A dusty, winding path led to a clearing where a woman wailed next to her smouldering mud-and-thatch hut. She used one loose end of her sarong to dab tears rolling down her cheeks, then stared at us with wet, sad eyes.

We ducked to avoid ashes blown our way by a sudden gust of wind. Charred household items - beds, pots and stoves - lay in place of huts burnt earlier in the morning by armed men in this remote village in Kenya's Coast province.

The woman was unable to communicate in Kiswahili, Kenya's national language, but she spoke through an interpreter.

"I have no home now," she said as her two frightened girls clung to her. "They burnt everything I had."

The attackers left a trail of misery among the Orma tribesmen who live here. They speared to death two women, shot dead a man with a rifle and bludgeoned another with clubs.

They then set ablaze 300 huts in three other settlements before disappearing into the grass and shrub plains that span most of the region. An estimated 1,800 people were left homeless.

I was in a team of journalists and aid workers, led by the Kenyan Red Cross, who travelled to cover the story and assess the aftermath. Many times I have visited remote villages to cover tribal violence like this, mainly between neglected indigenous peoples in remote places.

Such places are often considered too far-flung to make much contribution to the nation. Because of this, news of deaths like these rarely hits the headlines, but some of us Kenyan journalists cover them anyway!

Sitting on the fringes of a small township, the village we visited was just 45 minutes from Nairobi by air. But without roads and telephone networks linking it to the rest of the country, residents are locked in a world without education or the conveniences of modernity.

Newsmen often criticise the government for neglecting these regions, but maybe we too are guilty of blotting them out from public debate.

Predictably, the violence comes in election years. With seven months until presidential and parliamentary elections in December, it has started early here.

Frightened villagers told us word was already spreading that a politician plotting to win the local parliamentary seat had organised the violence.

They said there were about 80 attackers from the Wardei tribe that neighbours the Orma. The two communities have carried out cattle raids and fought over scarce water for centuries.

But since the 1990s, the violent clashes took a new turn. Politicians began stoking the fires of hatred between the two to win loyalty and gain from the misery of their victims.

A five-year cycle of violence - the time between national elections - soon became apparent in the region and several other flashpoints across the country.

Aid workers and police are battling humanitarian and security crises in three other hotspots in this East African nation where politically instigated tribal violence flared up this year.

The picturesque Mount Elgon region in western Kenya has been transformed into a battleground where nearly 200 people have been killed in two months. More than 40,000 people have been displaced, leaving them vulnerable to disease and hunger, according to the Red Cross.

In the Kiambu area near Nairobi, a tribal gang of youths known as Mungiki has been running amok, butchering people with machetes.

In the village we visited, residents and security agents told us the attackers seemed interested in burning the national-identity and voter cards of their victims.

ID cards, which are mandatory for every Kenyan aged 18 or above, are required as proof of identity when entering voting booths.

"The attack is political," said the provincial commissioner in charge of the region, after leading a security team to the levelled villages. "It appears someone does not want people to vote."

As we drove through bush and along cattle tracks to another village mourning the death of two residents, scenes of desperation greeted us. Children, their faces grey with dust, stood by their mothers, pondering a night without roofs over their heads.

"When they burn houses, they burn votes," one man said, saying the politician was afraid the community would not vote for him.

And as they burn votes, they turn the people's aspirations into ash. I wonder how many more attacks villagers will suffer before the elections in December.

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