When Kenya's leaders set out on a tour of the Rift Valley last week, it was hardly surprising that they chose to begin it in the town of Eldoret. The small community was the scene of some of the worst violence that flared up after the country's elections, including the torching of a church that killed around 50 people seeking sanctuary inside. Neighbours once lived in harmony in this community; now the rioting has virtually wiped it off the map.

More than 1000 people were killed and around 500,000 left homeless by mass riots in the wake of the December election that led to President Mwai Kibaki being accused of vote fraud by challenger Raila Odinga. Neighbours turned against each other as thousands of houses were razed and farms destroyed.

Sitting in front of a warm fire as a cold wind blows snow across hills in the Scottish Borders outside, Michael McKean is a long way from that violence that swept through Kenya. But less than 24 hours earlier he was out there, speaking to the people in the refugee camps and trying to work out how to turn problems into solutions.

The 33-year-old is part of a secondary emergency response team employed by the Edinburgh-based aid agency, Mercy Corps, to fly to disaster zones, including Kenya and Zimbabwe, at 72 hours' notice. His job is to prepare proposals from the initial emergency response staff and persuade governments to provide the funding to turn them into reality.

Witnessing the aftermath of the Kenyan conflict brought back grim memories of the conflict in Bosnia, where McKean worked with Mercy Corps from 2001 to 2003 to help displaced people return to their homes. "It reminded me of exactly that - two ethnic groups living side by side for years who then all of a sudden turn on each other," he says.

"I saw all these burned-out villages, like the ones I saw in Bosnia except that there you could see the remains of the houses but with no windows, while in Kenya all that was left was the foundations.

"The violence was still going on in rural areas when I was there. You don't see it, but you would get a call on the radio from an aid organisation network saying don't go to this place, there are boys out with bows and arrows.

"I also heard the same stories of people on one side forcing someone from the other ethnic group to kill someone in their own group, or themselves be killed."

Describing the impact of the conflict, and the camps that had to be set up to shelter displaced people, McKean adds: "I was talking to people in the camps who said they were not going back home. A farmer from Eldoret said it was a case of three strikes and I'm out' after he had been displaced three times as a result of post-electoral violence.

"The likelihood of these people returning home is not very high, and the longer they stay in the camps and are dependent on food distribution the less able they are to think about finding a solution. Some people think it could be a generation before people feel comfortable enough to go back to their homes. They are scared to return after the terrible violence they suffered - often inflicted by long-term, respected neighbours.

"We in Scotland have heard a lot about the conflict but I don't think many people understand the impact that being displaced has on your mental health."

Of course, it's not just Kenya that Mercy Corps work in; it has been working with communities in Zimbabwe. As President Robert Mugabe continues to hold on to power after a disputed election result there, Mercy Corps has been trying to improve access to health and education for the country's people, particularly those affected by the HIV/Aids epidemic.

Mark Chadwick, the charity's senior programme officer for Zimbabwe, said: "There needs to be enough stability to deal with the long-term crisis that they are suffering and the longer this political tension continues, the further away is the start of the recovery process.

"There is a huge amount of potential for Zimbabwe and definitely scope for recovery but the problems they are having at the moment are going to have an impact for several years."

McKean has been watching keenly the situation in Zimbabwe. "There are various factors that could trigger unrest, including an announcement by Mugabe that he is staying on or back in power," he says. "Mercy Corps is already working in Zimbabwe so we would be in a good position to increase our work there if we receive support."

McKean's fascination with world affairs began when he was growing up in Peebles - where his teacher mother, Claire, 59, and landscape-contractor father Craig, 66, still live.

"My mother tells me that from when I was really wee I would not read books but I would sit and read the atlas," he says. "By the age of six I could tell you the capital city of every country in the world."

Later, as a student, a field trip to Tanzania (in the course of a zoology degree at Glasgow University) led him to train as an aid worker. He says: "We were wandering about the rain forests when we came across a classic African mud-hut village.We were trying to educate the community about the fact that the Pemba flying fox was endangered and they were telling us that they had nothing else to eat, so what were we going to do about it? Suddenly it didn't quite add up to me."

After around eight years with Mercy Corps, McKean says he has become accustomed to the horrific scenes in which his job places him in, but admits it can be hard adjusting when he returns home.

"You launch back into normality straight away," he says. "I remember coming back after the Pakistan earthquake on December 22. I had been out there quite a while and on coming back and going Christmas shopping everything seemed so awful and commercial, having just been somewhere where 100,000 people had been killed and there were bodies buried in the rubble.

"The job satisfaction is immense, though. You really feel that you are achieving something, putting something back, and it's a fascinating opportunity to travel to parts of the world and meet people you would not normally get a chance to meet; to work in these countries and contribute to people's recovery and development."

While he has previously been sent to other African countries such as Uganda, McKean says that Kenya has for too long been regarded by the west as a stable African nation among more turbulent border states. But as the current crisis has highlighted, the country has no immunity to political violence and corruption.

The names of camps such as Naivasha and Nakuru will sound familiar to western tourists who have gone there to tick off the checklist of animals that visitors hope to see on safari. Few holidaymakers get more than the briefest glimpse of the abject poverty that blights the lives of much of the Kenyan population. "Kenya is known as the safari place, but it is also rated as one of the poorest countries the world," points out McKean.

The camps the Scot visited were made up largely of familiar, standard, UN-issue white canvas tents, although some sites were made to look a bit like Glastonbury, he says, by more colourful variations. Although the camps would give most westerners a jolt, these refuges bring an improvement to the lives of many poor Kenyans. People might be crammed five or six to a tent, but they have a place to live, they are fed, there is running water and latrines - which a lot of them didn't have before."

One of Mercy Corps' main aims is to help farmers who want to return to their land swiftly. While this is crucial for their wellbeing, it will also help stave off a food crisis that threatens to break out because rioting caused massive disruption of food production.

While the charity works to help people help themselves rather than dictating what they should do, it is also trying to persuade farmers to branch out from the staple crop of maize - which takes nine months to harvest - to vegetables such as potatoes, which can be harvested in just three months.

Like the fragile power-sharing deal that has been thrashed out between Kibaki and Odinga, this year's vital harvest will need widespread support to take root.

Helping displaced people help themselves: the ethos at Mercy Corps' heart

WITH a base in Nairobi and active relief and development programmes in Uganda, Somalia, Sudan and Ethiopia, the international aid charity Mercy Corps was well placed to respond to the crisis in Kenya.

Emergency response work has focused on the Nakuru and Kisumu areas of western Kenya where Mercy Corps is providing tools and seeds for farming families to start sowing their new harvest.

By encouraging farmers to grow vegetable crops, which they can harvest in as little as three months, Mercy Corps hopes that the 550,000 people left homeless by the post-election violence will soon become independent again.

Mercy Corps is also trying to support them while they remain in refugee camps by providing work such as road-repair programmes to ensure that they can help themselves and simultaneously help the community by improving vital infrastructure for Kenya's recovery.