ICC, PEV and all other abbreviations

Recently, I sat and listened to a young 22-year-old Kenyan woman retell her story of 2008. I do not recall how the topic came up but it did. She (let's call her Heal in this story) was born in Eldoret.

Her businessman father bought land in Ugunja, Siaya and set up home there from age 5. She assimilated and imbibed the Siaya culture and speaks the local language with a distinct Ugenya accent.

After she did her Standard Eight examinations, she was happy to be admitted to the school of her dreams, Kisumu Girls High School.

It was during the December holidays while she was in Form One that Kenyans voted and descended into the barbarism that we today abbreviate as PEV. When things cooled down in Kisumu, she went back to school, but could not be re-admitted.

"I was told that my place had been given to another girl who my people had expelled from the other parts of the country. That I should go and find a school among my people."

Ouch! To a 15-year-old Form Two child, how callous? She ended up going to a school in Thika among 'her people' where by her own admission, she did not fit in at all.

Fast forward to 2015: this young lady still lives in Kisumu where she was recounting this story. She did not sound bitter even though she says every time she passes by Kisumu Girls she feels that there was something denied her that was her birthright.

The question that lingers is, how do the prayers currently being held nationwide, the accusations and counter accusations, the name calling and dismissals help Heal?

For those who are still in camps; those displaced to date; those who lost loved ones; those who killed, maimed and raped, will these prayers bring closure?

If the case at ICC is dismissed as requested by the defence, will those who suffered trauma find peace. We know that those who survived the pain in Nazi concentration camps carried the trauma of their ordeal to the end of their lives.

There are those who chose to deal with their trauma quietly yet there are others who spent their entire lives hunting down the perpetrators of the atrocities. There were vigilant groups who tracked down tormentors and killed them as a way of finding peace. Yet there were those who took less dangerous routes to recovery.

Why do we delude ourselves that healing will come from letting the perpetrators of crime go free?

There are those who witnessed grave inhumanity meted out on people they loved, will they just continue living in the name of national healing? Even if we do not desire to deal with the injustices judicially, could we at least address the post traumatic stress disorders that will inevitably arise in the country?

It would be foolhardy to believe that we can gloss over the effects of that mayhem. That is a national lie. After the 1996 genocide, Rwanda devised a practical way of finding healing.

In Kenya, we pretend that no atrocities happened.