Bearing Witness

Bearing Witness

I wrote this blog a couple of months ago after my last trip to Kenya. The tribal warfare was already happening in the country. I knew about the Mungiki which had swarmed down from Central Kenya and killed many last summer. I knew about the police going into the slums of Nairobi and summarily killing hundreds. So what is happening is not a surprise to me really, but I wanted to share with you what it feels like to witness first hand tribal slaughter. It hasn't let up BTW and I doubt it will for a very long time.
They are fleeing Eldoret and other cities now. People from different tribes no longer feel safe living next to each other. Daniel wrote me this about a man he interviewed, "“I know that communities living here will never trust one another again. There is no point living in a place where you always expect your neighbour to attack you,” he said. I haven't heard from Daniel in a couple o days and I am beginning to worry. I know they burned the offices of the Nation newspaper in Kisumu. And I know that sometimes Daniel slept there because he had no other place to go. I worry.

Some things you shouldn’t ever see, much less ever talk about. In Africa that is often true. It’s one thing to see them on T.V and another to experience first hand. I thought a couple of years ago that seeing famine up close and personal was the worst I would ever see, but alas, I was wrong.
Today I saw Dr. Lemming. You remember that my family members are all psychiatric lemmings, and I had to see the doc who does research on us. I like him; he’s a researcher, which means he’s an MD/PhD and he’s quite geeky but in an endearing way. He is gentle and kind and tries not to flinch when I debrief with him after my trips to Africa. He’s generally quite interested.

I knew we would talk about the trip. I had put it off as long as possible, and I did need to say it; it’s just that the fearsome and chilling understanding of what I would reveal to him to day hadn’t fully dawned on me until I prepared to see him. I didn't tell friends and family about this because they worry enough, but somehow it seems time to tell people of something that has been going on since the beginning of metal and tribes.

In Africa killing is usually very personal. It has to be to use pangas. I had known before I left for this last trip about the killings in the Mt. Elgon region. It’s about 75 miles from our site. Normally one doesn’t drive through that area to get to Nambale. On this trip, though, I had to see a doctor and we were diverted through there because of the flooding of the Sio River. Mayhem is not limited to a continent or a people; sometimes it just looks that way.

The roads were pretty washed out. The visual noise one sees from a car of women walking with jerry cans or firewood on their heads, the boda boda bicycles carrying people, the cattle being walked along the edge of the road was absent as we neared this one bend in the road. Francis, my driver, and I were both rather nervous. He made some comment I don’t remember and then we saw it. The bodies lying in the road, arms and heads separated from bodies, animals gutted with entrails pouring out. We had to stop; I couldn’t bear the thought of driving over human beings. We heard a baby crying and soon the sound of police cars making that funny Nazi siren noise that you hear in old movies. We got back in the car, locked it and waited. I think both of us were scared that the tribal killers would come back, but Francis didn’t say a word. Neither did I, I just kept chanting the Lord’s Prayer over and over and crying.

What I told Dr. Lemming is that what struck me is the personal hatred one would have to have for another to hack him to death. Guns are rather impersonal compared to a panga. We forget that Africa, or at least Kenya is only 43 years old. And tribal animosities were not wiped out under colonialism. I looked up and saw the look in his eyes. It was a mixture of quiet horror and compassion. He didn’t know what to say, and I know when that happens to move on quickly.

Hotel Rwanda, Last King of Scotland, Blood Diamond, if you’re wondering they are true. I have no answer for this, I have no sage wisdom, just the observation of how personal it is over there and that somehow I understand. Somehow when there is no water, or too much water; when babies are dying from malaria and the cattle are starving; when you don't know if tomorrow you will die, and you think someone has wronged you, somehow it makes sense. To cut someone up you have to feel their breath upon your face, to get drenched in the sticky mess of blood. You are so much a part of the killing, you carry it with you on your own body, in your hair, in your nose. Maybe when you live that close to the bone, everything is personal. So I leave this story here. I bear witness to this horror and I hunker down for the brewing Northeaster that is coming. I know the sweet agony of Kenya and now you do too.