Responding to Deadly Conflicts in Western Kenya

Kakuma Refugee Camp began in 1992 and now has over 100,000 refugees. These came from Sudan, South Sudan, Somalia, Congo, Burundi, Rwanda, and Ethiopia. The camp is in the remote northwest corner of Kenya near the South Sudan/Uganda borders in one of the most inhospitable areas of Kenya. The local population is the nomadic Turkana people who keep cows, camels, and goats. Refugees are not allowed to leave the refugee camp without official permission. The camp is run by UNHCR (UN High Commission on Refugees).

As an isolated community with different nationalities confined to a small area, conflicts are frequent. Moreover, there is conflict with the local Turkana people who feel that the refugees receive preferential treatment and are destroying the environment by cutting the trees for firewood and depleting the limited water supplies.

For more than eight years, Transforming Community for Social Change and Kakuma 2 Friends Church (African Great Lakes Initiative local partners in Kenya) has introduced peace related programs in intervention capacity to help the raising need to peaceful coexistence within the camp and host community.

Healing and Rebuilding Our Communities (HROC) as program has set a basic foundation in addressing psychosocial challenges in trauma and rebuilding resilience towards addressing fundamental crisis in the camp.

Forty-one participants benefited in our just concluded two basic HROC workshop this included 25 women some with babies and 16 men. Most of participants were refugees seeking asylum and repatriation from Congo, Burundi, Sudan, Ethiopian and South Sudan.

The workshop was very fruitful and gave both participants and facilitators opportunity to learn more and understand Trauma.

The first day of the workshop, we focus on general knowledge about trauma, its causes, symptoms and its consequences at individual, family and community levels, The second day of the basic workshops we spend time and concentrated on personal journey healing and the last day was concentrated on community trust building.

“Today am reminded of my loss, I have come to terms with the war back at home in Congo because its beyond my understanding, what hurts me most is the loss of my four children through miscarriage, other women in the camp have laughed at me when I count my eight children, I have carried around my hidden grief, I have hold to that loss and it has burdened me for 4years,today in the training, during the exercise of healing from Grief, I have learnt that nobody is completely healed but I have survived to this point to get to this workshop and share my loss, I feel better”

“I received a scholarship to join a boarding school in class six, was happy my life would change as a young girl from South Sudan, when I went to join, someone had already joined the school using my name, to date I have never known what transpired, I used to work hard in education but this was a big blow and made me lose interest in education, losing that scholarship have affected my school work and I have been having suicidal thoughts, I thanks HROC for encouraging me to talk about want I lost. Am hoping going forward, should let my pain go and invite new energy to cope with life stressing challenges”

“During the definition of Loss, Grief and Mourning, you instructed us to open a blank page and write Loss; you told us to think of three things or persons we have lost and circle one that we believed hurt us most, the death of my wife affected me most after she was poisoned in Congo and later the death of my child in the camp, I have experienced challenges handling strong emotions when I remember the two losses, My anger has driven me into destructive behaviors that have affected my relationship with people around me including not trusting anyone. This training has helped me contain my emotions in a heathy way, through sharing my pain and finding a safer place where people are willing to listen”

The process and exercises in the training has serve as a building block in creating a new peaceful community in the refugee camp set up and give the opportunities to many refugees to learn and understand how to deal with their trauma and help others. In the recommendation

Participants requested the organizer to plan for the Advance and Training of Trainers session the next year before school open up to give chance to students for them to attend the session, organize a session for Girls with early pregnancies, victim of Sexual gender-based violence and school dropout for youths, trying to consider Sudanese and south Sudanese community to attend the workshop in Kakuma4 and kakuma1 areas as where the majority of them are living, Allocate jobs for those who will complete the 3 stages of the workshop, Plan a translator/interpreter for those in the workshop who do not understand both English and Swahili, to provide some T-shirts and certificates on completion of the training

