Women working – Isiolo

Isiolo, Eastern Province, Kenya, December 2007.

Women working/walking. I love the way Kenyan women use colour in their lives: clothing, blankets, scarves (and umbrellas). There is also a way the women carry themselves, with dignity, even when laden with goods and children. There was something about the bright umbrella on a sunny day that reminded me of parasols used by other kinds of women, in other countries and other times.

J. Riley/Riley Fine Art Photography ©2007

Anthony Mwangi

Kengeles, Lavington, Nairobi, December 2007

Anthony Mwangi, vocal artist, performing at a Kwani Sunday Salon event. This is a monthly event hosted by Kwani?, showcasing Kenyan authors reading from published works, and voice/sound performers of other sorts. These urban African artists, working in a variety of media, not only produce excellent contemporary African art and literature, but are also always very good material for photography themselves, (although often under challenging lighting conditions.)

J. Riley/Riley Fine Art Photography ©2007

Lake Victoria

Shores of Lake Victoria, Kisumu, Nyanza Province, Kenya December 2007.

We had gone out on a boat just after sunrise, but about an hour into the journey we came across a spot where people were working and we were able to get freshly-caught tilapia and cokes for breakfast. It was just another working day for these women packing charcoal, but the scene had a richness to it, like a painting. The fixed geometry of the charcoal sacks contrasts well with the lines of the women as they bend to lift and pack.

J. Riley/Riley Fine Art Photography ©2007

Christmas Day

Along the road between Kisumu and Eldoret, Rift Valley Province, Kenya December 2007.

A Christmas day. As we traveled rural Kenya on Christmas day, the most prominent sight was children dressed in their new or best clothes walking down the road. They were usually on their way to church, or to see family, or friends. Although there were few other signs to indicate Christmas, one could not help but notice that it was indeed a special day. A Photographically, it is hard to get better pictures than of happy young people in matching clothes the visuals are excellent.

J. Riley/Riley Fine Art Photography ©2007

On the road north of Isiolo

On the road north from Isiolo, Eastern Province, Kenya, December 2007.

These young men were paused beside the road, the two boys standing engaging me with their eyes, the other two in natural sculpted poses, seemingly in contemplation. There is a visual connection here between past and present in the way they are dressed. A The richness of their skin colour, the blue and orange clothing, and blue sky make this one of my favourite images.

J. Riley/Riley Fine Art Photography ©2007

Housing for tea plantation workers (Kericho)

Kericho, Rift Valley Province, Kenya, December 2007.

A Housing for tea plantation workers. I think I was attracted to the orderliness of this hillside; the neat rows of dwellings made it look like some kind of suburb, families nestled together, laundry on the lines. I like pictures with this kind of organized density and this picture is speaking to work organization as well as social networks and economic patterns. A The white buildings and green roofs and ground create excellent tonal contrast.

J. Riley/Riley Fine Art Photography ©2007

Peace Net

Peaceinkenya.net is an initiative under the Electoral Violence Response Initiative (EVRI-1)

How did EVRI-1 (every-one) start?

Following the outbreak of violence in Kenya on December 29th 2007, members of the Partnership for peace, hosted by PeaceNet convened and initiated an Electoral Violence Response Initiative (EVRI), consisting of civil society organizations (Maendeleo ya Wanawake, PEACENET TRUST, Amani Parliamentary Forum, and Nairobi Peace Initiative), The Kenya Private sector alliance (KEPSA), The Ministry Youth Affairs, The National Steering Committee on Peace building and Conflict Management. The Media Owners Association and the Media Council of Kenya. The team was joined by Action Aid, Oxfam, and World Vision. Since the initial meeting on the 29th December, a number of organizations have joined the initiative, including The Amani Counseling centre, Pamoja Trust, Youth Initiatives Kenya, Global Coalition against Poverty (GCAP), Saferworld

What does EVRI-1 do?

