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AGLI Latest News

Kenya
On Thursday, Dec 27, Kenya held its national election. The Quaker Peace Network-Africa of which AGLI is a member organized 49 Kenyans and 29 international election observers. The voting went extremely well, but as the votes were being tallied, it was clear that irregularities were taking place. On Dec 30 when Mwai Kibaki was declared the winner, violence broke out in many parts of Kenya including western Kenya where Kenyan Quakers mostly live and AGLI works through it partner, Friends for Peace and Community Development (FPCD). Since that time AGLI and FPCD have delivered relief supplies to the people displaced in Lumakanda, Lugari District; dug five latrines for an IDP camp at a police station in Kakamega; had listening sessions with youth in Kakamega and Kisii and the prison staff in Eldoret. Forty one-day listening workshops with staff of the Center for Disease Control (USA) in Kisumu are beginning. Numerous AVP workshops are being planned and two additional AVP facilitators have been hired to assist in this reconciliation work.

North Kivu
In North Kivu, the Healing Companion program that AGLI has begun in Goma and Sake has been interrupted as major fighting has resumed in North Kivu. Most of those AGLI was working with have moved to internally displaced people's camps--three healing companions cannot be located. The AGLI coordinator in North Kivu, Zawadi Nikuze, has been stuck in Nairobi where she was an election observer since she has been unable to travel back through Kenya to Goma. She will, of course, be going from the frying pan into the fire.

Rwanda
In Rwanda, the AVP program continues its AVP workshops with return refugees who have been forced out of western Tanzania and back into Rwanda. They also continue with a program supported by the American Embassy in Kigali to bring reconciliation through AVP workshops in very remote villages and towns in Eastern Province. Healing and Rebuilding Our Community (HROC) finished a brief workshop with the 30 scholarship students supported through AGLI by donors in the United States. They are beginning special workshops for youth and two others for the Twa, the third, marginalized group in Rwanda.

Burundi
In Burundi, HROC is focusing on three communities where the evaluation by Peter Yeomans was conducted last year. With the Friends Women's Association in Kamenge, Bujumbura, HROC will be conducting their first trial HROC workshop for HIV+ women. The FWA clinic is functioning in its new building. They are trying to get the electricity connected which they paid for months ago so that they can do blood tests for malaria and HIV.