AIM AIR responds in Kenya's post-election crisis

On Thursday, 27 December 2007, Kenya held national elections. They happen every five years. There is often some trouble, but no one was prepared for or predicted what was to come. It was a very close election and there was controversy during the vote tallying. In the days that followed, pressure mounted as the Opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, remained ahead in the vote count. On Sunday evening, the sitting president, Mwai Kibaki, was declared the winner. An hour later, President Kibabki was hurriedly sworn in to a second term. The country immediately erupted in violence and outrage.

Our Kenya based pilots and mechanics live with their families a few miles from Nairobi’s city center. We also live within very close proximity, less than a mile, to the Kibera slum, one of Africa’s largest. One million people live there in horrible conditions. Kibera exploded. That Sunday evening and most of the next day, there were running battles with the police, gunfire, smoke from mobs setting buildings and tires ablaze, looting, and chaos. From our houses we could see the fires nearby and hear the gunfire which was often very close. Many of the pictures you have seen in the news are of roads and storefronts that we use and visit. None of our personnel have been harmed, but this has not been a distant event for us.

Sadly, what I have described in Nairobi has not been the worst violence. In Western Kenya, the home area of the Opposition, people from the President’s tribe were being massacred. In one instance that sent shock waves around the world, 50 women and children who were hiding in a church for protection were burned alive. A three year old girl escaped the flames but men grabbed her and threw her back into the fire where she died. At dawn on Tuesday morning, one of our pilots put on a bullet proof vest and drove to the hangar on his motorcycle to begin our evacuation flying from the Western Province. We waited for a lull in the gunfire and off he went. That was the beginning.

In the last week we have moved over 500 people, mainly women and children, from the hardest hit areas of Western Kenya. Our pilots are currently flying into these areas of madness and hatred every day. I have personally been on a number of these flights. One man, John Mwangi, told me that his family had been at home the night the election was announced. Very soon thereafter, young men came and began to beat on his house. He, along with his wife and two young daughters, ran into the forest as his house and small business were set on fire. When his family climbed aboard our aircraft, they were exhausted. They had found relative safety at the local police station, but for many days they had no food or water and were sleeping out in the open. It gets very cold there at night and the mosquitoes made life even more miserable. Once we were airborne, I saw on their faces a sense of relief I will never forget.

Largely we moved people who might be described as “the weak.” We moved mostly young children. We moved the elderly. On one flight I had several young teenage girls with severe polio in their legs. As I watched this particular group slowly make their way to the terminal building, it occurred to me that these were the people who couldn’t run away when the nightmare and horror became a reality. In the path of a bloodthirsty mob, these were the helpless.

As I write these words, the BBC is reporting 600 people dead and 250,000 displaced. The last couple of days have been better. Calm seems to be slowly returning to this land. However, the hatred and rage that has been on display here this last week has seriously damaged the image of Kenya as a stable, peaceful country in the midst of other war torn nations. Things like this were not supposed to happen here, but they have. Please join us in prayer for those affected by the violence and for Kenya’s leaders to make good and just decisions for the nation’s future.

Matt Olson
General Manager


Photo by AIM AIR pilot Dale Hamilton:
"I took this picture just yesterday along the main Eldoret-Nakuru road at a place appropriately named Burnt Forest"