Novitiate in
Exile
This is an edited version of a letter sent from Kevin Kraft,
OP (St. Joseph) on the situation of the Dominican friars in
strife torn Kenya.
NAIROBI, KENYA – January 7, 2008-- I’m writing this
letter, surprisingly, from Nairobi, where the entire novitiate
just arrived yesterday (Sunday evening), unexpectedly! Let
me explain.
After sharing extensively with the 4 novices on New Year’s
eve about how the Lord has been working in each of our lives in
2007, I had during private adoration on Thursday, Jan 3rd, a very
strong sense (a certainty) that I and each one of the
novices are exactly where God wants us to be, that he has placed
us here and we are in the very situation where his will can be
fully accomplished in us. I almost spoke about it to them,
but in the end, didn’t that afternoon,
We had a rather touchy situation come up in the Dominican compound
in Kisumu the next two days. We were giving refuge to an
increasing number of people last week: three complete families
(with 8-10 per family) and several individuals. Some were
[from the Luos tribe] who had reason to fear because of their
surroundings, but the first ones to come were our accountant, [from
the Kikuyu tribe] her brothers- and sisters-in-law plus
their kids, fearful of their security due to reasons of tribal
identity. Much of the looting, burning and even killing going
on in Kenya these last days has been motivated by ethnic distrust
or hatred, since the political allegiances have largely been drawn
along ethnic lines. Within a week our sheltered guests
grew to over 30, plus the 60 or so kids that are normally on the
compound during school vacation. With the friars, not even
counting the sisters, their patients, the workers and guards on
our compound, that works out to about 100 people lodged and fed
daily! But it seemed to us an obligation of charity to protect
these people, offering them safe haven in our compound, which seemed
to be out of the range of the violence wracking Kisumu.
Friday during the day there was a tense moment when somebody came
to our door to ask what tribes the people were from whom we had
on our compound. The administrator of the kids’ program
called the police who came quickly, but the guy who asked the question
had already gone. Then about 10:30 AM on Saturday, Jan 5th,
Fr. Martin got an urgent message from the bishop, that he had heard
from a reputable source that there had just been a bus full of
Luo people that had been burned (with them in it) on the road to
Nairobi. Martin called me aside and told me, saying
he thought the time had come that we had to move the Kikuyus and
Merus off the property, for the safety of all concerned. But
he also said that, since two of the novices are of tribes associated
with the Kikuyu, they might come looking for any of them if there
were to be an incursion into the compound. A Congolese doctor
friend in Kisumu had been thought to be a Kikuyu, and three times
they’d tried to attack and burn his house, but the rioters
had been repelled either by neighbors or security people, so his
entire family was among those taking refuge in our compound.
Martin and I both felt that if the news of that bus-burning became
public, which it was bound to hapen, all hell might break
loose in Kisumu, with a thirst for blood along ethnic lines.
A large group of Kikuyus in Eldoret were attacked a few days ago
in a church where they’d sought refuge. The attackers
locked them in, and then set the church ablaze. Some of those
in the church managed to escape out of the church and evade the
attackers outside, but many sustained serious burns, and at least
20-30 were burned alive. That sinister deed of ethnic
hatred sent shock waves across the country: it meant that
even churches might not be respected as safe havens for those whom
hate-driven people wanted to kill.
Well, when Martin spoke of the expediency of some of the novices
leaving the compound for their own and others’ safety, I
felt very clearly that there was no question of sending them away,
that I should go with them and that we could move and continue
the novitiate year elsewhere. I began telling them of the
assurance I’d received in prayer just 2 days before and we
agreed together to go. We weren’t really sure where we
should go, because a lot depended upon the possibility and security
of transportation in these troubled times. The brothers
told me to forget about Tanzania, because the road passed through
Kisii, a hotspot which it would be very risky to attempt to cross. In
Uganda, there’s a large Dominican sisters’ formation
convent in Kampala, where we could have asked hospitality, but
there was an uncertain road through western Kenya to get there. We
weren’t sure about the possibility of getting to Nairobi
either.