It’s time to close our last year 2022, and what a year it’s been at Transforming Community for Social Change! Together, with so much upsetting news in the world around uswe were able to accomplish amazing work that culminated in violence prevention in the concluded elections in Kenya, training 960 youth in Non-violence trainings, 3 months of gender-based violence campaign and awareness, 12 basic trainings in Trauma healing and resilience and with good news on new lifetime donors. With all these remarkable achievements; None of this would have been possible without your support, so thank you for being an import part of TCSC family, we appreciate your sacrifice to help impact our communities and we wish you all the best in the coming New year. It is always hard to find the words in how we can express our gratitude for the truly humbling way you have supported our work in Mt. Elgon and Kakuma Refugee camp women sewing project. We know it is cliché to say “not all heroes wear capes” but we couldn’t leave 2022 without expressing our thanks to all who have believed in the work we do in advocating for Non-violence, Trauma healing, humanitarian support and micro entrepreneurship. Hopefully we will continue sharing our success stories of the year 2023

With only three days remaining, Kenyans will cast their ballots on Aug. 9^th 2022 in what is expected to be a closely fought presidential elections, this is an important election not just for Kenya but for all of East Africa and the Greatlakes region, however elections have a history of flaring up existing tensions in Kenya, most notably in 2007 during the post-election Violence

 At this point in time, Kenyan Elections remain inflammatory potential, and the prospects for a peaceful election are uncertain. In the 2007 elections, both sides expected to win, and the election result ignited violence based on feelings that voters had been stolen. If the 2022 vote turns out to be similarly close, the risk of violence will grow dramatically. It is likely that the presidential seat will be landed by political long-hauler, former prime minister, or the current deputy president. However, the combination of increasing levels intolerance induced conflict, escalating ethnic and political tensions, and histories of violence linked to the leading political contesters constitute a situation that could see the country heading into a new outbreak of election violence

The fear of conflict has been a factor in past elections due to general divisions in the population and many of the current candidates have previously incited or used violence. Traditionally, people have voted according to their ethnic affiliation and election violence tends to follow ethnic lines, already we have leaflets warning possible evictions in the rift valley.

On August 2rd we partnered with Mt. Elgon Sub-county peace committee lead by the deputy county commissioner in a peace caravan that covered areas perceived to be hotspots, in the caravan we managed to cover Kopsiro, Kaptama, Kapkateny, and Chongeyio and extended to the neighbouring sub-counties of Sirisia and Kabuchai.

Our main focus was on voter education, violence prevention basic skills and we encouraged member of the communities to report any early warning and remaining peaceful before, during and after election. The 12 chairpersons of the Mt. Elgon sub-county peace committee joined our citizen’s reporters who will play a key role mitigating hate speeches, and intervening conflicts in the region,

We currently collaborating with Friends United Meeting for the purpose of election monitoring and observation starting from the 9^th to 15^th.

Pray for our country Kenya, so that we may have peaceful elections.  

Request: We at Transforming Communities for Social Change would appreciate contributions to support our peace-making efforts before the August 9^th 2022 Kenyan election.

Before the August 9^th 2022 Kenyan election political leader have asked voters to accept bribes from the various candidates, but then vote for the best person. The law in Kenya states that, while it is illegal for a candidate to give a bribe, it is not clear if it is illegal for the voter to receive the bribe as long as it does not influence his or her vote!

Black’s Law Dictionary, 2nd edition, written by Henry, defines voter bribery ‘as an offence committed by one who gives or promises or offers money or any valuable inducement to an elector in order to corruptly induce the latter to vote in a particular way or to abstain from voting or as a reward to the voter for having voted in a particular way or abstained from voting

Bribing of voters is currently rampant everyone does it and so it sounds normal considering that many electorate believe that it’s their time to eat.

