Denis Nzioka by Jerry Riley

As the debate about sexuality and sexual rights in Kenya heats up, one personality is taking the discussion a step further as he vies for the country’s top position in the 2012 General election. Denis Nzioka is the PR and Media Communications officer for Gay Kenya as well as an avid blogger, writer and social commentator, and now Kenya’s first openly gay presidential candidate.

He started his career studying for the priesthood in a large Nairobi seminary, but while exploring questions within himself about his sexuality through his writing, blogging under the pen name Caritas Diablo, he found that he had a vocation within a vocation. Today he is one of the most vocal agitators for Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender and Intersexed (LGBTI) rights in Kenya. Only a few months after the UNHRC adopted a resolution on violence and discrimination against LGBTI people for the first time in its history, Denis has chosen to stand for those same rights in the most public office of a region that is not known for its tolerance of alternative sexuality. “Running for political office is a matter of pushing the boundaries; it’s a litmus test for Kenyan society. Can we overlook the fact that he doesn’t have a wife and family and look at his agenda … elect someone who does not fit the stereotype of what a politician should be? Can we move from petty politics to look at the person and what they bring to the table?”

Denis Nzioka by Jerry Riley

From his humble beginnings at Martin Luther Primary School in Hamza Estate and later Aquinas Boy’s Secondary School, Denis, once touted as a high achiever, has continued to rise and today is being referred to as the most powerful gay man in Kenya. When asked why now, Denis responds in simple terms; “The gay community feels it’s time its issues were put on the forefront, and they’re keen to have representation, being openly gay is already a significant political statement.” The new Constitution enables all Kenyans access healthcare and ensures that they are free from discrimination violence. This includes people from the gay community. Denis’ platform in the next general election while presented on a unique platter seeks to serve the benefit of all Kenyans. His main election points are poverty eradication, access to education, and human rights. The new constitution will need to filter down to the common people and, if implemented in full, Kenya will change.

Denis Nzioka by Jerry Riley

Denis has no trouble reconciling religious views with sexuality: “Sexuality is an inborn trait – it’s God given. Discriminating against someone for it is like chopping off the hand of a left handed person. It’s not something that can be helped. I am not a gay who’s Kenyan, I am a Kenyan who’s gay – I do believe God works in weird and mysterious ways and if he can make a donkey talk he can make a man gay. “Why would anyone choose a lifestyle that is so discriminated against? We have to be open to diversity. We have to be open to the possibility that people will not always fit the social constraints and it’s not for us to judge them or to discriminate against them. The reason why our society has so many issues with homosexuals is not because our sexual activity directly affects them but because women are still considered to be inferior. For a man to take on the role of a woman is so degrading so humiliating – because women are still seen as second rate. The gay rights movement will only be successful if the women’s movement is successful because then people won’t equate femininity with something negative.”

Denis Nzioka by Jerry Riley

Speaking to a diverse youth, Denis advises that it’s time for the youth to take control of their society and that the only way to do that is by being proactive. “It is important that the youth make inroads in all these channels and take advantage of the opportunities that are afforded to them. By making a political block the you can come together and realize that they are the next people who will lead this county and that there is nothing they cannot do”. Denis states that for Kenya to progress the country needs to move away from all stereotypes as the stereotype becomes the quality by which you’re judged as a leader. We must own up to our mistakes. As a politician you must modify your behavior to up your credibility. “Be a visionary, don’t look at short term goals. Meet the people and sell your idea to them. Ask the people what it is they need. Changing peoples’ mentality and attitude takes years. Be that breath of fresh air! We can sell a different type of leader, one that is committed to this country.”

Images by Jerry Riley

By H. I. Hussein

Is this what my life has come to? Boarding beat matatus and brushing shoulders with filthy hawkers? A KAS for God’s sake-that must have been from a decade ago!

No, this isn’t me. I am a cool, suave and intelligent undergraduate-and I don’t understand why these stupid employers can’t sift class from the trash CVs that they receive daily! Well, their loss.
Crap! I still have like five months till we open school-if ever! That was so not my fault, I still can’t believe that they put me up on the suspended list. Honestly, do I look like someone who could organize and mobilize drunken 20 yr olds to strike against the administration over some rigging. I was winning! Why would I need to strike against my inevitable victory? Dumb ass blondes!

Hey! How could I forget Ochieng still owes me! Who else, but yours truly of course, would have the vision and temerity to get the final exam questions from right under Dr. Situmbas nose. He he, it’s been a year and it still cracks me up! I mean who could be so stupid as to send his student to bring a forgotten blackboard marker from his office with the questions just sitting pretty on his desk. Well? Dr. Situmba I guess. And I gave them to Ochieng. Ochieng! Thank God he had the intelligence to be stupid in the first place otherwise I’d still be kicking myself for ever sharing them with him. All I have to do is hold that over his head and bam, I am in his father’s law firm. God, he’s so easy – “my name, my character, my dad”. Some sham of integrity he’s always preaching about: who cares? That’s just for the poor and losers.