But we felt we had to go soon, with the urgency of thinking
news could break and things could explode at any minute. Within
a half an hour we had our bags packed with the essentials for however
many days we might be gone, and after quick good-byes, off we went
downtown, with an armed escort from our local police station, to
see what we could do. When we got downtown to the local civil
authority (¨District Commissioner”, something like county
sheriff), we found that there were convoys of buses which would
be going to Nairobi with police escort. I decided on the
spot that staying in Kenya and going to our studentate in Nairobi
would be much less disruptive of our novitiate life than seeking
refuge in another community in a neighboring country. Our
original plan was to get the police to provide us safe transport
to Nairobi. Well when we got there, there was a huge crowd of people
milling around --mostly newly-made refugees-- and 4-5 buses
filled with people headed for Nairobi, awaiting their police escort. And
there weren’t any tickets to be had, nor any more buses leaving
that day, so using considerable pressure Martin was just barely
able to buy us bus tickets for the morrow. Martin left
to do other urgent things before we realized clearly that: a)
there was no way we could travel to Nairobi that day,
and b) we would not be allowed to spend the night on the premises,
as has been happening with police stations in much of Kenya these
past days, and which I thought we might do.
I had seen so many people leaving Kisumu on foot the past 5 days,
and now we were among them, albeit not in as harsh a condition. My
thoughts went to other similar crowds gathered in the airport,
--the tourist and business category, willing and able to pay the
much higher airfares to get lifted out of the tense Kisumu situation
to Nairobi or other countries. I was glad to be among these people,
all blacks but myself, most of them from non Luo tribes, seeking
safety outside of Kisumu. I knew there was another group
of refugees, too: those who have suffered the most, gathered
by the thousands in parks, police stations and churches across
the country, living out in the open day and night, fearful of attacks
even where they are gathered. When this latter group travels,
it is not in the comfort of intercity buses, but standing packed
in the back of army vehicles or cargo trucks like cattle, open
to the inclemencies of the sun, wind, heat and cold…
As it turns out, while we were waiting there we found out that
the “news” of the bus-burning was only a (false) rumor,
and had never happened! Good news! Of course, that
still didn’t alleviate all fears, because just such a rumor,
if disseminated and believed by people, could still provoke as
deadly a reaction as if it had been real. Too, the fellow
who the day before had asked what tribes people in our compound
were from was no rumor!
So we stood around on the same street corner from about 12:30 until
6:00 PM. Somewhere around 1:30 a Red Cross vehicle
came and some workers delivered 10-15 litre potable water bags
to every group of 8-10 people waiting by the roadside in the sun
with their small baggages nearby. I thought of my sister-in-law
who works for the Red Cross: never did I imagine that I would
be on the receiving end of their emergency services, but the water
was very welcome indeed, as our thirst was increasing, and the
small half-litre bottles we carried were nearly exhausted. A
policeman came out about 3:00, long after the bus convoy had left
for Nairobi, and called everybody together to tell the 40 or so
people still waiting there that we could neither travel that day
nor find refuge at the District Commissioner’s premises,
and so our waiting outside his premises was “useless” and
we might as well go home for the night after making our own travel
arrangements for the next day.
Going home was easier said than done for most of the people there,
including ourselves, because most had left their homes out of fear
of attack. The bus agencies were unwilling to sell any more seats
for the following day, having several days’ buses held over,
awaiting road security to be sent out. It seems that that afternoon
may have been the first civilian convoy to undertake the trip to
Nairobi since the violence began on the 30th. At any
rate, the policeman said that all they could offer was a police
escort for those who bought their own bus tickets for the following
day. When I called Martin and asked about returning to the
compound just for the night, he said he really felt it would not
be safe for the same people who’d just left the compound
to be seen coming back into it, and asked us if we couldn’t
stay in town. He suggested seeking lodging from a Franciscan sisters’ motherhouse
nearby (a congregation that works very closely with us), but when
I went there to check on the possibility of us spending just one
night in a sitting room at their place, the superior and community
were afraid to receive us for the same reason: a possible
attack by their Luo neighbors upon finding they were ‘harboring’ other
tribes. I certainly couldn’t blame them, when
we had left our very own compound for the same reason, but when
I left them, my voice cracked as I said, “Thank you all the
same; I can understand your fears; I hope we’ll
find some other place to stay.”
