Kenya's rising violence hampers relief effort

Jane, a 14-year-old Aids orphan, left Nairobi at 6am to make the journey through the Rift Valley, the most dangerous and unpredictable part of Kenya where scores of people have been killed, including five burned in their cars and a man who was beheaded. Jane's relatives wait anxiously all afternoon.

Finally, at 5pm, Jane's transport pulls up and Wilfrida, an emaciated 71-year-old, buries her head in Jane's chest and weeps tears of joy: "Jane, you are safe! I am so happy to see you."

Jane smiles and replies: "I'm so happy to be home, to see my grandmother alive, to see my grandfather who takes care of us, and all our neighbours. I was worried they had burned down our house but I can see that it is just the way I left it."

The thatched mud hut with its peeling Manchester United calendar on the wall, its grass mats for sleeping neatly rolled up, and its clapped-out sofa is just how we had found it, too, when we interviewed Jane two months ago for the Evening Standard's Christmas Appeal.

In the intervening period, our readers, responding to Jane's plight and to those like her, donated a remarkable £180,000 to Plan International, the charity working to transform desperately poor rural schools and help pupils like Jane.

But those funds have yet to be deployed as unprecedented post-election violence has engulfed Kenya. Up to 900 people have been killed and more than 250,000 displaced as the country splits on tribal lines. Former UN chief Kofi Annan has begun talks between the incumbent president Mwai Kibaki and the opposition leader Raila Odinga. But the violence has been heightened by the killing of an opposition MP Mugabe Were.

Mr Annan has said that said although short-term political issues could be solved in four weeks, full talks could take a year. But as soon as some sort of peace returns to the country, some of the money raised by Standard readers can be used to transform life at Jane Awino's school, Alungo Primary, where, despite losing both her parents to Aids by the age of eight, she is one of the brightest students.

Though nothing in her village appears to have changed, the vicious fighting has altered everything. Especially Jane.

But it is only when we step into her hut and gather on the ancient sofa that Jane alludes to the ordeal she has been through. "In Nairobi I saw lots of people killed," she says softly, looking away.

In the Kasarani slum-estate where Jane and her 12-year-old sister Rose were staying with their aunt Eunice and uncle Peter the killing started, she says, on the week of 5 January.

"Until then we had seen people killed on the TV, and the mood was low but there was no problem in our neighbourhood. But one night we heard people screaming. We looked out and saw men banging on the doors of our neighbours, dragging out the men and brutally beating them with clubs and pangas. We ran with my aunt and uncle to their friends in another area where there are flats with strong doors where it would be safe to hide. "The next morning we returned to my aunt's and I watched them take out four dead bodies from our neighbours' houses and carry them to the mortuary. There was blood everywhere. I have seen dead bodies before because I lost my mother and my fatherbut that was the first time I saw people killed in that horrible way.

"After that night it got worse: Kikuyus were killing Luos; Luos were killing Kikuyus. In the day it was safe but they were killing at night and at dawn. I was so scared, I thought they would come for us. We had to cook early every evening and then go and hide in my aunt's friend's bedroom, sleeping on mattresses on the floor. My sister got sick: she had headaches, stomach convulsions and vomiting. I had headaches, too. And nightmares.

"My aunt said to me: 'This is Somalia, this is Uganda, this is Rwanda - this is not Kenya!' Even me, I cannot imagine Kenyans behaving like this."

Their trip to Nairobi had started with such promise. As soon as end-of-year tests had been sat, exam papers marked (Jane came seventh out of 35 and "passed with flying colours", her headteacher said), and schools shut for the holidays, Jane and Rose caught the cross-country bus to Nairobi. It was 10 December.

"In Nairobi we were thrilled to see things we don't see here at home, like TV and big buildings. On Christmas Day it was my cousin's birthday, so there was a party. There was cake, groundnuts, popcorn, chicken, juice and biscuits. It was a real feast. I have never had a birthday party since my mum died, so it was great.

"With the election on 27 December, people were excited to vote. My family was hoping for a change of president, somebody to help poor people and not just Kikuyus. We liked Raila [Odinga]; he is a brilliant Luo. My aunt had promised to take us to Uhuru Park entertainment centre on New Year's Day but the violence erupted so we never got to go."

JANE'S thoughts immediately turned to her family in western Kenya. "We heard on the radio on 29 December that people were being killed in Kisumu, that shops and houses were burning. I wanted to come home to make sure my grandmother was safe, but also I was afraid, and then they told us there were no buses, that it was too dangerous, that people would attack us on the way, that we had to sit it out in Nairobi."

The next week their estate became a killing field. After that, it was a battle for survival, and to make it worse, food shortages set in. "Some days all we had was tea, other days it was just cabbage - that is why I have reduced so much," says Jane, referring to her worrying loss of weight.

On 14 January, one week later than scheduled, pupils countrywide began to return to school in dribs and drabs. Seeing her peers in their uniforms made Jane feel "frustrated and homesick", but the cross-country buses still weren't operating. Three days later, Odinga's Orange Democratic Party called for "mass demonstrations" and the schools, threatened with arson, closed again.

Only this week, with the arrival of Mr Annan have cross-country bus services resumed.

Jane's uncle booked her a seat directly behind the driver for the 250-mile journey from Nairobi to Kisumu, and then on, by matatu taxi, to her village on Lake Victoria. Their trip would take them through the epicentre of the worst clashes in the ethnically mixed Rift Valley, near to Molo town where youths chanting war cries barricaded all roads leading in and out before killing five people and dumping their bodies by the side of the road.

"We are going from fire to water," their driver said soberly, as they headed north through Nakuru before turning west into the Rift Valley. Up ahead, there were police roadblocks and some pitiful sights as they passed 13-ton trucks piled high with fleeing displaced families, up to 40 men, women and children sitting atop piles of mattresses, bicycles and all their worldly possessions.

On the outskirts of Kisumu, Jane saw burned-out petrol stations and looted shops and houses, but by now, with the Alungo Hills of home beckoning, she could barely contain her excitement.

Spilling out of her transport to hug her grandmother in the late afternoon sun, Jane looks different in other ways, too. She is taller and slimmer, yes, but she is wearing new clothes - sparkly sandals, a brown corduroy skirt, a smart top, a shell necklace, a new watch - and her nails are polished bright pink.

Compared with when I'd seen her in November, she appears like a young girl who has had some much-needed parenting. "You can see she has grown in confidence from having been to the big city," her 35-year-old uncle, Ali Bhuttoh, says approvingly.

"Look what Aunt Eunice bought us," Jane exclaims, unwrapping a compact cardboard box to reveal cooking fat, bags of sugar, salt and soap, but holding up, triumphantly, a file and a pristine exercise book neatly covered in brown paper for her new academic year.

"I am ready to start school tomorrow," she announces. But deputy headteacher Laban Obonyo, who has dropped by, tells her that because of the uncertainty around the mass demonstrations, the schools are closed until further notice. "We were not expecting this," responds Jane, forlornly. "The syllabus has to be covered; I am worried to get behind in my work."

With Plan's funds raised from Evening Standard readers still being cleared, we arrange for Laban, a trained counsellor as well as a teacher, to give Jane and Rose some much-needed posttraumatic counselling and private tuition. Jane beams appreciatively.

"OK, but now I am very hungry," says her grandmother, "the last proper meal I had was one week ago." Jane takes her tiny, bony hand. "I am hungry, too," she says, "let me go see if our grandfather has some fish from the lake for us to cook."