“…And how did the post-election violence affect your family,” I asked.

“We were forced to flee our home for four months. When we returned, all our possessions had been stolen, the inventory in my husband’s shop had been looted, and our house had been burned down. Our grain stores were looted, and by the time we returned it was too late to plant our fields: the rains had already come and gone. But even if they hadn’t, we could not afford seeds and fertilizer anyway. It’s difficult for us to provide enough food for the family now. Our children had to stay behind in school and now we can’t afford the school fees to send our daughter to secondary school, so she’s just waiting around the house until we make enough income.

Oh, and my brother was shot and killed in Nairobi—by the police.”

“O…k…,” I stuttered.

The scale of the violence and civil chaos that followed the disputed Kenyan elections in December 2007 is something I did not anticipate encountering before arriving in Kenya in January. 47% of the people I surveyed in ten villages across western Kenya were “directly affected” by the violence—defined as situations where the respondent or family members were evicted from their home or business, possessions were stolen or destroyed, land was not able to be planted as usual, or the respondent lost her job or faced persistent unemployment that they attributed to the violence. Another 32% of respondents were “indirectly affected” by the violence—including situations when family members or relatives in other parts of the country were directly affected, or when the respondent faced, for example, food price increases that they attributed to the violence. Unsurprisingly, well over 90% of those directly or indirectly affected by the post-election violence described the past year as being “bad” or “very bad.” Moreover, many of these individuals were not optimistic about the prospects of the new year, with continuing drought and economic hardship.

Reading newspaper stories about the post-election violence, I had never imagined how widespread and devastating the chaos had been to so many people—and I had not given too much thought to how the continuing disorder and hardship would affect the plans of Covalent Global in its start-up operations. It is clear that with hundreds of thousands of people still internally-displaced, the most pressing gaps in public goods provision become more acute. In fact, my preliminary analysis of the survey data suggests that those who were directly affected by the violence had systematically different priorities than those who were not directly affected. In particular, those directly affected were twice as likely to respond with housing construction as a top priority, as well as support for agriculture (training and subsidizing of farm inputs) and education (subsidizing secondary school fees).

With their social fabric torn, many internally-displaced people turned to family networks and community-based organizations for support. Having seen the tentative and incomplete support provided by the Kenyan government and UN agencies, I think there is a very strong role for community-based organizations in the reintegration of displaced people and rehabilitation of their livelihoods. One potential role I see for Covalent is to help coordinate the provision of resources for longer-term relief and peace-building efforts supporting these community-based organizations. Ordinary Kenyans are tired of the violence and civil chaos that seem to ensue after every election, and the most recent bout of violence is the last straw for many of them: “enough is enough,” as one survey respondent told me.