Having Driven Out Business, Kenyan Town Faces Consequences

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Kenya Election Sparks Violence

Kenya plunged into crisis after the re-election of President Mwai Kibaki, which opposition leader Raila Odinga and his supporters claim was rigged. Since the vote on Dec. 27, more than 800 people have been killed and hundreds of thousands displaced.

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Kenyan manufacturers estimate that 500,000 jobs could be lost if a solution is not found soon. The tourism industry is "basically dead," said one industry analyst, who put losses at $85 million over the past month. Banana farmers who were barely eking out a living even before the crisis are now practically giving away their produce because they can't ship it out. Real-estate analysts estimate property damage at $15 million.

The figures represent a significant loss for the Kenyan economy, which had grown by more than 6 percent annually in recent years, compared with about 2 percent when Kibaki took charge in 2002.

Around Kisumu, all sorts of other Kikuyu-owned businesses have stopped operating. Trucks are no longer bringing in vegetables. Major bus routes from here to Nairobi have been closed. And blocks of downtown -- including the main thoroughfare, Odinga Odinga Street, named for Odinga's father, a political hero to many Kenyans -- are scarred with blackened shops, taxis and trucks, hotels and grocery stores.

The lingering questions are whether the business people, particularly the traumatized Kikuyus, will return, and whether Kisumu can survive without them.

"We are wishing them to return," said Jared Ochanda, chairman of the local chamber of commerce. "How that will happen is anybody's guess."

The 50 or so Kikuyu residents remaining in Kisumu as of last week were all living under armed guard at a local police station, waiting for bus tickets out.

Sitting outside the tented camp were people who had done business in Kisumu for more than 30 years: a scrap-metal shop owner, a lumber merchant, a barbershop owner and a truck driver, who said that a fleet of six trucks, which were owned by an Indian businessman and driven mainly by Kikuyus, had been torched.

"We've been here for three weeks," said one man, Daniel Thuku, 35. Since arriving, he said, he had not set foot beyond the wire fence surrounding the station, where people from town often gather to hurl stones and insults.

"They shout that they will kill us," said Samuel Kangethe, 28, the truck driver. "That's why we need to leave here and go home."

He predicted that the city would fall into a period of decline without the investment of Kikuyus and Indians.

"Even they have started saying they are suffering," he said, referring to his former neighbors beyond the fence.

Kisumu is situated in the Nyanza province of western Kenya, which is considered the land of the Luo, Odinga's tribe. For years, the Luo have complained that the region has been underdeveloped compared with Kibaki's home province in central Kenya, and many had pinned their hopes for a better life on Odinga's election.