Kenyans try to pick up the pieces

By Karen Allen
BBC News, Eldoret

Thirty-thousand people have been displaced in this region alone

With up to 350 people killed in last week's post-election violence and more than 100,000 displaced, churches around Kenya have been praying for the dead and urging their congregations to search for peace.

Hundreds of people packed into Eldoret's Catholic cathedral - now a refuge for tens of thousands of people forced to flee their homes.

More continue to arrive, whilst others try to hitch a lift with the convoys of cars now leaving this region.

No-one here has been left untouched by the clashes which followed last Sunday's controversial election result.

And some sitting in the church pews were nursing injuries.

More than 30,000 have been displaced in this region alone.

Peace plea

The bishop of Eldoret, Cornelius Korir, called for peace and reconciliation and urged people to put aside their ethnic differences and move on.

He called on the people of Eldoret to do more to bring material help to those who lost their homes, as a massive aid operation led by the UN and the Red Cross now swings into gear.

Listening to the service outside among the hundreds grieving and in pain I find Mary - her husband is among the dead and she does not even have a body to bury.

The exact death toll from a week of killings is still unclear.

A few miles away in the town of Kiambaa, scene of last Tuesday's chilling attack on the Assemblies of God church, survivors have trickled back.

Some are picking through the debris looking for possessions - but most are still too frightened to return.

A few hundred metres away, I find a body in a burnt out field. So many of the dead are still to be collected.

As the diplomatic efforts continue to ease the political stalemate, many ordinary Kenyans are trying to come to terms with the political and emotional aftermath of such violence.