President Kibaki recently stated that recessionary global trends were bound to hit Kenya.
The Kenyan government forecast a 4.5 percent to 6 percent gross domestic product growth in 2008,
down from 7 percent the previous year.
This is a result of the negative impact on the economy the bloody postelection crisis has had,
which displaced over 350,000 people at its height.
No one bothered to mention the 84,090 IDPs [internally displaced persons] still displaced as a result of voting for his government,
left with nothing, living in squalid conditions, abandoned by the government which they elected.
Jane Wanjiku tells us about her situation still living in Hemland IDP Camp in Naivasha, Kenya,
one year after the violence erupted.
Now, my fellow Kenyans, what are we to do and we are in our home country?
We need to help each other.
It would be better if they give us to another country to be refugees there.
We could see how life would be there.
Life might be even better than here in Kenya.
We are like refugees from a foreign country.
And it is very bad to be refugees in your own country.
So we think it's better to go to another country.
Our children are now educated.
This is because, before, we were able to educate our children, because we were self-reliant.
Now, they can't get jobs and we cannot afford to send them to college.
Sometimes we ask God about our troubles here on Earth.
It's better to die because then, you leave all your problems behind, right?
Now we question the government, who is asking us to leave for KSH10,000 [U.S.$120]
Where can we go?
How will the lives of our children be?
Because we all have been on the run since 1982.
That's when election violence began, up until now.
We are asking ourselves, shall we go? Start renting houses?
The land we were farming on belonged to the Maasai.
That was the land we were chased from.
Where will we rent land if we go back?
We were renting the Maasai's houses. They won't rent us houses anymore.
We are living like the homeless.
This is a punishment.
The government wants to punish us, but where does it expect us to go?
Can you help me please?
I need to say "please."
When I talk about it, I feel such sadness
and angst.
When I reflect on how my life used to be,
and how it is now,
I ask myself, what is next from here?
I have already seen the beginning of my life.
Now I am asking myself, how will the end be?