where do we go?

When I close my eyes to remember Kenya, I see a dear friend sitting with her black slip-on shoes pointed outward, a scarf wound peasant-style around her head, picking the tiny rocks and bugs out of the uncooked rice. I'm playing somewhere in the yard, and she looks up long enough to yell at me, "Hannah... mommy's calling you!" in her sing-song Kenyan English. She's always been tenderhearted, always gentle, always fearful. And I fear for her now, scared, her oldest daughter separated from her by the unrest. She raised six children alone. She was married young, the third wife of a much older man who impregnated her and left the financial and emotional burden of raising the children up to her. She was abused and raped by a gang of corrupt police, who answered a robbery call to her home. Beautiful Sella, round-faced and quick to laugh. I have much to learn from her.

We haven't been able to talk to Sella since the elections have started, and threw Kenya into a teetering state of unrest. I know a conversation with her would be an echo of what so many across the country are calling out right now, "where do we go?" Some are crossing the Ugandan border. Others are fleeing to the bush. Still others take refuge in churches and prisons. One church this week had filled with seventeen people seeking shelter, thirteen of them children. It was barred and burned to the ground. The red cross estimates over 200,000 Kenyans are displaced already, and 300 have died. Tonight (PST) there is going to be a rally. Odinga (the opposition to the current president) has called for over a million people to march in Nairobi. The city is already without fuel, and food shortages are beginning. Many people haven't eaten in a few days. No one knows how long this will last. The current and re-elected president, Kibaki (whose re-election is claimed false and rigged by the opposition,) has shut down all live media within the country. Accusations and corruption on both sides are what is causing the unrest, and the fact that the political parties are each made up of one of the two largest tribes in Kenya. Despite International request, Odinga refuses to stop the rally, and Kibaki refuses to back down. So far the International Community has released statements urging the unrest to end. The head of the AU, Ghanaian President John Kufuor, who was supposed to come in and mediate called off his visit this afternoon.

The call of God is not so hard as we often make it, I think. Although I cannot speak for Her, nor can I claim to understand Him, God asks us to love each other as sisters and brothers. To care for each other as we would care for Jesus. Because that is where Christ dwells. I find this easier in a place I've lived and loved then one I've never seen. This is one of the curses I bring upon myself. How spotty is my compassion. I choose when and where to put it. And sometimes, I close my eyes really tight and stick my hands deep in my pockets, because I know that if I watch, if I give the hurting a chance to grab my hand, then I become responsible. And I usually don't want to respond. I constantly ask for mercy in this. Today though, I look at pictures of the cities and villages whose names are so familiar to me, and the slum where little Mary Munyange lives, and I shiver and ache. She draws me pictures of flowers and cats in the letters she sends. Her family dwells in Kibera, the largest of Nairobi's slums. One third of the cities 3 million people call these now burned and raided slums home.

It is illegal for Kenyans to have guns, which doesn't mean they aren't being used there now, being fired from one tribe to another, but it does mean that more have machetes. Long and old, with tire rubber wound round the bottom, or smooth wood that rubbed its roughness out and onto calloused work hands. Instead of cutting corn now, these tools cut down people, children even. What desperate sadness it causes to see faces of a gentle people contorted with hatred, and wielding weapons that were once tools of sustenance and growth.

As much as it is safe to lump sum an entire country, you would call Kenyans peaceful. Non-confrontational to a beautiful, sometimes extreme degree. Feelings of anger are held beneath the surface. To show negative emotions in public marks you as an unkind, bad person. Kenyans are community oriented. Their tribe is their rootedness, their understanding of belonging. Your tribe is your family, and yourself. What a beautiful sense of togetherness that brings, and what quick and volatile lines it draws. Suddenly neighbors are enemies. Friends are killing each other. And a country is torn apart by the seams it has sewn throughout itself.

Tonight the million will gather in the square to riot on Odinga's behalf. I don't know what will happen. My family and friends are holding a prayer vigil throughout the night to beg for peace and to cry with those who watch loved ones bleed. For the dying. For the unrest. That the country will not end up with the split governments it is now forming. That volatile tribal issues will not explode into more violence, or into the civil war that is being whispered about in fear.

Pray with us if you can... if you believe in prayer. Feel with us, all you who hurt for the sake of compassion. Sometimes we have to soften our hearts, simply because across the world so many have grown hard with fear and anger, and because, frankly, we don't know what else to do.