The Electoral Violence Response Initiative has begun to support and advise rapid peacebuilding initiatives particularly at the community level . These include: a white ribbon campaign, community level dialogue in Eldoret, Kasarani and Kibera, and is participating in the humanitarian initiatives of the Kenya Red Cross. PeaceNet regional committees in North Rift (Eldoret), Coast (Mombasa), Central Rift (Nakuru), Nyanza (Kisumu and Ugenya). Through the Media Council and the Media Owners Association, the participation of the media in peace building has grown phenomenally, as seen in the carrying of joint headlines by the Daily Nation and the Standard and the airing of National Prayers on all major broadcast media on Sunday January 6th January 2008.

Contact details

PeaceNet Kenya
Malim Juma Road, Off Denis Pritt Road
P.O. Box. 49806-00100 Nairobi, Kenya
Tel: (+254) 2725270/1
Mail: info @ peaceinkenya.net
web: www.peaceinkenya.net

An Unusual Hero

Mention the Kenyan GSU, and images of red-bereted, combat-geared policemen waving batons chasing rioting university students amid plumes of choking tear gas come to mind. It is not clear where the tagline fanya fujo uone (just try to make trouble, and see)came from, but it stuck so indelibly in the Kenyan psyche they might have well have adopted it officially and put it at the bottom of their logo. On 29th December 2007, Kenya saw a new side of this feared force when Superintendent Joseph Musyoka Nthenge faced a crowd of 500 angry demonstrators in Mathare and attempted to reason with them, asking why they were destroying a Kenya that had taken years to build. This was back before we knew what the fallout from the disputed and discredited presidential election would be. The electoral commission was delaying announcing the presidential results and people were getting restless. In slums all over Nairobi, young men gathered and prepared to march to the Kenyatta International Conference Center, ground zero for the Electoral Commission, to demand an answer.

The R Company of the GSU, Superintendent Nthenge’s unit, had been deployed to cover Kasarani constituency during the election. After the election R Company moved to Mathare. It is here that the TV cameras captured him talking to the demonstrators who had already destroyed property and were going to burn more houses and cars on their way to the city-center.

Fast forward to mid-February and we are driving to Ruiru to meet Superintendent Nthenge. Directions have been given as follows: past Ruiru town, past the fly-over, go two kilometers and you will see the camp on the left. We approach and from far we can see the rectangular metal water tanks raised high on stilts that mark many government facilities. Closer and we see the chain-link fencing and concrete posts that surround military camps, but we still miss the entrance and have to do a precarious loop before we get to the camp.

A brief pause at the gate while the guard makes a call and we are shown to the administration block.

This is the first surprise – he has an office and sits behind a desk. The second is the silver in his hair. On TV he looked like a young, battle-ready soldier. In person he is youthful but obviously a man of experience. He is medium-height and medium-build – not a man who would stand out in a crowd. He greets us warmly and gestures to the chairs opposite him. He is self-effacing and laughs off his newfound fame.

Superintendent Nthenge talks about that day in Mathare: “My duty was to make them not go to town… I talked to the boys in a calm way… First before you can disperse the rioters… you have to tell them your aim… There is no point of using force if they are willing to go.” But make no mistake, for all his gentleness you get the impression that Superintendent Nthenge will not hesitate to kick your ass if you cross the line he has drawn. “If they cannot disperse, you can use batons and teargas… and if that is not possible you have the third option of using the water cannon.”

After the results were announced, all hell broke loose. While the famous personalities were addressing the TV audiences from studios, Superintendent Nthenge was on the street. Though he looked calm, Superintendent Nthenge says, “I had to gather my courage. I said if they were going to stone me let them stone me.”