So all I need is to get that internship and it’s on baeby. No more KAS matatus and lice-ridden foul smelling charcoal-teethed cockroaches in the name of touts. God, I so don’t belong here!

Pick up the phone, you little pig!

All I need is just a slight opening and its first class from here onwards. The new BMW 2011 3 Series Sedan then I’m so dumping that little Njeri pest. I mean who the hell does she thinks she is, trying to attach herself to me. She’s not fit enough to polish my Italian designer loafers. God, they’re so sharp, arent they?!

Why isn’t he picking up his phone? Probably still in bed, had a late night with Rachel. What did she ever see in him? Women!

Pick up! Pick up! OK, calm down dude. It’s Ochieng, remember? Take a deep breath. “Lovely roses, shiny dollars”. Right, we’re still cool, suave and collected. God, am so fine, I impress myself sometimes!

Finally, “Ochieng, my brother, I’m sure you’re great as always. So I was wondering if we could meet up soon: I have a business proposition that I’m sure would be to your interest. Friday lunch at Galitos all right? See you then!”

Kenyan conversations is a collaboration between StoryMoja and GenerationKenya.

Image by Jerry Riley

By Clifton Anthony Gashagua

They come here everyday like stray dogs leaving the comfort of their kennels at home to play in the cul-de-sac. Tole is the oldest. A retired soldier with a mind like an imaginarium, he claims to have met Queen Victoria and fought in the East African Campaign against von Lettow-Vorbeck’s forces. No one knows what the bald Barthlomeo does for a living. Mandole is a quiet water vendor; he owns the next shop. Garrison Mwambao is an excommunicated Catholic priest and the conscious of the pack. He was once a shepherd of men until he ‘was struck by the light on his way to Damascus’, as he puts it. Then there is me. My closest relation is a lady from Voi who comes by the shop every other Saturday. I suppose you can call her my girlfriend.

Old Tole was heartbroken by the failure of the ’82 coup attempt against Moi’s rule. He says that I look like Ochuka and talks to me in war phrases whenever we are alone. He reenacts a march and salutes to a spirit army general. We don’t give much consideration to his sentiments. He hates women, too.

“Leave that woman! Coast women are good for nothing.” He says. And then after what seems like a deliberation in his conscious he adds, “Get yourself a young girl from Murang’a to birth you a child or two.”

“Yes Tole, I should do tat!”

“Or is it that your gadgets are not working properly? Is that why you only see madam once a week?” The old man says, totally disregarding my privacy. There is an unspoken pact between us to be brutally honest. He sneers and looks around the pack to make sure everyone hears him.

“I know a doctor who can get you mechanics working properly, double your horsepower.”

The others laugh. I hate it when conversations revolve around my life. Garrison is silent all the while, as if some invisible doctrine still spread its webs around his neck, preventing him from participating in any profanity. ‘The after taste of religion’ he calls it.

“Well,” Bartholomew, as if waking up from a reverie, says. “You can bring her to me. I have enough medicine for all the women in Kenya and Somalia.”

We all burst into hysterical laughter. Old Tole has to control his laughter less its force collapses his tuber-ridden lungs. He coughs and spits bloody phlegm on the path. Damn you old man, I curse to myself. Mandole laughs loudest and is the last one to quell down looking at us like a hungry child, waiting for the next crumbs of conversation to set him laughing again. Garrison is the last man to speak as we all rise to set out in different directions.

“You people.” He retorts. “Can’t you find anything else to talk about?”

“Damn Virgin!” Old Tole curses under his breath in what is concealed as a mumble, but loud enough to betray his contempt for the man of God.

As the clouds gather overhead I rise towards my premises. Barthlomeo offers to help drag the wheelbarrows and tiles back into the shop. I don’t trust him. I fear that one day I will find my shop robbed.

In the distance, Old Tole strolls towards his house, sad and lonely, I know he is already anticipating the next day. He comes here for the free Roaster cigarettes I buy him. I close shop and call the madam.

“Can I see you today?” It’s a Thursday. Damn you Tole!

Kenyan conversations is a collaboration between StoryMoja and GenerationKenya.

Image by Jerry Riley

Story By Beth Nduta

The whole setting was silent, though the shop was opened and I could peep out to see whatever was happening, I still could not bring myself to go out. The two men-one dressed in a white shirt and hands akimbo and the other in a faded jacket, and red shirt with colors peering out and hands in the pockets-standing out of the shop were still talking and it appeared that they were the only ones who were brave enough to chatter about the morning’s event so casually.

