men, people who are left without jobs because their Kikuyu employers have fled.

All of the stories are moving. However, for those of us living here, none of them are particularly new.

The tale of Mercy Moses surprised me, though. She's a 21-year-old woman from a middle class Kalenjin family. Nothing particularly terrible has happened to her directly. Nonetheless, the way she thinks about her safety and her future has changed significantly...


Mercy Moses is wandering the dusty roads of an estate on the edges of Eldoret. She's fashionably dressed in a skirt, blouse, and long white scarf. She greets friends in the road. Most are people who she's known for most of her 21 years.

As she walks through her neighborhood, she points out houses that were abandoned during the post-election violence. She gestures toward hills that are scorched black by the fires that razed Kikuyu shambas to the ground.

She says the chaos at home began on December 30.

"After the [election] results were announced, everything went haywire. I knew things were bad when I saw a group of youths - at least 800 - walking together. People had crude weapons: rungus, pangas. I saw police with guns and teargas canisters. I saw houses being burned."

Moses is Kalenjin. She says that at the end of that first day of violence in Eldoret, she called her friends one-by-one to see how they were. It was only then, scrolling through the list of names in her mobile phone, that she realized that her group of friends is a great mix of tribes.

"I never actually though about it," Moses says. "I am of the generation that was brought up to know that this is Mark, this is Nduati, this is Timothy, this is so and so. It never really hit me that, 'You're a Kikuyu, you're a Luo, you're a Kalenjin.' It's only until the chaos began that it hits you."

At least seven of her lifelong friends have fled Eldoret. Moses says she's sure that one family will not return. The others are trying to sell their property and build new homes elsewhere.

Still, Moses says, the recent conflict hasn't changed the way she feels about her friends.

"These are people I call my lifelong friends. As much as they are no longer in town, they are still my friends. If anything happens, it is them that I lean on."

Moses is dating a young Kikuyu man. She says their relationship is still strong, despite the recent bloody revival of long-standing Kikuyu-Kalenjin land clashes. They don't talk about politics together, but Moses says they do pray for peace in Kenya.

While her friendships have not changed, Moses says her sense of safety at home has.

In late January a close friend of hers was raped at knife point. Moses says her friend thought she was boarding a taxi but ended up in the hands of two unknown men. Since then, Moses says she is much more careful about when she travels, and with whom.

"I think I am getting paranoid but maybe it's for the better," she says. "I can't board a private car right now. If I have to travel somewhere, I'd rather use public means. I don't travel past six. I travel only during the day."

She and her friends used to meet in town every afternoon during the holidays, for ice cream and movies and shopping. They would return home by eight or nine at night. Now, she says, they meet mid-morning so that everyone is home long before dark.

Not far from her family's home, Moses rounds a corner to find four young men walking toward her. She looks up at them and edges to the other side of the street.

"Seeing a group of men freaks me out," she says. "I see a group of young people and I think they are up to no good."

Moses is studying business and economics at a school in Nyanza. Their Christmas vacation has been extended to April because of the violence. While at home, Moses has been running a small business of her own, making mandazis and fried groundnuts for her family's shop.

When she graduates, Moses says she would like to start a tourism business. There is not much tourism in Eldoret. Before the December election, Moses says she was willing to move out of her home area to a more tourism-rich area. The recent violence has made her question such a move.

"I think I'll really consider where I settle later on in life," she says. "I'll have to consider how safe it is and the political climate and all. I wouldn't have thought of that before."

She says she never imagined she would see so much violence in Eldoret, or in Kenya. Although she voted in December, she says she does not plan to vote in 2012. Moses believes in democracy but, right now, she's skeptical about the potential for a fair democratic process in Kenya.

She says Kenyans need to come clean about the violence that has wracked this country over the past ten weeks. People who have wronged one another need to sit together and explain their actions. Only then will people be able to move forward as one nation.

"I want to be in a land where people live where they want to live, without the insecurity of the five-year deal. Right now, people are thinking, things will cool and after five years [during the next elections] it will be the same story. I am hoping for a Kenya that will have peace. Not just peace for the moment, but Peace peace."

Power-sharing and quiet

I apologize for being so quiet in the midst of power-sharing deals, last minute emergency negotiators, regional conflict flare-ups and international acclaim.

