Fraught Valentine's Day ahead for Kenyan rose farms

With armed mobs marching down the street outside his flower farm, and just four of his 700 staff turning up to work, Billy Coulson surveyed endless rows of roses grown for romantics in Britain and realised there was only one thing he could do: throw them all away.

A total of 800 million flowers are due to be flown from Kenya to Europe in the run-up to Valentine's Day next week and Mother's Day in March.

Kenya is the world's largest producer of roses and the source of more than one third of all cut flowers sold in Europe. With Kenya's two other major industries – tourism and tea – lying in tatters, the country can ill afford flowers going the same way.

However, the violence that last week rocked the town of Naivasha, 55 miles north-west of Nairobi, is threatening to cripple the horticulture industry.

With thousands of workers too afraid to return to the fields, flower farmers have been forced to turn millions of flowers to compost. However, they now believe they are over the worst and can meet their Valentine orders. "It was touch and go," said Mr Coulson, general manager of Nini Ltd, a farm that produces 55 million colourful stems a year for British supermarkets and flower auctions in the Netherlands.

"The violence lasted two days – if it had lasted another two days we would have been in real trouble."

Those two days were long enough for the Luos people, who were forced out of their homes by Kikuyus. The owners themselves have been threatened, told to sack all their Luo staff or face the consequences. Almost all Luos have left their jobs anyway after being chased out of their homes.

Instead, hundreds are gathered in the grounds of Naivasha prison, waiting for transport to take them back to their home province, Nyanza, in western Kenya. Those waiting dismiss the idea that they could be housed temporarily in a Red Cross-managed camp, funded by the farm owners.

"We will not be safe there," said Eric Otieno, 29. He came to Naivasha seven years ago to work on a flower farm but now he just wants to go home. "No one wants to stay in Naivasha," he said.

Beds and tables, sofas and suitcases are all packed on to the top of buses bound for Nyanza. Private bus companies were charging 1,000 shillings (£7.50) for a one-way ticket and there was no shortage of takers.

The sudden outbreak of violence in Naivasha last week caught everyone by surprise. Unlike the earlier violence in the Rift Valley, Naivasha has no outstanding tribal disputes over land. For many years the flower farms have acted as a multicultural magnet, attracting thousands of migrant workers from tribes from across the country.

Peter Szarpary, head of the Lake Naivasha Growers Group said: "If you'd asked me two weeks ago if this could happen in Naivasha I would have said 'never'. It was a model for the rest of the country; an example of a multicultural, peaceful town. There were no tribal problems whatsoever. In two days they turned this upside down."

Hundreds of Kikuyus armed with machetes and clubs forced Luos and Kalenjins out of their homes. They said they were carrying out the attacks as revenge, following the expulsion of Kikuyus from the Rift Valley.

The trouble first flared after the re-election of Mwai Kibaki, a Kikuyu, who defeated the Luo challenger Raila Odinga for the presidency. Almost all of the Kikuyus in Kisumu, the country's third largest city and the capital of Luoland, have fled. The same is true of Eldoret in the Rift Valley. There are hardly any Luos or Kalenjins left in Nakuru and Naivasha. In Nairobi's slums, lines have been drawn separating Kikuyus from non-Kikuyus.

It has all placed added pressure on the former UN secretary general Kofi Annan and politicians on both sides to find a political agreement. The government and opposition appear to have slightly mollified their hardline stances and Mr Annan said yesterday that he hoped an agreement would be in place by "early next week".

Meanwhile, the flower farms' investment plans have been put on hold and fears are growing about competition from neighbouring Ethiopia, as well as Ecuador and Colombia. The cancellation of tourist flights from Europe has also been a problem, as around 30 per cent of flowers were flown to Europe in thecargo holds of passenger planes.

But the farmers are hopeful. In other parts of the country, most notably the Rift Valley, one of the major sparks for the fighting were disputes over land.

"If this healing process has a chance," said Mr Szarpary, "it is here in Naivasha because it is not about land."