Rift Valley Province

I took a journey to the worst hit areas in Kenya by this post-election violence. The roads were not safe to travel alone, so I flew. Flying over the area, you could see places that were once villages but now are blackened ash on the landscape.

People still live in fear here. (Well, we still do in Nairobi, too.) But, these people have felt the worst violence. One pastor told me that people from eight different tribes worshipped together on Sunday morning and by Sunday night, they had all turned on each other.

Many of our Baptist churches in this area were either burned or looted.

There are thousands staying in Internally Displaced camps. One camp I visited had more than 20,000 households. There are so many people there, the Red Cross is only keeping track of households and not individuals.

One of the most distressing things in this area is how things were burned. Walking down the business road with all of the store fronts, you can see two stores burned and looted, then you see a store that is just fine and still open. Then, you see a few more burned out stores, then a patch of normalacy again. It's very distressing because it shows that these burnings were picked according to tribal affiliation.

Pray for the Rift Valley Province. They live in constant fear. The pastors I drove around with would barely get out of the car -- even when I hired an armed escort.

Mass Funerals

There were two days of peace this week -- well, let me rephrase that -- two days of "almost" peace. These days were set aside so everyone could bury their dead.

In Nairobi, hundreds of people walked down the road holding branches (a symbol of peace). They walked in front of huge trucks loaded down with caskets.

There were around 35 caskets at the mass funeral I attended. Friends carried the casket to a table bearing the dead person's name. The caskets were placed under a tent.

Kenyans then pass next to each casket - weaving in and out. It was total chaos and no "personal space" allowed.

My heart sunk when I heard women wailing. We don't really do that at American funerals, but it is cultural here. Some people are still professional wailors -- just like Biblical times. Anyway, the mood was quite somber.

These people were lifted up as heroes for "the cause." I don't think hero status really comforted the grievng families.

I'm having a hard time writing about what I experienced here. So, you'll just have to experience it through my photos.

Story link

Here's a link to my organization's website. There, you'll see a multi-media presentation on Kenya. And you can find other stories I've written about this incident.

http://www.imb.org/main/default.asp

Let it rain!

We thought there would be a reprieve of the riots and violence, but word just came out that the opposition party is calling for the protests to continue through this next week.

Please continue to pray. Last week, the protests got pretty violent, but not as bad as everyone expected. I credit that to God. It just "so happened" that it rained all three days of the planned protests. Now while that may not sound like a big deal, it's actually a miracle. It is dry season in Kenya and we were not expecting rain until the end of February.

I talked to a friend in a part of Kenya where there are no riots or violence and they are completely dry, with no rain or cloudy skies. In the towns where the most protests are happening -- it rained off and on for three days straight!