This article appeared in last weeks Daily Nation. I think you will appreciate reading it. The papers surprised us by honoring our work. Thank-you for being a part of it in prayer and giving.
You can see the original article at http://www.nationmedia.com/dailynation/nmgindex.asp . Go into archives for March 26.
Oscar Muriu.
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Halfway Point Back To Normal Life.
(The Work Of The Nairobi Chapel In Restoring People)
DAILY NATION, Living Magazine, Wednesday March 26, 2008.
Someone called my father from outside and I thought it was one of his friends who often called him to go and chew miraa with him. My father opened the door and went out to meet the man calling. I didn't give it a second thought. But he never came back.
"When I woke up in the morning, I went outside to wash my face and the first thing I saw was his badly mutilated body. It was floating in a stream next to our house. He must have been murdered and thrown into the water. I was so frightened that I literally ran all the way to the road. It did not matter to me where I was heading; I just needed to get away from what I had just seen. I ran without looking back.”
As many Kenyans try to settle down to business as usual following the very rocky start to the year, others, like 14-year-old Paul Ngatuk Erumu, are wondering where to begin to pick up the pieces. He is now an orphan - thanks to the post-election chaos in which thousands, including his father, were killed, and thousands others rendered homeless. The Standard Seven pupil's mother died several years ago in a village in Turkana while giving birth. Both she and the baby died, according to his father.
Paul was living with his father, an ODM elections agent, in a rented one room house in Isiolo town when the violence broke out. As he ran away in fear, he was lucky to get a lift to Nairobi. He arrived in the city in the evening and slept on the streets.
“I narrated my story to some strangers and a Good Samaritan gave me Sh20. The next morning moving from street to street, I found myself at the Kenya National Theatre where someone else me another Sh20 and told me to head straight to the Jamhuri Park showground. He said many fleeing Kenyans were being housed there.”
But by the time he got to Jamhuri Park following the directions he had been given, Paul found the gate closed.
"I started to cry. I didn't know what to do ' " says the soft spoken and traumatised boy.
I saw a man and asked him where I could go. After explaining to was from Turkana, he took me to some Turkana people who rejected me. I started crying again, feeling completely lost."
The man then took him to the Nairobi Chapel situated nearby and they asked him to stay with Paul for a few days while they looked for a place for him to go. "He bought me a meal and put me up for four days after which I went back to the church. From there I was brought here."
'Here' is a halfway house in Karen, Nairobi. The house is an initiative of the church; some members of the congregation have temporarily opened up their homes to accommodate Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). These halfway houses have proved to be a saving grace for those who have no homes to go back to or are still too frightened to even consider going back. Paul is one of many who were caught up in the violence and are unsure of how to start again. But for now, he and others like him are safe.
The halfway house has also been home to 55-year-old Naomi Wanjiku, who fled from her home in Burnt Forest after a celebration jig following President Kibaki's disputed election win.
"Immediately after the elections results were announced, we (women from my area) all came together to sing and dance in celebration. Within minutes, our neighbours from different communities started throwing stones at us. Even before we could recover from this shock, houses were being torched. They burnt our maize farms, which were ready for harvest. I remember going to check why my sheep and goats were bleating only to find them roasting alive. I couldn't do anything to save them."
That night, Naomi says, nobody slept. Having lived through the 1992 violent clashes, she took her title deed and tucked it deep into her pockets.
"In the morning, people started to flee with whatever they could carry," she says. "By this time, arrows were flying all over the place. This was very scary. More houses were being torched and I fled at seven in the morning with only the title deed and my life."
Naomi is thankful to God for coming out alive, but says she can never go back. "It is hard to forget the things that have happened. No matter how much the Government insists on reconciling communities, it is hard. I lost literally everything in 1992. I rebuilt and resettled; now here I am, back at square one! Where is my future and that of my children? My grandchildren? Will the Government guarantee my family a future?"
Naomi's family was divided as people fled in different directions. At the halfway house in Karen, she has only her two young grandchildren. Her four children are living with relatives in Kinangop and Githunguri. Although she left 4.5 acres of land in Burnt Forest, she has no plans of going back. She is thinking of settling in Limuru and hopefully set up a business there.
Mercy Wanjiku, a 31-year-old mother of three, fled from Cherangany in Kitale. She weeps as she recalls how 27 women were whipped and taken away to Kaboret forest in Cherangany where they were raped. She says she lost her two-acre maize plantation. With her is 25-year-old Anne Wangui, a mother of four. She was a resident of Chepcion in Molo when the violence erupted. She believes her husband is still trapped somewhere in Molo even though she hasn't heard form him since she ran with the children. Maria Njeri fled from Elementaita leaving everything behind apart from her four children. "Everything was razed to the ground. The only clothes I had were the ones I was wearing" she says.
At the halfway house are about 40 people. Twenty-four year-old Moffat Njau is the caretaker. He worked as a chef before the violence broke out and when businesses in Nairobi and its environs came to a standstill, he decided to volunteer to help in the halfway houses programme. He was introduced to Njenga Muigai, the owner of the halfway house in Karen. Njenga is one of those who have given their houses to be used to accommodate IDPs. Njau was charged with ensuring the smooth running and administration of the halfway house.
Njau says nothing gives him greater satisfaction than to see people come to the halfway house in a very needy condition and be transformed through care and counselling, until they are ready to face life again. Indeed, about a week or two after they come in many of the IDPs are ready to leave.
