Your resident alien

Now I have a certificate to prove it!

<<...>>

Exchange burned

On Wednesday, the ODM party arranged a funeral service in a local park near Ngong Road. I saw people assembling at the mortuary on my way to work, along with press vans and the army General Service Unit. Towards the end of the event, youths threw stones at the GSU and started fires at barricades they made in the road. The GSU responded with tear gas and that was the end of the funeral. The youths then vandalised the telephone exchange, pushing over a wall and pushing two cars against the wall. They set fire to the cars, looted everything they could find, broke windows and had fun in front of the cameras until the police and army got back in force and stopped it all. Some of the crowd ended up in my road but didn’t do any damage. I was at work at the time and all was well when I got back. The exchange is 2-300m from my flat, opposite my bus stop. The burned section is at the back, towards the mast. <<...>> <<...>>

Organising a student protest

My postgrad students returned today, and the undergrads are due to arrive this week.

One of the postgrads remarked that the undergrads might get involved in any Mass Action that is called.

Apparently it won’t happen on our campus because there isn’t a good main road to block and the police post is too small to bother with.

For a good protest one should have a big road near to student housing, for running away, and a police station. The Uhuru Highway (the biggest in the country) is ideal; blockages will cause an impact, it’s got a roundabout next to student accommodation on the main campus, and the central police station is only 200m away.

If this isn’t enough to get the police out for a fight, it may still be necessary to throw some stones at the police station to get them out.

Either way, when it gets to lunch time both sides will go to eat and reassemble at the agreed time.

Sounds rather like the previous city centre rallies. (And very different from the slum fights.)

Friday 18th Nairobi

We are on the third day of “Mass Action”. In reality there has been much less enthusiasm for these as the situation has settled. The heavy rain probably also helped.

I stayed at home, with supplies of food, phone cards and cash but haven’t been very much affected directly.

The city centre has been cordoned off each day and the token efforts to have a rally by the opposition leaders have been rebuffed with tear gas, at which point the leaders disappear in Range Rovers to go to hotels and the followers run from the police.

Meanwhile in the slum areas, there is general hooliganism and robbery to which the police respond with tear gas and some bullets. Sadly, there have been a few deaths, from various causes.

The road to work gets blocked as it is a containment point for marchers from the slum to the central park and there are sometimes clashes there. Otherwise I would not know anything was happening.

 I did hear a bit of gunfire yesterday, from the Kibera slum, perhaps in connection with a train that got stopped and robbed.

The opposition say this is the last of the calls for rallies; they are moving on to boycott businesses now, which will presumably just continue to hurt fellow Kenyans and leave the politics unchanged.

The antics in parliament are all too reminiscent of UK parliaments but they also have a bit of true Kenyan chaos. The opposition party, formed out of a load of splits and mergers, has to submit a list of 6 additional MPs to be appointed in addition to those elected. They have submitted two different lists; one from the “current leaders” and one from the registered officials of the party. The latter includes two of those officials themselves. Presumably this will get resolved  but it isn’t a great start from those who wish to run the country.

There are several things which are concerning. One is the enhanced poverty amongst those who were already poor, a second is the deep ethnic enmity which has opened up again, and a third is the problem of a president without a majority in parliament.

Despite all that, and there is a lot of sadness amongst Kenyans, there is also optimism from everyone I speak to that after this period of turbulence it will get resolved and normality will return.

I am hoping students will return on Monday, at the third attempt, and we can get back to normal there too.

Kenyan Anthem and flag

O God of all creation
Bless this our land and nation
Justice be our shield and defender
May we dwell in unity
Peace and liberty
Plenty be found within our borders.

This is the first verse and was written for independence in 1963; it uses a Swahili song for the tune.

It seems so poignant now.

The stripes on the flag are symbolic:

Black for the people

Red for blood shed to gain independence

Green for a fertile land

White for peace. <<...>>

Getting stolen goods back

In the coastal area, there was a lot of looting which the police were unable to prevent or deal with. One timber-yard owner announced he would be pronouncing a curse on anyone who hadn't returned the goods. There was a rush to return items as news got around that one person had a heart-attack while carrying off a TV. Others claimed not to have been able to go to the toilet for several days, or other ailments. Some hired handcarts to get the stuff back, others said they knew they'd be a laughing stock but they couldn't risk the curse. People in the Muslim areas seemed to take this very seriously.
Less seriously, a newspaper columnist argued that this should be used to combat mobile phone thefts, instead of the expensive high-tech solutions that don't seem to work.

