I was very lucky to get an opportunity to shoot a question to some of our national leaders early in December 2007. I was invited to be part of the audience for “Agenda Kenya” a local television program that gives ordinary citizens a chance to debate face-to-face with their leaders. The topic of that day was “Elections and Violence.” Normally, the audience gets to write their questions just after they are given the topic of the day and just before the recording starts. A few good questions that serve as main guides to the whole program are then selected by the production team. My question happened to be the first one to be chosen and subsequently, I was given a chance to pose it. “What are the relevant authorities doing to make sure that the young people are not exploited into violence during the forthcoming elections?” I asked.

In past elections, there were always incidents of violence reported in different parts of Kenya. Poverty and land allocation were usually the true causes of these fights, but the perpetrators used the elections themselves as an excuse. As many people around the world now understand, there is a huge gap between the rich and the poor in Kenya. Around election time, the rich always have a way of persuading the poor and uneducated to commit heinous crimes, often by giving them a small stipend at the end of the operations. The poor don’t have many better options. This election season, the issue of land allocation loomed particularly large. Some of the tribes believe that other tribes have moved to their lands, settled and grown rich from them. This matter was so serious that some of the political parties were using it as their main campaign agenda. Although we Kenyans pride ourselves on tolerance and understanding, tension was in the air.

Aware of this tension, the panel of representatives from the government, the opposition and various NGOs and religious organizations responded to my question by elaborating their plans to prevent violence. The govt. said that it had already unveiled initiatives designed to sensitize the youth against violence and exploitation. The opposition promised to talk to its supporters. The NGOs, business and religious organizations were going to come up with peace campaigns — posters, TV commercials, newspaper ads, etc. They all felt confident and went on to reassure the audience that they were going to keep their promises. At the end of the day, nice show, hopefully message passed on.

Fast forward to the 27th of December 2007. The general elections were upon us. I woke up as early as any other voter did that day. Before I left my house I flipped through the various local television stations, and all I saw was huge turnouts in nearly all the polling stations. Some even stood in the rain just to make sure that their right was observed. This realization made me much more eager to go and cast my vote – a right provided by the constitution of Kenya. I slipped into my comfortable shoes as I knew that it was going to be a long queuing day. Then I double-checked to make sure my ID and voter’s card were in my wallet, and I hit the road to my polling station. On arrival I found the lines were even longer than I had seen on television. It was a couple of hours before I got a chance to cast my vote and left the station a happy man. The day was a good one, with just a few fracases here and there.

Evening came and some of the results started trickling in through the media. The outcomes were full of mixed fortunes for the different candidates as some of them shockingly won while others lost honorably. Many families were glued to their television sets following the results and the sideshows that came with them. The going was good and smooth, but one thing was missing: the presidential outcome. This was one result that the entire country waited for with bated breath. Panic and tension soon started to grip the whole country. Personally, I was not all that concerned. After all, I had done what I was mandated to, hadn’t I?

As time passed, I started to sense things were going to turn ugly sooner than later if the news from parts of the country was anything to go by. I decided to do a panic shopping trip to my local shopping centre. Normally three supermarkets operate here in the Buruburu Shopping Center, but on Saturday the 29th of December, 2007, there was only one supermarket that served all and sundry. For the second time in a span of 48 hours I stood in a queue for more than four hours just to pay for my commodities. Just before I got to the till, the chairman of the Electoral Commission of Kenya appeared on television and said he was ready to declare the presidential winner. The supermarket’s doors were partially locked, security was beefed up and all attention was turned to one of the TVs mounted on one of the shelves. No sooner had the ECK chairman commenced with the announcements than some of the agents from various political parties started jeering and shouting at him. The chairman couldn’t stand it and had to leave as the environment was no longer conducive for him to do his job. There was confusion and all of a sudden things went helter-skelter. Now I had arrived at the till, and I left hurriedly after completing my transactions. I jumped into the first bus that came my way so that I could get home before the results were announced. My timing was almost perfect as a couple of minutes after my arrival, the announcement was made. The incumbent had won by a relatively big margin.

This is when all hell broke loose. The transport system was paralyzed. No more buses plied my route. The violence continued to rock the country continuously for the next couple of days. A lot of people went on to be killed, others were hospitalized while still others were displaced. Some of the basic items like food, water and cell phone airtime were scarce, and you had to either cough up extra money or walk far to get your items for the right prices. Talk about people taking advantage of situations.

All this time I was closely following the incidents from the comfort of my couch through the TV and the newspapers. Then I heard a knock at my door. On opening it, I saw the unthinkable. A huge number of my family and friends from the Mathare slums were gazing at me with eyes that say, I have seen it all. For a moment I was breathless, and it finally dawned on me that the situation was real and not just a fabrication of the media. Apparently, they had fled after been attacked by marauding youths from the other side of the slums. I went on to share my one-bedroom apartment with 13 people. It was indeed a very difficult time for me as these infamous events took place when I had spent most of my savings on the Christmas festivities, and I wasn’t earning any more money as everything had come to a standstill. To add salt to injury, almost all the prices were hiked to ridiculous levels. We all had to share what we had, from shoes to clothes to even towels, as many of my guests didn’t get an opportunity to salvage any of their personal belongings. Even though it was challenging to take care of all these folks, I felt relieved just to see them alive and kicking rather than hearing other bad news about them, as I had seen happen to other people out there. I also felt that I was of good, positive use, and realized that life is all about sharing no matter how little you might possess.

