Trouble in Kenya

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Bogy

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Oct 18, 2006
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Some of you know from previous posts that my daughter serving our nation as a member of the Peace Corps, stationed in Kenya. You may also be aware, if you have paid any attention to the news in the past few days, that elections in Kenya, and the transfer of power, do not proceed as smoothly in Kenya as they do in the U.S. The events of the past few days have been anticipated for as long as my daughter has been in Kenya, about 18 months now. Some of you have communicated to me at various times that you think about my daughter, and so for those of you who may be concerned, here's an update.

As I said, this was not unexpected. Partly because of the Christmas holiday, and partly so that they would not be alone if things did get...well, the way they are, my daughter and two of her friends spent Christmas together. The election took place on the 27th. Monday morning, after seeing news reports and reading others online, I phoned my daughter to see how things were going. She stated that the violence was not at that point to close to them, but that the Peace Corps was trying to make arrangements for them to be picked up and brought to Nairobi. There was no petrol available in the community they were in, and the roads were blocked in place with checkpoints. Monday night/Tuesday morning the gunfire got to within a kilometer of them. They were able to hire a car to take them to where the Peace Corps vehicle would pick them up. Two men from the community went with them, to get them through the checkpoints. Much of the trouble is based on tribal affiliation. My daughter is a blue-eyed blond, but one of her friends immigrated to the U.S. from India (the Kenyans are familiar with people from India, and this was not a problem), and the other is African-American, and has the skin coloring associated in Kenya with the opposition tribe. At the checkpoint the men from the community
explained that all three women were from America, and they were able to get through.

When we spoke with her on Tuesday, about 11:00 AM our time, so 8:00 PM there, they were in a house in a gated community, with a four foot wall and a ten foot barb wire fence on top of that, with security, and more security at the gate to the house, with a third gate to the entrance to the upstairs of the house with the bedrooms. Wednesday they were expecting to be transferred to a home the Peace Corps owns, where a staff person had been living until just a few days ago. He went back to the states. Some of the Peace Corps Workers are already there. Normally when they come to Nairobi they stay near the City Centre, but that area is expected to be the focus of violence on Wednesday/Thursday. They are also being housed where they are, so that if the decision is made to evacuate them they will be closer to the airport.

Kenya has made some great advances in the past few years. My daughter has said she wouldn't mind staying in Kenya after her term is up (at least before these events), because the cities offer anything you can find in any large city in the world. But the country also has a huge disparity in wealth between the cities and the rural areas, and even the cities are home to huge slums. Kenya has a tremendous problem with corruption.

News accounts state that thousands of tourists are stranded in Kenya, some I am sure who were there for the Safari trips, and many more on the coast, especially in the Mombasa area (where my daughter and her friends had hoped to meet other PCW's to celebrate the New Year as they did last year. While there had been hope that there would not be the kind of upheaval they are now experiencing, as I said previously, it was not really unexpected. Probably the severity was not anticipated. My daughter had told us when she first got there that if we were able to come while she was there, we did not want to come at this time.

We are able to keep in contact with our daughter. She has a cell phone. However, if she needs to contact us she makes a quick call just to tell us to call her back. The phone service is a pay as you go system, and they are not allowing users to buy more minutes so that people cannot communicate. So she is conserving the minutes she has. She is not charged for incoming calls. Live broadcasts were banned soon after the elections, and most of the information she has of what is going on comes from friends and family outside of Kenya who are calling or texting her.

BTW, Happy New Year. :D:eek:
 
Happy New Year, to you also!
Thanks for the update on your daughter. I sure hope she remains safe, and can continue her good works!
Tom in TX
 
....elections in Kenya, and the transfer of power, do not proceed as smoothly in Kenya as they do in the U.S.....

Master of the understatement.

I hope all goes well with her. She will certainly have the experience of a lifetime.
 
Thanks for the update. I will pray for her.
 
