An Internally Bleeding Country: Prospect for a Fatal Future

When one reads about the holocaust or watches documentaries about it, they would wonder how humanity can be so violent against itself. A keener analysis of most of the civil wars including the American Civil War shows how one class or group of the society justify their superiority against their target, hence their attack. It happened in Nazi Germany and two decades ago, one social group in Rwanda went on a rampage to eliminate another. Back home, we have had our own minor incidences that have severally threatened to make our nation a bloody one.

What we refer to mostly as our worst close shave was the 2007/2008 post-election violence (PEV). Whereas that was not an origin of violence in itself for us, it is an indicator of how volatile our situation is. After the PEV, we formed the National Cohesion and Integration Commission (NCIC). Has it brought any cohesion? Zero. I would rate it at less than 20% majorly due to its public conduct and my own personal interactions with it. Actually, apart from the average person has some level of fear to be prosecuted for hate speech, the hate is not gone.

Meeting the enemy in college

I joined college during the political term of PEV. I was from the mountain and I met people from the lakeside and the Rift Valley. Politically speaking, I was the winner and my college mates from these two other regions were the aggrieved parties. How did we relate? The university would say very well. My friends would also say very well. And actually, we never fought so we related very well. That, however, was and still remains on the surface.

I made a deliberate choice of friends that were almost exclusively from the lake region and the Rift Valley. I shared a room with four Luos and had a few Kalenjin friends. I remember that on the very first day of college, I was allocated a resting room with Steve, who was a Luo. The choice of this room was not deliberate, we had just been randomly placed. When we introduce ourselves to each other, I told him I am Meru. It is kind of normal for Kenyans to want to know the tribe of the other person. Then he asked what a Historian would term as an ignorant question: Are you a Kikuyu? I said no and I had to school him on the difference between Kikuyus, Embu, and Meru. To him, and later I came to learn it was the misconception of many young people from the lake region, everyone from the Mount Kenya region is categorized as Kikuyu.

I went on to learn more about Steve, his other Luo friends and their precious Maranda High School. I was also from a school in the same league or even higher than Maranda so I had lots of classmates and previous schoolmates at the university that I would have spent time with. That is why I said my choice of Luo friends was deliberate. With time, and partly due to my physique and skin complexion then, anyone from the lake region who did not know my story thought I was one of them. I had to learn basic Luo that I still use to date. Their influence was so much that at one point I was so interested in marrying a Luo lady. I loved how the ladies spoke their Dholuo.

While I grew up, I had been fed with so many nasty stories about Luos and that formed my basis for wanting to know them more. The only good thing I would associate with Luos was that they were academically intelligent. Everything else was bad, hateful, and stereotypic. They also had bad stories and even stories of hate about those of us from the mountain and mainly the Okuyus (their name for the Kikuyu tribe and possibly Kikuyu associates such as Meru and Embu). We had a good time in college and we helped each other without thinking much about our tribes until after the 2013 General Elections.

The tension of the 2013 General Election

In March of 2013, after we had voted and come back to college, the mood at the university was low, uncertain, and students had regrouped on tribal lines to feel safe. After the IEBC announced the results on the 9th of March, Raila Odinga filed a petition at the Supreme Court. That meant more tension at the university and even around the country. I remember some of my friends had to relocate to places along Thika Road with the argument that in case there was chaos, it would be easy to evacuate and go home. I also remember that on that particular day when the Supreme Court was to rule on the presidential petition, there was tension at the university and students watched the progress with held breath and high levels of alertness. Some shied away from the university’s common TV rooms and others choose not to get to college that day altogether. All along, I personally felt safe because I could easily switch sides. My origins were from the mountain but people around thought I was either from the lakeside or the Western part of the country. Only I prayed it never came to a point where I had to hold a long conversation in Luo. There was tension not entirely because we cared about what the court would say, but because we imagined a chaotic response from the students that would certainly be along tribal lines.

