“I am not a happy man,” said John Otieno, a community leader in Kibera and an Odinga stalwart.

A crowd of young men who had gathered around him on Monday morning grunted their support, muttering the words “thief” and “stolen.”

“But there will be no protests,” Mr. Otieno said, and the men around him simmered down. “We will listen to our leader. Raila said he will take this to the courts, and we have faith in the courts. We will wait for them.”

“Kenya,” he said grandly, “has changed.”

Though the electoral drama has not been fully resolved, Kenya has greatly defied expectations, along the lines of what Uhuru Kenyatta, the president-elect, said in his acceptance speech on Saturday: “Finally, Kenya has come of age.”

The raft of reforms this country made after the crisis of late 2007 and early 2008, and the extensive antiviolence messages during this election, seemed to have found their mark. Since the election results were announced Saturday, giving the presidency to Mr. Kenyatta in a surprising first-round victory, top politicians down to neighborhood activists have been calling for peace — and the peace has been holding, even in passionate Odinga strongholds like Kibera and Kisumu (in western Kenya) and along the coast.

A big reason is that Mr. Odinga, who says he has detailed information about inflated voter turnout and the theft of thousands of votes, has decided to take his grievances to the courts this time, not to the streets. He says he has faith in the judiciary, which in 2007 was widely dismissed as inept and corrupt, but is now respected as one of Kenya’s more dependable public institutions. Willy Mutunga, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, is one of Kenya’s most trusted public officials, though some analysts have raised doubts about the other five justices.