The previous night everything was normal and no one had even the slightest idea that such a hideous event could take place. I remember we were at home slowly taking our breakfast when the sirens of the police car and ambulance shattered the peaceful atmosphere. We all cowered in a corner as the cars whizzed past our house towards the shopping center. My father, in his old and worn out coat, went out to find more detail as I peered through the window. We had to wait a while before father came back. From him we discovered that the shopping center had received a mysterious visitor the night before. Many people described him as a normal everyday man who could never hurt a fly but with the destruction, he left behind, we knew better than to judge a book by its cover.

I gathered enough courage to head to town and have a look at the whole situation. My hands were shaking as I moved towards the yellow tape already put by the ardent police force. Pushing my way through the crowd, I heard the sighs and gasps of the people who had already seen it all. I was shocked to see the body of a young boy, sitting silently at a corner, with deep cuts allover his body, and gazing across the boulders. I slowly followed his line of site and had to gasp as I behold the sight of a naked woman whom, as I figured out later was his mother. She was sprawled on the floor in an unnatural pose. Her head-with irregular patches of hair- looked like it was held by tiny ligaments while her legs seemed broken and at an irregular position. I was shocked.

The police force after seeing the increasing size of the crowd, started to shoo us away. We reluctantly moved away after a lot of persuasion from them, each of us silent with thousands thoughts in our minds. After a few minutes, the chatter started everyone with their own theory as to what had caused the event in this lonely village where everyone knew the business of the other. We opened the shops, the market women took to their stands and for a while, the normalcy returned. I later came to learn that the woman and her son had run away from home, after years and years of brutality from the man, she married. She had sought refuge in our village-miles away from hers but the adamant man came after her.

Kenyan conversations is a collaboration between StoryMoja and GenerationKenya.

On December 27th 2007, Pastor Robert Birgen, of African Inland Church, Chepsiria, stood patiently in line at the Kapkuis Primary school polling station in Kuinet, a few kilometres north of Eldoret town. When he reached the polling booth he saw Mzee Kamenya, an old Kikuyu neighbour of his since the early 90s, asking the electoral agent to help him out.
‘Fill in for me, Raila for Presidency,’ the old man said loudly.

Though the polling station’s majority of voters were Kalenjin, there were also members of other tribes, mostly small scale farmers and teachers who lived in the area. Most of them had bought land in the 1980s and 1990s from two white farmers who were leaving the area. Kalenjin locals who had lived on the land since the countrywide, ‘One Million Acre Scheme’, in which the government re-sold the White Highlands to Kenyans after independence, also sold land to members of other tribes over the years. Both co-existed un-problematically till the 1992 and 1997 clashes which served, relative to what would be the 2007 post-elections crisis, as mere hiccups of upheaval. If single families had upped and left in both elections-related clashes, the last became the ‘clash to end all clashes.’

On the evening of December 31st President Kibaki was inaugurated and Pastor Birgen remembers hearing screams and war cries echoing all over the valley. The next day, a Monday morning a tractor load of about 50 people, all Kikuyus, drove up to his church and asked for refuge.

‘These people who had come from Ziwa and were heading to Eldoret sought safety in my church. My immediate neighbours, most of them natives, had no problem with them staying there. The problem was people from other places, far flung villages, who were not happy with that arrangement,’ Birgen says. Ziwa is inland and about 42 kilometres from Eldoret where most non-Kalenjin families were forcibly removed.

Emissaries were sent to warn Pastor Birgen that ‘these people’ were not wanted there.
Later the next day, on January 1st 2008, a group of armed youth in their hundreds came and surrounded the church. They wanted all the people inside the church to leave. Birgen and other church elders pleaded with them. Already, the Assemblies of God church in Kiambaa, that would become famous had been burnt they same day at noon. When he spoke to members of the gang, some said: ‘I cannot go to Nairobi and express my anger to the President, but if I can do the same through his supporters here, then he will get the message.’

The next 7 hours were the longest of his life.
Earlier before the gang had congregated, members of the church had spotted Kalenjin youth trooping towards Kimumu, a non-Kalenjin settlement in the area and in the heat of the moment almost committed the most foolish act of their lives. Birgen’s wife intervened preventing the situation from escalating into another Kiambaa.

The gang remained patient and kept vigil for 7 hours till around 11 p.m and a unit of the General Service Unit arrived and escorted the displaced people from the church.

Today, Birgen believes that the violence was beyond tribal cleansing. ‘All those who sympathised and voted for the government, natives or not, were being targeted.’

