Violence strains Kenyan coffin-makers' friendship

By Michael Georgy

NAKURU, Kenya (Reuters) - Business is booming for friends Bob Otieno and James Maina, but they have little cause to celebrate.

Since ethnic violence erupted in Kenya after the disputed December 27 election, the coffin-makers from rival tribes have struggled to meet demand, toiling away in a tiny wooden shack beside the municipal morgue in the Rift Valley town of Nakuru.

Profits have soared but their relationship is strained every time a body turns up of a victim hacked to death, burned alive or shot with an arrow.

"We are both angry but we try not to talk about it," said Maina, hammering nails into a piece of wood. "It's better that way."

Their relationship is just one example of how tribal bloodshed has torn apart people who lived side by side and worked together before the closely fought vote thrust the country into one of its darkest moments since independence in 1963.

Some Kenyans have watched mobs turn on their relatives in the name of tribal affiliation.

Others long to know the fate of loved ones weeks after more than 1,000 people were killed, mostly in ethnic clashes and some by police during protests.

The turmoil has displaced 300,000 people and hurt Kenya's reputation as a stable democracy and regional tourism and trade hub.

DUMPED ON ROADSIDES

The morgue in Nakuru, a trading town 160 km (100 miles) northwest of Nairobi, has dealt with 170 victims of the violence. Thirty have not been claimed by relatives.

Morgue officials cannot identify them because the victims, all males, were too badly burned or mutilated. Others were shot by arrows and their bodies had decomposed.

Police found them dumped in fields or on roadsides, said a morgue official who asked not to be identified.

All he can do is stare at empty forms, hoping mothers, fathers or sons will show up before the morgue is forced to move the bodies to a mass grave if too much time elapses.

Twenty are lying on the floor in numbered white plastic bags, others are behind the doors of the morgue's freezers.

"I think most of their relatives ran away for fear of their lives when the problems started. They are too scared to come back and search for their relatives," said the official.