Scarred and scared: the Kenyans still displaced by 2007 poll

They have been excluded from the reinstallation and compensation package that the Kenyan government set up in 2008, a deal criticised by rights groups and think tanks.

In makeshift camps on windswept barren land more than 100 families, chased from their homes in the wave of violence and killing that followed the disputed 2007 polls, are still waiting to be re-homed.

In the run up to the next elections on March 4, these still displaced people camping around the town of Nakuru in Kenya's Rift Valley fear renewed violence once more.

They have been excluded from the reinstallation and compensation package that the Kenyan government set up in 2008, a deal criticised by rights groups and think tanks.

"Efforts to resettle, compensate or reintegrate internally displaced people (IDPs)...have often been patchy, ill-informed and, at times, fraught with alleged corruption," said the International Crisis Group (ICG) think tank.

The group claims the process has "lacked transparency"

Over 1,100 people were killed in the 2007-2008 violence, and some 600,000 fled their homes in bloody ethnic conflict that shattered Kenya's image as a beacon of regional stability.

At one camp called Kihoto -- meaning "victory" in the local Kikuyu language -- 108 families have been squashed in together since 2008, even though they failed to negotiate the complicated bureaucratic process to register as officially displaced people.

"Even if we were late to register we are still displaced," protests Jeffrey Morua, 41, who heads the camp.

Given that they were not allowed to join the official IDP camps, the families pooled what little money they had and bought this half acre of arid land for 100,000 Kenyan shillings (around 850 euros, $1125).

Each family has a plot just nine feet by six feet (2.7 metres by 1.8 metres).

"It's not big enough to build a decent house," Morua said, pointing to the makeshift homes -- rectangular structures made of tree branches covered with tarpaulin and bits of plastic.

"To build permanent homes we'd need money for bricks and iron sheets," he added.

Water is scare, and the residents of Kihoto must purchase it by the jerrycan.

The overcrowded school is several miles (kilometres) away, and the children from the camp are the first to be sent home when the classrooms are full.

Some of the displaced do day labour on the surrounding farms for little more than a dollar a day.