Nairobi — Journalists who witnessed the horror and mayhem sparked by the disputed 2007 election results are still faced with trauma, many months after a political pact ended the worst violence since independence.

Unprepared for the magnitude of violence the worst in independent Kenya the reporters and photographers did all they could to inform the public, but at great emotional cost to themselves.

Their heart-rending stories are contained in a newly-published booklet, Healing the Messenger, which came out of trauma counselling sessions in five different localities across the country.

The inaugural session was held in Nairobi in March 2008 and the last was held in Mombasa in May 2008.

We will move on

The depth of horror in the eye witness accounts from journalists in Nairobi, Nakuru, Eldoret, Kisumu and Mombasa was gruesome.

But as expressed by one of the journalists in the Eldoret counselling session: "I believe through sharing and speaking out, we will move on."

During the trauma counselling sessions, there were journalists who could narrate their experiences but declined to write them down. Others were very sensitive when their colleagues attempted to make notes as the counselling sessions went on.

The journalists too had their own experiences arising from the retaliatory evictions of certain communities from those areas following the violence in the Rift Valley, Nyanza, Western and Coast provinces.

Counselling sessions

In one case, a journalist came back from duty and found his wife badly beaten. Other journalists' houses were burnt down or property looted or destroyed. One and his family had to raise money and pay his would-be killers to escape death.

The journalists' testimonies below are reproduced courtesy of Kenya Correspondents Association (KCA), the Kenya Association of Photographers, Illustrators and Designers (Kapide), the Kenya Union of Journalists (KUJ) and the Danish organisation International Media Support (IMS).

The eyewitness accounts hereunder were recorded during the trauma counselling sessions and reflect the experiences journalists and photographers witnessed during the post-election violence.