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.