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Update today was that she and her friends were transferred to the other house, where they joined 16 other Peace Corps workers. They passed through 2 gates with security before they reached the house, and have a security person with them in the house. Her post is on Lake Victoria, just a kilometer from Uganda. She has heard that other PC workers in the area were told to go to Uganda, which would most likely have been what she would have been advised to do. She has heard that homes have been burned in her community, and she is very worried for one of her friends, who is a well known supporter of one of the opposition leaders. Many Kenyans are also taking refuge in Uganda, so he may be one of these.
 
I can only begin to get an inkling of how your feeling right now as a father wanting to protect your daughter and the frustration at not being able to do it. I have admiration for what your little girl is doing in that part of the world and Im sure that if she stays after her term is done she will continue to do great things.
 
Update today was that she and her friends were transferred to the other house, where they joined 16 other Peace Corps workers. They passed through 2 gates with security before they reached the house, and have a security person with them in the house. Her post is on Lake Victoria, just a kilometer from Uganda. She has heard that other PC workers in the area were told to go to Uganda, which would most likely have been what she would have been advised to do. She has heard that homes have been burned in her community, and she is very worried for one of her friends, who is a well known supporter of one of the opposition leaders. Many Kenyans are also taking refuge in Uganda, so he may be one of these.

Good to hear she's ok. It looks like it's only going to get worse. News | Africa - Reuters.com
Mobasa is a cool place, but Kenya was unstable 25 years ago when I was there. Marine Medium Helicopter Squadron-262 [HMM-262]
We have people who can get them safely out of country.
 
There are some hopeful signs. This news report is from about 10 AM Central time in the US, or about 7 PM Kenya, Thursday.

NAIROBI, Kenya (AP) — Riot police fired tear gas and water cannons Thursday to beat back crowds heading for a banned rally to protest Kenya's disputed election, and the president said he is willing to talk to the opposition once calm has been restored.
The attorney general called for an independent body to verify the vote tally.
Kenya's electoral commission said President Mwai Kibaki had won the Dec. 27 vote, but rival candidate Raila Odinga alleged the vote was rigged. The dispute has triggered ethnic violence across the country that killed 300 people and displaced 100,000 others.
As attempts at mediating the crisis gained momentum, Kibaki said he was willing to hold talks.
"I am ready to have dialogue with concerned parties once the nation is calm and the political temperatures are lowered enough for constructive and productive engagement," Kibaki said, hours after police halted the planned march by opposition protesters.
South African Nobel peace laureate Desmond Tutu flew to Nairobi and met Odinga. Tutu said afterward that Odinga was ready for "the possibility of mediation."
Tutu gave no details but said he hoped to meet Kibaki as well. Government spokesman Alfred Mutua said Kibaki had no plans yet for such a meeting.
A European Union official said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana would discuss a proposal to mediate the crisis.
The Associated Press: Police Disperse Protesters in Kenya

Kenya was a British colony, and they and the U.S. have been working hard to get the parties to talk, and it seems they are quickly reaching that point. Bishop Tutu is there, and Barack Obama yesterday taped a plea for all parties in Kenya to cease the violence. With his Kenyan roots, Obama is a national hero there. My daughter met him when he was there visiting family, and the enthusiasm of the crowds was tremendous. From what my daughter has heard, the proposal mentioned at the end of this article is a coalition government.

Thank you for your support. It is greatly appreciated.
 
Things seem to be improving at least a little bit. When I talked with my daughter this morning (evening for her of course), they were now being allowed to leave the house, in groups. Of course they were still not to travel very far. She said the market had a little more selection than it had previously. Those who had been instructed to cross to Uganda have now been transported to Salaam, Tanzania. She's a little bummed that she hadn't been at home now, because she would now be in Tanzania instead of restricted to one house. The electricity is off, but the house has its own generator. However, the generator is limited in how much power it can provide, for a house with 19 people and more coming in. The Peace Corps director is supposed to be coming to talk with them tomorrow. This is the Director for not just Kenya, but that region of Africa. Nairobi is headquarters for the region, so they would only evacuate everyone in very extreme circumstances.