At a time when all TV channels were showing the GSU faithfully fulfilling every teargas-throwing, water-cannon spraying, slum-cordoning stereotype, Superintendent Nthenge’s clip playing over and over was like a palliative, giving the police a much-needed human face. While the riot police stood shoulder to shoulder in intimidating body armor, looking for all the world like space rangers, Superintendent Nthenge looked vulnerable and approachable. “Times have changed. If you cannot accept the change, it will force you,” Nthenge says. The GSU of old had a fearsome reputation, “If they would pass a place they would not spare anything, even dogs. They were not seen as people who could share a word with anybody,” Nthenge acknowledges and laughs. “The training has changed. I was taught negotiation and it sank into my brain… also customer care.”

“As in the people rioting are your customers?” I ask.

“Yeah… Why not?” Nthenge answers without a hint of irony. “People know their rights… People should not fear the GSU.” As to what should happen to make this tenuous peace in Kenya permanent, Nthenge says it is the duty of the politicians to go back to their constituencies and preach peace as rigorously as they campaigned to be elected.

The usual biodata: Superintendent Joseph Musyoka Nthenge was born on 18th March 1962 at Iviyani Village. He attended Kitengei Primary School from 1971 to 1977 and Kathese Secondary from 1979 to 1982. He joined the Kenya Police in 1983 and has followed no other vocation since. He went to the GSU training school and has served in various capacities, rising to his current rank of superintendent and Staff Officer of Operations of the R Company in 2007. Since he appeared on TV, colleagues from all over the country, some of whom he hasn’t seen since they trained together, have called to congratulate him for showing what they believe is the true image of the GSU. They and Superintendent Nthenge are true believers in the stated mission to make the Kenya Police a world class police force. At a time when we have also seen a riot policeman shoot dead a young unarmed man on TV, there is a reassuring professionalism and humanity about Superintendent Nthenge.

For all the stand-together, build-one-country, because-we-are-one-people talk, Superintendent Nthenge is a hero because he keeps his humanity about him and does not retreat to a safe, impenetrable place when he wears that camouflage and red beret.

Jacqueline Lebo lives in Nairobi, is a writer, photographer and the Managing Editor at Kass Magazine. She is currently working on a book about Kenyan athletes in the Rift Valley, and is a runner herself. Jacqueline Lebo is a member of Concerned Kenyan Writers and a photographic consultant for GenerationKenya.

A tale of two urban villages

South Loresho and Kibagare Village, in Nairobi, sit side by side. In a prefab room, with a single long table, and wobbly white plastic chairs, representatives of both communities also sit side by side. It is a microcosm of a Kenyan moment: someone from Eastern Province speaks and everyone listens. Then there is a parade through some of the other provinces: Western, North Eastern, Central. Although a good guesser may hazard by either their names or their faces exactly where they come from, there is a high chance that at least some of the guesses will be wrong. They speak using the national lingua franca, Kiswahili. They share common concerns – crime, security, employment, poverty.

Outside the room are houses with kei apple hedges. Cars, some ordinary saloon cars, others four-wheel drives with United Nations number plates, slow down to negotiate the speed bump just before the gate. This meeting is in the gated community of South Loresho. Most of the men at this meeting live outside the gates, in Kibagare Village, on patches of ground that slope away from a road so rutted that only the kerbs indicate that it once had pretensions to tarmac.

Contrast this: a patch of public land on which is perched a room four-foot by four-foot, with corrugated metal walls and corrugated metal roofs against a half acre of garden with a four-bedroomed bugalow and a neat sign outside with the house number on. The people who live in Kibagare Village are poor, there’s no doubt. And those who live in South Loresho are financially middle-class. It could have been a fine example of perfect tinder for class war, for resentment on the part of the poor, and fear of the part of the comfortable. Instead, these two communities, through a testing period of Kenya’s history, stayed peaceful.

