Peacemaker moulded in hell

• Girl abandoned at 11 to take care of little brother and sister founds the Peace Caravan.
• VYP linked refugees with youth and peace groups in their home countries to share ideas to prepare them for repatriation and re-integration

You’re 11 years old. Your little brother and sister watch in muted shock as your parents fight to such intense levels that they both just walk out, leaving you all to fend for yourselves.

This was the early life of Rachel Kung’u, founder of The Peace Caravan and Voluntary Youth Philanthropists.

First impressions reveal a quiet demeanor and an ever present smile, and nothing except her reputation in the peace keeping world could have prepared you for what she had gone through.

“My mum only got back long enough to leave us with another two-month-old baby she introduced as our brother. She again left, and that, for me, are my most vivid memories as a child,” said Rachel.

Hawking, begging

“So I basically quit school for a while to provide for my brothers and sister. Hawking, begging anything to put food in their mouths. Support from my extended family was complicated, my father re-married and never really hung around long enough to take care of us.”

Rachel had to overcome more challenges than would seem fair for a child her age, but all those difficulties moulded her.

“I’m not bitter and I can never forget the kindness I came across in life. Now it’s my turn to give back to the community. I want to provide peace and cohesion in Kenya.”

After completing high school and a brief employment, Rachel followed her calling and founded the Voluntary Youth Philanthropists (http://www.peace-caravan.org), registered in 2002 as an NGO uniting youth including young refugees mainly from the Great Lakes region living in Kenya.

Due to this cross-cultural interaction VYP linked these refugees with youth and peace groups in their home countries to share ideas to prepare them for repatriation and re-integration.

VYP was registered in Burundi (Jeunesse Volontaire Philanthrope – JVP) and an office established in Bujumbura in 2003. By analysing VYP’s initial ideas and approaches and its impact in Kangemi, the idea for the same strategy in other communities came up.

Rachel thought of trying to link different places countrywide to hold public interest activities that encouraged social unity and dialogue and, in 2004 The Peace Caravan was born: A convoy with camels, traditional dancers, dramatists, acrobats all in tow with a growing crowd of curious on lookers moving from village to village and setting the stage for charismatic youth leaders to discuss social and development issues.

After the General Elections, Rachel was appalled to see her country fall apart after the presidential results were announced. As the volatile situation escalated many distressed Kenyans were seeking exit strategies; but not Rachel.

When the church in Kiambaa Village in Eldoret was burnt together with women and children, she decided to travel to the North Rift to foster peace among the youth she had met months before in a peace building event.

At first, no one wanted to travel to the trouble spot. Bit her insistence paid off when foreign donors sent her cash to mobilise a team to make the visit to the then emerging IDP camps.

Rachel sat with them, looking for a middle ground and promising to communicate their versions of grievances to the authorities.

On January 28, at the height of the conflict, youth blocked the Nakuru-Nairobi highway in Naivasha, terrorising commuters to retaliate the killings in the North Rift.

Rachel decided against everyone else’s better judgment to meet them and seek a peaceful resolution to the escalating crisis.

As soon as she got to Naivasha, she bought a long skirt before meeting the youth. They were conservative and frowned upon women who wore trousers.

Rachel and her team spent a day in Naivasha calling for non-violence. The highway was unblocked that evening.

A meeting between chief mediator Kofi Annan and youth representatives was a landmark because in the past the youth were always sidelined by leaders.

Rachel was the youth convener at the meeting where they presented Dr Annan with a “Youth Position Paper”.

The theme of the Peace Camel Caravan this year is Brotherhood in Peace Forever.