By C. Bryson Hull

TIGONI, Kenya, Jan 10 (Reuters) - When the time came for a tribal reckoning in Kenya, the fact Mashuno Onyango was born in Limuru and speaks Kikuyu meant nothing.

The town's dominant Kikuyus, angry over attacks on their tribe sparked by a disputed presidential election, came and told him it was time to go home because he was a Luo.

"Now how can we stay here? Our landlords don't want to see us, and our employers don't want to see us," Onyango said at the nearby Tigoni police station, where about 800 Luos have taken refuge from threats of attack.

Limuru, a factory town surrounded by farms of tea, coffee and bananas 40 km (25 miles) north of the capital Nairobi, is an unlikely site for ethnic conflict since it almost entirely populated by Kikuyus, the tribe of President Mwai Kibaki.

But about 1,000 Luos, whose parents or grandparents were brought from western Kenya while the British colonial government built the railway, have called it home for decades and lived peacefully with their neighbours.

Onyango, 52, is a typical case. His grandfather worked on the railway, and he was born in the Bata shoe factory's clinic to parents who both worked in Limuru.

Now, Luos here say it's the political elite which is again responsible for their migration, having sparked clashes that will see them sent back to their ancestral land in western Kenya -- no matter that Limuru is the only home many of them know.

Opposition leader Raila Odinga, a Luo, says Kibaki stole votes to win last month's election.

As soon as Kibaki was named the winner on Dec. 30, clashes broke out, in some cases with members of Odinga's multi-ethnic political coalition striking out against Kikuyus and other tribes seen as aligned with him.

'LIKE FIREWOOD'

An estimated 250,000 Kenyans have been displaced by the fighting, creating scenes most Kenyans think of as affecting other African nations, not their own usually peaceful one.

"Politicians use us just like firewood, to light their fires. They tell us we have to fight while they're eating nicely," said Onyango, a 52-year-old stonemason.

"They are the ones claiming they would remove us from poverty if they were elected, and now look what they have done. There is no work, we have no homes."

The fighting that has forced Limuru's Luos to leave actually has little to do with their tribe, but rather the Kalenjin tribe aligned with Odinga's Orange Democratic Movement (ODM).

Aid workers say that the Luos were threatened and ultimately ordered to leave as Kikuyus driven from the Rift Valley by attacks from Kalenjins angry over the election poured back to their families in Limuru.

The tales of horror from the purges in the Rift -- including the burning of 30 Kikuyus in a church, the torching of farms, and attacks with machetes and arrows -- set the local community off, said volunteer Alice Wanjiku, a Kikuyu.

"Right now, our people aren't thinking about anything but violence. They saw their people chased off like this and now they are thinking: `Those people there think we are cowards, and that we won't fight. We'll show them'," she said.

Wanjiku, who runs a butchery, says she and other like-minded community members are trying to soothe tempers and persuade them to let the Luos return as angers fade and peace emerges.

But political tension is still high in the east African nation, since Kibaki moved forward with naming his government while Odinga demands internationally mediated peace talks.

"If those people could agree, it would finish. We don't blame the Kikuyus," said watchman William Odidi, 29, a Luo also at the police station. "As neighbours, we didn't have a problem." (Additional reporting by Florence Muchori)

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