Jennifer Titus went to choir practice yesterday as she does on a Thursday morning. Thirty minutes later she was on her knees begging for her life, as a mob set her church alight around her.
"I had to plead with them to let me out," she said, as the roof of Kibera's Africa Inland Church billowed smoke deep in the heart of the slum.
"I was praying and tears were coming down my face. I had to tell them I wasn't a member of the church and was just hiding from the police, but until then they wanted to kill me."
More than 30 died on Monday in a church set ablaze in the town of Eldoret. Yesterday, about 50 young men stormed Jennifer's church, built with money from hated former president Daniel arap Moi. They siphoned petrol from a generator before setting alight its wood-framed roof.
By the afternoon its roof sagged and the windows were making popping sounds as they exploded. Church members armed with iron pipes promised to defend its ruins.
"Burning our church will not make Raila president," Joshua Deya said. Kibera is home to thousands of Luos from west Kenya who back presidential candidate Raila Odinga.
Police fired volleys of live rounds all morning to disperse crowds behind burning barricades. But they could not prevent thousands of mostly young men pouring on to the paved streets outside the shanty town.
"There are police stopping us now, but we know our rights," said one young man brandishing a leafy branch, a symbol of defiance, as he marched towards the police. "If Kibaki is president he will be a president for Kikuyus only."
All morning the police held firm using tear gas and water cannon to keep the column some two miles from the city centre, where opposition leaders planned to hold a rally.
At times anger boiled over. Roadside stalls and two petrol stations were torched, and a hail of rocks rained down on police. But by early afternoon the protesters dispersed, leaving roads carpeted with the cabbages they had used to pelt posters of Kibaki and smouldering barricades.
On the other side of town in the Mathare slum, rival groups hurled rocks at each other. Black smoke billowed from a burning gas station, and several charred cars sat along the roadside. The corpse of at least one dead man lay face down on a muddy path, and a wailing wife pulled her battered husband from the dark waters of the Nairobi river where he had been left for dead.
Shops and offices stayed closed all day. The smart coffee shops and glitzy shopping mall favoured by expat aid workers remained deserted as a thick pall of smoke rose into the sky from dozens of fires. Downtown Nairobi was empty save for truckloads of riot police in red berets who kept protesters away from Uhuru Park, the would-be destination for the rally.