What An Odd Experience

What an Odd Experience

I finally got through to my liaison officer, Charles, today. He has been in the thick of things in our village. Busia/Nambale is on the Uganda border. Because of its border status there is more tribal variety for trade reasons. Charles usually works in Mombassa, down on the coast, another real hotspot.

So it’s 10A.M here in bitter cold Boston and I’m talking to Charles. He tells me of the killings and the burning of the shops in Busia. The Asians (read India and Pakistanis) have fled across the border because their shops and those of the Kikuyus were hit the hardest. Charles is calmly telling me this, but has no idea what is happening in Nairobi, the capital. Since they are virtually cut off from any deliveries, postal service has been shut for over a week, and there is no electricity, they have been without papers or news reports. So I tell him, no worries, I’ll read him the paper. He asked me to call back in 10 minutes.

15 minutes later, while sitting in my warm parlor with the fountain running, cats sprawled in leisurely sleep, Charles puts me on speaker phone with his mobile and I am reading the newspaper to several of his friends and neighbors. I read them articles from both the Nation and the Standard. They didn’t know about the continued rioting or the severity of the killing in Kisumu. How odd to be reading the Kenyan papers on line to a group of Luhya’s sitting in a parlor over in Nambale. Is my life real? Did this really happen?

Charles was greatly relieved that One Village would continue its support. It made me sad to think that they are so used to donors leaving, that they naturally thought we would pull out. He asked me to send an email right away reassuring the teachers and families in our schools, which I happily did. He said that my call gave him the courage to venture into town and try to go to the cyber café to pick it up. Sure enough 20 minutes later I got on line email from Charles. He hoped that he could get all the head teachers together and pull together a relief effort.

Many have asked me why this is happening in Kenya and I am attaching a link to a Youtube video that I think says it best. These weren’t elections but tribal stances ripe for outrage due to continued domination by one tribe over another. Odinga did go ahead with the rally in Uhuru Park today. The Nation will be out now, so I’m going to check it.
Check out this video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNLb0yN_O94&feature=related