Kenya's come a long way over the past week. After power-sharing negotiations broke down last week, Tanzanian President Jakaya Kikwete came in to talk with the leaders. Kikwete is chair of the African Union. He is also reportedly close to the U.S. administration.

There is some speculation that he may have carried in a more stern warning from the United States, as government and opposition teams threatened to leave the talks. The two groups had agreed to the idea of a Prime Minister's post, to be held by Raila. They just couldn't decide what powers that post would have.

There are many details still to be ironed out but last Thursday, with Annan and Kikwete at their backs, the two leaders signed an agreement.

Then Annan, who reportedly said he felt like "a prisoner of peace", left Kenya after 41 days of holding the country together.

What does this deal mean on the ground in Kenya?

I notice that many people, when they talk about the deal, initially call it a "peace deal" and then correct themselves by calling it "power-sharing." People seem relieved that there is some kind of agreement. But they know an agreement is not a guarantee of peace in the long- or short-term.

There are differing opinions as to whether the deal will hold. There is a long history of broken promises in Kenya's political history, particularly between Kibaki and Raila. There is also concern that the 2012 elections will bring a new round of political violence.

When I was in Eldoret earlier this week, the mood was generally quiet. Food prices are still high. The hills around town are scorched from where small farms and estates were burned. There are still 15,000 Kikuyu and Kisii people camped at the Agricultural Society of Kenya's showground.

But for now, at least, tensions seem to have eased.

The great sign of an attempt to return to normalcy in Nairobi came, for me, on the cab ride back from the airport.

Navigating the endless traffic around downtown, my cab driver cut through Uhuru Park. For more than two months that symbol of independence was off-limits. As we cut past the podium and the couples sitting under shade trees, Lucas told me that the armed General Service Unit members were sent back to their barracks shortly after the deal was signed.

There is still a lot to be done. The consitution needs reform. Parliament opens today to consider a couple of bills that would usher in the National Accord and Reconciliation Act. Despite unfortunate newspaper typos, the members of parliament say they will "tow the line" to help usher in a new era in Kenyan politics.

Going forward, 8 Months will continue to bring you analysis, updates, various points of view and the voices of people who have been (and continue to be) affected by the post-election violence.

Voices: shattered by a bullet

Judy Waguma of African Woman and Child Feature Service went into some of the roughest and poorest areas of Kibera last week. She brought back this story of a woman who was shot by a stray bullet during the post-election violence.


Shattered by a bullet

The road leading to Mashimoni village in Kibera is long and rough. Sewers stream like small rivers under handmade wooden bridges.

Pamela Aoko Ndhiwa has lived here for the last three years. She seems oblivious to the the sewage just inches from her plastic sandals as she crosses the small bridges leading to her house.

Ndhiwa walks slowly along the winding route home. She passes dark bars where, at mid-morning, men are deep in discussion over a local brew called busaa. Children are playing in the footpaths. Women are washing clothes, cleaning houses and plaiting one another's hair.

Ndhiwa does not talk much. Her hands are shoved into the pockets of her grey sweater. Every few meters, she stops to catch her breath.

Her home is one of several mud houses facing each other across a hard-packed footpath. Ndhiwa and her three children live in this single-room mud house. There is one bed, three stools and a small area for cooking.

Ndhiwa has been married and separated. Two of the children she is raising are her own. The third was orphaned when Ndhiwa's brother died.

Ndhiwa says all three of her siblings have died. She says she does not know whether they died of HIV/AIDS or its related infections. At the age of 21, she is the only person left to take care of her family.

"Despite everything, I have managed to look after my children and family well and take the kids to school," she says.

Ndhiwa was born and raised in Homabay. She says when she was a child she wanted to be a nurse but dropped out of school in standard eight. Her parents could not afford to pay her secondary fee education.

"I met my husband almost at the same time I dropped out of school. We then got married and he brought me to leave with him in Nairobi where he worked as a mechanic," she says.

She conceived her last child after being married for two years. Ndhiwa says after her youngest child was born, both she and the baby got sick.

"My baby would get sick frequently, but I brushed it off as a common ailment for babies and that she we will get better," says Ndhiwa.

