By Michael Georgy

NAKURU, Kenya, Feb 17 (Reuters) - Children crammed into a soccer stadium in this Rift Valley town won't be kicking a ball around any time soon.

Thousands of Kenyan families have taken refuge here from post-election tribal violence that has killed 1,000 people and displaced about 300,000 others, and there is no space for a kick-around.

Playing is also far from the thoughts of young boys and girls whose memories of the butchery could haunt them for life.

"The children are very traumatised. They are very aggressive," said Jane Carol, an aid volunteer.

"They have made drawings of people being beheaded or houses being burned down after what they saw."

Long rows of tents in the stadium house people too scared to return to neighbourhoods which have been destroyed.

Many are waiting to be transported to their ancestral villages to seek safety from possible attacks by rival tribes.

Thousands have already left but others are stuck. They may be unable to afford bus fares of about 1,200 shillings ($17) or fear they will end up in another camp like the one in Nakuru, a trading town 160 km (100 miles) north of Nairobi.

BUS FARE MAFIA

Samuel Odera, 36, spends his day sharing horror stories with other witnesses of the ethnic strife that followed a disputed Dec. 27 election which returned President Mwai Kibaki to power.

"They took everything from us," he said. Some have fallen prey to camp dwellers who pose as middlemen able to organise a way out.

Even if Steven Omondi generates the cash for a bus fare, he fears it will fall into the wrong hands. "There are people who are taking the money from us. They are like a mafia," he said.

Omondi, 28, says he, his wife and two children survive on cabbages and he points to the dirty leaves of one in a bucket.

"We split it up into pieces over a few days," he said.

The trauma is most obvious among children. Four young boys living in one tent lost their mothers and fathers in the mayhem and aid workers are trying to prepare them for the news.

Aid volunteers gently act out tragedies to help the children cope, pretending they are neighbours who were killed or relatives who disappeared. "We sing songs with the children," said Carol.

"Good Samaritans", as some camp dwellers call them, have donated toys and dolls. A group of agitated young boys line up as they are distributed, pushing and shoving each other.

In the farming town of Naivasha about one hour away by car displaced Kenyans living in a camp are under less strain. The tents are bigger and cleaner, and there are more portable toilets.

Some do not seem as desperate to leave for ancestral villages. A group of young men are busy building a donkey cart, resigned to the possibility they may be in limbo for a long time.

But the legacy of the violence still colours their lives. Labourer Shemi Lingori, 45, watched members of his Luo tribe hack his Kikuyu boss to death.

"I escaped. They thought I was a Kikuyu," he said. "I have nowhere to go. My boss took me in as part of his family." (Editing by Katie Nguyen and Robert Woodward) ($1=69.75 Kenyan Shilling)

AlertNet news is provided by