Relatively stable only days before, Kibera, the home of Kennedy Odede ’12, suddenly became ground zero in the violent conflict between Kenyan President Mwai Kibaki and Orange Democratic Movement (ODM) leader Raila Odinga in late December, 2007. Having barely escaped across the country to the coastal city of Mombosa, Odede and his friends sat in shock, watching their homes burn on the television screen.

Odinga had won by at least 5 percent, international observers concluded, and yet Kibaki, a member of the ruling Kikuyu tribe, had been declared the winner. The Luo (Odinga’s tribe) and other ODM supporters had taken to demonstrations and increasingly violent acts against Kibaki supporters.

In Kibera, an enormous, illegal slum located outside the capital city of Nairobi, Odinga’s candidacy had aroused considerable excitement, and his announced defeat incited a severe tribal conflict. In turn, government police, attempting to contain the situation, blocked off the road in and out of Kibera, cutting off access to outside food sources. All the while, long-standing criminal organizations such as the Mungiki, an infamous Kikuyu gang, and the Taliban, a militant Luo political group, were drawing strength from the conflict.

Back in Mombosa, Odede and other members of Shining Hope for Community (SHOFCO)—a humanitarian group that he started in order to improve the quality of life in Kibera—remained stranded in a deserted school, hoping that the conflict would blow over. Yet signs were not good. The ethnic conflict appeared to be spreading to the coast.

“I went to the only market to buy food for SHOFCO,” said Odede, who is a Luo. “They said you are a Luo, go buy from Luo.”

In dire need of food, Odede sent a Kikuyu friend to the market.

“My SHOFCO chairman, a Kikuyu, went to the same market,” Odede said. “They told him to buy much food because there was going to be a war.”

In the following days, hiding in the school, Odede’s food supplies became dangerously depleted. Soon there was nothing left, so Odede and friends had no choice but to travel back home.

When the nine-hour train-ride west ended, they found that Nairobi had degenerated into total chaos.

“We got out at the train station, and we saw police shooting bullets,” Odede said. “I saw people on the ground bleeding. So all the SHOFCO youths ran—they wanted to go find their families.”

On his own, Odede fled to a friend’s house in the middle-class enclave of Olympic, which had remained comparatively calm through the crisis.

If he had returned to Kibera that night, he later heard, he may not have survived.

“That night, I was supposed to sleep in Kibera and a gang came and castrated 10 men near my house,” he said.

Odede’s friend advised him to forget Kibera, though he also cautioned against trying to leave the country, since such an exit could be fraught with peril. After three days, however, Odede decided he couldn’t abandon his home.

“I snuck into Kibera at night,” he said. “I didn’t want to run from my people. I wanted to die with them.”

In the dark of night, Odede slipped through the burning slum, finding the way back to his hut. He soon fell asleep in his bed, only to be awoken by the sound of nearby gunfire.

“I heard ’Boom, Boom, Boom,’ and I knew I was a target,” Odede said. “I quickly climbed into a very small corridor and then I heard police come into the house. They were throwing and taking my things, saying, ’If you are here, come out.’”

Odede’s contacts who had remained in Kibera had previously warned him that he was a Mungiki gang target because of his political status as the informal “mayor” of Kibera. Sitting in the corridor and listening as the intruders shot his guard dog, Chui, Odede realized that they had not been lying.

“I was targeted because I was a leader,” he said, declining to discuss the specifics. “The more I am seen as a politician, the more I am seen as a threat.”

Still hiding in the corridor, Odede heard the policemen leave and then start to fire rapidly into the street. When they left, Odede surveyed the damage and was horrified by what he saw.

“They were spraying bullets everywhere,” he said. “I saw they had killed a baby.”

With few options left, Odede fled to the local Luo headquarters in the Katwakera district of Kibera to find safety. There too, he was met by violence, as he stumbled upon a pitched battle between the two tribal factions.

“I went to the Luo stronghold and I saw them using machetes against the Kikuyu, who were using bows and arrows,” Odede said.

Meanwhile, back in the states, Jessica Posner ’09 frantically tried to raise the funds and resources to transport Odede out of Kenya. Posner, an African American Studies Major who had worked and lived in Kibera during her semester abroad, had left the country three days before the violence erupted.

“I organized this huge group of artists who met Kennedy at the World Social Forum and also people that had worked at SHOFCO and arranged to get him out of there,” Posner said.

Among others, Associate Dean for International Affairs Alice Hadler and Matt Podolin ’09 aided in the effort, and soon enough, Odede had been reserved a seat on a plane to Tanzania.

After spending two days encamped in the Luo stronghold, Odede decided it was time to leave, though he was deeply conflicted over the decision.

“I wanted to remain and see what happened with my people,” he said. “I felt very targeted, though. If I left, I didn’t know what would happen to my home. If I didn’t leave, though, I would die.”

