It is almost a relief at Lake Flowers, a small farm in Naivasha, Kenya’s horticultural heartland, that the biggest problem they have at the moment is insect pests. Seven months after violent ethnic clashes brought the Rift Valley town to a standstill, many of the flower farms are having to deal with tiny mites that flourished in the conflict when fumigation labourers fled. “I’m still fighting spider mites and powdery mildew,” says Mahmud Abdullah, who runs Lake Flowers.
In late January, the epicentre of the violence moved down the Rift Valley into Naivasha. Ethnic militias, alleged to have been sponsored by senior members of Mwai Kibaki’s government, visited the town one Sunday morning. Going door-to-door, the gangs first forcibly recruited members of the president’s Kikuyu community and used them to identify and hunt down opposition leader Raila Odinga’s Luo community in reprisal attacks for violence against the Kikuyu in other parts of the country. By the end of it, scores were dead and many more injured.