Time travel

To visit my friends at Christmas, I used Ethiopian Airways (“Connecting Africa to the rest of the World”) rather than Kenyan (“Pride of Africa”) and so spent a night in Addis Ababa each way. The useful tit-bit for pub quizzes is that Ethiopia is the only country still using the Julian Calendar, so this year is 2000 and started on Sept 12^th in our Gregorian calendars. Thus I travelled 7 years back and forward again each way. All that Tardis stuff bothered me much less than the half hour early they tried to get me on the hotel-airport bus coming back at Addis.

I also had Christmas twice; my return trip happened to be on the Ethiopian Christmas day (7^th Jan this year, though all the books/calendars say it is the 8^th).

You can see why they had famine there when you look at the scenery but Addis seems nice enough.

Another quiz question: Anyone know which was the last country to switch from the Julian calendar?

Addis Airport & Ethiopian Airlines

Odd curiosities:

1. Very high security (unless girl is distracted talking to mate while luggage goes through) but then Ethiopian are the most high-jacked airline in the world. (More quiz trivia for you).

2. Souvenir coasters for sale; designed on a Thai pattern and made in USA.

3. Announcement: “Would passengers waiting behind destined for (Nairobi) frankly go to gate 4”. Hope the other 3 languages were better but I guess the message is conveyed.

4. Best in-flight magazine I’ve seen.

New year

Normally New Year is seen in amongst the cold wet Cumbrian hills.
This year I slept under a myriad of stars on a beach on the Gulf of Aden. On Jan 1st we swam with Whale Sharks, the largest fish on the planet. OK, these were 3 metre babies, but that's still pretty big. They are committed vegetarians with a lovely pinkish surface and rows of white spots. The water was a bit rough for poor-swimmer me (1m waves) but I found that with a life-jacket it was good fun.
Other beach life included many gulls, a heron, crabs, various multi-coloured fish and some hermit crabs.

The rock hyrax were in a nearby canyon.

A real low point

You know Kilimanjaro is the highest point in Africa, but where is the lowest?

 

This is!  Lac Assal. 156m below sea level. (Also claimed to be third lowest in the world.)

 

The lake was cut off from the sea by a volcano and there are hot springs (oops, burned foot) and lots of salt. The whole country is rather bleak and dry and there is a significant haze to dull the views.

 

The salt you can see, with a shallow layer of water in parts leading out to the deeper and amazingly-coloured waters of the lake.

The wading Brits are my old school friend and family.

Nairobi situation

Thanks to all who have contacted me to see how things are.
I'm due back in Nairobi on Tuesday 8th , having delayed 3 days in North Africa to allow things to settle. I understand all should be well now, indeed some parts of Nairobi were untouched all along. One person told me if it were not for the news they wouldn't have known anything were happening but another said it was very bad.
The trouble was in predictable spots where there is a history. (Slum areas with a lot of support for opposition leader Raila Odinga, city centre, the far west of the country where fighting has continued for years over land, ethnicity, etc.) Having said that, one of the protest marches got intercepted near my flat and there was trouble at that point; a petrol station got burned and that made me take the chance to delay my return.
There has been a shortage of cash (banks closed), fuel and food but that is now resolving.
The politics need sorting but I can't see there being a lot more violence immediately.
The election certainly seems odd. I could understand it being close, although Raila's campaign was a lot better than Kibaki's, but it seems odd that Mwai Kibaki got a majority personal vote when at the same time his alliance got far fewer MPs than the opposition ODM (about 55:95 depending who is allied to whom with about 30 seats yet to declare). Most people will have voted consistently for MP and President. The EU observers said that in at least two places the local count reported 50-odd thousand for Kibaki but the Electoral Commisiion announced 70-odd thousand in the final result. MPs made themselves very unpopular with massive pay awards and pensions and most were voted out, regardless of party. Twenty ministers lost their seats, including the VP.