When the conflict had temporarily moved to a distant part of town, Odede sprinted through the forest and back into Olympic, where he caught a taxi. Driving into the heart of Nairobi, Odede wore a cloak over his face to avoid potentially lethal checkpoints. Despite the danger, however, he reached the airport, and finally escaped.

Safe in Tanzania, Odede had little time to reflect on what he had just been through. He was already a month late in submitting college applications, something he still wanted to do, though he wasn’t sure whether the American colleges would allow him to apply so late. When Posner e-mailed a number of schools to ask if they would accept late applications, however, some, including Wesleyan, expressed interest.

“I randomly e-mailed 15 schools, most of whom didn’t reply back,” Posner said. “When I e-mailed the Wesleyan admissions office and asked if they could read an application a month late, though, they said yes.”

Though Odede sent in his application late, certain University officials such as Hadler pushed for the Office of Admissions to look at his application.

“He’s a very good writer and his story was so compelling,” Hadler said. “So I just kind of said please take a look at this guy.”

Given the nature of Odede’s background, the Office of Admissions was willing to make an exception.

“Certainly in Kennedy’s case, he wasn’t thinking about applying to colleges until the unrest in Kibera, so it wasn’t a problem for us to extend the deadline,” said Associate Dean of Admissions Terri Overton. “We tried to be as responsive as quickly and creatively as we could. I guess maybe other colleges wouldn’t have done that, but it seemed like the right thing to do and part of our job.”

As the Office of Admissions reviewed Odede’s application in Middletown, Odede anxiously waited in Tanzania for the violence to subside so he could return home. By February, Former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan had brokered a power-sharing agreement between the two parties: Odinga was to be named prime minister, while Kibaki would remain as president. As the violence consequently subsided, Odede decided to return to Kenya.

Kibera was not the same. Rubble was everywhere, and tribal divisions had fragmented the once integrated neighborhood. Back at home, Odede did what he could to restore SHOFCO, yet there was not enough time. Only several months later, he was accepted to Wesleyan.

Though he was overjoyed with the news, Odede feared that he would not be granted a visa from the American embassy. Years earlier, he had been invited to attend an International School in Canada only to be rejected by the Canadian embassy because of his impoverished background.

“I was afraid that the US would refuse me a Visa because I am from the slum, and I knew the Americans were pressuring the government to share power with Odinga,” Odede said.

As a notable member of the Kiberian political establishment, Odede had indirectly met Odinga before at roundtable discussions over local security and water issues. Therefore, fearing that a Western country would again reject his visa application, Odede arranged a meeting with the embattled prime minister, who was happy to write a letter to the American embassy on his behalf.

“Kennedy comes from a very humble background that is stricken by poverty,” Odinga wrote in the letter. “However, this has not deterred him from excelling in both his school work and extracurricular activities. I therefore request that the embassy issue him with a USA visa to allow him to proceed for his studies.”

With that, Odede was off—out of Africa and into America and the radically different world of the academy. Coming out of the second largest slum in Africa and into the insular world of Wesleyan has been an unreal experience for Odede.

“We were walking the street the other day,” Posner said. “And Kennedy asked me, ’So all I have to do is write and read about wars in Africa and then they feed me?’”

Odede now lives in 200 Church and is interested in sociology as well as international politics. Even here on campus, he continues to support Kibera by selling bracelets made by HIV positive women for 5 dollars a piece. Four of the dollars, which can feed a Kiberan for four days, go to the individual woman who made the bracelet, while the other dollar is reserved for the maintenance of SHOFCO. Odede has sold 150 bracelets so far this semester.

Overall, while Odede has loved being in America, he has also been surprised by how much is wasted in this country.

“People have too much here,” he said. “Look at the way people waste food at Usdan. They just take too much. There is no food in Kibera.”

Odede plans to return to Kenya in two years with other Wesleyan students in order to build proper sanitation systems. After college, he also hopes to return to his country, though he doesn’t know in what capacity.

“Some of my friends think that after this I can become a good political leader,” Odede said. “I think I want to give back to the world. In what way I do not know—that will come later.”

Before he left for Wesleyan, Odede had some business to take care of in Kibera. In order for his family to survive while he was gone, he found an abandoned plot of land and built an informal structure on it. His parents now earn a substantial living from renting out the house. Odede also added on a final branch to SHOFCO in gratitude to his new school: the Wesleyan School for Kibera Girls, which educates 46 orphaned girls in a variety of subjects.

“[The school is] made out of tin and mud,” he said. “We teach girls about English, math, life and other social things there. Now there are two Wesleyan’s: one in the slum and one here.”

In a place where carrying rocks everyday is the norm, and no one ever leaves, the University that brought Kennedy Odede to America has provided hope for those who had forgotten that there was such a thing.

“When I was leaving Kibera finally, people were so happy to know that Wesleyan gave me this opportunity,” he said. “Everybody knows about Wesleyan there. At Wesleyan, they now say, there is no such thing as rich and poor.”