THE ELECTION INFLUENCE ON OUR DEAF CHILDREN

Date: 24Th December 2007

Kenya holds its general elections after every five years. It’s been five
years now since we elected a new president and the strongest opposition
party want him gone!

Christmas this year will  be like no other! In past years we always vote
before Christmas but this year the elections will be held on the 27Th of
December! There is a lot of tension in the country and the politicians are
doing nothing but campaigning day in day out! There are posters of aspiring
politicians in every direction that you look.Suppoters of different
candidates have now changed their dressing code and they now wear
T-shirts,shirts,caps etc with the names and pictures of their favourite
candidate.
The walls of every public place are coated will posters, the streets have
become dirty because the papers are falling off the walls and are flying
all over the place when the wind blows.

There is a lot of anxiety especially in Kibera slum, one reason is because
it is the biggest slum in the country and there are a lot of people living
there, another reason is because there are a lot of different ethnic groups
coming from that slum and it is believed that each tribe wants a president
who is from the same ethnic group like them. It seems like the two main
rival tribes in the country right now are the Kikuyu and the Lou the
current president is a Kikuyu and the strongest opposition leader who wants
to take over him is a Lou! 

Most of the land in Kibera slum is owned by the Kikuyu but most of the
tenants are Luo, rumour has it that now the Luo have issued threats and
said that if a man from their tribe becomes the president, they will grab
the land from the Kikuyu and they will not pay a penny! I cannot confirm if
this is true it’s probably speculation from the slum dwellers.

Each day families including families of our deaf children are moving out of
the major slums and going upcountry with all their belongings for fear of
what will happen after the elections or during the Election Day, there have
been a lot of election violence and many of our deaf children living in the
slums have been heavily affected! We have a girl whose name is Riziki,she
has two twin brothers and a while ago there was some violence in the slum
and the police used tear gas to disperse a crowd of civilians that had
gathered in one place unfortunately one of the teargas landed near Riziki’s
house and it has greatly affected her siblings and they had to be admitted
in hospital! This is just but a simple example.

Today is the last day for the politicians to campaign, the three major
politicians fighting to be presidents have held rallies in the city and
huge numbers of people have attended these functions.

My biggest worry as of now is whether our deaf children living in the major
slums will come back next year or not. This will somehow be determined by
the elections outcome. The elections will be held on Thursday this week and
we are all hoping that they will  be peaceful and fair! We have heard
stories of violence erupting in the slums and we are all hoping and praying
that nothing bad will happen during this year’s elections.