Ethnicity and the country’s lingering Balkanization are topics studiously avoided in Parliament. Few of Kenya’s politicians seem ready to tackle land reform, constitutional reform or the dangerous culture of impunity, all of which were called urgent priorities after the bloodshed last year. Many Kenyans are urging the International Criminal Court in The Hague to get involved, because they have no faith that the Kenyan justice system will prosecute the well-known political figures suspected of orchestrating last year’s killings.
“This country hasn’t healed,” Mr. Kiai said, “because we haven’t done anything to heal it.”
Many victims of last year’s violence feel totally abandoned. On a recent morning, Mary Macharia stood in a long line of sick people at a hospital near Nairobi, Kenya’s capital, her eyes on the floor.
A shiny, bubbly scar stretches from her ear to her lips. The right side of her face looks melted. A glance in the mirror jolts her mind back to the burning church where her daughter was killed a year ago, along with 30 others.
“Some days,” she said, “I hate myself.”
Across Kenya, near the western town of Kisumu, Millicent Awino is all alone, a young woman who used to have two children and a decent job packing flowers. She is essentially a serf now, her time, her sweat and her body at the beck and call of her ex-husband’s family, the only people who would take her in after she fled the violence that consumed her son and daughter and the ethnically mixed town where she used to live. She recently had another child, by the ex-husband who came into her hut one night, but the baby died of malaria.
“I think I’m done with children,” she said.
She also said she would never return to her former home.
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/01/world/africa/01kenya.html?scp=2&sq=church&st=cse
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