KENYA:It's calmer, but the ethnic cleansing is continuing, writes Rob Crilly, in Kericho, Rift Valley
A cardboard box crammed with clothes, pots and a little maize meal was about all that was visible of 12-year-old Maura Zena as she trudged through the neat rows of tea bushes that line Kericho's rolling hills.
"We were given 48 hours to get out," she said yesterday, tilting her head to balance her load as she kept walking. "That ran out last night. Now we are frightened, very, very frightened." She has been caught up in the wave of ethnic violence that has swept Kenya following disputed elections.
The clashes may have calmed but around Kericho the ethnic cleansing continues.
Thousands of members of the Kisii and Kikuyu tribes are fleeing the town for their tribal homelands to escape threats from the local Kalenjin population, who accuse them of supporting the controversial re-election of President Mwai Kibaki.
Meanwhile, opposition leaders called off demonstrations due to take place today which many feared would unleash a new wave of violence.
Raila Odinga, who is demanding that Mr Kibaki stands aside, told followers not to take to the streets after meeting Jendayi Frazer, Washington's top Africa official. "We are now assured that the mediation process is about to start," he said. According to the president's office, Mr Kibaki has invited Mr Odinga to talks on Friday aimed at ending the crisis.
The police say that 600 people have died in the violence - up from the previous figure of 350. About 250,000 people have fled their homes in clashes between rival political supporters, ethnic groups and the police.
Some of the worst violence was in the western Rift Valley, around the famous tea plantations of Kericho. Hundreds of opposition supporters invaded the vast tea farms last week burning the neat homes of plantation workers and destroying equipment.
Uniliver - which produces leaves for its PG Tips and Lipton brands in the gently rolling hills around Kericho - said that at least 11 people were killed on its estates.
Maura, whose Kisii family worked as tea pluckers, was heading for the town centre yesterday where thousands of people had converged seeking safety and a ride home. She had been threatened by fellow workers from other tribes.
All day, buses, trucks and tractors with trailers arrived to collect mothers carrying babies and men with mattresses tucked under their arms.
Kip-Utich Kaptich, technical, development and corporate director of Unilever Tea Kenya, said production on the estate would resume once workers felt it was safe enough to return.
For now, the company is helping them head home.
"With numbers swelling in the town we had to provide transport to return them to their homes," Kaptich said. "The priority was to protect the safety of our workers." No one could move until the weekend when police managed to clear roadblocks around the town.
Margaret Bosiri has been sleeping under the stars waiting for a ride home since last week.
She had to watch as hundreds of attackers armed with pangas - the Kenyan machete - and bows and arrows swept through the farm where she lived.
"They followed me into my house with pangas. They took all our valuables - radio, chairs even the mattress," she said. The gang piled up her cushions in the centre of the house, doused them with paraffin and set her little house alight.
She fled with her children to a church in the centre of town, where they now sleep on a tiny patch of grass.
"I will return when things are normal, but I don't know when that will be," she said.
The Red Cross estimates some 30,000 people have fled their homes here.
Richard Barchok, chairman of the local branch, said they were desperately short of shelter, clothing and food.
"The main problem is young kids sleeping in the open," he said. "If we have rain soon - and we expect it in the next couple of weeks - then we are concerned about pneumonia and other diseases."