In a close election, the winner might be just that person who bribed a little more than his/her opponent. Another concern is the inverse: Voters will not vote for a person who has not given them a bribe. Therefore it is impossible for a “clean” reform candidate to win. Psychologically when candidates have given voters bribes, they feel that they no longer “owe” the voters anything because they have already paid them. This then leads to corruption as the candidates feels that he has to reimburse himself of the expenses he/she put into the campaign. Bribing is everywhere. With current economic situation sugar.

In this elections we have six positions, Since the smallest note is 50 shillings (50 US cents) and one cannot bribe with coins, this is the smallest possible bribe depending on with electoral position one is looking for; in this case the sixth position is for a presidential candidate who would us around 1000shillings (US $10)

During the day of the 2022 primary elections one of our citizen reporters from Mt. Elgon commented that there was no working in farms that day because everyone was lined up on the road to receive bribes from the various candidates. Polling stations have large numbers of people standing around outside waiting for their payoff. Clearly it is to the benefit of those who have received the bribe to not acknowledge that they have received it and certainly they would never claim that it influenced their vote.

Nonetheless the practice has negative consequences. The high turnout for both the primary and general elections could be due to the fact that the voters are expecting to receive  a considerable  number of bribes so that Election Day is a “profitable day’s work.”  Every losing candidate claims, quite correctly, that he/she lost because the winner bribed the voters.

In the recently completed primary for this election, a losing candidate who had spent a considerable amount of money on bribes in a community that ended up not voting for him, when he noticed defeat he hired some thugs to destroy nomination paper and election materials.

More serious was the case in Bungoma County in the 2012 election where a losing candidate hired thugs who killed eleven people and wounded over 100 more in three villages where he had spent considerable sums on bribes but did not receive many votes. The villagers were irate, cornered and tortured one young man who they believed (probably incorrectly since outsiders are usually the ones brought in to create violence since they don’t know the victims) was one of the thugs. Under torture he gave the names of nine other youth and the community lynched all ten people. Transforming Communities for Social Change, would like to conduct voter education sessions on Leadership and integrity, reporting malpractices in election process, eradicating corruption and bribery during this electioneer period.

The post coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) has profoundly affecting life around the Refugee camp. Isolation, contact restrictions and economic shutdown impose a complete change to the psychosocial environment in the camp. These measures have the potential to threaten the peace work we have done in the refugee camp. Even though the current crisis can bring with it opportunities for resilience, disadvantages may outweigh these benefits. Anxiety, lack of contact due to lockdowns and reduced opportunities to interact are main concerns. Another main threat is an increased risk for complete shutdown on condition of healing that help in people recover from trauma, domestic violence and re-experiencing trauma.

Like crossing the river, we help participants work together towards a common goal of healing from trauma. In a six day training in the refugee camp we manage to train 48 refugee from South Sudan from Nuer and Dinka who for many years have been two rival pastoralist groups back at home, Congolese and Burundians in two different Healing and Rebuilding our Community(HROC) basic trainings.

By the end of three days participants identify their source of strength and the wisdom they have gained through difficult life experience during Covid-19 pandemic through which they see themselves and one another as resilient human being using available resources of strength that can help them cope with any situation.

“The world almost came to an end when Covid-19 was reported to us, we knew we will died in this foreign country after running from war in our mother country South Sudan, we thank the healing companions from HROC who visited us and accompanied us during the difficult times of Covid-19 pandemic and also recommended us for this training. Today I find inner strength to share my loss and decide to go on with the help of others in the camp”

“It is in this training that I have been given time to express my feelings, the facilitator gave me a tissue when I was overwhelmed by emotions, I felt I was not alone, I feel i have removed a heavy burden on my head”

While the above testimonies many not be easy for everyone, for some the trauma is buried so deep and is so horrifying that it is almost impossible to put words to it, there seems to be an almost universal truth that human beings need to find means for expressing, remembering and releasing horrible experience in order to heal.

The training helped the wounded people develop that inner power and begin to truly listen to others including perpetrators, at the end of the training they discover that though it is difficult, there is the potential for further and deeper healing as a results thus healing communities are created.