Betty Kweyu is leading CARE International's emergency response in Kenya's western city of Kisumu, hit hard by post-election violence. The aid agency is focusing its efforts on the Nyalenda informal settlement, working with its local partner, the Lutheran Church, to reach out to local youth. Betty describes her experiences.

People are now surviving on one meal a day, if they are lucky. Their purchasing power has been compromised by the post-election violence because many stalls have been burned down and people have lost their livelihoods. Normal supply chains have also been disrupted.

As you penetrate the informal area, you see youths standing around idle. Access to casual jobs is now a problem and most of them have nothing better to do. In this area many houses have been burned down.

The Lutheran Church is reaching out to these young people in order to better target those who are neediest. If young men are idle, they are more likely to cause trouble; but if you engage them, they can assist you in identifying the most vulnerable people.

I met a widow in the Manyatta village of Nyalenda. Before the elections, she was doing well and owned a stall and several sewing machines. During the violence, however, everything she owned was burned down. Now she worries about where she will find her next meal.

Additionally, she had borrowed money as a loan and the impact of the crisis left her with no means of repaying it.

By talking to her, I understood the difficulty of targeting the neediest. She told me that when the first distributions were made by other agencies, she could not get near the food. Strong youths reached the food first and she was afraid to be pushed and get hurt.

Another problem I have come across is that internally displaced people are not necessarily visible. Many live with families and friends, not in the camps. There are, therefore, vulnerable people who are just not counted in the statistics. Families are sharing the burden of caring for others and are no longer living normal lives. Livelihoods are stretched.

During the past couple of weeks I have seen a lot of anger and a lot of suffering. A large number of internally displaced people are also returning to the province as this is their region of origin. People are also afraid of the hooligans who loot and destroy the property of others.

Of course people are also afraid of walking alone and certainly of walking the streets at night. People fear being attacked in their residences and even in their places of work. If I am with colleagues I feel safe but if I am alone I do not. I am almost never alone these days. I don't dare to be. I am afraid.

What is interesting is that people find coping mechanisms to deal with the tension. Because the situation was so bad immediately after the elections, people can now even make jokes about it.

There are also strong information linkages now. If there is going to be a demonstration somewhere, people alert one another via phone messaging or word of mouth. People are now able to avoid areas where there is fighting. People know ahead of time what is going to happen tomorrow or if there are any problems. There are early warning mechanisms in place.

This is a completely different Kenya than the one I have known for the past 30 years. Now, everyone has to be cautious. I used to be able to walk outside and feel safe. I am not even proud to be Kenyan right now. Sometimes I feel so frustrated because I know that no matter what I do, the needs are so great that my contribution is small in comparison.

I have seen bitterness in this community and resentment against other tribes. It was not like this before. People in Kisumu used to welcome someone from another tribe and even give them a local name.

My middle name, Kweyu, does not belong to the most populous tribe here, the Luos, and sometimes I even feel uncomfortable introducing myself.

I think politics has done this to us. People have taken sides. It is now me and you, us versus them, which is very strange. In the workplace people accommodate each other but outside there is bitterness.

Some people are afraid to live in the communities where they have lived for decades; but if they have limited options of where to go next, they stay around and hope that the community will not turn against them. Some neighborhoods are now creating vigilante groups to protect themselves.

By now my family is used to me doing this type of work. When I first went to Garissa I thought they would die. Now they support me and approve of my work because they know it makes me happy. They just tell me to please take care of myself.

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