The Other Church

By Peter Chepkonga

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.