A Place To Call Home [Hardcover]

A Place to Call Home is a story of refugees no community wanted to see anywhere close to them, as if they were good for nothing. It is an epic portrayal of a painful dilemma of thousands of homeless internally displaced persons (IDPs) who were victims of the highly contested and disputed presidential election. The novel is a true, tear-jerking reflection of a botched election in December 2007 and January 2008, which culminated into a postelection violence that brutally killed almost there thousand innocent people. Some were burned alive inside a church- God's territory as they called-where they had taken safe haven. About seven hundred thousand people were forcibly removed from their homes; some took refuge at police stations, while others fled to neighboring countries to remain alive. Business premises, vehicles, and other properties worth billions of shillings were destroyed, and domestic animals were stolen. This spate of violence happened at a time when thousands of ethnic militias heavily armed with homemade crude weapons were chanting war slogans and singing traditional war songs everywhere in the country. Loyal to their respective presidential candidates, the militias roamed the streets of towns and villages, making every journey perilous. Enemies who got caught were beheaded, and their heads were paraded or displayed on the main highways. Women were seized and gang-raped by the militias and got infected with the deadly HIV-AIDS virus. Amazingly, communities turned their backs against the combined IDPs who were looking for a permanent settlement, calling them foreigners, invaders, or land grabbers in their own country. Breathing under such horrifying circumstances, all IDPs drawn from various tribes resolved to live together in peace and harmony and to prove to the world that they could live with people from other communities without any problem, in spite of their language and cultural barriers. The idea of living together was instilled in the IDPs by VP Nyal#Ð