allAfrica.com: Kenya: Displaced Return Home in Uncertainty (Page 1 of 2)

After five months of languishing in the hundreds of overcrowded, understaffed, and undersupplied camps, Kenya’s Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs) are finally returning home.

In early May the Kenyan Government launched an ambitious resettlement program known as “Operation Rudi Nyumbani” (Operation Return Home) that aims to resettle the more than 100,000 people still displaced by the violence that followed last year’s presidential elections.

The sprawling IDP camps that once collectively sheltered more than a quarter million people are now nearly empty. Deserted fields checkered with patches of bare ground where tents once stood are now the only evidence that thousands once lived there.

At Ekerengo IDP camp in Nyanza Province, home to 1400 displaced households, a convoy of Kenyan Army trucks is being loaded with people carrying only their few possessions and two weeks’ ration of food in a burlap sack– the last aid they will receive. Alongside the convoy, hundreds of men, women and children wait to finally return home after five months of waiting. However, not everyone is rejoicing at the prospect of returning home. For many, home is now nothing more than a pile of cinders in a hostile land.

Joseph Moenga is one of those dreading the return home. When the post-election violence exploded in his hometown of Nyamusi, a band of young men came to attack him and his family. After narrowly escaping death when an arrow grazed his face, Joseph ran blindly to the bush where he lived without food for a week. After finally finding refuge at a local police station he was transported to the nearby town of Ekerengo where he reunited with his wife and eight children.

Now five months later he is standing in line waiting to be shipped back home, deeply troubled by the idea of returning.

“I don’t want to go,” confesses Joseph. “I am being forced to go. My home was burned and I have nothing to return to and no one has given us anything to help us restart our lives! Now is not a good time to return, I fear that it will just happen again. I saw some of my friends butchered like hogs. I still have dreams about the incident.”

Most of the returning IDPs share similar apprehensions about going back to places where they watched neighbors murdered and homes burnt. One of the major concerns is that there has been no real resolution to the conflict. The underlying issues of land ownership, economic inequity, and political manipulation of ethnic prejudice have yet to be addressed in a serious way.

Without attention to the underlying causes, reconciliation between communities, and reparation for lost property many fear that the stage is being set for another flare up in the not too distant future.

In Uasin Gishu, the Rift Valley district hardest hit by the post-election violence, IDPs already have been resettled from the huge sprawling camps to smaller “Exit camps” nearer to their homes.

This transitional arrangement enables the returnees to access their property, plant their fields, and begin the slow process of rebuilding their homes and lives. However, the host community’s attitude towards their return demonstrates the challenges that Kenya faces concerning the unresolved nature of the conflict.

The returnees report that, while they haven’t been physically attacked again since they returned, their neighbors have made it clear that they are not welcome by various acts of aggression and intimidation. Some are forcibly grazing livestock in their fields, destroying their newly planted crops, and refusing to provide essential services such as the grinding of grain.

Challenges faced in these transitional camps are compounded by a variety of other factors. Few people were able to return to their farms in time to plant maize, the most important food crop, forcing most to rely on less lucrative but faster maturing alternatives.

These problems are exacerbated by below average levels of rainfall throughout most of Kenya and skyrocketing food and fertilizer prices, casting the shadow of famine over displaced farmers who are already at their most vulnerable.

The food security situation in some of the more remote exit camps, especially in the troubled Mt. Elgon district, has become dire. The two weeks supply of food they were given upon leaving the IDP camp was exhausted several weeks ago and the newly relocated families are now barely surviving on immature vegetables dug from their gardens.

The scattered and isolated location of some of these camps has made it increasingly difficult to distribute emergency food aid. In times of bad weather some areas are simply inaccessible due to extremely poor road conditions.

Some of those most reluctant to return are the small businessmen and women who had their shops looted and destroyed. They have no fields to cultivate and have no capital to reestablish their businesses.

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