Ups and Downs in the New Kenya

April 21, 2008


Things are improving on the political front. The new cabinet – though bloated in size with 40 new ministers and 52 assistant ministers – has an interesting composition. For each minister, the assistant minister was selected from the opposing political party. The hope is that they will be working together to fix some of the problems that brought us turmoil after the recent election. Please keep them in your prayers as they take on that task.

As one man commented to me last week, you sleep happy and then you may wake up to chaos. That is what happened last Monday morning. Though we were in no danger, the first thing that I heard was that school was having issues with buses because of protests around town. Of course, I was thinking, “What could they be protesting? The cabinet has been named, and things appear to be improving.” Well, the trouble came from a group of thugs that has been outlawed called the “Mungiki”. They are somewhere between an inner city gang and the mafia. They are allegedly part of the paid criminals that were causing some of the unrest in the country after the election. Two politicians were recently arrested for funding their escapades. Last Monday, they declared a week of mass protest because their leader has been held in jail on a weapons charge. The leader’s wife was murdered last week, and the group is blaming the police. However, it is speculated that she was probably killed as a result of fighting within the organization. At the end of the week, the government announced that they wanted to “dialogue” with the Mungiki, and the protests were called off. I guess we will have to wait and see what happens with that.

While we did not witness any trouble, we did cancel one of our classes due to uncertainty of safety on the roads. The school that our children attend had to cancel after school activities that Monday, but otherwise, it seemed to be a normal week. Thika did have quite a bit of trouble as businesses were threatened not to open because of the protest. Murang’a also experienced the troubles with businesses being forced to close. All reports are that things are back to normal now.

This week, we will try to get back on track with a make-up class. We are also beginning the task of sorting out the loan particulars for the groups in the different areas. Lots of number crunching is ahead in the next few weeks as we sort it all out.

We will write more later to update you on our groups. For now, please pray for continued peace and a willingness to let the healing process continue in this country. As always, we appreciate your prayers.

Blessings,
Anne