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Soon reports were reaching us that young people were being recruited to fight, that caches of firearms had been discovered at our ports of entry destined for the Rift Valley. Rallies where only members of a certain community were allowed into became common. People began carrying weapons in broad daylight. Those who could fled their homes to rejoin their families in their ancestral lands.
And then it all blew up. In a period of eight weeks hundreds of previously lush lands lay desolate. Where houses existed only piles of ashes remained to give testimony. Many lives were lost. Families were torn apart and crops that had been ready for harvesting razed down. Many packed their belongings and fled, only to find all roads blocked. They were made to leave all their belongings beside and walk away, walk away to a future that lay so bleak, walk away from what they'd sweated for all those years. Some just broke down and died, some suffered trauma they've never recovered from, wounds that have never healed.
We weren't there by then. Mother had taken us to our grandparents' home where it was safer. She had managed to carry some of our belongings and leave them at a church in Eldoret town, the District Headquarters. Each day new reports came, “so and so is dead,” and our just completed house that had cost mother so much (my father had died five years earlier) had been razed to the ground. So much was lost.
Soon the elections were over. Schools were re-opening for the New Year. Many had not even settled and so could not proceed to the next classes. By the time they joined new schools, so much material had been covered they had to go back to the previous class. Some would never see a classroom again. It was so sad. Luckily we were able to enroll in new schools in the town and proceed with our studies, but one of my brothers had to repeat, as interviews for his class had already been concluded despite his having topped his class in the previous school.
We stayed there for just a few months. Soon we were to relocate to Nyandarua District in Central Province which is predominantly inhabited by the Kikuyu to which we belong. The thought of settling somewhere away from our native home was too terrifying. Without realizing it walls of fear had been erected on our paths, walls which though surmountable have impacted us so much that none of us considers settling away from town in the near future.
The most difficult part has been collecting the pieces and starting all over again. Though we were able to get help from relatives, most of our then neighbours have found it difficult to pick up again. Sometimes you pay them a visit in their smoke-filled huts on the outskirts of major towns and you can't help shedding tears at their stories of the agony they have to undergo each day to get something to put in their mouths. And yet in their eyes there is the hope that one day they will be able to go back home and start all over again where they left off. Some have given up the fight and their only hope in life is that we, the young, will read and help them in future. They tell us: “Work hard, one day one of you may even become the president and help us get our land back. Then we won't have to beg as if we never had our own homes.” Theirs are tales of agony. Of going through something they feel they hadn't been destined them for. Meanwhile they lay their hopes on God and on their children that one day they shall be able to again tread the streets of this world as respected men and women that they were before.
For me the quest to know what really happened has caused me great pain. Sometimes you want to ask about a friend, but so many times the answer has been “You didn't know? He also died in the tribal clashes” or “No one has ever heard from him” or even “He gave up the struggle and committed suicide.” So you don't want to ask, you don't want to hear that yet another died, you don't want to hear of how one is struggling after a mental breakdown. You want to walk away, to forget it all, to think it never happened. You want to go back to the life before it all happened, but you can't.
I still long to go and see the land of my birth. I still long to go and see the land I spent the first seven years of my life. I still long to spend the evening with Kipchumba, my best friend whom I haven’t heard from for the last 12 years. But above all, I long to know the truth, to know how and why it all happened. Only then can the wounds truly begin to heal.
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Mwangi Munyua
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Comments
Its Wonderful Martin Tairo | Mar 31st, 2005
This writing very well desctibes your motherland, Kenya which also happens to be my motherland too. There is very nice command of English as a language. Why dont you contact me so that you get involved in a project magazine we are doing with some other youths from Africa?
Please contact me.
Hi david mbitu | Mar 30th, 2008
Thanks for the article. its really inspiring and we pray that all will be okay in Kenya. We are all suffering because of bad ethnicity and selfish leaders. its sad and painful but we will make it through. Keep the peace banner flying and take a heart and be bless brother.
Re Comments Mwangi munyua | Apr 14th, 2008
Hey,
thanks all for your comments. very much appreciated.
Mc
To MC Githinji Kamau | Nov 15th, 2009
Hello, I happen to know you though we may have interacted for only a few sessions while we were in Kiluka and Nyawira farms respectively. I have very nostalgic expereinces of my childhood in Kiluka....growing in that environment shapped my life to a great extent....this made me to visit the area last year in August,!!! In the evening when I went back to Eldoret I felt hollow and desolate.....war is bad and it kills.
I remember your mum and late dad, they taught in the same school (Chepkelo). Actually I have been able to know becuase you resemble one of your parents so much!!!
I hope you will read this piece if you still visit this site and then we can catch up bilaterally.
To give a more hint that I know you...teacher Mwaniki was your neighbour and not far from his homestead was another man called Muturi whose neighbour was the cool and quite man by the name Wanjohi.
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