Kenya:

" . . . Now Kenya's ethnic clashes have landed the two men -- one a Kikuyu of the tribe of President Mwai Kibaki, the other a Luo like opposition leader Raila Odinga -- in hospital. There, thanks to a shortage of space in the midst of a flood of violent injuries, they share the same bed." [1]

Leads don't get any better than that.

The story may say what one knows intuitively (for example, "Resentment of the Kikuyu stems even further back, to perceptions that they were favoured by colonial power Britain and -- as shrewd businessmen and women -- then emerged from the country's 42 tribes as the most influential, analysts say"), but it is all the more entertaining for that.

For this blog, the politics of division along blood lines--even when such numbers in the millions and relationships across any given "house" involves primarily hosts of strangers, that as opposed to a relative handful of boys (and disgruntled men) in the 'hood--seems indicative of conflict across the Horn of Africa: not Marxists, not the demagogues of democracy, not Islamists, not even warlords can take the credit here--it is simply "my people" and, derisively, "your kind."

"It has been devastating," he said. "The change has happened so quickly. We lived with these people and we shared our lives together. We never imagined that they harboured so much hatred."

Quick: Kikuyu? Luo? Luhya? Kalenjin?

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1. Lewis, David.  "FEATURE--History looms behind Kenyan crisis."  Reuters AlertNet, February 7, 2008.

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Correspondence: James S. Oppenheim

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