In all of this I was not personally at risk, as the anger of the
Luos is directed at other tribes and not at foreigners; I was there
to accompany my brother novices wherever they had to go. Still,
I felt like Joseph looking for lodging in Bethlehem! The
sisters gave me a good lead, however, where I finally found us
lodging: a local parish run by the Mill Hill fathers, very
close by the police station. They already had half a dozen
people who had sought refuge with them, camping out in their parish
hall. Fr. Gerry said, “Sure, you can come along too
if you need to.” It must have seemed strange to him
that a priest whom he’d met at diocesan clergy meetings was
asking him for refuge for his whole novitiate class and another
5-7 adults, us having our own house just across town and up on
the hill, but then these are strange times, and he accepted without
hesitation. So I went back and told our folks.
Just when I arrived, there was a large group of SDA’s (Seventh
Day Adventists) singing moving Christian songs to the waiting refugees,
alternating with brief preaching and prayer. Then they spread
out, introduced themselves to everyone, offering words of encouragement
and solidarity, and finally shared little cartons of milk and loaves
of bread with everyone present. That was our lunch! It
was a beautiful gesture of this congregation which is obviously
attuned to the ‘signs of the times’, responding to
this very recent category of displaced people in Kisumu. We
exchanged names & addresses with some of them, and hope to
visit their church when we return to Kisumu to thank them for this
most heart-warming, encouraging gesture. Hopefully we Dominicans
can learn from them to do the same; it was very effective
preaching!
After the SDA’s had finished and took leave of us all, those
in our party walked over to the nearby parish, where we were very
warmly received by two of the parish priests and a group of laypeople,
including our fellow refugees. One of the most welcoming was a
Kisii man who it turns out had lived 25 years in Kisumu, and had
had his house looted by Kisumu residents. What a tragic betrayal
of neighborliness toward a man who had made Kisumu his home! He
had already sent some of his family off to Kisii to be among his
relatives, and he was now living in an empty church hall with a
mattress to sleep on and probably a bag or two of salvaged items!
Shortly after arriving we recited Vespers with the people in our
group, and then received gratefully an evening meal of uji (hot
porridge) and bread. After Compline outside in the cool of
the night, the men slept in the Church with a host of mosquitos
for company. We were up early the next morning (5:30
AM) and at the D.C.’s office before 6:00 to make sure we
got on our bus. We said Lauds at 6:45 by the roadside with
some other hopeful passengers looking on, and then went to the
bus station to board, fortunately only a few blocks away. The
8:00 bus finally left Kisumu about 10:30, being one of at least
14 buses of various agencies travelling together, along with an
estimated 50 private cars, headed by a police vehicle to insure
the security of the convoy.
Actually, the “security” was more psychological than
real, since as soon as one of our buses got a flat, we stopped
to help them, and the convoy went on. It seems that they
hadn’t foreseen very well the inevitable problems or different
speeds that one or another vehicle would have throughout the normally
6-8 hr. trip to Nairobi. In any case, we arrived in Nairobi
about 7:00 PM without any difficulties or dangers, thank God, and
Maury, one of the oldest running marathoners in Nairobi, picked
us up in the van, and we came home to a hearty welcome by our brothers
in the studentate.
And so, here we are, peacefully settled in for the time being
as guests of the studentate community, where I began my Kenyan
experience, - - probably only until next weekend, if all
continues quiet in Kisumu and on our compound in particular. We
are all healthy, alive and well, happy to be here
with our brothers. We’ve shared a lot of jokes here
in the studentate about being “fugitives” and “refugees”,
but we know that tens of thousands of other Kenyans are living
in a truly precarious situation as displaced people, with
no one to give them the welcome we had .After what little hardships
we experienced, we have a much greater sensitivity towards those
who have much less to begin with, have suffered much harsher treatment
than we, and experience true, gripping fear and insecurity concerning
their future.
Please keep them (and us) in your prayers. Tomorrow, Tuesday,
January 8th, there is a local day of prayer for peace, reconciliation
and solution to the political crisis. Sunday was already a first
one at the national level, when we were travelling, and we will
be participating in the prayers of the parish here. So
we’ll be united in prayer, despite the distances.
Kevin Kraft, (St. Joseph)
St. Martin de Porred House - (Novitiate)
Dominican Friars, Wahubiri
P.O. Box 2566, 40100 KISUMU, Kenya |
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