Kenya's war of words

[Harold F. Schiffman]

February 12, 2008
Op-Ed Contributor

Kenya's War of Words

By SIMIYU BARASA
Nairobi, Kenya

WHEN you find yourself at a wedding discussing how more than 800 people
have been killed and more than 250,000 kicked out of their homes for
having certain ethnic origins, you know there is something terribly wrong
with your country. Living in Nairobi the past few months has been like
living in a relatively comfortable glass cave in the middle of hell. What
began in late December as protests against election irregularities has
spiraled into killings based on which tribe your identity card and speech
indicate you belong to. English and Swahili, the languages that were
supposed to unite us, have now been rendered useless. In these times, when
belonging or not belonging to a particular tribe can be the difference
between not being dead or being seriously dead, what chance does a person
like me have? I was born to a Luhya father and a Taita mother, but I speak
the Kikuyu language of Kiambu, where I was raised.

The politicians no longer have the ability to stop the violence, despite
their posturing that they could do so at the snap of their fingers. We see
Kofi Annan, the former secretary general of the United Nations, posing
with the rival contenders, President Mwai Kibaki and Raila Odinga, in
photo sessions where the two antagonists shake hands and smile and call
for peace. But the political rhetoric seems a joke; we know that revenge
and counter-revenge are what the various ethnic groups really seek  to do
to what they did to our tribe mates.

Daily life is a constant kaleidoscope of languages for those of us who are
of mixed ethnic heritage. We must gauge what sort of street or village we
are in and, like a chameleon, speak the correct tongue.

My sister Rozi, a health worker, was recently taking a patient to a
hospital in western Kenya when their ambulance was forced to stop by
youths who demanded to know what tribe she came from. The youths were
hunting members of Mr. Kibakis Kikuyu tribe. When they saw that her ID
card showed a mixed Taita-Luhya name, they asked her to speak in Luhya to
prove she wasnt a Kikuyu.

I really cant speak it because my mother is a Taita! she pleaded,
explaining that our father had never taught us his language. In
desperation, staring at the freshly chopped corpses around her, she showed
them a photocopy of my mothers national identity card, which she had had
the foresight to put in her purse. This apparently convinced them, and she
was let go.

Never before has it been important in our family to know which tribe we
should belong to. My sisters and brothers have names from both of our
parents communities. I know no tribe. I know only languages.

Supposedly cosmopolitan Nairobi has now been Balkanized, with whole
neighborhoods turned into exclusive reserves of certain tribes. Some have
imported murderous thugs from rural areas to protect their own  the
Mungiki street gang for the Kikuyus; the Chingororo for the Gusii tribe;
and groups taking the names Baghdad Boys and Taliban for the Luo people.

Where can those of us of mixed heritage, who do not know their tribes war
cries, find refuge? My Luhya name is problematic in itself: The Kikuyus,
who support Mr. Kibaki, are hunting Luhyas, whom they claim voted for Mr.
Odinga, a Luo. And the Luos are hunting Luhyas as well, claiming they
voted for President Kibaki. Such is my fate for having a father belonging
to a tribe that apparently voted 50-50!

Virtually all the major police stations and church compounds in Central,
Rift Valley, Western, Nyanza and Nairobi Provinces have been turned into
camps for internal refugees. These peoples laments are all the same: We
were born here; we dont even know any relatives in our so-called ancestral
lands; we are Kenyans, not people of whatever tribe you want to pin on us.
Yet the government now says that it will relocate them to their ancestral
homes. For many, this means ethnic cleansing and death.

Many of my friends have now resorted to taking crash courses in the
dialects of the tribes indicated on their identity cards, just in case it
comes in handy. We sit in groups and laugh morbidly at the e-mail messages
from our former classmates who are now abroad asking us if we are safe.
After we graduated from high school, many of our friends faked
bank-account statements to get student visas and fled to the United
States, to wash toilets between university courses. Not me: I proudly
swore to them that I was sticking here because I am an Africanist, a
believer in the African dream. Now my faith in my countrymen has faded
faster than the newness of the New Year.

In this climate, inter-tribal marriages have become so rare that they are
the subject of TV news reports. This is greatly upsetting to those of us
who  thinking about our parents marrying all those years ago  never felt
that living a life outside your clan was a significant matter. We love
Kenya, without thinking of our neighbors lineage. It is from us that Kenya
will rise afresh.

Simiyu Barasa is filmmaker and writer.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/12/opinion/12barasa.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&oref=slogin

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