News from Kenya

Since I heard this hit CNN, I thought I'd update about the latest Mungiki news.

As I've written about before, Mungiki is an extremist/terrorist group that is part of the Kikuyu tribe. The mainstream Kikuyus, however, are very against what the Mungiki stand for. This week, a group of Kikuyus decided the police/gov't weren't doing enough to stop the Mungiki and attacked a number of suspected Mungiki members in Karatina (abt 2 hrs from Nairobi; where I was originally supposed to be placed, actually). The Mungiki then retaliated...and you can see where this is heading.

A news crew went into the area and found a suspected supporter of Mungiki, a woman, close to death on the grass outside her home. They asked their police escort to call an ambulance, but the police refused saying it was too dangerous. They watched the woman die.

All of this is extremely sad, obviously. The people aren't happy with the police response to Mungiki. Taking the law into their hands, however, is scary. Their acts of revenge are most likely going to spur additional acts of revenge from Mungiki...and so on.

It's very frustrating to see this on the news every night. Tension b/tw Mungiki and the Kikuyus (which my family and many of the kids at Sidai are part of), not to mention the rest of the country, is getting worse and worse. Combine this with the political tension here (people of certain tribes will never vote for people from other certain tribes; people are extremely unhappy with gov't; etc.), and I'm really concerned for the future of Kenya. I would not be in the country during the next election (if they even make it that long w/o major upheavals or violence). You can see how there is the possibility of tension and violence continuing to expand.

I'm not trying to worry anyone (sorry, Mom). I feel completely safe here. My concern is more for what is to come in the upcoming years. I really hope the government can come up with a way to dissipate some of the tension, but my confidence is the government is definitely lacking.

Here are a couple of news articles if anyone is interested:

http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/590848/-/u64bc3/-/

http://www.eastandard.net/InsidePage.php?id=1144012430&cid=4