By Allen Neece

“Nothing sorts out memories from ordinary moments. It is only later that they claim remembrance, when they show their scars.”

-Chris Marker, “La Jeete”

The scars run deep.

From my chair on this verandah above the town of Lamu, with the muezzin call to prayer reverberating below (I can hear it because I got my aids on) and a stiff seaside breeze at my back, a torrent of memories rewinds through my mind. For the past week, text messages from friends flitted into my cell phone daily until two days ago when it finally stopped vibrating. They were heartfelt missives of farewell. The remaining 58 U.S. Peace Corps volunteers in country were in Nairobi, completing closure of service paperwork and readying themselves for a sudden, unexpected return to America. Some of my friends succeeded in landing direct transfers to countries around the continent. To have spent five months in country acclimating to a new culture, learning Kiswahili or Kenyan Sign Language, only to up and quickly (and willingly) relocate to a new country speaks volumes about the dedication of these Volunteers. Those who didn’t receive transfers had no choice but to leave. At least the volunteers in the Central, Eastern, and Coastal provinces had time to pack and achieve a semblance of closure. For those of us from the Western, Nyanza, and Rift Valley provinces, our departures from Kenya were abrupt and forced. Kwaheri (goodbye) Kenya was all we could say as we went our separate ways. Most of these people I know I’ll never see again.

My site was in Kakamega and I was there when the shooting started. Actually, my site “mama” had told me that GSU troops were beating people in town. Since I had no food, I immediately headed in to see if I could grab some provisions before the situation became worse. Upon alighting from the matatu, I could see people milling about. Eventually chanting mobs began jogging slowly through the streets. Windows were shattered. Gunfire from the police and troops followed. The soundtrack of my mind played songs like “The Guns of Brixton” and “Wild In The Streets”. Although I was never in any danger, I was concerned about getting caught in the middle of some sort of fracas where I could wind up getting robbed. Nevertheless, it was quite unnerving to see soldiers brandishing automatic weapons careening through the shuttered streets in jeeps and lorries after rampaging mobs.

Unemployment is high in Kakamega, 7-8 hours northwest of Nairobi, a rural agricultural town that is the capitol of the Western province and one of the two traditional homes of the Luhya tribe. Nearly every able-bodied Luhya male in their 20s and 30s work as boda-bodas (bicyclists who ferry people). They’re lucky if they earn 10 bob a day, a mere pittance. They number in the hundreds and when combined with the Luo bodas in Kisumu, an hour to the south, they easily number in the thousands, an instantaneous street army for the opposition. Kisumu is Kenya’s third largest city and the heart of the opposition thus it saw more than of its share of election violence. According to the newspaper, over 70 per cent of Kenya’s population is under the age of 30. With agricultural land scarce, these men have little opportunity to put food on the table, much less provide for a family. With no jobs or hopes for a positive future and historical inequalities piling up by the decade, they have absolutely nothing to lose. I can’t help but think of Langston Hughes’ poem:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore–
And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?
Or crust and sugar over–
like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags
like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

Kenya’s raisins of politically instigated tribal violence have been exploded in the past, during the 1992 and 1997 elections which were mostly concentrated in upper Rift and on the coast, but nothing near the scale of the current violence. I can only hope that the ongoing Kofi Annan-brokered meditation talks will yield concrete results.

Thirteen of us from our ten-week training group had come together for Christmas/New Year’s Eve, spending several nights in the Kakamega Forest. The election took place on the 27th and due to travel restrictions, those who came from other provinces had to stay until the 30th. By then, the country was in flames and Peace Corps was frantically consolidating all Volunteers together in specific safe houses. We would eventually spend a number of days cooped up in the immediate vicinity of a two-bedroom house. For the first few nights, we sat outside and listened to the rattle of gunfire a few dozen yards away. Evenings were rent with orange flames from the torched houses, dukas, and churches. Barricades of burning tires punctuated the horizon here and there. Standing on a ridge above town, I watched with a churning stomach as howls of vengeance stalked the fields of Kakamega. The warm, gregarious Kenya I had greeted upon arrival in September was gone, immolated by the powers that be for want of hegemony and avarice. Twelve people would be shot dead by the police and GSU but that tally was from weeks ago. It’s undoubtedly increased since then.

On January 5th, the 13 of us were airlifted from Kakamega to Kisumu where we boarded charter flights to Dar es Salaam, Tanzania (At the air strip in Kakamega, we encountered local Luhya who were flying into Nairobi, directly into the maelstrom then engulfing the city. When asked why, they said they were going to “defend the country” by voicing their dissent peacefully in the streets. I was deeply moved by this and only wish people in America had the same passion for defending the Constitution as these people did). Freed from the confines of our respective consolidation sites, approximately 35 of us Volunteers from the Western, Nyanza, and Rift Valley regions were ensconced at a Club Med hotel on the Indian Ocean (while another 35 from the same provinces were consolidated in Nyeri). It was surreal to go from murderous bedlam to the quiet serenity of the proverbial bath-water warm turquoise sea. We drank and caroused with nihilistic fury, it was the only avenue of release we had. Some of us had seen people die in Kisumu. As most of us were traveling away from our sites when we were first consolidated in Kenya, we only had a few changes of clothing. All our personal belongings were left behind. One of my friends only had a few days of clothing suitable for the tropics; she returned home to Minneapolis to minus 40 degree weather wearing the same clothes.

As we bronzed ourselves by day and imbibed by night, hundreds of people were being hacked to death in western Kenya. It was a helpless feeling to watch news clips of the violence on television and equally discomfiting to realize that we Volunteers had the luxury of leaving this nightmare. Kenyans couldn’t. We get to leave, they have to stay and watch their country unravel. After ten days of uncertainty under this brutal equatorial sun, Peace Corps ultimately decided that considering the overall instability of our affected provinces it would be best for us to terminate our service and return to the States.

For those of us who had already been in country over a year, this was difficult to accept. There would be no farewell to the friends, families, communities, towns that one had spent considerable time and energy getting to know. Romantic relationships between Volunteers and Kenyans were sundered. Closure was denied and a one-way ticket home to America was the only consolation prize. I can’t even imagine how my fellow Deaf Education teachers must have felt, the ones who had already been in country a year now. They never got to say good-bye to the kids they had taught and nurtured for months. I never even got to step inside my classroom as I was evacuated two days before I was to start teaching. I had spent months learning KSL. Who am I going to sign to now?

My last day as a Peace Corps volunteer was Saturday, January 19. The majority of us in Dar es Salaam flew home. Instead of accepting a plane ticket, I chose to cash out in lieu. After bidding adieu to good people whom I had been with continuously since September, I took the road as my bride. Cities that I’ve bedded lie strewn behind me: Dar es Salaam, Stone Town and Kendwa in Zanzibar, Nyali and Likoni and Tiwi in Mombassa, Kilifi, Malindi, and now, Lamu. A year ago, I was teaching high school in L.A., putting unruly students in headlocks, wrestling with the dichotomy between ASL and print English, and listening to lots of Sunn O)). I’m now broke, jobless, homeless, blowing the last of my money on alcohol, and rewinding these scars. I know not where the road takes me but for now wherever I place my head is what I’ll call home.

Kwaheri, Kenya.

As of Friday, February 8, for the first time since commencing operations almost forty-five years ago, the U.S. Peace Corps no longer has a presence in Kenya. A total of 144 Volunteers in all were removed. Although this suspension is temporary, full reactivation of operations will be contingent upon the political situation in Kenya.

Allen Neece is an asiyesikia in exile.