Junior Lawrence Chen was one week away from being robbed, carjacked and thrown off a tour bus.
While on a trip to Kenya last summer, Chen said his tour bus had been victim to political violence in the region just one week prior to his arrival.
"We heard a lot of terms, like 'carjack.' People just stop you in the middle of the road and say, 'get out of the car,'" Chen said. "If you resist, they will kill you."
The continuing political unrest in Kenya, as a result of the presidential election held Dec. 27, has caused much concern among Chen and other Duke students with ties to the country.
The violence is the result of a close election involving incumbent President Mwai Kibaki, who was declared winner despite accusations of a rigged election from his opponent, Raila Odinga.
Although Chen-who was traveling with a group of Duke students to complete a documentary project-said he and his group were not directly involved in any attacks, he was living in Egerton University near Nakuru, Kenya, when one of the university's students was murdered. The student had gotten into an argument in a pub about the high political tension at the time and was subsequently killed in a fight.
The murder Chen witnessed, however, along with the political instability is more of an exception rather than the norm for the country, said Rachel Omondi, a Kenyan-American sophomore.
"Kenya has always been a politically stable country," she said. "It's just been very saddening. It's a major step backward."
Omondi, whose grandparents, brother and father are currently in Kenya, said her family members are constantly updating her on the situation there.
"When I recently talked to my father last weekend, he told me that there are gangs raiding towns," Omondi said. "Stuff like that has been happening a lot. It's very surreal and saddening at the same time."
The election was initially a hope for many Kenyans, but its results caused much sadness and grief in the country, said junior Lydia Simmons, who was studying abroad in Kenya last Fall.
"Every single person I met in Kenya was engaged in the hype and talk about the election, extremely excited for [its] possibilities.... I do not think anybody expected what happened," Simmons wrote in an e-mail. "They expected a fair shot toward change and anti-corruption, but all that resulted was the stripping of democracy."
The situation in Kenya seems to be getting worse day by day, and a possible solution might not come soon, said Anneliza Mathews, a Kenyan-American sophomore who was in Kenya last summer.
"An aunt of mine who works in a hospital in Nairobi told me about the increasingly high number of young women who had been raped in their small villages and the high number of displaced families," Mathews wrote in an e-mail. "I don't think there is any doubt that fraud took place during December's presidential election. However, it does not seem like the crisis will end anytime soon."
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