After ten working days running cooped up in iHub it was a
great sense of freedom when we set off to Eastleigh on the other side of
Nairobi to give out the first edition of the Tamuka Newsletter. Eastleigh is
the area of Nairobi that has witnessed all the bombs in recent times: A suicide
bomber in August, Molotov cocktails thrown into a Sunday school session in
September, and an exploding public bus in November. By December Eastleigh had
become a riot zone that left dead bodies on the street for several days straight.
Al Shabaab have a very ingenious way of inciting violence.
Eastleigh has a huge Somali population, but a huge proportion of these are
Kenyan Somali. These are people who have lived in Kenya for generations and are
as Kenyan as anyone can be. This means that the recent war between Kenya and
Somalia has even less to do with them than it does with the innocent Somali
refugees who have fled Somalia seeking refuge in Nairobi. Unfortunately this is
a message that other Kenyan tribes find hard to swallow. By setting bombs in
Eastleigh the terrorists play on the ignorance of Kenyans, who then turn on
their Somali neighbours as if they were the enemy. Walking through busy Garissa
Road made me see how inevitable this reaction was. People of Somali origin have
laid claim to much of the area’s cultural identity, from the aroma of strong
spices, to shops selling middle eastern rugs, mosques and shisha bars. While Bantu faces huddle in the corner watching with suspicion, gangs of tall thin men
amble slowly down the pavements holding hands and combing their straight hair.
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| Eastleigh after a bomb in November |
As we walked along chatting with overly extroverted hawkers
it was hard to imagine these streets being the scene of such violence only a
month ago. It was hard to believe that tomorrow, as parties choose their
nominees for the elections, the energy was likely to heat up again. It was hard
to imagine the stories of Somali refugees being stopped by police and arrested
for being foreign. Yet on just this one road we were stopped by three people
who told us the same story. The police had arrested them, torn up their UNHCR
refugee mandate in front of them and taken them to jail, only to be released
upon a bribe of 1000 shillings. Apparently these are often plain clothes policemen
who would never perpetrate such an act in front of a mzungu witness.
The saddest part about this harassment is that it is
supposed to be something of the past. Plenty of NGO’s have conducted
sensitisation seminars with police to make sure that treat refugees in
Eastleigh just as they would treat anyone else, and reports from the NGO’s and
the refugees was that it was working. However, in December the outgoing
government issued a directive that all 100,000 refugees living in Nairobi
should return to the camps. Why? Because of the bombs. This is a security
measure. Do refugees who have fled one country because of a war, now want to be
the people to start a war in the country that is protecting them? So the
police, who drop their reluctant support of integration amongst refugees and
use this directive as an excuse to literally scare anyone of Somali, Congolese,
Sudanese, Ethiopian or Rwandese origin out of the city.
And it is working. CDTD, an NGO that works in the community
in Eastleigh ran a vocational school for 125 refugees last year. This term
their numbers are under 30. But where are all these refugees going? Are they to
be added to Dadaab’s 400,000 population, to eat their meals at an ordained
time, live in ordained mud houses in ordained rows, and wait for another
mundane day to pass slowly by? Or will they return to the countries they
believe to be too unsafe for their family? It is a tragedy that refugees of all
people are being used a political tool, while they have no voice and not even a
vote to come back with.
Call to action: mzungus in Nairobi let’s go and patrol the
streets of Eastleigh, as it seems we are an unwitting group who can prevent
this police behaviour!
2. All refugees and anyone else: text your views and stories
to 4342. It is free and anonymous and will be seen by anyone who follows
@TamukaHub or @XavierProj on twitter.
