Fire destroys the home of an IDP in Rift Valley.
RUIRU, KENYA – Tucked in a group of motorbike taxi operators, known as “boda-bodas” here, Gathura Kariuki, 46, gazes blankly at the busy highway, firmly gripping his handlebars. He is waiting for clients at Kimbo shopping center, which is situated off Thika highway in Ruiru, a town in Kenya’s Central province.
It is 2 p.m., and clients are few at this hour. But he has decided to try his luck as he waits for sunset, when clients flock to taxis to get home from work. As the other boda-bodas, who are mostly in their early 20s, exchange dirty jokes, Kariuki is quiet.
“I never knew my life would come down to this,” he says as he dusts off his rented motorbike.
Kariuki is among the more than 650,000 people displaced by violence that rocked Kenya after a disputed presidential election in 2007.
One year before the election, he established a big grocery shop at his Burnt Forest home in Uasin Gishu, a district in Kenya’s Rift Valley province. He had six dairy cows and many goats. The income from his business and farming activities enabled him to support his family and send his three children to good schools. He says he was considered wealthy in his village.
But when the violence broke out on Dec. 29, 2007, he says he and his family left nearly everything behind when they were forced to flee.
“The only thing we could carry were a few clothes, which we stacked in two sacks,” he says. “We boarded lorries hired by the government to evacuate people and ended up in a displacement camp in Naivasha.”
But after living in the Internally Displaced Person, IDP, camp for just a week, Kariuki says he couldn’t take it anymore. Although humanitarian groups supplied food and other basic items, he says he decided to find a way out of the camp to “start living again.”
“I was used to working in my farm and business,” he says. “I could not allow myself to be reduced to a beggar. I’m not a cripple.”
So Kariuki took his family to a nearby town and started working at construction sites. He later rented a motorbike and started working as a taxi operator. After peace was restored in mid-2008, his wife and children went back to their farm, but he decided to remain behind.
“There was nothing to go back to,” he says. “My shop was burnt down and livestock stolen. Here, I work and send money to my family at the end of the month. I’m hoping to save enough to money to buy my own motorbike.”
Kariuki is among the minority of IDPs here who have started a new life for themselves after losing their homes and businesses during the violence following the 2007 presidential elections. Thousands of other IDPs say they still have nowhere to go and remain living in the camps. The government, which promised to have all IDPs resettled by December 2010, recently announced September 2011 as the new resettlement goal.
President Mwai Kibaki of the Party of National Unity, who was the incumbent, and Raila Odinga of the Orange Democratic Movement both claimed victory during the 2007 presidential election. The dispute led to violence that left 1,300 people dead and more than 78,000 homes burned, according to a U.N. Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs report.
Peris Wanjiku, one of Kariuki’s clients, also moved to Ruiru with her husband and three children after the violence. She says she was a timber dealer in Eldoret, the capital of Uasin Gishu, and also had real estate investments. She says her entire fortune went up in smoke during the violence.
“My brother sent us air tickets on the night the violence started,” she says. “We landed in Nairobi and later took a bus to Gutundu [in Central province], where my husband’s parents reside.”
Wanjiku moved to Ruiru after a few months and started a grocery store with some 30,000 shillings, $345 USD, she had saved in the bank. Though her business has not grown much, she says she and her husband have bought land in Ruiru and have built a new home near the shop. They have also erected rental houses.
“Though it may take a long time for us to back to where we were, I thank God that after the violence, we have been able to rise again,” she says. “I have discovered that war has no winners, only losers. Those who burnt my property are still poor. I hope Kenyans learnt from the experience. Never again should we stoop so low.”
Zachary Macharia, her new neighbor, says he is amazed at Wanjiku’s resilience and determination.
“She first came here with a little baby, and they used to sleep in a small room behind the shop,” he says. “But in less than four years, she has achieved more than most local people. I wish other displaced people could learn from her and stop depending on handouts.”
The government started a program dubbed Operation Rudi Nyumbani, which means, “Go Back Home,” in May 2008 in which it offered the IDPs money to return home and restart their lives.
While many have returned home – exact statistics are not available – others, like Francis Waweru, opted to integrate themselves into communities near the IDP camps. The amounts the IDPs received varied. Waweru says he received 30,000 shillings, $345 USD, from the government, while others say they received 10,000 shillings, $115 USD, and still others say they haven’t received any.
Waweru says he and his family of four were forced to leave their farm in Uasin Gishu during the violence and sought refuge at Kirathimo IDP camp in Limuru, about 30 kilometers from the capital, Nairobi. He and his wife worked in tea plantations during the day and returned to the camp in the evening. His younger brother, James Njoroge, worked as a casual worker at the nearby Bata shoe factory.
After receiving the government payout, they rented rooms in the town. They say they are now happy that they have been able to start their lives over.
“I don’t think I would ever want to go back to my farm,” Waweru says. “I’m happy here. The war opened my eyes, and I now look at life differently. Before, I couldn’t think beyond my small farm, but now I have a secondhand [shoe] business that is doing well.”
But unlike Kariuki, Wanjiku and Waweru, most of the displaced lived in camps for a long time. Thousands are still there, 3.5 years after the violence. They say they have nowhere to go.
Sarah Wang’ombe is one of them. She lives in Ndatho IDP camp in Subukia, located in the Nakuru district in the Rift Valley province, with her two teenage daughters and relies on food from well-wishers.
She says she can’t go back to her home in Nakuru, though peace has returned, because violence erupts in the area every time there is an election.
“I lost my husband to election chaos in 1992,” she says. “My daughters and I fled and returned a few months later. Five years later, in 1997, violence broke out again, and my home was burnt down. I still returned because I didn’t have any other home.”
She says the violence continued to worsen.
“In 2002, the worst clashes ever happened, and my two daughters were raped,” she says. “I can’t go back there again because I don’t know what will happen next.”
Wang’ombe says she relies on relief food because she earns very little from her menial jobs and the cost of living is high.
“I earn 100 shillings [$1.15 USD] a day from working in people’s farms,” she says. “This is only enough to buy a packet of unga [cornmeal], so I have to rely on well-wishers.”
She says she is waiting for the government to buy her a piece of land somewhere far from her original home.
To date, government programs have rebuilt 1,600 homes, but owners have not returned to 1,500 of them, according to an April article by Esther Murugi, minister for special programs, in The Standard, a Kenyan newspaper.
Peter Kariuki, national IDPs chairman, who is not related to Gathura Kariuki, says he wrote to the government to explain that many can’t return home because they fear additional violence will occur after next year’s election.
“We know President Kibaki has our interests at heart and would like to help us, but other leaders don’t care,” he says. “The Minister for Special Programs Esther Murugi recently said we are not genuine IDPs.”
Murugi wrote that when she traveled around the country to talk to IDPs, she discovered that some had their own land but had moved to IDP camps to receive more land from the government. The debate on this issue continues.
Special Programs Assistant Minister Muhamud Ali says that out of the more than 600,000 people displaced by the violence, only 5,600 have yet to go home.
But the IDPs chairman says there are more than 19,410 families waiting to be resettled.
Ali says the government is determined to settle all IDPs by the end of September this year and appealed to the members of Parliament, MPs, to stop playing politics with the IDPs’ lives.
But Kariuki, the IDP chairman, says the government is only buying time.
“By September, all MPs will be out campaigning for the next elections,” he says. “No one will be there to push the government for our sake.”