5 Feb 2008



It's with great regret that we have come to learn that even neighbours turn against you in times of need. Despair engulfed the Kenyan community like an envelope in the wake of post-election violence. (One of a kind in the Kenyan history).

High hopes and expectations shown on each face during the electioneering period as Kenyans braced themselves for a political revolution from the older to the new generation but only to wake up in the face of violence that rocked every corner of Kenya.

Chaos erupted as properties were looted and hundred of lives lost. A group of Kenyans, many coming from one family left Kenya for Tanzania as people seeking refuge due to the chaos. All procedures required for travelling was cleared by the group. Our first stop was at Arusha for a week and while there immigration officers visited us and checked our papers to ascertain that all was well and later adviced us to go to Morogoro where we were to be given refugee status.

On reaching Chalinze police station we were blocked by the police who seemed to have erected a road-block just for us since they removed the road-block immediately after netting us and kept us for almost 4 hours at the station as the officers were going through our travelling documents. They escorted us to Central police station in Dar-es-Salaam reaching there past mid-night and again keeping us for another 2 hours.

All this time small children and their mothers had not eaten anything. Desparation engulfed us like darkness after sunset and all our hopes were gone since our passports and travelling documents had been seized byt the police. After a week in Dar-es-Salaam they finally gave us back our passports and travelling documents and immigration officers in Dar-es-Salaam adviced us to go back to Arusha and get the refugee status there, but we realised that this was a game the immigration officers and the police were playing with us since they were claiming that the refugee camp had already been set up for us in Arusha yet there was not a camp.

The Immigration officers according to our own conclusion seemed to have made a decision about not giving us any refugee status we want and were only waiting for the 3 months period they gave us to elapse so that they can deport us back.

        - Babu