They did as the pre-election posters advised: Chagua Amani, and they chose peace. Inequity in Kenya is most visible in the squalor of urban poverty, and it is a disadvantage few people will be able shake off. Yet this is what it seems the men of Kibagare Valley aspire to, and wish for themselves and their neighbours. They explain that the land they live on is not theirs. Years ago, the area was full of European-owned coffee estates. They needed workers, and those workers found a bit of hill to perch on. When the coffee estates were sold on, the workers found new kinds of work for people who had bought land in the new development. Many now work as gardeners, cooks, drivers, askaris (security guards). To them, this work is their livelihood and their eventual way out of poverty, if they hunker down and put their shoulders to it. Next door in Kangemi, another poor area, they say, they have their own title deeds, they can have easy money. Here, it is harder for us. If we don’t work, we don’t eat. That is why we decided that peace was better for us than politics. Although you can see that we come from all over Kenya, we did not fight. As one of the men says, “How could I turn against a neighbour who is also struggling and say, today I will burn your house?”

The villagers listened during the two pre-election sessions on community policing that the local police station had organised for them. In order to keep themselves safe, they set up a 50-person strong patrol unit who took it in turns to walk their community at night. When the committee heard that groups were wandering the country trying to stir up trouble, they decided they would let no outsiders in. They imposed a voluntary curfew by asking the area’s residents to stay in their homes as soon as evening fell. The chairman made his personal mobile number freely available so he could organise help whenever it was needed. “But we are all human, we are not perfect.” When there was trouble, the committee made sure the police knew about it. Miscreants were forwarded into the hands of the law.

It could have been so easy for the poor of Kibagare Village to loot the rich in South Loresho. “Poverty is something that drives people to only think about today, not the future. If you are hungry and someone pays you two hundred shillings to burn someone’s house you will do it.” Yet, the men of Kibagare Village chose for the future, not the today, and by doing so, they provide all of Kenya with a message of leadership by example. “If you tell people rules to keep all of you safe, you have to obey the rules yourself, even if you are a leader.”

What is the big secret for peace? Ongea, one of them says. Talk. Talk to your neighbours. Talk to people who live around you. Make connections. Find out who the leaders in neighbouring communities are and talk to them. Make your own networks. As a nation, we have a lot to learn from leaders like this. In a post-election Kenya, we find proud examples of leadership in a group of men in Kibagare Village. Men you can put your trust in, explain your concerns to and know you’ll be listened to.

There once was a Kenya where people chose to live where they would. There still are pockets of Kenya, where people choose to live as they will, irrespective of where their neighbours come from, and willing to live in peace. Chagua Amani: that is what they have done, in these two villages. Choose Peace.

Dayo Forster is a novelist whose first book, Reading the Ceiling, was published in 2007. She lives in Nairobi where she also works part-time as a financial sector development consultant. She is a member of Concerned Kenyan Writers.

Concerned Citizens for Peace

The concerned citizens for peace initiative came into being on January 1, 2008 after violence erupted in Kenya following claims of rigging and a flawed election process in the country. The original five core members- who included Kenyan peace mediators and members of the civil society- started the group in order to rally for peace and tolerance and to call for dialogue after the country witnessed its worst post-election violence that led to political and ethnic killings and the wanton destruction of property. The group wanted to see a Kenya without violence, a Kenya that is not divided on political or tribal lines. They wanted to see a peaceful Kenya, which had one people who were called Kenyan.

The original five core members included:

• Ambassador Bethuel Kiplagat- Kenyan renowned peace mediator and former special envoy for Somalia
• General Daniel Opande (Rtd) – Kenyan renowned Peacekeeper in Liberia
• General Lazaro Sumbeiywo (Rtd) – served as Kenya’s Special Envoy to the IGAD-led Sudanese peace process (1997-98) and then as mediator (2001-05)
• Ms. Dekha Ibrahim Abdi
• George Wachira- a policy advisor with NPI

The concerned citizens for peace initiative works in two levels:

1. Creation of a conducive peaceful environment
2. Encouraging dialogue on pertinent issues during the current crisis

For more information on the group contact:

Ms. Dekha Ibrahim Abdi: 0721 915 853
Mr. George Wachira: 0722 407 164
Shalini Gidoomal beadsandbush (@) mac.com

Administration: Shalini Gidoomal beadsandbush(@) mac.com>

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