At least 1,000 people have died in Kenya since ethnic violence broke out following flawed presidential election. As politicians try to knit the country back together, Sheri Fink reports on how one group of medical workers is finding ways to work together again.
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Burnt-out buildings south of Eldoret

Fink: Out on the highway near Eldoret, some health workers drive by the remains of a gas station and a restaurant that once served the area's specialty, sweet goat meat. Nurse Pamela Akhaabi notices a column of black smoke rising in the distance.

Akhaabi: "When I see smoke I have a lot of bad effects on me, it reminds me of the bad times, the skirmishes. We're just seeing smoke on the right side of the road."

Fink: Akhaabi concludes that the smoke is from a fire set by a farmer clearing his land. It's a good sign. A sign of life returning in the heart of the Kenyan conflict zone. Akhaabi says just after the disputed presidential election, her family was threatened.

Akhaabi: "My husband works for the government, and the government won, so the people on the opposition side were even targeting our home......you're the ones who stole our votes, so we are coming for your lives......So my husband and the family we had to leave home, our own rural home."

Fink: They fled nearly 200 miles to Nairobi. Akhaabi was one of an estimated one thousand nurses displaced by the crisis. Some health workers were killed. In areas like Eldoret, people were targeted because of their tribe, says Akhaabi's colleague Dr. Sylvester Kimaiyo. He's the program manager for a network of health clinics called AMPATH.

Kimaiyo: "The Kikuyus on our staff had to seek refuge everywhere, so none of them was working with us at that time ."

Dr. Kimaiyo

Fink: Across the region, clinics shut down. Health workers stopped visiting rural homes and clinicians, like Kimaiyo, who remained, began treating the wounds of conflict. But often the victims and their healers came from opposite sides of the ethnic divide.

Kimaiyo: "In terms of the patient-doctor, it's been a little trick. The people who were brought to hospital initially or in the majority of cases were Kikuyu.

Fink: Dr. Kimaiyo, on the other hand, is Nandi. And the two tribes were in conflict. He recalls one 90-year-old Kikuyu man whose family asked Kimaiyo to treat him.

Kimaiyo: "For a while I actually felt uncomfortable. I felt like telling them, ‘can't you look for another doctor?' The problem was I was fearing they would reject me, or the other way around, in case of any accident, medical accident, it would be taken to be intentional, as an extension of this particular fight.

Fink: But Kimaiyo took care of this Kikuyu man and many others. Some patients at the hospital balked at being cared for by nurses of a different ethnicity. So the staff stopped wearing name tags that gave clues to their family background. In other areas, some patients complained of being turned away because of their tribe. As violence abated, displaced health workers ventured home, testing the waters. Nurse Pamela Akhaabi was one of them.

Akhaabi: "I even felt threatened when I came back to work and heard the talks that were going around that the other certain tribes should leave this region if you don't belong here, so I really felt threatened about that and felt, am I at the right place? Is this the place I should work?"

Fink: But returning to work brought her daily reminders of the trauma the population had endured.
Akhaabi: "Sitting down and just hearing bad news, bad news the whole day really put me down. There's a weekend I couldn't even just get out of bed. I realized I was really overwhelmed."

Fink: Akhaabi says she knew she wasn't the only health worker suffering as a result of the conflict. So she and her colleagues launched a program to help AMPATH staff cope. Some are getting cash assistance to help rebuild their lives. Others are getting counseling. And everyone takes part in group sessions where they can vent their feelings.

Pamela Akhaabi at the gate of a patient's home near Eldoret. In the foreground: co-worker Erica Kigotho

Fink:Akhaabi says at one debrief, she confronted colleagues who had said members of her tribe should leave Eldoret. Others pointed out that no single tribe had enough qualified individuals to staff the clinics.

Akhaabi: "So in that debrief we all agreed and said we all need each other......when I left that session, members in that group came up and agreed that we really need to hold each other's hand, we need to forgive and forge on, forge ahead."

Fink: And they are forging on. AMPATH's health programs are now back to full strength. And Akhaabi says she now feels safe and comfortable at work.

Akhaabi: " I feel quite happy that normalcy's returning, people are healing, and most of the staff here, we are getting back to where we were before, and the friendship is really getting stronger."

Fink: AMPATH staff hope the reconciliation taking place here bodes well for Kenya's other multi-ethnic institutions across the country. For the World, I'm Sheri Fink, Eldoret, Kenya