Word: kikuyu
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...clear, sunny afternoon this May, 16 months after the nation erupted in a tribal bloodbath, Kenya buried the last of its dead. The violence in early 2008 claimed 1,133 lives and displaced 350,000. Its terrible climax came on New Year's Day in the largely Kikuyu village of Kiambaa in the northern Rift Valley, when a Kalenjin mob surrounded a tiny village church where a few hundred people were sheltering, freed those who gave up cell phones or money or sex, closed the doors, heaped mattresses and dry maize leaves against them and set them alight. Thirty-eight...
John Githongo is an unlikely hero. The son of a patrician Kikuyu family - his father was accountant to Kenya's first President, Jomo Kenyatta - Githongo grew up in Nairobi's leafy suburbs, went to the best schools and studied abroad. He enjoyed privileges that 95% of Kenyans can only dream of. In 2003, on the strength of that background, Githongo was appointed his country's anti-corruption czar...
...understand the forces underlying it - to recognize that Kenya's near-death experience was caused not by ethnicity alone, but by its toxic mix with politics. Because Kenya's constitution vests disproportionate powers in the presidency, the ethnic group to which a President belongs - in Kibaki's case, the Kikuyu - has typically been seen as the beneficiary of unequal access to justice and economic opportunity. Combine this with a corrupt political élite given to extravagant displays of consumption, and it is no wonder that powerful resentments have built up in Kenyan society, not least among the Luo who backed...
December's election saw incumbent President Mwai Kibaki, who belongs to the Kikuyu tribe, defeat opposition leader Raila Odinga, a Luo, in a contest that opposition supporters said was rigged. Kenyans, who often vote along tribal lines, then found themselves caught in ethnic clashes marked by swinging machetes, soaring stones and flying arrows that have left hundreds dead. Hospitals and morgues saw instance after instance of victims with arrows lodged in their heads and chests. A peace deal was struck Thursday between Kibaki and Odinga, establishing a coalition government. But some Kenyans fear the violence is not yet over, blaming...
...about an hour's drive - first on potholed asphalt roads then on a rutted dirt track into the village of Kogelo - from the city of Kisumu, the center of opposition support, standing on the shores of Lake Victoria. The population here is Luo, arch-rivals of President Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe. Angry mobs torched shops, bars and garages belonging to Kikuyu businessmen and forced their families to board buses for their tribal homelands in Central Kenya. In spite of the apparent political breakthrough in the capital Nairobi, the anger remains even if the mobs have been called...