Before the petition could be heard and determined, some IEBC ballot boxes and other materials were found in Kenyatta University’s Students’ Centre. That led to chaos. Fortunately, the then President of the university’s students union was a Luo who tried his best to calm the situation. I can only imagine it would have been worse if the president was from the mountain. On that fateful night, I was in my room making supper when I was alerted. I went out asking what it was. From a distance, I could determine that the demonstrators were from the lake region. With all my confidence, I joined them to understand the problem. I walked across them alone and went past them to the point of the chaos. That was a risky affair and I remember a friend of mine from the mountain warned me to stay away. The rowdy youth would call anyone passing to determine whether it was one of them or an Okuyu. Luckily, my camouflage worked. I went all the way to where the boxes were and maybe the university never knew how much Tom Mboya, the then KUSA (Kenyatta University Students’ Union) president tried to calm his tribesmen not to torch the Student’s Centre as they had done to cars at the parking lot. The point here is, had the chaos escalated to killings, it would have been between Okuyus and Luos. Has the situation changed? Absolutely not. As recent as Sunday 29th August 2021 when Raila Odinga was in Murang’a, certain people from the mountain argued that selling Odinga in the mountain is like selling pork in a mosque. That shows we are still a people full of hate for each other and would grab any chance to devour what we perceive as our enemies.

Have we made peace since the 2007/2008 PEV?

Having joined college after the PEV, and with a personal interest in matters reconciliation and genuine neighbourhood, brotherhood, and sisterhood, I took time to listen to people’s stories. I had joined the International Movement of Catholic Students (IMCS) out of my desire to pursue healing. The IMCS is part of the Pax Romana. During one of those moments of confessions and opening up students from Nakuru county, which was a hot spot for the PEV, narrated how they witnessed the drainage trenches flowing with human blood. When asked whether they had forgiven, they were hesitant to say yes. They actually never said yes they had forgiven. Their explanation contained a statement that is still stuck in my mind and I use it often when I have discussions on national unity: ...people have moved on but are waiting for a perfect moment to revenge. I interpret that to mean that in case this country descends into another chaos, it will be bloodier, longer, apocalyptic, but might compel us to pursue genuine cohesion.

The Marsabit Question

In May of this year, I was in Illeret Sub-county of Marsabit County. That was a journey I had postponed since December of 2019 due to the stories of insecurity I had heard. I listened to numerous stories and it was clear there was real hate between the Dasanite tribe that occupies Illeret sub-county and their Gabra neighbours. It is so intense and ongoing that the Dasanite feel insecure at North Horr town because they call it a Gabra town. Actually, even the Gabra treat it as their town. On my way back, we stopped at North Horr for a meal but the driver was worried about our safety and had to rush us to get out of the town because it was at night and with so many Dasanite spotted by the Gabras alighting, they could easily and fast organise to attack them. The hatred is so bad that students from the Dasanite community would rather not join a secondary school than join secondary schools in North Horr.

After I had left Marsabit county, I still kept in touch with a number of young people there, some of whom I was exploring ways they can come down-country for their studies. When the day came for the students to travel, the lorries from Illeret had to use a longer route through Loiyangalani to get to Marsabit town rather than through North Horr because there was some conflict in Marsabit. This time it was not between the Gabra and Dasanites but between the Gabra, Borana, and others. To date, I follow the stories in Marsabit and I see how they hurl insults against each other on social media. I tried seeking an audience with the NCIC on the situation but they never responded like they had ignored my efforts to reach them before.

How is national cohesion elsewhere in the country?

In Kisumu, I have a friend who works there but is ever on high alert to evacuate. He had to relocate from a different estate to one near the Kisumu International Airport just in case there is a need for him to leave the city on short notice.

I currently live in Nyeri County in a region with a number of people from Meru. One day I asked a Meru whether they feel safe settling in a foreign county. I also asked whether they fear that one day the Kikuyus might flush them out. His answer was: ...look around, most of the more developed compounds and farms belong to Merus. Instead, it is us who would flush them out.

In a neighbouring sub-county where there are still Kikuyus and Merus, there was chaos one evening. When I inquired, the residents who are my friends said the chaos erupted between Kikuyu and Meru young men who both wanted control of a certain shopping centre.

Are we a cohesive nation? No, we are not.

Are we doing enough to bring cohesion? No, we are not.

Are we at a high risk of ruining this beautiful country of ours? Yes, we are.

Last week there was a public debate on the withdrawal of GSU officers from the Karen home of the Deputy President. An alleged university don posted on social media: ...if anything happens to Ruto, Afghanistan will be a shadow.

From these stories of suspicion, personal insecurity, the need to revenge, and hateful comments from high ranking individuals, we need to be candid about the risk we face in going the Rwanda way, or Somalia, or even Afghanistan as the don posted.