Uneasy calm returns to Eldoret

A visit to Eldoret last month revealed that business was picking up slowly in Eldoret town, one of the epicentres of violence that rocked the country following disputed presidential poll results. In fact, a visitor to the country for the first time would have been confronted by a paradox of heavy security presence in a seemingly calm environment.
Yet, only two months ago, the town was a no-go zone as marauding youths killed, maimed, burnt and preyed on anybody perceived to have been “a stranger” as they blocked the highway.
At Burnt Forest , two bodies lay dead as armed forces engaged in a stand off with youth armed with machetes, bows and arrows.
At the Eldoret ASK showground, hundreds of tents housing 19,400 internally displaced people was a constant reminder to what violence can bring to human life. But when a team of journalists arrived, the people at the camp did not appear to be mourning any more. They went on with their business even in their restricted life. Among them was Ronald Ngugi, a secondary school teacher who is bringing change to 400 secondary school students at the IDP camp.
He told journalists he found his new value at the camp when after the Christmas break he could not go to his Kepkenda Girls High School in Keiyo District where he is the head teacher. Neither could his wife go to Kisumu where she is a civil servant. “I found myself becoming a headmaster for the internally displaced students. The job is challenging especially because we lack the necessary materials to kick start the teaching. But I am happy the ministry has promised to send us books and equipment." “I am concerned about 40 candidates who will sit their Form Four examination this year. They have to catch up with the rest of the students who are in the countryside where things are relatively calm”, Ngugi offered.
His new school is a tented structure in the Eldoret Show Ground. Outside we found dozens of books donated to the primary school pupils by the SDA Church . Pupils were singing hilariously with all their hearts as they smiled as teachers drew diagrams on boards in the tented classrooms.
It was moving seeing the children catch up in one rhythm, as troupes of army and para-military officers riding on vehicles patrolled the area surrounding the camps and in town.
According to Sidney Kung’u, the camp manager, there are 4,000 pupils and students at the showground.
We spotted a lorry with an officer who had a bullet magazine running round his shoulders order a matatu driver to drive away from the road. He was among a contingent of security details escorting the Israeli Ambassador to Kenya Jacob Keidar and other important guests.
Keidar was in the town to console the victims of the violence. He also donated tones of food and presented a consignment of medicines and medical equipment to the director of Eldoret Moi Referral Hospital Dr Haroun Mengech.
Keidar said he was impressed by the efforts being made to ensure the displaced people were receiving the necessary assistance, while expressing optimism that the on-going peace mediation will provide a lasting solution to the crisis.
Dr Mengech said the hospital and the staff had gone through a baptism of fire during the violence. “Some of my medical staff could not come to work as they were threatened, yet we were receiving hundreds of people badly injured and in need of urgent attention”, he said. Dr Mengech said the hospital handled 522 plus cases of cuts, burns, people with arrows lodged in their body, among others. “The mortuary capacity was overstretched and we had to bear with a stench which engulfed the whole hospital, until the Red Cross donated a container to supplement the mortuary”, he added.
Kung’u said some people are going out to their farms to plant as it is planting season and then returning to the camps for safety. “We have issued them with identification cards in order to cater for the genuine ones,” he said.
Kung’u said that some youth from Moi University Eldoret are engaging the youth in an effort to try and broker for peace. “We have committees which are trying to help with reconciliation. As you know, it is the youth who mostly engaged in the violence.”