"Some are transported to their up-country homes if they feel that the structures are still in place for them to resettle. But in most instances, they choose not to go back. " says Njau.
Situated about five kilometres away is the Jordana House, a bungalow that used to be a guesthouse before the post-election mayhem. Alyta Githire, the proprietor, attended a service at the Nairobi Chapel on the invitation of a friend. Little did she know that this visit would change the nature of her business for several months. She had been watching news clips on television about how much IDPs were suffering in the camps.
"I always wondered how all these people coped up with living out in the open. How did they cook, eat, shower, dress or undress with all those people around them?" Alyta says. During the sermon, the pastor leading the service made an appeal to the congregation and Alyta raised her hand and volunteered her guesthouse to be opened up to the displaced. From then on, displaced people and their families started streaming in. In the first week of February, Alyta received the first bunch of 30 people. And it has been like this ever since - after each group has been resettled, another one comes in and the numbers have not gone below 30.
Alyta, who reveals that she was previously a very private person, says the whole experience of opening up and having her private space invaded has taught her some lessons in humility.
"I feel humbled. I used to complain a lot about small things, but now I do not. I have learnt to appreciate what I have, including people from backgrounds different from mine.” She has grown spiritually, too. "I thought I was close to God before, but now I know differently. Now He is right here with me' "
The halfway housing project is funded and supported by Nairobi Chapel, some partnering organisations, various companies and individual well-wishers. "The church has played a big role; individual members of the congregation have also been very helpful donating foodstuffs, clothes and toiletries;' Alyta says.
In both halfway houses, there are rules and regulations to abide by. A very strict timetable must be followed, especially when it comes to meal times. Njau explains that the experience of cooking for large numbers has taught him how to budget for large numbers of people. He has also learned how to handle people with sensitivity.
The healing process
He says, "When they first come here, most of the IDPs are very quiet and distressed. They keep a lot to themselves and we allow them to do so because it is part of healing. But at some point, they open up. That is when we listen carefully, wipe their tears and comfort them. I walk with them through all this until the point when they sober up and actually start to visualise themselves starting a new life altogether," Njau says, adding that many of their visitors came from Kirathimo, Tigoni and Cherangany camps.
"It is at that point that they start living again and we sit down together and discuss plans for their lives.”
Leornidah Ambiyo, 30, is one person who has benefited from this humble rehabilitation project. She fled from the Kibera slums at the peak of the violence. She was with her 11-year-old son and they camped with other fear stricken families at the Jamhuri Park showground.
“A month and three days later, church people came to see us. Some young women interviewed us on how we could get back on our feet. I had nowhere to go; our rural - home is very poor and going back there without any form of direction would only have caused problems to my family," explains the single mother, who originally comes from Kakamega.
After the interview, Ambiyo was taken to Njenga's house and after 10 days, the programme administrators had rented her a house for three months at Riruta Satellite and taken her son, who is now in Standard Five, back to school. Ambiyo cannot see herself going back to Kibera where she worked as a cleaner during the day and sold vegetables at night. She still returns to the halfway house to help with the cleaning and other chores. She has this to say to her fellow Kenyans: "We must love each other like members of a family with different characteristics and interests. We must be one thing."
Milicent Mwololo
Turning A House Into A Home
According to Pastor Anne Mburu, the team leader of the halfway houses project overseeing resettlements, the houses have acted as a transit camp where IDPs come in to experience the warmth of a home as they await resettlement. Anne says in while these people live in the halfway houses, the administrators on the ground work hand in hand with Red Cross personnel to gauge ways in which they can be helped.
"In most cases, these people do not wish to go back to their homes, especially after what they saw. These are people who saw death and killings with their own eyes and talking about going back home might even offend some of them. In cases where they refuse to go back, we rent a house and pay three months’ rent in advance for them. We also take the children to boarding school and help the parents start a business” Anne explains.
There are a few who have opted to go back to their homes and the halfway house team has been the success of this programme. "Those we have helped have been able to -pick up the pieces and get on with life,” Anne says.
When there were still very many people living in the camps, it was common for children to come to the halfway houses very sickly because of exposure to the cold "but after they absorbed the warmth of the houses, they would get better. I have seen some very sickly children get better within two days of coming in"
Anne says the half way house project was originally supposed to last until the end of March but since there are still very many destabilised families, it is likely to take a little longer to wind up. “But it need support form Kenyans, especially when it comes to sponsoring as many children as possible to go back to school.”
She explains that due to the instability of the families, there is little choice other than to send the children to boarding school so their parents can have space to restructure their lives. "Part of this is done through getting them actively involved in the running of the houses through a duty roster for cleaning and cooking."
The houses have also hired caretakers, matrons and chefs - all aimed at making the IDPs feel comfortable. Volunteer youths teach children the basics of reading and writing. At the Jordana House, for instance, a makeshift school has been set-up and a Form Four graduate is volunteering as a teacher. Children under her care are learning the basics of the alphabet. They also sing songs and engage in sports as a way of occupying them and reducing the opportunity to relive the horrors they have seen. Prayer and Bible Study are also part of life in the halfway houses, which have succeeded in painting a picture of love amid chaos, warmth amid coldness of heart and a process of transition from displaced families to surviving families.
Oscar Muriu
P. O. Box 53635
Nairobi
Kenya
Tel (254)723-261-944
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