When questioned on ideas of heroism, Birgen, a calm proud man in his 30s, shrugs.
‘I even helped someone move to Nairobi without a problem. But that is another story.’
The difference between the Kiambaa church, a few kilometres away, might be that it did not have a brave Kalenjin pastor to fight for it.

‘They say that there were men, women and children there but the young men in the church were conducting night raids and so the Kalenjin warriors retaliated. Some claim that there were passing and stoned,’ Birgen recounts.

‘The youths went there, asked all the women and children to leave, however, some skirmishes had already started, and women and kids couldn’t leave … also, the old and young men in the church refused to let the women and the children out. So the warriors lit fire to the church to kill the energetic young men in the anger.’

‘They set the building alight and burnt everyone in the church … that is against Kalenjin custom. Women and children are always left alone,’ Birgen says shaking his head.

We were headed to Kijabe town an hour’s drive from Nairobi, our destination was a small mission station set up by the African Inland Church Missionaries in the late 1800′s. The town’s name is derived from the Maa language meaning “the windy place” proof of this evident in every person we passed swathed in some kind of warm woolly apparel.

AIC Kijabe Hospital is nestled at the edge of the Great Rift Valley escarpment in Lari division of Kiambu district. It is a frontier of sorts of Central and Rift Valley province. Turning off the highway the thin windy road spiraled down through thick forest into the Kijabe Mission Station about 2km from the town.

For the longest time Kijabe Hospital has been a landmark for those seeking affordable treatment from far and wide. It started when a group of missionaries began a medical unit in 1915. It has grown since then and now has inpatient, outpatient, maternity and paediatric sections. The total bed capacity is 249. The hospital sees an average of 300 people daily with a large percentage of the people coming from as far as North Eastern, Somali and Ethiopia.

The mission hospital has hit the headlines over the decades mostly under rather tragic circumstances; some well-known ones date as far back as the pre-colonial days. In March 1953, the few survivors of The Lari Massacre sought treatment at the hospital after the brutal attack by the Mau Mau who accused them and their Chief Luka of being British collaborators. Black and white haunting images of those who survived, eyes full of fear and with bandaged broken and slashed bodies at the hospital beds sent shockwaves the world over of the growing rebellion of the Mau Mau and their plight for freedom. The 80′s and 90′s were notorious times for traffic accidents along Kenyan roads and this brought them thousands of casualties. In more recent times, they received the injured from the Nairobi bomb blast tragedy in 1998 and their care and compassion brought them recognition from the then Head of State.

During the post electoral crisis earlier this year, Kijabe Hospital sent medical teams to various camps including Naivasha, Kirathimo and Nakuru. While in attendance they were able to attend to not less than 800 people in each camp. About 60 of them each month since then still need clinic checks and the hospital accommodates their medical needs. This kind of help has strained the hospital financially having incurred costs of about Kshs. 1.6M. The surgery and treatment of the 4 children from the Kiambaa church burn is over Kshs.900,000 and growing.

“At Kijabe, we do not just mend or fix ailments; we also preach and provide hope and compassion to the patients. We do not turn anyone away; our priority is not money but their welfare physical and spiritual. Our compassion must be the reason we have patients coming from far and wide.” said Mr. Julius Marete the hospital’s Executive Director.

Walking past the full waiting room the sick sat calmly each bearing their pain and waiting for their turn to be attended.

Bethany Kids, the pediatrics ward of the hospital deals with the more common pathological diseases but are also equipped to deal with complicated procedures or conditions.

Some of the special conditions they deal with include:

• spina bifida – a birth defect where an incomplete closure of the nureul tube results in an incompletely formed spinal cord.
• hydrocephalus – where the child has an accumulation of fluid in the brain causing an enlargement of the head.
• cleft lip
• burns
• club feet
• hypospadias – a birth defect of the urethra in male children involving an abnormally placed urinary tract opening
• ambiguous genetalia – a condition where one has more than one sex organ

Specialists from all over the world give their time to perform these operations mostly at no cost to give these children a new lease of life. They limit the pain and rehabilitate children.

While at the children’s ward we stopped by to see some special patients Mercy 14, Mary 16, Jedidah 4 and Anthony 11. The children were victims of the recent post electoral violence barely surviving a church fire in Kiambaa a small village in Eldoret at the height of the violence. They had fled from their homes after they were attacked and property gutted following the announcement of the presidential poll results.

Strangers to each other before the fire, a friendship forged amid the twist of tragic fate. A Good Samaritan risked driving them through the then dangerous Eldoret- Nairobi highway after spending sometime without much medical attention at an Eldoret hospital.

