Praying for Kenya

As some of you may be following the events in Kenya in the post election period, I am asking you to join me in prayer today for this country and the people of Kenya.

Kenya and its people need our support and encouragement. They need peace to rule and settle over every home and shack. The quiet and calm needs to spread through every street.

I believe God cares. I believe that men are envious and unhappy without any peace. You can win an election but watch your own country fly to pieces in a matter to days – because of pride and power. The leadership of this beautiful country needs help – needs prayer – needs a change of heart.

There is much more at play in this situation than one can see from such a far away place as Canada.

I have been in the Kibera Slum of Nairobi, Kenya. I have witnessed first hand the poverty and the pain.

I offer this article in full rather than try to re-write it for you to read. It appeared in the January 6, 2008 edition of the Toronto Star and is written by Mitch Potter.

~ Pastor Murray Lincoln ~

Resources
http://www.thestar.com/News/World/article/291374

TheStar.com - World

Africa's largest slum on verge of exploding

A woman is robbed as she returns with goods in the Kibera slum in Nairobi, Kenya. Clashes between rival ethnic groups rise in wake of deadly post-election violence (photo by Noor Khamis/Reuters)

January 06, 2008
Mitch Potter - Toronto Star

NAIROBI–If hell has a railway, it might look like the one that snakes through the stinking shantytown of Kibera.

Here in Africa's largest slum, where half a million or more Kenyans squat in mud and tin squalor, every side of the tracks is wrong.

It was wrong a week ago, even before Kibera set itself alight as the hottest flashpoint of rage against an election outcome that named President Mwai Kibaki the victor over opposition front-runner Raila Odinga. More than 300 people have been killed and 250,000 displaced in the violence.

And Kibera felt wrong again yesterday, despite conciliatory messages from Kibaki and Odinga that raised hopes for a political compromise to end the Kenyan impasse.

By day, the surface wounds are obvious: long stretches of burned-out market stalls lining the railway, some still smouldering; and everywhere, long faces of desperation engrossed in an all-consuming quest for food.

There hasn't been much to eat in Kibera since the violence kicked off. And with the economy at a standstill, the hand-to-mouth hordes are hard-pressed for cash to pay inflated crisis prices for the basics.

Yesterday, the stalls not burned were threadbare, with garden greens, pineapple and tiny red plums the colour and size of cherry tomatoes on offer.

One man hobbled along the tracks clutching his prize of a tray of broken eggs.

But when night comes, those with full bellies and those without all say that ethnic fear returns to the equation, as simmering tensions between the rival Kikuyu and Luo sects and their tribal allies continue to pull Kibera apart.

That fear still lingered on the faces of a group of mothers and children among an estimated 300 displaced people taking refuge in St. Jude Catholic Church yesterday.

A few minutes before the Star arrived, a teenage Luo girl was whisked away to hospital, having stumbled to the door in tears after she was gang-raped by six men overnight.

None of the women at St. Jude have homes any more. Each was torched by the marauding gangs, who sought out households by tribe, burning out the vulnerable minorities in waves that changed Kibera.

Kikuyus no longer live among the Luos as they did just one week ago. Many fled to a fairgrounds abutting Kibera, where the Red Cross was yesterday scrambling to feed a growing encampment of more than 3,000 people. Kibera today is a changed ethnic quilt, separated by tribal flag.

"I only had time to grab our children and run," said Sarah Muchayo, a mother of two. "And then they burned my home.

"Now, it has changed. Even if we could rebuild, I don't know how we can go back. We are afraid."
Muchayo is of the Luhya tribe, a smaller grouping with a different dialect but close enough to Luo to be seen as partisan.

Like so many others in Kibera, she put her electoral stock in the notion that Odinga's opposition represented long-awaited emancipation for the slum-dwellers. Not for tribal reasons, but simply because she believes a future Odinga government represents the best chance for the poor to finally win a share of Kenya's economic successes.

Kibera's politicians and several foreign diplomats who spoke to the Star on background say the rage of the crushed expectations, together with crimes of opportunity, was the main driver of the violence, despite its sectarian overtones.

"It is a situation where people are hungry and desperate and they take whatever they can," said city councillor Bernard Adhiambo, a representative of Kibera.

"There is a tribal side to it. But the main thing is the anger of poor people with nothing left to lose."

Though Kikuyus, who include President Kibaki, comprise some 22 per cent of Kenya's 33 million people, and Odinga's Luo tribe just 13 per cent, the equation is reversed in Kibera, where the Luos number foremost among the 42 tribes in the Kenyan mosaic.

The chafing between the rival camps dates back to the 1960s, when Odinga's father, Jaramogi Oginga Odinga, broke ranks with Kenya's first president, Jomo Kenyatta, a Kikuyu.

Subsequent political ruptures only deepened the Luos' sense of grievance that almost since Kenya's inception, they have been relegated to bottom-rung status beneath the enterprising Kikuyus, who dominate government and business.

Yesterday, there was one hopeful point where both tribes intermingled, drawn together at an exchange point where Red Cross emergency crews distributed packages of biscuits and cornmeal.

Hunger as the great equalizer, allowing for the burying of hatchets.

More hope was to be found in the declaration of President Kibaki opening the prospects for a unity government that would include the opposition. And in Odinga's response that he is prepared to forego the demand that his rival resign as a precondition of negotiations.

But the deeper mood in Kibera was a sobering reminder that even if Kenya's duelling political classes find a political formula out of the crisis, the sectarian scars of the past week are likely to cast shadows far into the future.

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Photos of the Kibera in April 2007

These folk will likely be displaced by now. Take a look at these children and think about where they are sleeping tonight. The church you see is situated right beside the railway tracks mentioned in the article.

My heart is twisted today. Pray with me.