Has Kibera Come of Age?

 Kibera, one of the hotspots of 2008 post-election violence, is currently experiencing delicate peace. Anxiety and restlessness among the residents of Kibera is evident owing to the delayed presidential poll results. The community is awash with rumours of the vote tallying irregularities at the national tallying centre based at Bomas of Kenya.  The reality on the ground however, is that the calm situation can only be maintained a little longer. As late as yesterday, there were anomalies with the electronic tallying of votes and the commission chair declared that they shall resort to manual tallying of votes. This made the anxiety among the youth to increase. Someone might not easily notice tension but it is easy to see that the youth might just be waiting for a trigger to call them to action.

Meanwhile, the living condition in Kibera is also becoming unbearable. There is unavailability of basic commodities like food and fuel. The shopkeepers have decided to be cautious and are rarely opening their shops.  The few shops which are open are selling the foodstuff at high prices, perhaps caused by the increasing demand for goods which are scarce. The verandas of most shops have been turned into places of social chatter where different youth groups sit down and discuss the results as they are tallied at the National Tallying Centre.

There are also some youth groupings who insist that if the election results won't be favourable to any of the coalition then the best alternative to solve the dispute should be the law courts. These youth are convinced that Kenya has matured enough to avoid violence because of political competition. However, the most important thing noticed is that the residents of Kibera and the Kenyans at large hope for a violence free elections. Even though the vote tallying is slow and Kenyans and Kibera residents are slowly losing patience with the electoral body, the sense of maturity and tolerance being experienced in Kibera has never been witnessed before in any Kenyan election history. To this end, could Kibera residents and Kenyans generally be coming of age?