A Block-by-Block Bid for Peace

"They shook hands, and they each said they were sorry," Kyalo said. "We admitted that everyone is guilty. We did shameful things, which we really did not have to do."

As a sense of relief settled through the room, the leaders began sorting through the reasons they were fighting. Among the conclusions was that they were being used as proxies to serve the interests of Kibaki and Odinga, neither of whom had set foot in Kibera since the violence began.

Odinga's only gesture at that point had been to buy coffins for the dead.

The men denounced rumors that had been flying via text messages exposing alleged "informers."

As a kind of impromptu truth and reconciliation process extended into the afternoon, people on both sides assessed their feelings, Kyalo said. It wasn't always pretty, and the group decided that for now there was too much anger for Luos to return to Kikuyu areas and vice versa.

"We asked, 'How do you feel when you see a Kikuyu in your area?' " Kyalo said. "And the leaders would say, 'I feel very fine, but others don't.' "

"The fact on the ground is that as much as everyone wants to say it's normal, it's not normal. You can't wield a panga and then the next day be normal," he said, using a Swahili word for machete.

The leaders vowed to "preach peace" in their areas. Osodo began by stepping outside the clinic to address the young men there.

"I told them to put their pangas away," he said.

They didn't do it right away, he said. There were shouts of "Traitor!" and "We will not agree!" But somehow, slowly, temperatures cooled.

The next day, Osodo and Kyalo once again walked the mud paths of Laini Saba and Mashimoni, past burned-out markets, along railroad tracks where people had been hacked to death and up to a bus staging area still guarded by young men with bows and arrows and machetes.

"I told them, 'If you have an arrow, your customers are going to disappear,' " Osodo said.

In that way, a sense of sobriety began to reassert itself in one part of Kibera.

When Kibaki and Odinga announced their political agreement last week, there were no major celebrations in Kibera. Instead, there was the usual rhythm of life of a Thursday evening, of a thousand vendors at a thousand tiny kiosks selling heaps of tomatoes and roasted corn, of Swahili rap coming from painted barbershops and columns of people making their way home along the railroad tracks where Osodo and Kyalo had walked before them.

"Before Kibaki and Raila made peace, we made peace on the ground," Osodo said. "They called Kofi Annan, but me, I didn't call Annan. I called my brothers."