I didn't really intend to write today, but I got a few emails from people concerned over the news about all of the violence in Kenya (and they all cited the BBC, so I guess American TV has dropped the ball on this one), so I thought it would be good to let everyone know how things stand and reassure you of my safety. Things are undeniably bad down the road in parts of Nairobi and Central Province. The Mungiki beheaded a local official and three of his family members and neighbors last week in a district called Muranga'a and killed two police officers in Mathare, a Nairobi slum with 500,000 inhabitants. The police cracked down, killing a few people in Muranga'a and sealing off Mathare before going door to door and killing 33 people. Most of the dead were shot in the back of the head, and it's become clear that of the 40 or so people who have been killed in total, only a few were Mungiki. Life can be astoundingly cheap here/
I, however, am not in one of the problem areas, and for once Rift Valley Province is untouched by violence. Nanyuki is a diverse town, and while the majority of the population is Kikuyu and there are a few Mungiki in town, things are peaceful here. In mid-May, the Mungiki distributed leaflets in Nanyuki, and most other cities with a large Kikuyu population, inciting the youth to let Kibaki know that he was letting down his tribe. The youth here don't seem to have responded. Someone I know, a friend of a friend, was arrested this week and beat up by the police for having dreadlocks, since the Mungiki used to wear dreads before the group was outlawed and went underground, but it's pretty safe to say he's not a sect member. Everything else I've heard is second-hand, but I've heard plenty. The Mungiki have become an obsession here, with the newscasts invariably leading with the latest Mungiki news and the newspapers devoting the first three or four pages to Mungiki stories, with one of the papers running a multi-paged section titled "The Mungiki Menace" every day. The stories come in two varieties and are irresistable. The newest stories are first-person tales of police brutality in Mathare, but the most common story is still an expose about the initiation rituals of the Mungiki, with some unnamed source discussing how he was made to drink human blood and swear an oath to abstain from alcohol, drugs and sex with non-sect members. The exception to the anonymity of sources is one MP, Kihara Mwangi, who claimed that he witnessed 10 other Kikuyu MPs, including some members of the Cabinet, be administered Mungiki oaths. The assumption is that Kihara is now a dead-man-walking. We'll see.
I, on the other hand, am safe. The Mungiki have targeted matatu drivers, police and local administrators whom they see as uncooperative, and I do not fall into those categories. For that matter, I've never been to the Nairobi and Central Province shantytowns where Mungiki operates and the police go trawling for suspects. Dol Dol, where I spend most of my time, has a majority Maasai population and is completely safe from everything but elephants. So while the news stories are cause for concern, they're not a cause for concern on my behalf.