“These children are very special to us and are such a success story. We are so proud of them. When they first came their burns were festered due to lack of proper medical attention. Even after skin grafting and several reconstructive surgeries they hardly suffered any infection. They were so positive and brave and now you see them around the hospital smiling and looking much better. Some of these things have nothing to do with us but more to do with the hand of God.” says Joshua Omolo an anesthetist at the hospital.

We found some young volunteers going through school-work with the children from books donated by well wishers.

“When nobody visits them, sometimes we walk into their room to find them all quiet thinking most likely of their dark future. The constant question on their lips is where to go from here.” said Sister Brenda Gathenya the Nurse-in-Charge, Pediatrics.

Mercy’s mother, Margaret Nyambura was a nursery school teacher before and had to leave work to raise her children; her husband was a farmer and the breadwinner. The children are terrified at the thought of returning to where they once knew as home and their harvest and home was all set ablaze.

Mary’s and Jedidah’s (the little one was in the local Kijabe mission nursery school at the time we visited as she has recovered) mother, Serah Wanjiku Kariuki was a farmer before the post electoral violence. Her children are too traumatized to go back and she is looking for a way to resettle elsewhere with a duka perhaps so as to support the young ones.

Anthony’s mother, Peninah Wangui Mbuthia is a skilled tailor and is wondering how to start her life again. They lost everything in the attacks. She is mostly sad because she lost her cherahani which earned them their daily bread”.

In the meantime, they are all thankful for at the very least they escaped with their lives. Just barely.

The hospital also has HIV clinic that cares for just under 5,000 patients. In the height of the violence the operations were disrupted but they were able to reach a large number of their patients who required life-saving ART medication by using their community health workers, volunteers and staff members.

“Among our patients we can take you to the doorsteps of 98% of them. We have regular follow up programs from the hospital and have 27 sites throughout the country for people to receive care and viral management.” said Fredrik Kimemia, Senior Programme Officer in the HIV/AIDS clinic programme.

For many, Kijabe hospital is an oasis of compassion and as we walk away, our hearts are warmed by the hope we see in the eyes of the people walking up and down the corridors of the hospital.

As so says Mahatma Gandhi, “be the change you want to see in the world.” Indeed AIC Kijabe hospital is living up to this by standing out as a Kenyan Shujaa at hand when needed most to replenish drained life and hope of our nation, generation after generation.

At this point, he nearly gave up. Eighteen hour days, seven days a week, full of talks, discussions, peace meetings; all of it seemed pointless as he watched the irrational murder taking place a few feet away, unable to help the victims or remove himself from the situation.

“I felt it was all futile,” explained Tom. “I knew I could spend hours in discussion with someone who promised to remain calm, but could and did turn to violence just as easily and irrationally the following day, his eyes and ears blind for the brief moments it took to snuff out another life, to loot or burn houses and businesses. I was watching it happen”

It was as if a madness had affected everyone and it was out of control, resulting in gruesome killings countrywide.

Fortunately Tom didn’t give up. The following day he attended the regular Peace forum organised by CCP, and reported on the grim state of affairs. He returned to the regular beat of peace meetings, and kept trudging, kept working.

Tom is a volunteer – both with the Lavie Foundation that came into being in 2000 when the Nubians clashed with Luos over rents in overcrowded Kibera, and of the Nairobi Peace Forum that drew together 33 groups during January 2008 in a bid to coordinate a cohesive strategy to cope with the post election violence across the slum areas of Nairobi.

A practiced peacemaker his experience at Lavie, made him wise to the signs of burgeoning unrest. Walking the mud-rutted tracks of Kibera before the election he saw more markers of dissent as tribes polarised -He heard tough talk at the regular Sunday meetings in Kamakunji on a Sunday where Luos would meet and discuss both politics and local affairs. The split began to form – Luo’s with ODM and Kikuyus with PNU. He knew a crisis was close at hand.

On the day of election tensions were running extremely high. Many Luo names were missing from the electoral register – including Raila’s. ECK chairman Kivuitu came to visit Kibera and told people they could vote even if their names were not on the register, and even without ID’s. This cooled the situation down a bit. Tom and fellow volunteers circulated at the meeting, targeting leaders, asking them to talk to the few people they could, urging them to keep peace. “This approach, with time has impact and prevents too much agitation,” he said.

But there was little Tom or any of the volunteers could do in the fretful uncertain days following the election. The violence surged up and around them. They went from Kibera, to Mathare persuading people to stay calm but tempers ran too high.

“All we could do was inform police of what was happening,” said Tom “It wasn’t helpful because the police were so biased as well as liberal with the teargas and bullets.” They often called off planned actions – like in Toi market where a crowd threatened to burn them and they had to run from the meeting they were trying to set up. They couldn’t even go to places like Katwekera because of the militant way the Luos there held out and fought against anyone who tried to enter.

