As Chwanya’s frustration grew over the years, Samuel Mathu was feeling increasingly optimistic about his future, especially after Kibaki became president in 2002.

It was around then that he decided to leave his small farm in the town of Kipipiri, in the Kikuyu heartland of central Kenya, and start a business in Nairobi. He found a handful of Kikuyu investors and set off for the city. “A lot of people from my place were here,” Mathu said, explaining why he landed in Kangeme. “So they told me what to do.”

He started out selling imported secondhand clothes, a business dominated by a tightly knit Kikuyu network. Mathu got into the more lucrative electronics business when a Kikuyu friend, also from his home town, offered him a deal to take over his small shop in the market.

“A lot of people, these tribes, they do not know how to do business,” Mathu said. “They rely on being employed somewhere. The Kikuyu, they know how to do business.”

In the two days after the election, exit poll numbers suggested that Odinga was headed for a decisive victory. But when Kibaki was declared the winner, Chwanya said to himself, “This thing is going to be done over our dead bodies,” he recalled. Meanwhile, Mathu and his Kikuyu friends were taking to the streets of Kangeme to celebrate. Within about 15 minutes, however, they were being stoned by rioters in the first wave of the violence that eventually swept across Kenya, leaving more than 500 people dead. Even now, his leg gashed by a stone, Mathu said he does not fully understand why his customers and neighbours turned against him. “All these things that came, I don’t know what I can say,” he said. “I don’t know what I can say.”