Testimony of Elizabeth Karanja

January 10, 2008

Missionary Bill Kuert sent this first person account from Elizabeth Karanja. Her husband, John, is the principal of East Africa School of Theology in Nairobi, where she works as the receptionist. It will help you sense a bit of what it is like for the Africans who are enduring this crisis. John and Elizabeth have family members who were caught in a wave of violence in western Kenya.

Elizabeth Karanja: On Friday after the election, my sister called to tell me that the area where my uncle lived was becoming very tense. He was convinced that anything could happen. I called my uncle and he said, “We can hear people screaming in the distance. It isn’t safe to sleep in the house.”

By the next morning the situation had eased, but it wasn’t a lasting calm. John’s mother and brother live near my uncle. John called them, and his sister-in-law said that they were preparing to leave the house because tension was mounting again.

On Sunday the attackers started burning houses in the area, forcing everyone to flee. Our family members gathered with others at a local shopping center. My uncle told me, “They are torching houses in my neighborhood. My house is burned.” We also learned that John’s brother’s house was destroyed by fire.

Around 9 p.m. John’s sister-in-law called on her cell phone. “They are now ready to attack us,” she said. “Please pray for us. We are besieged, and we cannot run away. They are surrounding us.” All John and I could do was pray and ask God to perform a miracle.

The attackers came to the shopping center with bows and arrows and stones. They fought for the better part of the night until they ran out of arrows. Early the next morning they returned with more arrows and fought until around 10 a.m.

Overwhelmed, our family and the rest of the Kikuyu group started to run away, leaving everything they had carried from their houses the previous night. The attackers burned the entire shopping center and everything in it.

When I called my uncle’s cell phone, he said, “Things are so bad. Things are so bad. I’m almost in their hands.” Then the phone went dead. My husband could not reach his family, and we feared all of them had been killed.

We learned later that during this critical time my uncle asked his children to run away and leave him to die alone. The children said, “Dad, if it means dying, we will die together. We cannot leave you.”

Together they fled, but soon my mother-in-law—who is more than 80 years old—got too tired to run anymore. She sat down in a cornfield and stayed there alone until Tuesday afternoon. Risking his safety, John’s brother went back to look for her. Miraculously he found her, and they went to a refugee camp set up at another small shopping center where the rest of the family was waiting. By God’s grace, all of our family survived the ordeal.

For nearly a week they could not go anywhere because the roads were blocked and no vehicles could get through with help of any kind. Eventually, buses and lorries were able bringing people to the Nakuru show ground where they are now receiving help.

People from all over the North Rift and western part of Kenya are staying at camps, out in the open under the scorching sun. At night they sleep outdoors in the cold. Children are in danger of getting sick because of poor conditions, and sanitation is an issue. A look of despair is etched on the faces of parents. Young people are devastated, their dreams shattered.

Please pray that God will visit our beloved country and stop this brutality against humanity.

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