At about this time the Nairobi Youth Forum came into being. A conglomeration of organisation working in slum areas, it was formed to provide a comprehensive network of activity across all the poor urban settlements and it elected Tom as its representative.

Each day NYF responded to calls for help. “One time we had a gang stopping people at night and robbing everyone. They had taken over a road in Korogocho and forced all passers by to pay each time they entered or left. We were able to scatter them with the help of the provincial administration.”

As things began to calm down they held forums, mixing all tribes in often heated discussions, allowing people to air grievances. They did street talks – stopping at a cobblers or groups playing chess and engaging them in conversation “Everyone wants to talk politics,” he said “we would add to the debate by asking what sort of peace they were creating and reminding them of their role in the atmosphere of the place they lived. That sobered them up and often resulted in people reflecting on their role in the violence.”

Still he feels that their work – even though it consumed him night and day – is just a dribble in the sea of humanity squished into the densely populated parts of Kibera, Mathare and Kawangware where he works. “We might reach 100 people in a day – in a place where there are 800,000. It’s a long and slow process.”

It was often disheartening. Tom met many dishonest peacemakers, particularly pastors who would say one thing to him, and then incite violence from the pulpit with their followers.

“I learned that people can do anything,” he said “We are all very civil and then we turn into animals in a moment. It has been a revelation to me – anybody has that potential. I even saw clergy looting – carrying things away from burnt-out shops.”

Tom hasn’t flinched in telling truths, however painful. He is not the sort to use the expression “a certain community”

He reported on the partisanship of the Red Cross in distributing aid, and on how Martha Karua and Beth Mugo took food to Jamhuri IDP camp and insisted it be served only to Kikuyus. He’s taken umbrage with the violence perpetrated and organised in Kamakunji by the Luos.

In his regular updates at the CCP meetings Tom aims to represent the mood of the slums as accurately as he can.

“Most people living in these areas don’t live as they would have wished to. They can’t find work, can’t bring people to visit especially if they are from a more upmarket estate. So they get trapped in their villages getting drunk and angry. They do without food or health services, struggle with water and suffer many indignities.”

He spends much time currently trying to help with employment. He leapt at the opportunity to use 100′s of black plastic crates generously donated by a flower company to help small businesses start again using them in a variety of ways – for storage, carriage, and construction.

He spends much time correcting myths – “People don’t believe there aren’t jobs available and think that Kibaki is hoarding all the high and low paid for Kikuyus. Of course that creates enmity. Many people regard jobs in town in offices or factories as real work, while running a kiosk or a small business is considered temporary until a “proper” job can be found. We teach them to see their entrepreneurship as valid and important since they have created a job for themselves.”

Right now he is actively searching for funding for small organisations who do strong grassroots work but don’t have the right legal set up to access established funding streams.

“Tom is so busy,” said a co-worker. “He has given so much time, energy to bringing about peace and harmony.”

“There won’t be papers written about me,” he said modestly, “but I know I contributing to helping this bad situation. “I wrote statements, made calls, walked the streets, and worked on conciliation. This is my passion. Right back to school and college I was the sort of person that challenged and questioned issues. I liked working with others and I liked dealing with social problems. This has been the biggest challenge of all, but if one person responds and lays down his panga, then I know I have helped clearing a way forward.”

As the rugby world in Hong Kong was falling asleep after a hard day’s work, the rugby world in Nairobi was waking up in tense anticipation for the most important weekend in the rugby season so far – the semi-final weekend of the Bamburi Rugby Super Series, the elite 15-a-side competition.

The Kenya Rugby Football Union (KRFU), the governing body of rugby union in Kenya, had a vision to transform Kenya into a leading international rugby-playing nation not just in sevens but also in the full 15 player version of the game. To realise this vision KRFU had to do a couple of things. First of all KRFU had to establish who the best rugby players in the country were, and secondly KRFU had to have those players participating in intense competition against each other. The Rugby Super Series was born. As the proverb goes, uhukuma mu luhya, nuwahuka hango, “to have respect in the world you must first be respected at home”.

The annual Rugby Super Series, sponsored this year for the 5th year in a row by leading local cement manufacturer Bamburi Cement, brings together the top 180 rugby players in East Africa. Club teams pick their top players and merge these players with the top players of their partner club to form a Rugby Super Series franchise for a total of six franchises, five franchises from Kenya and one from Tanzania, all named after different animals.

