“Kill two, get one free”
SYLVIA MUDEGU knew she was in grave danger in the violent aftermath of http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=2838’s disputed presidential election when there was a tremendous hammering on the door of her home.
As she heard the sound of wood breaking, she put her hand over the mouths of her children Esther, 18 months, and Rose, 3, and hid behind a curtain. “Don’t move. Don’t make a noise,” she whispered.
Minutes later the 20-year-old woman was begging for her life. http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=1707 wielding sticks and machetes poured into her house, a two-room tin-roofed shack in a malodorous slum on the eastern side of Nairobi, grabbed her hair and dragged her outside.
All around, she saw homes on fire and people fleeing as arsonists and looters tore through the slum taking vengeance on anyone perceived to have voted for President Mwai Kibaki.
Kibaki is a member of Kenya’s largest tribe, the Kikuyu, and the attackers went on the rampage believing he had stolen the election from his challenger, Raila Odinga, in order to stay in power for five more years. Odinga is the leader of the smaller Luo tribe. Mudegu knew what to expect next. The men from Odinga’s Luo tribe would rape her. With other women, she was taken to a stream by the edge of the slum.
“They raped even the old women,” she said. The screams went on and on. “One girl was 12, and at 12 you know how to scream loudest.”
Mudegu tried to speak with detachment. But a tear on her cheek gave away the fact that she, too, had been raped.
One of hundreds seeking refuge on a piece of wasteland after their homes had been torched, she sat in the open this weekend, surrounded by pots, pans and bags of clothing salvaged from destroyed homes.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/africa/article3137608.ece