<<Print>>

A Kenyan deadline expires on Friday for people displaced by post-election violence to leave their camps. Two weeks ago President Mwai Kibaki ordered the closure of the camps, which at the peak of the violence were home to around 500,000 people. But more than a year-and-a-half later there are Kenyans still living in tents some of whom are reluctant to leave. Stanley Wanyoike said he will only leave if the president keeps his promise to give them land. "We are ready to leave if the promise made by the head of state is fulfilled," said Mr Wanyoike, who was forced to flee his home with his wife and five children on 30 December 2007 - the night President Kibaki was controversially declared the winner of the election. "That is being given a place to settle - some land. We are waiting to hear if we are to get land." Early last year the agricultural showground in the town of Eldoret was home to almost 25,000 people. Less than 2,000 remain. Each family has been offered 35,000 Kenyan shillings (about $470, �290) for leaving but to receive the money they have to dismantle their tent. Tent is a generous word for leaky structures which are made out of shabby pieces of plastic sheeting and old sacks. "I sleep in my small tent with my six children," said Elizabeth Wanja, who like almost all those in the camp is from the Kikuyu ethnic group and had fled attacks from Kalenjin neighbours. Kikuyus were seen as supporters of President Kibaki, who is from that community, while his rival Raila Odinga was backed by ethnic Kalejins and Luos. In Mrs Wanja's tent is one thin mattress, a few pots and pans, a handful of clothes and a radio. "The government says you can't be given that money unless you pull down the tent. But if you pull down the tent you don't have anywhere to go. So you are confused." Many of the residents said they feared returning to the communities from where they were chased and wanted to be given a large piece of land so they could settle in a fairly large group - safety in numbers being the preferred security option. During his visit to Kenya this week former United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan lamented how Kenyans were still in camps so long after the signing of a peace deal which he had mediated. Critics suggest some Kenyan politicians have been far more focused on protecting themselves than helping the plight of those whose lives were shattered by the violence some of which was instigated by politicians. "The Showground in Eldoret is the only IDP [internally displaced person] camp left in Kenya," the minister for special programmes Naomi Shaban told the BBC. "The government is still in the process of acquiring land to settle the IDPs on. I don't think the process could have been done any faster as it is an extremely complicated exercise," said the minister, who added that she could not state categorically whether or not the remaining IDPs in Eldoret's Showground would be given land. She dismissed the possibility of them being forcefully removed from the camp as the deadline expired. Walking amongst the ramshackle tents Mrs Wanja's daughter, Sonny, was hoping she would soon be back in school. "We just stay here like animals because when the rain comes there is water in the tent. We don't have food, we don't have clothes and we don't go to school," said 11-year-old Sonny, who remembers the day she fled her home. "They burnt our house. They killed my father - they slashed him like grass and put him in a dam." "We cannot go anywhere because we need somewhere we can stay. President Mwai Kibaki said they will give us land. I have not seen the land yet." There are those who feel progress is being achieved. "One year nine months down the line people are running their lives as normal - a bigger percentage of them," said Robert Odhiambo of the International Organization of Migration (IOM), which has helped build more than 4,000 new homes for people affected by the violence. "So maybe for this small percentage that's remaining we need to find out exactly, individual by individual, what's the real reason why somebody's not going back." Although in some areas tensions still exist, the IOM has had some success in ensuring there is some mixing of rival ethnic groups in the Rift Valley. "You have community A and community B coming together to reconstruct the burnt hut, so it is a little bit like burying the hatchet." Resettling around 500,000 Kenyans whose lives were uprooted was always going to be a mammoth task and remains work in progress. Worryingly, it is not the only enormous hurdle that needs to be overcome - Kenya is in desperate need of reconciliation and justice in order to prevent a repeat of the violence at the next election, due in 2012.