LOLGORIEN, KENYA — Wherever he went, the man of God carried his shotgun. Like its owner, the double-barreled 12-gauge was old and broken in places, dusty from miles of hard African road. He kept the splintered stock bound together with a length of black rubber, and he believed it might be his only protection, save for the good Lord and his American name, in a country that had never felt more dangerous.
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Priest's mission in Kenya went beyond church
John Kaiser was warned by other priests that his style in confronting the Moi government was too reckless. Kaiser knew he was in danger but kept speaking out -- until he could no longer do so.
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By day he ventured deep into the savanna to visit the scattered churches of his vast parish. The shotgun rested on the seat of his Toyota pickup, beside his rosary beads and Mass kit. His faithful arrived from the hills, bright in their tribal wrappings, to hear him speak in Swahili of the risen Savior, to receive a wafer on the tongue.
His red-brick parish house sat at the edge of an immense valley rolling away toward the Serengeti Plain, and at night the shotgun stayed with him as he double-checked the locks and walked down the hallway toward his bare room. Stayed with him as he climbed into his narrow metal-frame bed and slept fitfully, hyenas cackling and whooping in the dark outside his window.
Stayed with him that morning in February 1999 when he fixed his Roman collar, climbed into his truck and drove for hours on bad roads that played havoc with his arthritic neck. Finally, he arrived at a plain-looking government building called Nakuru County Hall.
This was the setting for the Akiwumi Commission, a tribunal created to probe the causes of tribal clashes that had cost more than 1,000 lives across Kenya in recent years. Its real purpose, many suspected, was to conceal the government's central role in the violence.
He entered the crowded room, a broad-shouldered, long-limbed man with work-worn hands and thinning white hair. Three judges loomed from the bench in powdered wigs, a vestige of British colonial justice. He took a seat before a microphone at a scuffed table.
As he began to talk, his voice steady and composed, it was impossible to tell that he had been living in a state of terror for weeks, afraid that he'd never be allowed to speak, afraid that once he started, he'd never live to finish.
Nor would anyone have predicted that this obscure, deeply eccentric American churchman would become a national hero to Kenyans, his name a rallying cry.