Those who were in the States for Christmas were originally told to plan to come back on the tenth, but now have been told to leave their tickets open ended, so it doesn't sound like they figure on a quick return to stability. My daughter is of course wondering if her site will still be viable after this, since a lot of the violence was in that area. She is supposed to be there for six more months, and she is concerned they will try to move her to a new site.
She did say that if they want to move her to the coast for six months she might be able to deal with that. :)

There are encouraging signs in some reports that progress is being made. The million man march that was called for by the opposition now has been delayed until next week, and my daughter speculated that in part the enthusiasm for the protests may be waning.
 
Very interesting to have a "REAL" account of what's going on. Keep us posted!

Tom in TX
 
After a few days of being able to move around the neighborhood they are in, on Tuesday tjeu are supposed to stay put again, there are more protests planned. On Thursday, the plans are to move all the Peace Corps Volunteers who are from provinces where it is not yet safe to return to Kyeri, which is at the foot of Mt. Kenya. Looks like a beautiful area, and is the destination for many taking safari tours. Lots of wildlife in the area. They are to be there until at least the 16th, when some decisions are supposed to be made about future plans. The president has invited the opposition leader to meet with him, so hopefully some resolution can be reached. A big question is after the events of the past week how soon it will be before some areas reach any semblance of normal. There are some areas where Peace Corps personnel have been able to stay on site. The western provinces, which is where my daughter is stationed, are the areas most affected.
 
Quick update. They were moved to Nyeri. The above was either a mispelling or misunderstanding by me. Nice, but its a little on the cool side, only gets into the 70's because of the elevation, so its felt to cool to use the hotel pool.

More importantly, the regional director is supposed to come and talk with them on Tuesday. He was in Tanzania Sunday to talk with those evacuated there. After some hopeful signs, no progress seems to be taking place. They are not figuring many of the sites will be viable for a minimum of 2 to 3 months. Quite possibly nowhere near that soon. My daughter only has six months left to go. Options include; being reassigned to a new site; being sent home until its ok to return; going to a site to help somebody already there; doing humanitarian work (not sure just what this would consist of, could be working with CDC, UN, etc.), being reassigned to another country, or just coming home. With only six months left to go, many of these really aren't feasible. Also, there are between 60 to 65 people this affects, and there are probably not going to be that many places available. The worst for her is that she will have no opportunity to go back to her home. The least of this is retrieving things she would like to keep. One good thing is that she was just home at Thanksgiving, and brought many souvenirs home then. She would give the Peace Corps list of what she wanted, and when it was considered safe they would try to retrieve the items. Hard telling when that would be. She has a friend in the community who she will ask to mail her what she wants, primarily pictures and journals, and to distribute the rest between herself and other friends. My daughter's site is complicated by its proximity to Uganda, just a kilometer away. Earlier last week I read a report that Uganda was strengthening its military along the border, ostensibly to keep the violence from spilling over. The rumors she is hearing is that raids have either taken place or might take place along the border by Ugandan forces, and that Uganda might take advantage of the turmoil to grab some land along the border.

Tomorrow when I have more time I will share some of what her understanding of these events. A few days ago they had a panel of the Kenyans who are their trainers talk about their perspective of whats going on.
 
Instead of finding out today what was going to happen, my daughter's group was brought back to Nairobi. When I talked with her this morning, she said that Peace Corps Washington wanted everyone in Nairobi, but we changed subjects before I had a chance to find out if that meant the group in Tanzania had been brought, or was coming to Nairobi. They are in a hotel this time, instead of in an empty house. The financial officer talked to them, and said that the reason they were in the hotel they were, was because it was directly across from the main bank, so they could close out their accounts. When my daughter asked if that meant they were going home, the financial officer kind of backed up and said they would be hearing the options tomorrow. Someone was supposed to be coming to help them deal with their stress, but my daughter said that if they would just tell them what was going to happen, that would take care of 75% of their stress. Hopefully tomorrow.

It's been a really busy day, and tomorrow doesn't look any better. I will try to share the analysis by Thursday.
 
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