well, here i am in kenya.

The situation continues to change each day in Kenya, without any very large shifts. I have been reluctant to write about the current crisis because I still don't have any useful theories about why this is happening, I don't have any ideas of how to go forward towards peace and a just governance system, and I don't know always know what is happening.

I am fine and safe, as are pretty much all ex-pats and the middle and upper classes in Nairobi. In Nairobi, it is the people trapped in Kibera, Mathare, and the other poor settlements who are really suffering.

I liked this article on Pambazuka - http://www.pambazuka.org/en/category/features/45291 "Let us not find revolutionaries where there are none" – this is not about a people's movement being suppressed by an illegitimate ruling government. It is about people with power fighting over power, using a long history of unequal power relations to inflame their supporters (and, yes, paying gangs of young men to kill and burn or to kill and burn in retaliation).

In the meantime, Kenya is suffering a serious economic hit, many farmers' crops have been destroyed and their livestock burnt or stolen, homes are burnt to the ground, businesses are closed throughout much of Kenya. Tensions are beyond stretching point between tribes and yet not between economic classes - Kenya's degree of inequity (gap between poor and rich) is 10th in the world, and is largely accepted within Kenya as how life is and must be.


Ways to Help

MCC is supporting the immediate emergency responses of providing food, clothing, water, etc to the many internally displaced people and will continue to support the initiatives for peace in Kenya. If you can, please support MCC by donating to MCC, earmarked as Response to post-election violence in Kenya ( http://www.mcc.org/donate/)

Before going to ACORD, I worked closely with farmer groups in the Uashin Gishu district, in North Rift Valley, where much of the violence is occurring. Some of the farmers in the Uasin Gishu Small Scale Farmers group have been displaced and their homes destroyed. If you would like to chip in to the pot to help them start over, let me know. This is an informal giving of friends of the farmers, so this would not be tax-deductible.