Raila Odinga and Mwai Kibaki (Photo: © Boniface Mwangi/IRIN)
It has finally happened. After much prayer, intense bargaining, skilled mediation and significant but largely unspecified international pressure, President Mwai Kibaki and Hon Raila Odinga finally signed the elusive agreement which marked the culmination of that part of the mediation process focusing on solving the disputed presidential elections.
The signing of this peace deal is a massive step forward. It still has to be ratified by parliament but to overturn it would effectively be against the public wishes of both leaders.
It represents the real hope and possibility that people can begin rebuilding lives without the uncertainty that future chaos and pain of unknown depths might still be round the corner. I confess that, with many others, there have been many times when I have found it hard to believe that this moment would arrive.
The signing ceremony was a very dignified event with positive and generous speeches by both the mediators and the two political leaders.
The night before, the TV news played exuberant scenes from 2002 of the swearing in of Mwai Kibaki at Uhuru Park before tens of thousands of people, with Raila Odinga sharing the same platform. The film then moved to 30 December 2007 and the hasty swearing in of the same president in a virtually private ceremony at the Statehouse which lacked any sense of joy or genuine celebration.
The contrast of the two news clips left you with a bewildering sense of what seems to have been lost. Kenya has enjoyed excellent economic growth but also, it appears, deepening fragmentation of society.
[Now] Kibaki and Raila were back on one platform and back again into one government. It would be naive to think that the deep animosity of the past two months has evaporated but there was generosity of spirit, and laughter from Mwai Kibaki, things that have been conspicuously absent in the political arena over the past two months.
The deal offers a real possibility of redistributing power by creating an executive prime minister, who will almost certainly be Raila Odinga, and securing that post within a National Accord and Reconciliation Act which will form part of the constitution.
Similarly, arrangements have been made for the sharing of government posts - with some security that the present opposition cannot be reshuffled out of government.
There has been some public rejoicing, but quite muted. Not much dancing in the street. The overwhelming feeling seems to be more relief than rejoicing. All are aware that the signing of a paper and an Act of Parliament will not restore relatives to the bereaved, homes, fields and business to the displaced or resurrect relationships, built over years and torn apart in hours.
The great news of this deal is that it now seems possible to seriously begin the task of rebuilding, restoring, and healing. At the college [Carlile College, the Church Army training centre where Colin works] the conversation has already turned to when we can begin teaching in Kibera and moving our residential students back there.
The encouragement from Kofi Annan is that the process does not end here and the mediation team was due back to look at longer term issues of land reform, wealth and resource distribution and the search for a more just and equitable society. If real progress is made in those areas then all that has been so tragically lost in the past two months may not have been entirely in vain.
[A recent] editorial in the Daily Nation Newspaper perhaps best captured the task: "Now that the deal is done let the hard work begin".