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No Quick Fix for What Still Ails Kenya
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Officials from Kibaki's government came to Oljorai and began dividing their five-acre plots in half, he said. Those who resisted were beaten and jailed.
"They came and said, 'Whether you like it or not, we're going to subdivide the land,' " said Veronica Kimitei, who was landless before Moi settled her at Oljorai in 1995. "But this is where we belong."
As happened elsewhere in the Rift Valley, that sense of injustice, compounded by accusations that Kibaki had stolen the election, was cast in ethnic terms.
For Kimitei, Kaitany and others, the enemy became not Kibaki's Kikuyu-led government, but the Kikuyus in their midst.
As violence spread across the Rift Valley, so did fears that Kikuyu militias were poised to attack Oljorai.
The people there called a meeting and decided, Kimitei said, that "Kikuyus must go."
It was early morning when the mob came to the farms of Machiria and Karanja with bows and arrows and molotov cocktails.
Machiria was away. But Karanja and his other neighbors ran across the twiggy fields to the closest safe place -- the farm of Moi's son, which always has plenty of security.
