WITNESS - How did it come to this in Kenya?
By Andrew Cawthorne
NAIROBI, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Kenya's election day was so calm I went for a run in the hills before sauntering into the office late in the afternoon.
The next week was so frenetic, I didn't make it back through my front door.
But several hundreds of Kenyans never made it home at all, leaving a shocked country - and world - asking "what on earth happened here?"
Just how this nation -- so beloved by its people, so quickly loved by those of us who come here - spiralled into chaos and death over the election count is a question that must be answered quickly if a repetition is to be avoided.
Re-elected President Mwai Kibaki's government says the opposition were such poor losers they deliberately unleashed "genocidal" violence that killed 300 people, including 30 burned alive taking refuge in a church.
His rival, Raila Odinga, says Kibaki's men cynically stole the Dec. 27 vote, enraging a people who had voted out an arrogant elite, then shot at innocent protesters.
Others say Kenya's tinderbox of tribal tensions, land disputes and wealth inequality was bound to explode when whipped up by unscrupulous politicians with the excuse of the election.
Many Kenyans are furious Kibaki and Odinga were unable to swallow their differences and meet to stop the bloodshed.
They include my housekeeper, whose neighbour was shot dead by a stray bullet when police and looters fought in Nairobi's Kawangware slum.
They also include some middle-class Kenyan friends, returning from studies and jobs abroad to visit their families over the New Year, but instead finding themselves cowering terrified indoors and checking the next flights out.
And I wonder what Reuters reporter Guled Mohamed, a Kenyan who has covered Somalia for the last two years and is a veteran of dodging bullets and bombs in Mogadishu, thinks after a narrow escape in Kisumu.
Had he not spoken the Luo language of his attackers - opposition supporters on the rampage minutes after Kibaki's election win - his fate would have been worse than just a beating and a lost wallet.
BURNING SLUMS
It was calm on the day after the vote, a Friday, but when the results-counting dragged into another day, tempers frayed.
Suspecting fraud, opposition supporters in Kisumu took to the street, but their protests quickly descended into looting, anarchy and gang-fights.
Members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe were the first targets, though it soon became a free-for-all.
Three days after the vote, the Election Board chairman summoned journalists and party agents to announce the results.
Rumours swirled Kibaki was to be pronounced winner, after a late surge in the tallies to overtake Odinga by a whisker, and then opt for a snap swearing-in.
"That's what Tony Blair did, isn't it?" one government spokesman told me on the phone well before the event.
As opposition members heckled the chairman and stormed his podium, riot police whisked him off to a backroom to give the result to a small group of reporters.
When Reuters TV's Ben Makori called, saying "Kibaki's won, it's official, I've got the tape," it took me a few seconds amid the office chaos to steady my fingers and put the news out.
Kibaki was on the lawn of State House taking his oath within an hour. As he spoke, I could see from the Reuters office, in the centre of Nairobi, smoke rising from slums all over the city where opposition supporters went wild.
QUICK DECISIONS
From then, it's a blur. Decisions come flying - is it safe to send our newest reporters, Nicolo, Duncan and Joseph, out on the burning streets?
Are we being balanced in our coverage? Is it right to say the church massacre "awakens memories" of Rwanda? Is that offensive to the 800,000 people who died in the genocide there in 1994?
How can we get beyond the tribal stereotype to show that politicians, criminals, inequality and genuine anger are fuelling the violence now?
Where do we get water, let alone food and coffee? Can someone shut the window so the teargas doesn't blur my vision of the computer screen? Is my wife ok?
Images rear before me, some on TV, some in the street.
The one I can't get out of my head is the large crucifix hanging in a church in Kibera slum. As the church burns, large flames burst out of the top of the cross.
Then, finally, home again. To forget all about it.
My three-year-old daughter Sofia crawls into bed at 5 a.m. and wakes me up: "Daddy, where have you been? Did Kibaki win?"
When I get up, the garden is full of Kenyan boys playing football with my five-year-old son, Oliver. The housekeeper's relatives are still taking refuge here. (Editing by Sean Maguire) (To read more Reuters Witness stories click here: here)
NAIROBI, Jan 8 (Reuters) - Kenya's election day was so calm I went for a run in the hills before sauntering into the office late in the afternoon.