In a day of hard fought battles the Rhinos (made of players from Kenya Harlequins RFC and Mwamba RFC) defeated the Cheetahs (drawn from the players of Impala RFC and Nondescripts RFC), while the second semi final saw the Lions (made up of KCB RFC and Mombasa Sports Club RFC) defeat the Sharks (a Nairobi universities select side). The Buffaloes (made up of Kenya upcountry rugby clubs Nakuru, Kisumu, Bungoma, Egerton University, Maseno and Moi University – Eldoret) defeated the Twigas (a Tanzania select side) in the 5th place playoff.

The true winner of the day was the game of rugby. Fans were entertained, battles were fought on the pitch, standards of play increased and perhaps most importantly friendships were cemented not only between team mates but also between players on opposing sides.

On Sunday morning Kenyan rugby fans woke up to news from Hong Kong that the national sevens rugby team had taken the fight to the mighty Fuji losing 10-0 in the quarterfinals of the Hong Kong sevens with national sevens team coach Benjamin Ayimba assuring fans that it is only a matter of time before Kenya claims that prestigious scalp as well.

Like their compatriots in Hong Kong, players from the national 15 a-sides team as well as players from all the Bamburi Rugby Super Series (BRSS) franchises had a busy Sunday in Nairobi. On this Sunday however, Kenya’s top rugby players would leave their mark not on each other but, in a positive way, on their community. BRSS Chairman Aggrey Chabeda, BRSS Tournament Director, Auka Gecheo, Bamburi Representative Sypie Nyinza, Kenya Rugby National 15s Team Manager Wangila Simiyu, BRSS Director – Events Management Josephine Were and BRSS CSR Officer Thomas Arigi together with over 20 players and fans paid a visit to the National Spinal Injury Hospital on Lenana Road in Nairobi. Following a warm welcome from Dr. Maurice Siminyu, his management team and curious patients the rugby players armed themselves with buckets, mops, brooms and bleach and proceeded to give the hospital a good scrubbing. This was an opportunity for the top rugby players in the country to contribute to their community as well as an opportunity for them to sit, talk and encourage and make new friendships with the patients and the staff of the National Spinal Injury Hospital.

Hong Kong to Nairobi, the rugby pitch to pitching in to help in the community, driving mauls, driving brooms, passing balls, passing buckets, up and unders to lifting spirits, this was a weekend in which rugby was the ultimate winner.

We praise the man who,
though he held the match between
his finger and his thumb,
beheld the terror of its tiny drop of phosphorous,
its brown and globoid smoothness
like a charred and tiny skull
and so returned it to its box.

So too, we hail the youth who,
though he took his panga on the march,
perceived it odd within his fist
when there was neither scrub
nor firewood to be felled,
so laid it down.

An acclamation for the man who,
though he saw the woman running, clothing torn,
and though he lusted,
saw his mother in her youth,
restrained his colleagues
and withdrew.

We pay our homage to the man who,
though his heart was like a stone
and though he took a stone to cast,
could feel its hardness in the softness of his palm
and grasped the brittleness of bone,
so let it drop.

We laud the man who,
though he snatched to scrutinise
the passenger’s I.D.,
saw not the name – instead, the face –
and slid it back
as any friend might slide his hand to shake a friend’s.

And to the rest of us,
a blessing:
may you never have to be that man,
but if you have to,
BE!

Praise Peom was written in Kenya, January 2008. Stephen Derwent Partington is a teacher in Kenya, and a poet. He lives and works just outside Machakos and is a member of Concerned Kenyan Writers. A collection of poems, SMS & Face to Face, was published by Phoenix, Kenya. Stephen is the Exhibitions Consultant for Generation Kenya.

“There’s a lady who says she wants to see us,” Daniel said, putting his phone away. “I don’t know who she is, but she’s just down the street.”

We drove to a nearby matatu stage, where a small, stout woman in a pink business suit climbed into the front seat, introducing herself with a sad smile.

“I have a friend,” Elizabeth said quietly, “who told me you could help my son.”

We drove off, bouncing along the pitted streets of Dagoretti Market with Peter behind the wheel and Daniel in the back with me. Everyone said hello. Peter said all his friends call him OP; Elizabeth nodded, then explained that her boy was addicted to drugs.

“Which ones, exactly?” OP asked.

“Gasoline at first,” said Elizabeth, “but now I think glue also. He used them a long time ago, but stopped for a while when we took him to the hospital last year. Now he’s started again.”

The two brothers took turns asking question, gently but firmly, the way you pull out a tooth.

“How old is your son?”

“Twenty.”

“When did he first start sniffing?”

“When he was eight.”

“Where does he get the money?”

“He charges batteries.”

