Takin’ It To The Streets

with green mambas as the Nairobi Snake Park
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By Dan

. . . . or Burnin’ Down the House, if you prefer the ‘ Heads to the Doobies.

We flew back to Nairobi on Friday afternoon the 28^th, and weren’t quite sure what we were going to find. The presidential election had taken place the prior day, and interim results had been announced, but nothing final or determinative. Our sense in Lamu though, was that things were starting to get a little unsettled. The taxi driver who had arranged to meet us at Wilson Airport was nowhere to be seen when we arrived, and when I called him on his cell phone to see whether he was just running late, he explained that he was out of town for fear of trouble. That sort of alerted us that things might be a little interesting. . . . .Unlike our first drive into Nairobi from an airport, we sailed along through virtually deserted streets.

elephant orphanage
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Back to the Fairview, which once again was a lovely haven of calm, cleanliness, and coordination. They just know how to do things right, there. We spent a quiet evening there, with one eye on the TV to watch election results.

Betty Cordoza was due to arrive at about 7:15 am on Saturday morning, and oh, boy, were the kids excited. Grayson stealthily set the alarm on his watch for much earlier than needed, and the kids had made some pact to wake each other up. This was like Christmas to them – maybe because they know that Nana tends to be bearing gifts when she appears, so it effectively was Christmas! We headed out to the airport, tried various means to watch for her plane to land, and managed to connect with her as she exited Customs. It was great to have her join us, and she did arrive with all sorts of fun stuff. Special thanks to a couple of people who wrote extremely nice letters, Ellen’s baked items, Josh’s care package, Lila’s card and gift, and Miss Erker’s fun pile of stuff (but, no, I’m not going to use the razors just yet!).

At Karen Blixen's house
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After checking out the situation, it seemed OK for us to head over to the Snake Park, which Christina and I have really enjoyed over the years. It’s pretty hokey, and hasn’t been updated in about 50 years, but getting up close and personal with a Gabon viper, black mamba, and other assorted poisonous critters is fun. The word was, though, that downtown was basically closed down due to rioting or the threat thereof, so we headed back to the hotel. Christina and I confessed to each other at some point that we were both thinking of the movie Hotel Rwanda, when the white tourists in Africa blissfully enjoyed the comforts of a lovely hotel while chaos raged just outside. Fortunately, as I write this, to my knowledge the chaos has been comparatively limited, but it was a weird feeling.

At the Carnivore
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OK, a quick and very simplistic overview of the presidential election: the incumbent, Kibaki, was being challenged by somebody named Odinga. Lamu seemed to be predominantly in favor of Odinga, most of whose support came from tribes other than the Kikuyu, who are the largest tribe and the one which has traditionally dominated Kenyan politics. Kibaki is a Kikuyu. Early reports showed Odinga leading by a healthy margin, and his party was winning a large majority of the seats in parliament. Kenya has historically been one of sub-Saharan Africa’s most stable countries, but it has had only three presidents in the almost 50 years since independence, and this was the first truly hotly contested election, so there was a lot of attention focused on it. And, in an awesome show of democracy, 14 million people voted. Vote counts started to slow down on Saturday, and numbers started to come out that didn’t make sense. (I think that in one precinct, more votes were apparently cast for Kibaki than there were registered voters.) Allegations of irregularities increased, and the people, especially Odinga’s supporters, were doing a lot of rioting to show their displeasure with the way things were going.

Grayson loves his care package from the Lees!
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As of Saturday evening, they had stopped issuing reports on the vote. Sunday morning, we couldn’t get any new information as to what was happening, but it was apparently quiet. So, we headed out for the suburb of Karen. First stop was the Sheldrick Trust’s elephant orphanage, where we spent a very fun hour watching baby elephants being fed as part of their preparation for release into the wild. With some stray warthogs running around as well, it really felt like we were in Africa! A few other places we wanted to visit in Karen were closed, but we did manage to visit the house in which Karen Blixen (of Out of Africa fame) lived. Christina, who has always had a thing for Karen Blixen, seemed to be in heaven. . . . .

Thanks Lila!
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Driving home, we saw some pretty significant pillars of smoke coming from parts of town where rioting was apparently at its heaviest. We weren’t anywhere close to any problems, as far as I know, but we were paying a lot of attention to what was going on. I don’t know if anybody really knows the true facts, but at some point on Sunday morning, it was suddenly announced that Kibaki had won, by about 500,000 votes. He was quickly sworn in, with Odinga vowing to keep on fighting. Time will tell what happens. There was more smoke and even some flame visible as we drove to dinner on Sunday evening, to the point where we considered aborting, but our taxi driver assured us that we were fine, and we ended up having a really fun dinner at the Carnivore, a Nairobi institution. They no longer serve as many kinds of wild game as they once did, but we did get to enjoy crocodile meat (not very popular at our table) and ostrich meatballs (tasty!), as well as other more traditional barbecued meats. Plus, since it was a late birthday celebration for Nana, we got to hear the staff singing the “Jambo” song to her, complete with drums, hoots, and whistles. All in all, a fun evening.

With all of the craziness and uncertainty in Nairobi, we’re definitely glad to be heading out of town tomorrow morning for Tanzania. Let’s all hope that things settle down without further bloodshed and violence in Kenya. It was an interesting lesson in democracy (sort of), less than transparent governments (maybe), being a good loser (whether you really lost or not), etc. It might be a good time for Al Gore to make a visit.