The next week was so frenetic, I didn't make it back through my front door.
But several hundreds of Kenyans never made it home at all, leaving a shocked country - and world - asking "what on earth happened here?"
Just how this nation -- so beloved by its people, so quickly loved by those of us who come here - spiralled into chaos and death over the election count is a question that must be answered quickly if a repetition is to be avoided.
Re-elected President Mwai Kibaki's government says the opposition were such poor losers they deliberately unleashed "genocidal" violence that killed 300 people, including 30 burned alive taking refuge in a church.
His rival, Raila Odinga, says Kibaki's men cynically stole the Dec. 27 vote, enraging a people who had voted out an arrogant elite, then shot at innocent protesters.
Others say Kenya's tinderbox of tribal tensions, land disputes and wealth inequality was bound to explode when whipped up by unscrupulous politicians with the excuse of the election.
Many Kenyans are furious Kibaki and Odinga were unable to swallow their differences and meet to stop the bloodshed.
They include my housekeeper, whose neighbour was shot dead by a stray bullet when police and looters fought in Nairobi's Kawangware slum.
They also include some middle-class Kenyan friends, returning from studies and jobs abroad to visit their families over the New Year, but instead finding themselves cowering terrified indoors and checking the next flights out.
And I wonder what Reuters reporter Guled Mohamed, a Kenyan who has covered Somalia for the last two years and is a veteran of dodging bullets and bombs in Mogadishu, thinks after a narrow escape in Kisumu.
Had he not spoken the Luo language of his attackers - opposition supporters on the rampage minutes after Kibaki's election win - his fate would have been worse than just a beating and a lost wallet.
BURNING SLUMS
It was calm on the day after the vote, a Friday, but when the results-counting dragged into another day, tempers frayed.
Suspecting fraud, opposition supporters in Kisumu took to the street, but their protests quickly descended into looting, anarchy and gang-fights.
Members of Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe were the first targets, though it soon became a free-for-all.
Three days after the vote, the Election Board chairman summoned journalists and party agents to announce the results.
Rumours swirled Kibaki was to be pronounced winner, after a late surge in the tallies to overtake Odinga by a whisker, and then opt for a snap swearing-in.
"That's what Tony Blair did, isn't it?" one government spokesman told me on the phone well before the event.
As opposition members heckled the chairman and stormed his podium, riot police whisked him off to a backroom to give the result to a small group of reporters.
When Reuters TV's Ben Makori called, saying "Kibaki's won, it's official, I've got the tape," it took me a few seconds amid the office chaos to steady my fingers and put the news out.
Kibaki was on the lawn of State House taking his oath within an hour. As he spoke, I could see from the Reuters office, in the centre of Nairobi, smoke rising from slums all over the city where opposition supporters went wild.
QUICK DECISIONS
From then, it's a blur. Decisions come flying - is it safe to send our newest reporters, Nicolo, Duncan and Joseph, out on the burning streets?
Are we being balanced in our coverage? Is it right to say the church massacre "awakens memories" of Rwanda? Is that offensive to the 800,000 people who died in the genocide there in 1994?
How can we get beyond the tribal stereotype to show that politicians, criminals, inequality and genuine anger are fuelling the violence now?
Where do we get water, let alone food and coffee? Can someone shut the window so the teargas doesn't blur my vision of the computer screen? Is my wife ok?
Images rear before me, some on TV, some in the street.
The one I can't get out of my head is the large crucifix hanging in a church in Kibera slum. As the church burns, large flames burst out of the top of the cross.
Then, finally, home again. To forget all about it.
My three-year-old daughter Sofia crawls into bed at 5 a.m. and wakes me up: "Daddy, where have you been? Did Kibaki win?"
When I get up, the garden is full of Kenyan boys playing football with my five-year-old son, Oliver. The housekeeper's relatives are still taking refuge here. (Editing by Sean Maguire) (To read more Reuters Witness stories click here: here)
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