“Your boy has absorbed these drugs deeply,” Daniel concluded after a few minutes. “They are in his blood, in his brain. He’s helpless now, and angry because of that. He is angry at you and everyone who loves him. But we can make him better. Tomorrow, we’ll come to your house and talk with him. And later we’ll bring him to stay with us for a while. He needs to be around other boys who have gone through this kind of thing.”

There are no shortage of such boys in Nairobi – Daniel is one himself. Though no hint of it remains in his smooth, quietly flamboyant manner, when Daniel was thirteen he ran away and spent four years on the streets of the capital, addicted “to every drug I could get my hands on.” He was seventeen before a religious awakening finally brought him into church and convinced him to move back home.

His return to his family led to a theological scholarship in Norway, from which he graduated in 2000 and came back to Kenya. Together with his brother’s help and the financial backing of private donors he’d met abroad, Daniel founded a shelter for street children in the shade of the Ngong hills: the Emmanuel Boyz Rescue Center.
Over the past seven years, Daniel and OP have ushered over three hundred street children through Emmanuel’s doors. Not a bad resume for two guys in their mid-twenties. But as 2007 gave way to a dark new year, the brothers realized that one Emmanuel wasn’t nearly enough.

“A few days after Kibaki was announced president,” OP recalled, “I called Daniel and told him: we have to act swiftly.” Calls had been pouring in from IDP camps desperate to find living spaces for their burgeoning populations. But Emmanuel was already full. OP squeezed a few homeless Luo boys in from Dagoretti, knowing they would be killed if they stayed on the Kikuyu-dominated streets… but the pressure to bring in more grew literally by the hour.

On January 4th, less than a week into the chaos, Daniel and OP rented a two-storey, five-bedroom house on Dagoretti’s Waithaka-Ruthimitu Road, and started driving in families by the truckload. They called their new home Emmanuel Kidogo.

“The first group we brought were sixteen street kids from Korogocho,” OP recalled. “They were so traumatized they forgot all about their drug habits.”

But as more victims kept flooding in to Kidogo, the silver lining grew increasingly thin. Leaflets signed ‘Mungiki’ began appearing on doorsteps throughout Dagoretti, including at Kidogo: All Luos and Kalenjin are our enemies, they read. You have 48 hours to leave before we burn your houses.

“We ferried in all the non-Kikuyus in the middle of the night,” Daniel said. “Once they were there, we warned them not to step outside. Man, it was tense.”

Eighty people were living at Kidogo at the height of the chaos. Many had left by the time I visited, driven by OP and Daniel to family homes outside Nairobi. But 30 boys remain for Kidogo is now a permanent home.

There is Jacky Karanja, the ten-year-old bearer of a vicious scar now running the length of his right leg. A street child from Dagoretti, he’d jumped on to a speeding lorry to escape a scene of tear gas, machetes and stray bullets; he escaped all these only to lose his grip and fall at such velocity that the pavement tore the flesh off his bone.

And there are the three Karioki brothers: Hosea, James and Joseph. Aged seven, nine, and eleven, they were tending cattle in Burnt Forest when the fields caught fire on December 30th. They raced back to the house in time for their mother to hide them in a cow shed. She then ran into the granary to distract raiders, who locked her inside and burned her alive while her children watched through a crack in the wall.

More than half of Kidogo’s children were orphaned in the post-election violence. “They’ve lost all trust,” said OP. “We have counselors who talk to them every day, and slowly they are opening up. But it’s extremely hard to get them to talk about what they’ve been through.”

With their past in ruins, it can at least be said the boys have a good shot at a positive future. The most immediate threat was resolved when Daniel and OP organized a meeting with the local Mungiki, convincing them to leave Kidogo alone.

“In fact,” said Daniel, “they’re now protecting us.”

Meanwhile, 28 of the boys are enrolled in school or vocational training, depending on their age. The remaining two are joined by a dozen kids from the neighborhood each day – Kidogo doubles as a kindergarten, tended by the pastor who now lives here after his own home was destroyed in the skirmishes.

“You know,” Daniel said, “we can’t wait for the government to step in and solve everything – we have to act now. We have to get these kids in school, and we have to teach them to love each other.”

“Only when we educate the children that we are all Kenyans,” OP added, “can we expect change. That’s why we’re focusing on the kids. They’re our foundation. If we give them the right information, in ten or fifteen years we’ll be living in a very different Kenya.”

Arno Kopecky is a Canadian journalist and travel writer currently based in Nairobi. After spending most of his twenties on a surfboard, Arno moved to New York city for an internship with Harper’s Magazine. Since then he has written extensively for Canadian and international publications like The Walrus Magazine, The Globe and Mail, the Toronto Star, as well as Kenya’s own Daily Nation newspaper. He is an editor at Kwani?.