For Expatriates, Kenya's Torment Is Their Own
Shock Waves From the Unrest Reach Those Far Away
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Saturday, March 1, 2008; Page C01
"Is everyone safe?"
"We good. bullets still whizzing in Kibira."
"Mostly safe. Not sure you'll hear from Fridah soon. I understand they relocated to Nakuru a week or so ago."
"Mwafugas are fine, save for the 1 day we missed milk and bread. And we don't all carry machetes. . . . Till we meet, stay blessed."
-- E-mail exchanges between
Mkawasi Mcharo Hall of Silver Spring
and relatives in Kenya
When "the Youths" came to kill them because they were Kikuyu, his sister put his 93-year-old mother on her back and ran a mile to a church, a supposed refuge from the post-election violence that erupted in December in Kenya.
But the Youths -- that's what they called them -- set the church in Eldoret on fire. When his sister tried to escape, again with his mother on her back, the Youths beat her.
She dropped her mother as the blows rained down. The Youths poured gasoline on mattresses and blocked the door. She picked her mother up again. But the fire grew so hot, so impetuous, it forced her to drop the old woman a final time before climbing out of a window.
Samson Njoroge sits in Hyattsville, telling the story as it was told to him by his mother-in-law. He had eight relatives who were trapped in the church; the 4-year-old son of his brother was killed.
His mother burned to ashes, he says. They did not give her the privilege of dying the way an aged woman should die -- in peace. He looks at the floor. Still today, weeks after the violence, with a political settlement finally at hand, he does not know where his sister is.