After three weeks of continuous unrest and uncontrollable chaos, the situation started slowly creeping into normalcy. My guests left at their own pleasure. Some went back to their original homes, while others relocated to safer areas of the country. Still news was coming in that some of the other peaceful areas were getting contaminated with the war virus.

I am one of the three Kenyan agents who run an organization named Canadian-Mathare Education Trust. This organization pays for the education of secondary school students who hail from low-income families in and around the Mathare Valley, the second biggest informal settlement in Kenya. The CMETrust Beneficiaries were meant to travel back to their respective schools during the first week of January. This was not feasible as many of the roads were illegally blocked and most of the buses had halted their operations for fear of been attacked by the unruly youths manning the highways. We had to postpone the students’ back-to-school dates indefinitely after trying and failing to travel twice and losing some of our personal belongings. Fortunately none of us were physically harmed during the two incidents. No one seemed to understand what was going on or who was making it happen. Eventually, after closely looking into the situation, we sent the students back to school on the first week of February.

Back at the Mathare Slums, I serve as the coordinator of a group of local young men and women formed to address issues that affect young people in the community. This includes drugs, HIV/AIDS and the environment, among others. Many people, both from the local community and from abroad, were looking up to Mathare Roots Youth Group to come up with ideas and initiatives that would address the urgent crisis the community and the whole country was facing. The group meets every Sunday, and the 20th of January was no exception. That day we discussed the violence, its effects and the aftermath. We charted a way forward, including an emergency plan. The plan was to visit the internally displaced people and bring along some clothes, food or anything else we had at hand. We thought it was essential to go down to the internally displaced persons camps and witness for ourselves the suffering our community was going through. This was also an ideal opportunity to share with the people there the little that we had. We got an overwhelming response to our plea both from local and international friends who gave us full support both in cash and in kind. Come the 2nd of February, we gathered in the mid-morning and set out to see our people. They were very glad to see us and we had a terrific time with them. At first it was shocking and sad to witness what we saw— a family of six or more sharing a single tent, people lining up for food as if they were not able to fend for themselves, fear and uncertainty in some of the idps not knowing what to do or where to head next — but in the end we all had a terrific time there. What was so astonishing was that these people can never again trust their own neighbors and friends who they have lived with their whole lives. But who could blame them after the ordeal they went through?

In the late afternoon I had to leave for a meeting to be held on the other side of the Nairobi city. The meeting had been convened by United Nations Environment Program officials who asked us, as the community leaders from affected areas, to come up with ideas and activities that would help the community come back together and practice tolerance and most importantly peaceful coexistence. We all came to a consensus that football (soccer) would be the ideal activity to pull many people together, as it is the most popular sport in Kenya. Other activities such as volleyball, drama, pool and tree planting were also organized. Up until today, we are still coming up with the best framework to heal our community.

It has been more than two months since our beloved nation went into a state of unrest, a hitherto unknown phenomenon. Now everyone is either directly or indirectly counting their varied losses. The state is still in an uncertain situation. No one knows what will happen tomorrow. The former UN chief Mr. Kofi Annan is currently in the country to mediate and probably push the antagonists to come to a peaceful understanding. A lot of initiatives have sprung up to create awareness and facilitate peaceful coexistence. Both local and international humanitarian organizations are working day and night to make sure that the affected people are well catered for. All Kenyans are yearning for peace and for normalcy.

Kenya has been very peaceful if our neighbors are any comparison. Look at Somalia, Rwanda, Sudan, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Burundi, and Uganda. All these countries have been involved in long or short civil wars. Some of them have come to peaceful resolutions, and Kenya has always been the chief mediator and the chief host to their fleeing refugees. A couple of peace agreements have been signed on our own soil. There have been some fracases before, but we have always found our soul and bounced back. Personally, I have witnessed the kind of admiration and respect our neighbors feel for us. One Democratic Republic of Congo citizen once confessed in a conference held in Nairobi that he had always dreamed of coming to Kenya, as he thought it was the one of the greatest countries in Africa due to its tranquil and democratic space. He nearly shed a tear. His testimony was so moving that the chairman of the conference asked for the attendees to have a short break.

All in all, my life and my work have been affected. As a country, we are all looking forward to a day that we will say that it’s all over now, let’s move forward. I admit that we are at this point in time a wounded nation, and we have got some healing to do. But eventually we will recover and thrive again. Hopefully other countries will look at us for inspiration in the future as they have always done in the past. But until that day comes, I will continue to ask this question: “What were the relevant authorities doing to make sure that the youth were never going to get exploited into violence”?

President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga signed a peace agreement on Feb. 28 creating a prime minister position for Odinga.