Rains, food shortage add misery to IDPs,Kenya

Rains, food shortage add misery to Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs)

By Amos Kareithi ( eastandard.net)

Generosity has run thin, their clothes threadbare.

Wells of tears have run dry, as have the granaries. The displaced people are living one day at a time in the hope of a better tomorrow.

Heavens have opened, bringing forth torrents of rains and, ironically, misery. A cloud of gloom hangs over the lives of thousands of displaced people living hundreds of kilometres away from their homes.

Three months ago, the rains would have been met with of jubilation and planting would have begun.

Not this time.

At the Naivasha Stadium camp, home to 3,000 displaced people, rain clouds are viewed with as much dread as a plague. Hundreds of women scamper to collect pieces of firewood scattered around their tents as frantic hands grab pots with boiling food into the tents.

Ms Beatrice Nyokabi, a mother of two, says: "When it rains, the prospects of eating are slim. You cannot cook inside a tent. If it rains before you cook, you sleep hungry."

Nyokabi, 32, fled from Narok and this is the fifth camp she has been in.

As she takes us round, she wipes away tears rolling down her cheeks.

"This is a wasted year. We cannot plant even if we go back to our farms. The rains have started. Now, our only hope of harvesting is September next year. That is a long time to live on handouts," she says.

Going back? Mr John Matthias, a retired secondary school teacher, wants to hear none of it.

"How can you go back and face the same people you saw kill your relatives? It is jumping from the frying pan to the fire," he says.

Matthias is still traumatised and scared of going back to Narok town, where he was preparing to establish a school. He is too scared to even give his surname lest he betrays his ethnicity.

He wears mismatched shoes — Nike on the left foot and Puma on the other. These and the navy blue coat, which matches with his tight fitting trousers, were donated.

No one seems to care

His is among families torn apart by violence in Narok, Kuresoi and Molo. Now, Matthias is condemned to a weekly ration of three kilogrammes of cereals, 150 grammes of cooking oil, four grammes of salt and half a kilogramme of corn soya.

Displaced people do not understand why no one seems to care about them any more.

"Are we really Kenyans? For how long will we rove from camp to camp like nomads?" asks a tearful Nyokabi.

"The Government should tell us whether we have a right to be in this country, or they tell us where to go."

News that President Kibaki and Mr Raila Odinga, the prime minister-designate, were to visit last week enlivened the camp. But it was not to be.

"Instead of wasting time squabbling over Cabinet positions, our leaders should go round the country preaching reconciliation. Only then will returning (to our homes) be possible," Matthias adds.

But Mr Benard Muturi rules out any possibility of returning to Kiambaa in Eldoret. He cringes in horror at the suggestion that he should go back to his father’s three-acre land, describing his last days there as "hell".

"Our neighbours killed my father. They shot him with poisoned arrows and then hacked him to death. I saw them do this. I know their names and faces," he says with a grimace. "I cheated death. I escaped to Kiambaa Kenya Assemblies of God Church, where my brother’s wife and children were burnt to death."

Muturi says he is better off at the knee-high tent at the Word of Faith Church in Limuru.

Muturi, who owned a restaurant in Langas, Eldoret, now has to line up for a plate of beans and ugali or rice.

"If the Government wants to help me, let it sell our land and resettle us. I’m not willing to go back," he says matter of factly.

Like 820 other people who fled Eldoret, he has been at the camp for the one-and-a-half months. Their continued stay is, however, in danger as food stores have dried up.

"If help does not come in five days, I don’t know what will happen. Food supplies can only last us this long," says Pastor Isack Ng’ang’a.

Ng’ang’a, however, says the camp is better off than the one at Kirathimo.

"We are supposed to get food from there, but they are always in short supply. Right now, they have nothing. That is why they demonstrated in Nairobi," the cleric says.

He is bitter that international NGOs have neglected some camps.

"We just see them here bringing visitors. Why are they using us?" asks Ng’ang’a.

Even as he speaks, about 600 women are at the gate with ‘ciondos’ and paper bags, waiting for donations. Every Wednesday, the women get a week’s ration from the chief.

On the day of the interview, however, neither the chief nor Kenya Red Cross Society staff has been seen, and the women are becoming hungry and angry.

"We have to screen every visitor into our camp. If we do not, we will be overwhelmed by the large number of people seeking accommodation," Ng’ang’a said.

At Mathare chief’s camp, Nairobi, a slum is developing. Streams of smelly water crisscross the muddy camp, whose mobile toilets are full.

"Every time it rains, we sleep hungry. The tents leak like a sieve. There is little we can do," explains the camp secretary, Mr John Mwangi.

Although the camp has 800 people, there are only 80 tents.

"My tent shelters 10 people. The situation is worse in others," says Mr John Maithia.

He said most of the people sharing tents met at the camp, but had learnt to share whatever little they had.

Ironically, people displaced from Mathare C are living only metres away from their houses, but they dare not go back.

Last week, the Provincial Administration said the displaced should return. But when a few were escorted back, their adversaries warned them that they would demolish their rebuilt houses.

"We do not want to go back. How do you feel when you come face-to-face with the man who raped your mother? All we are looking for is a new beginning. The Government should help us to start a new life," said Maithia.

In the camps, dusk comes at 6pm. Nights in tents are dark and cold.

And as Kenyans wait for wrangling politicians to get their act together, it is a dog’s life for displaced people.

They feel it is time they stopped being used as pawns in a political chessboard or inanimate data for humanitarian organisations out to make money.