She says that her husband was involved with a woman whose health she questioned. When Ndhiwa's illness persisted, she decided to get testes for HIV/AIDS.

"The results came positive," she says. "I could not believe it. I went home and pretended that things were fine. My CD4 count was 200 at the time."

That count measures immune system activity. A low CD4 count indicates a depressed immune system. Ndhiwa says she ignored the test results until her health worsened. Then she went back to Medecins Sans Frontiers, a medical aid agency in Kibera, where her HIV-positive status was again confirmed.

"My CD4 count had then dropped to 90 and they had to put me on [anti retroviral drugs]," she says.

After counseling and nutrition training from Medecins Sans Frontiers she says was able to come to terms with her status. She resolved to try to live a long and healthy life so that she could care for her children.
 
During this time, she says, her husband disappeared. She has not seen or heard from him since.

In her determination to make things work, Ndhiwa started a small shop where she sells various drugs. She also sells fingerlings on the side to support her family.  She says business was going well until the post-election violence erupted. Her small shop was looted and claimed by rowdy youths in Kibera.

Facing the loss of her livelihood, Ndhiwa's life was endangered on the 31st of January, when a stray bullet hit her left breast.

"I must admit that God loves me, because the bullet missed hitting my baby's head by a whisker, as I was holding her in my arms," she says.

The shot came at about eight o'clock in the morning when, she says, "I was seated in the house holding my baby in the arms thinking of what I would do for the children this new year."

Ndhiwa could hear fighting and gunshots outside her house. She was cuddling the one-year old baby when suddenly she felt something hit her hard. The next thing she remembers she was lying on the floor.

"I had no clue what it was. But I saw blood oozing out of my chest. I got more frightened when I heard people rushing to my house and making a lot of noise. On seeing me lying on the floor they started screaming that I had been shot."

Ndhiwa says she lay on her floor for close to 30 minutes. Her neighbors called for police to take her to the hospital.

She says that when they got to Kenyatta hospital at around nine in the morning, she waited for hours in the casualty department before being attended to.

"I was in so much pain. I sat there from nine in the morning to midnight, when a nurse sympathized with me and took me to the ward."

For three days, Ndhiwa stayed at the hospital without treatment.

"No doctors were attending to me," she says.

She says that there was serious discrimination in the hospital because she is Luo.

"I could hear some nurses saying that I was shot when I had gone to collect stones for my husband," she says.

Lady Luck shone on Ndhiwa when a doctor sympathized with her and looked at her case.

"He wondered why I still had the bullet lodged in my body," she says.

There were many patients at the hospital, Ndhiwa says. She was told that she could not go to an operating theatre since it was busy. The doctor took her to a different ward and covered her eyes with a piece of cloth. He gave her an injection and removed the bullet without general anesthetic.

Tears roll down her cheeks as Ndhiwa remembers the surgery. During the procedure she removed the cloth from her eyes. She winces as she talks about the agony she went through.

"I was in so much pain. It was unbearable, I could not even scream," she says. "I cried slowly, biting hard on my lips. He gave me more injections several times and continued to remove the bullet until it was fully out. All this time I could see everything he was doing."

The bullet was successfully removed. The hospital bill was ksh 6035. Ndhiwa says she could not afford to pay since she had lost her business.

Ndhiwa and the doctors agreed that she would pay installments of ksh 500 until her debt is paid off. But still, she has not fully recovered from the wound and the surgery.

"My health is not good. Now with the bullet wound, I cannot work as hard as I used to. I get weak all the time."

From being a strong and hard working woman, Ndhiwa is now forced to beg for food. She is relying on her neighbors to take care of her children.

Despite her struggles, Ndhiwa considers it a blessings to be alive. She knows she could easily have become one of the 1000 or more Kenyans who have been killed since Kenya's disputed presidential election.  -Judy Waguma

Interfaith women for peace

Before the elections, I spent a day with a group of women from Kibera who are working toward peace in the slum.

The article about Interfaith Women for Peace and Development was just published in the latest edition of Intercultures Magazine.

It's poignant to read the story from the other side of post-election turmoil. But Mama Hamza's message still rings true...

Women need peace. Their children need peace. Who is going to give a woman peace? Who will give a woman power? It is you, yourself, and your sisters.