Dear Friends,

Thank you for your emails, for your concern and for your prayers. We are fine, the expatriate community is somewhat removed from the situation although lamenting the sorry state of this once beautiful country. The situation in Kenya remains tense and phrases like “ethnic cleansing” are being bandied around. The number of IDP’s(Internally displaced people) are growing by the day. There are many camps in and around Nairobi and Police stations and Churches remain important sites around the country to house these people, and today an estimated 300,000 are still sheltering in 44 makeshift camps, two thirds of whom are estimated to be women and children. The Kenya Red Cross is doing remarkable work but is becoming overwhelmed by the scale of the problem in some areas. A friend visited two IDP camps this week and found one full of Kikuyu’s just outside Nairobi that she likened to a holiday camp, it was so well run, and another with thousands of every tribe except Kikuyu’s, at a police station in the tea farm area near Limuru a few miles outside Nairobi where the organisers were completely overwhelmed, people were arriving, trying to carry all their possessions with them. In this second case the people had been threatened by the Mungiki who are a terrorist group among the Kikuyu tribe. They have in fact been causing trouble for at least a year.

At "Kids to Kids" we are hearing of some of the families who are being told to move on and David one of our teachers was also told this week that he must shift. He is a Luhya and all his neighbours and his landlady are Kikuyu’s. Most of the landlords in  the Nairobi slums are Kikuyu. His landlady was being threatened by the Mungiki that if she had tenants who were not Kikuyu her houses would be burned. This situation is becoming common all over Kenya. We have now got to the stage of revenge killings, so the situation is spiralling out of control. Today one of the guards on our compound was threatened with death if he didn’t move out, so a relief guard came on duty to allow him to move his possessions. I don’t know where he was going to move to!

Kofi Annan and his team have been making progress and seem to be agreeing on a course of action. He is insisting that the politicians speak with one voice, however President Kibaki blew that straight away, by still claiming he is the rightful president and that ODM started the violence. There are a growing number of Kenyans that have limited faith in the process. One lady said the other day that she thinks as soon as Kofi Annan departs the process will halt. We can only pray for better than that. The media have now been told to put across positive messages about living peacefully alongside neighbours and captions now run across the TV screen. On Saturday I saw the following: “We are all equal in God’s eyes. We are all equal as Kenyan Citizens.” I hope the local radio stations have toned down their words they were actively inciting the people to violence. Many tribes have their own radio stations in their own languages a popular one round here is KISS 100 a Kikuyu radio station, according to Eunice they were actively inciting the Kikuyus I don’t know if this has ceased yet.

Today at kids to kids we accepted 5 more children on to the programme so now we have 27 children enrolled, we still don’t know what has happened to 8 whom we pre registered. It is still far from safe to enter the slums, so our home visits will have to wait. We were hoping to provide uniform for our children this year, but have been wondering if the time is right to look for sponsorship amongst our congregation. However we now have the samples and will finalise styles and colours tomorrow. I tried our samples on two children today and they did look smart. The colours are red and blue. They are being made by Jane on our K2K committee who has a tailoring business.

Derek was busy flying last week. On Saturday he flew a group of politicians and clergy to places in the west, Kisumu, Kisii and Kitali, and collected others, some were going to a funeral but they were also going because Kofi Annan had told them to get to their constituencies and speak to the people. So far they have all been hiding in Nairobi where it is relatively calm. The paper today reports the excursions of many MP’s to their constituencies this weekend. Two ODM MP’s were killed last week one in Nairobi and the other in Eldoret, now they are all asking for body guards. They are allowed to carry guns anyway. Derek has gone to Sudan today and is back on Wednesday. The Sudan work is still carrying on as normal and the extra flights because of the crisis are being fitted in wherever possible.

Bernard our Programme manager sent us an update recently and with the following story: "In the evening my phone was ringing, when I answered I heard the nervous voice of a woman asking for help. “I am not safe here and I am told to leave with my three year old girl, - please, please help.” My question, “Where are you now? did not get a clear answer – I had no idea where she was and she did not seem able to explain more. Suddenly I realised that the music teacher of my daughter was in the adjacent room, a Kenyan from that region. I rushed into the music lesson, “Do you know this village?” there was a moment of hesitation – “No I think not” – but then remembered a friend who had once mentioned the village. A quick call on another telephone while I was calming the woman gave us the new information from the friend. On our large wall map we quickly found the village, close to the Ugandan border and we were then able to identify the nearest airstrip. My heart leaped, we had not flown to that destination for years, but just the next day we happened to be evacuating some people from there, and there would be space on the flight! This was more than coincidence! While I quickly passed on the details to the frightened woman my heart was filled with a silent prayer: “Thank you Lord, You do care for your people and it is an adventure to serve you!”

I have been reading a book by Philip Yancey recently on prayer and he said that when he prays coincidences happen. Surely this is God at work. Each week I meet with a group of ladies in Nairobi from all walks of life. We have far reaching discussions, Bible study and times of prayer together. This group certainly helps me in my prayer life. Regarding Kenya it is difficult at the moment to get beyond the stage of lamenting to God, and we do feel helpless in many ways. It seems the only thing I can do at present is to be a listening ear and offering consolation and prayer. There are so many terrible stories, but I know there are stories of courage and Godliness that are emerging from this crisis, particularly amongst the Kenyan health workers. I pray that Kenyans will be able to accept a new identity, that of being Kenyan and not Kikuyu or Luo, or any other tribe, that the church leaders will speak with one voice to bring harmony and reconciliation and that the politicians will be able to address the serious problems of poverty and land ownership.

Thank you again for keeping in touch.  We love to hear from you.  Please keep praying for Kenya.

With love from,

Janet and Derek