wfn.org | CWS Kenya: Displaced people return home in uncertainty

[Worldwide Faith News <wfn@igc.org>]

> For Immediate release

Kenya: Displaced people return home in uncertainty
By Micah McCoy/CWS

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 filed this update.

NAIROBI, June 24, 2008 ? 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 Contacts:
> Lesley Crosson,
> CWS/New York, 212-870-2676;
> lcrosson@churchworldservice.org
> Jan Dragin, 781-925-1526; jdragin@gis.net