Families seek loved ones lost in Kenya crisis

By Daniel Wallis

ELDORET, Kenya (Reuters) - When a mob of his neighbours tried to kill Philip Nderitu, he ran from his home in western Kenya to sleep outside a police station.

He knew his family would be spared the rocks and machetes of his attackers because his wife was a Luhya, a tribe seen as pro-opposition.

But their home was ransacked as post-election violence convulsed the country's lush Rift Valley after the December 27 polls, and he had no idea where his loved ones had fled.

Almost a month later, they were reunited.

"I am so happy," the 48-year-old night guard said, hugging his five sons after Red Cross workers brought them together at a camp for nearly 13,000 people uprooted by the bloodshed.

The displaced here, like Nderitu, are members of President Mwai Kibaki's Kikuyu tribe, chased out of villages around Eldoret town by gangs of youths from the Kalenjin tribe they call "warriors". Hundreds of families were split up in the chaos.

As Nderitu's family talked excitedly, 19 pictures in a nearby window -- some bleached by the fierce sun -- showed mournful-looking children holding numbered pieces of paper.

"Do You Know These Kids?" read a sign, translated into Swahili "Unajua Hawa Watoto?"