In December of 2007, after an extremely close national election between incumbent President Mwai Kibaki and opposition leader Raila Odinga, targeted ethnic violence broke out in several communities in Nairobi and Western Kenya after Kibaki was ultimately declared the winner.  Over 1200 people were killed and 350,000 were displaced within their own country for several years.  Odinga, who is a Luo, has his strongest support base in Western Kenya, among the Luo, Luya, and Kalenjin ethnic groups, and Kibaki is a Kikuyu, the largest ethnic group in Kenya.  The Kikuyu have primarily held the Presidency since Kenya became an independent democracy in 1963, representing 3 of the 5 presidents, and the two other Kenyan presidents are from the Kalenjin ethnic group.  Historically, ethnic clashes are not unusual in Africa or anywhere else in the world, as we well know, and the tension between the 42 ethnic groups in modern-day Kenya was naturally exacerbated by outsiders arbitrarily deciding borders, and assigning value to, or elevating one group over another.    Yet another consequence of colonialism. After the announcement of Kibaki's victory, many of Odinga's supporters took to the streets in their communities as angry, fire, and machete-wielding mobs, and they looted, burned, and destroyed the property of their Kikuyu neighbors, forcing people to run for their lives in the night.  People who had been friendly as neighbors for decades were suddenly murderous enemies. While I was there, in March of 2008, just a few short months after the violence, I was working with both the International Medical Corps and the International Rescue Committee, documenting the camps they were managing and assisting in the area of Eldoret, Kisumu, and Kitale. We visited several camps in the area...one camp was in a church, one in a field on the top of a hill, and another, a massive Internally Displaced Persons Camp or IDP camp set up in what they called the Showground area of Eldoret.  Unfortunately, the ethnic tensions have persisted in Kenya, and each election year brings with it the fear that something like this may happen again.