Peter Chepkonga
23 July 2008
Nairobi — On December 27, 2007, Pastor Robert Birgen of the African Inland Church, Chepsiria, stood patiently in line at Kapkuis Primary School polling station in Kuinet, a few kilometres north of Eldoret Town.
When he reached the polling booth, he saw Mzee Kamenya, his Kikuyu neighbour since the early '90s, asking the electoral agent to help him out.
"Fill in for me, Raila for President," the old man said loudly.
Most voters at the polling station were Kalenjins, but there were also members of other communities, mainly small-scale farmers and teachers in the area.
Most of them had bought land in the '80s and '90s from two white farmers. The Kalenjins have also sold land to members of other tribes over the years.
The various communities co-existed peacefully until the 1992 and 1997 election clashes, which were - relative to what would be the 2007 post-elections crisis - mere hiccups.
On the evening of December 30, President Kibaki was sworn in moments after the hotly disputed presidential election results were announced by the Electoral Commission of Kenya.
War cries
Pastor Birgen remembers hearing screams and war cries all over the valley. The next day, a Monday morning, a tractor load of about 50 people, all Kikuyu, 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 had no problem with them staying there. The problem was people from other places, far flung villages, who were not happy with that arrangement," Pastor Birgen says. Ziwa, about 42 kilometres from Eldoret Town, experienced massive eviction of non-Kalenjins.
Emissaries were sent to warn Pastor Birgen that "these people" were not wanted there.
On New Year day, armed youth in their hundreds came and surrounded the church. They wanted all the people inside the church to leave. The pastor and other church elders pleaded with them not to harm those in the church.
The Assemblies of God church in Kiambaa had been torched the 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 seven hours were the longest of Pastor Birgen's life.
Earlier, before the gang had congregated, members of the church had spotted Kalenjin youth trooping towards Kimumu, a non-Kalenjin settlement.
The group remained patient and kept vigil for seven hours till around 11pm when a platoon of paramilitary General Service Unit arrived and escorted the displaced people from the church.
Today, Pastor Birgen believes that the violence was beyond tribal cleansing. "All those who sympathised and voted for the Government, natives or not, were being targeted."
On his idea of heroism, Mr 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 Kiambaa church, a few kilometres away, might not have had a brave Kalenjin pastor to fight for it, he adds.
Night raids
"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," Pastor Birgen recounts.
'The youths went there and asked all the women and children to leave, but since fighting had already erupted the women and children couldn't leave.
The men in the church also declined to let the women and children out," the pastor says as he shakes his head.
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