THE Archbishop of York, Dr Sentamu, was due to fly out to the troubled country of Kenya last night for a four-day visit, with the encouragement of the Archbishop of Kenya, the Most Revd Benjamin Nzimbi. The trip has two purposes: to be a fact-finding visit, and an expression of solidarity with, and prayer for, the Kenyan people.

The visit was arranged after a long phone conversation with Archbishop Nzimbi, when it was agreed that it would be helpful. Church leaders in Kenya still appear to be at odds about the best way forward in the conflict.

The Bishop of Mbeere, the Rt Revd Gideon Ireri, in eastern Kenya, told Ecumenical News International on Tuesday that he had serious concerns that the Church was not speaking with one voice.

A delegation from the World Council of Churches in Kenya said this week that political leaders in Kenya believed that the Church there had taken a partisan approach, and were not keen that it should be involved in the mediating process.

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Most Kenyans have a strong faith. The majority are Christian with a considerable Muslim minority. But, some Kenyans are becoming increasingly upset with church leaders and are criticising them for letting their ethnic allegiances get in the way of promoting peace.

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The road from Eldoret to Kericho used to be one of the prettiest drives in Kenya, a ribbon of asphalt threading through lush tea farms, bushy sugar cane and green humpbacked hills. Now it is a gantlet of machete-wielding teenagers, some chewing stalks of sugar cane, others stumbling drunk.

On Friday there were no fewer than 20 checkpoints in the span of 100 miles, and at each barricade – a downed telephone pole, a gnarled tree stump – mobs of rowdy young men jumped in front of cars, yanked at door handles and pulled out knives.

Their actions did not seem to be motivated by ethnic tension, like much of the violence that has killed more than 800 people in Kenya since a flawed election in December.

It was much simpler than that.

“Give us money,” demanded one young man who stood defiantly in the road with a bow in his hands and a quiver of poisoned arrows on his back.

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The top American diplomat for Africa said Wednesday that some of the violence that has swept across Kenya in the past month has been ethnic cleansing intended to drive people from their homes, but that it should not be considered genocide.

Jendayi Frazer, the assistant secretary of state for African affairs, who visited some of the conflict-torn areas this month, said she had met with victims of the violence who described being ordered off their land.

“If they left, they were not attacked; if they stayed beyond the deadline, they were attacked,” said Ms. Frazer, while attending an African Union meeting in Ethiopia on Wednesday. “It is a plan to push people out of the area in the Rift Valley.”

The Rift Valley, one of the most beautiful slices of Africa, has been the epicenter of Kenya’s postelection problems and is home to ethnic groups that have long felt others do not belong.

The violence, fueled by decades-old tensions over access to wealth and power, exploded on Dec. 30, after the electoral commission said the incumbent president, Mwai Kibaki, won an election that observers said was deeply flawed. Ethnic groups like the Kalenjin, who were supporting Kenya’s top opposition leader, Raila Odinga, burned down homes and hacked to death Kikuyus, Mr. Kibaki’s ethnic group.

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The Anglican Church of Kenya has expressed fears of violence during the countrywide mass action called for next week by ODM leaders.

Consequently, the Church appealed to would-be demonstrators to avoid violence and police to shun use of live bullets to avoid loss of lives.

“We are not against the idea of mass action but our fear is that some people may use the event to engage in violence and to loot property,” the ACK Archbishop Benjamin Nzimbi, told a press conference at the church headquarters in Nairobi.

“The law enforcers should provide security without excessive force. They should not use live bullets on the people and must avoid being partisan,” said Archbishop Nzimbi who read the statement the bishops had prepared after their two-day meeting.

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Kenya’s bishops have called for an investigation into claims of malpractice in the country’s recent disputed elections in a strongly worded statement that was apparently strengthened under pressure from the religious community.

The original document, sent on 2 January, expressed “deep sorrow and concern at the outbreak of violence and the breakdown of law and order”, and appealed to Kenyans to pray and “to refrain from violence and from the senseless killing of our brothers and sisters”.

Hours later the Catholic Information Service Africa (CISA) sent out a revised version that contained five more paragraphs and was prefaced with an apology for having sent out “a mutilated copy” of the bishops’ letter. “One full page was missing! Our only excuse is that this is an emergency service. Our journalists, who went home for Christmas and voting, are still stranded in their home areas.”

In the added paragraphs the bishops call for restraint among the security forces, dialogue and “independent mediation if need be” between the election winner, President Mwai Kibaki (a Catholic) and his opponent, Raila Odinga. The bishops also call for an investigation into claims of electoral malpractice, which, they said, could merit the establishment of an independent commission “to audit and review the tallying of the Parliamentary and Presidential polls”.

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The United Kingdom pushed for a repeat presidential election as President Kibaki and Orange Democratic Movement’s Mr Raila Odinga, appeared to edge closer to the dialogue table, on the eve of the arrival of Ghanaian President Mr John Kuffuor.

Monday night, Kibaki ”” in a dispatch to newsrooms by the Presidential Press Service ”” invited Raila and five other members of his party to a meeting on Friday at 2.30pm “to dialogue on the stoppage of violence, consolidation of peace and national reconciliation”. Also invited are nine senior clergymen.

Earlier, Raila had raised expectations for a quick political settlement when he said ODM was ready for negotiations and dialogue to break the post-election impasse.

In the same vein, the party called off countrywide protest rallies planned for Tuesday to allow mediation talks to be conducted in an atmosphere of peace.

The party dropped preconditions it had earlier set ”” which included that President Kibaki steps down ”” as a prerequisite for the talks.

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This thing called Kenya is a strange animal. In the 1960s, the bright young nationalists who took over the country when we got independence from the British believed that their first job was to eradicate “tribalism.” What they really meant, in a way, was that they wanted to eradicate the nations that made up Kenya. It was assumed that the process would end with the birth of a brand-new being: the Kenyan.

Compared with other African nations, Kenya has had significant success with this experiment. But it has not been without its contradictions, though they had never really turned lethal until now.

Our Kenyan identity, so deliberately formed in the test tube of nationalist effort, has over the years been undermined, subtly and not so subtly, by our leaders – men who appealed to our histories and loyalties to win our votes.

You see, the burning houses and the bloody attacks here do not reflect primordial hatreds. They reflect the manipulation of identity for political gain.

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Update: The local paper has an editorial on Kenya also.

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His Holiness Pope Benedict XVI has followed with deep sorrow and concern the violence which has broken out in your country, and he has asked me to address this letter to you, in your capacity as the President of the Kenya Episcopal Conference, in order to express his unity and solidarity with your Brother Bishops and all your countrymen, and to assure you of his prayers that this great tragedy will soon come to an end.

The Pope is close in spirit to all the victims of this violence: the many persons who have lost their lives, often atrociously, the grieving members of their families, the wounded, those who are dispossessed or had to abandon their homes, and all those who are threatened and living in fear. Entrusting those who have died to the Lord’s mercy, he invites you to reach out generously to all those in distress and need.

It is His Holiness’s heartfelt hope that this beloved Nation, whose experience of social tranquility and development represents an element of stability in the entire troubled region, will banish as quickly as possible the threat of ethnic conflict which continues to result in so many crimes in certain parts of Africa.

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