Friday, January 25, 2008

Today's 411 on Kenya

We have several members of our church community that are originally from Kenya and the Presbyterian Church of East Africa. For weeks now we've prayed with them for the elections that took place on December 27th, and since then for peace to emerge from the contested election and emerging actions of genocide.

A friend Tara Taylor also shares a lot of updates regarding Kenya as she has worked there through the church and gone there several times to both learn and do music.
She emailed today with some updates on what is happening.

BBC reports a bit of encouraging news today Kofi Annan (the former General Secretary of the United Nations) is there now and for the first time, the two rivals (Kibaki and Odinga) met face to face to discuss a resolution to the issues. Both are calling for peace, and asking Kenyans to remain calm. This is a huge first step. More talks are to be held, and the issue is far from over. There are still spots of violence around the country (Kisumu, Mombasa , Kibera/Nairobi), and more people being killed/displaced. Incidents of rape have more than doubled between Dec. 1st and now (women and children are extremely vulnerable living en masse in temporary shelters). More than 250,000 people remain displaced and in dire need of shelter and food (children are particularly vulnerable to malnourishment with a shortage of milk in refugee camps).

Here's other online Articles

The Standard (Kenyan Paper)
The Daily Nation (Kenyan Paper)

I'll do some online research to see how you might be able to help bring peace, reconciliation and restore wholeness through the gifts of your time, money and/or prayers.

(scroll down to find the article
about Kenyan refugees relocating to Uganda)

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