Gitau Warigi
1 June 2008
opinion
Nairobi — I happened to be in Nakuru this weekend, and though engaged on some different business, I decided to briefly pull away from gawking at the flamingoes now returning to the lake, to see firsthand the sadder matter of how the internally displaced people in the town were coping.
There are two big IDP camps there, barely two kilometers from each other but rigidly segregated by ethnicity and by the December voting patterns of their inhabitants.
One is at Afraha stadium to the south, the other at the ASK showground to the north.
Afraha is where are encamped the "internal" Nakuru IDPs, those from within the town's volatile estates.
They are mostly Luos. The ASK camp comprises, in the main, victims uprooted from outside the district, from Molo, Olenguruone, Timboroa, to as far as Londiani and Kericho. These are mostly Kikuyus.
Although the two camps endure the same deprivations, there is hardly any contact between their residents.
The other group with a considerable presence in town and which was party to the post-election hostilities are the Kalenjin.
In the wake of reprisal attacks, many fled the town to seek safety with relatives in Kericho, Nandi and elsewhere.
Clearly, you sense the lingering animosity from the ASK camp is mostly directed there rather than at the Afraha group; emotions have sort of ebbed between them.
Life is only slowly returning to some semblance of normalcy, but the presence of the large IDP camps right inside the town is an everyday reminder that there is plenty of unfinished and very serious business.
A subtle battle of wits has been going on between the IDPs and the government, which is eager they return to their homes. It is no longer about security so much.
It is about something called compensation. It is a word everybody in the camps keeps mentioning, even the kids.
And until it gets resolved to everybody's satisfaction, the government's desire to re-settle everybody and close the camps will not happen immediately.
People in the camps have wildly differing views about this compensation. Many have put in individual claims running into many millions of shillings.
The government is walking a tightrope trying not to sound callous by saying it simply can't afford the cumulative sum all these claims would amount to.
Some IDPs I spoke to believe there is a limitless donor pool of cash available to the government to compensate victims.
Administration officials in the camps agree there is a flat sum the government is paying IDPs, though it is far short of the figures they expected.
But they are paying only those who offer to leave the camps and return home.
They say this is the only way to sort out genuine cases who lost property from journeymen who didn't and who may even have been far away from the theatres of violence.
Many of the IDPs who have agreed to go home actually concede this is true.
They recognize it is better to start your life anew in whatever form rather than rot in squalid camps waiting for compensation that may never come.
It is easy enough to value the loss of someone who points to where his farm is and the house that was torched.
It is trickier with those in urban centres like Nakuru whose losses were in looted or destroyed household goods, even as in most instances they were renting houses they didn't own.
It gets trickier when you consider all those who instead of heading to the camps got taken in by relatives elsewhere.
It is good that the government has launched a 'profiling' programme for IDPs, those temporarily integrated in communities, and those already re-settled.
However there is one category for which the government may have no choice but to treat as a special case.
There are some IDPs who underwent the great trauma of having most of their family killed as they watched.
They can't live with the memory if they go back where that happened. Alternative homes need to be acquired for this category.
When I visited the camps, I saw no evidence of anybody being forced to leave. But there was lively debate on the merits of going or sticking it out.
Since the government announced money and material help would go to only those who register for resettlement, the voluntary trickle of returnees has accelerated.
The government provides free transport. The day I came the local DC was flagging off a convoy of returnees headed for Burnt Forest and Timboroa.
I overheard one group who were vowing to stay sneering at the departing convoy, which they claimed had not suffered as they had, just because they had salvaged some meagre furniture that they piled in trucks as they left.
Be the first to Write a Comment!
Copyright © 2008 The Nation. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). To contact the copyright holder directly for corrections — or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material, click here.
AllAfrica aggregates and indexes content from over 125 African news organizations, plus more than 200 other sources, who are responsible for their own reporting and views. Articles and commentaries that identify allAfrica.com as the publisher are produced or commissioned by AllAfrica.
