Long lost weekend for me ….

Well we have just done with a loooong weekend, and now we head into a 4 day week.
“Absolutely fabulous”, I hear you cry.

We woke up to these cheeky blighters in our garden ...

Then off my son and I went to the Nairobi park with a bit of a packed lunch on board, and went and saw these …

and lots of these ….

And a few of these ….

The rest of the weekend was spent hanging out with these ….

And having a few games of this ….

Sadly right now, my life feels a bit like this ….

And so although it really was an excellent weekend (and I have the bruises to prove it), finding anything half full right now is becoming increasingly difficult, and yet as you can see from my photos, I have absolutely NO excuse at all to feel this way.

I do hope that I will wake tomorrow to a better frame of mind.

Wish me luck ...

I should title this ... and here we go again!

Just to please you all after our joyous little occassion of festivities yesterday after the naming of the extremely large cabinet of over 100 ministers (with 40 ministries and god knows how many assistants for each), and now with a heavy head I'm afraid this is what we've woken up with today ......


Dear Friends:

Following the skirmishes that were reported this morning, this is the current security update as at 1130 hrs from KK Security:

Situation in Nairobi
Runda / Ruaka / Ndenderu – The situation has normalized and public transport has resumed.

Thika Road – Police have the situation under control. Public transport has resumed. A security crackdown is underway in Mathare North.

Kikuyu – Transit goods trucks have blocked the road out of Kikuyu leading to traffic blockages. The trucks had their tyres deflated at Gitaru. Police are working to clear the road. Public transport has been disrupted. There are reports of roadblocks at Feed the Children Junction and at Dagoretti.

Kariobangi / Dandora / Juja Rd area – The area is a hot-bed of Mungiki activities and there have been reports of vehicles burnt. Police patrols have been intensified and there are reports of a security operation against Mungiki in the area.

Githurai / Zimmermann / Kahawa West – In the morning, the roads had been blocked. There was gunfire as police cleared the road. The situation has normalized and there are police roadblocks. Public transport has resumed.

Enterprise Rd – There were running battles between the Police and the Mungiki in the morning and there were gunshots heard, so far the situation has calmed down as it’s a game of hide and seek.


Situation across other Towns

At least 10 suspected Mungiki have been gunned down by police across Nairobi, Central and Rift Valley provinces. Nine have been killed by police, two by Mungiki.

• In Makadara a man was hacked to death overnight.
• In Kariobangi estate two suspects burning cars were shot dead.
• On Kirinyaga road, another suspect was killed
• In Eldoret, two suspects have been shot dead.
• Naivasha recorded one death. Another was killed on the Nairobi-Nakuru road.
• Two suspects were killed in both Ruiru and Murang’a.
• Thirty vehicles and a petrol station were set ablaze in Embakasi.
• In Nakuru, two vehicles were set ablaze in Bahati by Mungiki who barricaded the Nakuru-Nyahururu road.
  

Cause of Disturbances
Mungiki are reported to be protesting against the killing of jailed sect leader Maina Njenga’s wife and his driver last week. The protests are also to pressurize the government to release the sect leader from prison. This morning, a group calling itself the Kenya National Youth Alliance claimed responsibility for the disturbances.



More reports to follow as they come

ER, Of course this violence isn’t tribalism . .

I do not wish to take sides, and I wouldn't like to really say who is right and who is wrong at this stage, but how the hell are we going to sort out this mess and pick our lives back up off the floor.

Yet how is it that our Mr. Kibaki (or President Kibaki as he likes to be known at the moment – however no-one knows how long that will be for..) – went to visit displaced people in the Rift Valley and yet he only addressed the Kikuyus from his own tribe.

Behind him, they burnt houses and he tried to fob it off as a burning of the grass – "Would that be for planting Mr. Kibaki, and sowing of the land that people have been displaced from and have no money or means to buy seeds to plant their land or anything else for that matter as they are living in showgrounds waiting for the next delivery from the Red Cross?"

No, Sir, I’m afraid you’ll find that is yet more homes going up in smoke and while you stand there and preach to your fellow tribesmen how they are entitled to their land, we do not disagree with your sentiments, but we most definitely disagree with your words as, as much as you would like to diss tribalism, by speaking the words that you do to only your kinsmen, you will be the cause of further tribalism and bloodshed surely.

Kibaki seems to think by naming half his cabinet and putting in a bunch of non-Kikuyus – although only his own supporters of course – this will solve the problem and show he is not favouring his own.

Er …. Wrong. He has just made a farce of the peace efforts surely and we all live in a continued stalemate.

The Nairobians are doing a marvelous job of pretending everything is absolutely fine and trying their best to get on with their jobs in the usual manner (whilst they still have them and the economy hasn’t yet bitten us in the arse) – during daylight hours anyway. In the early evenings they rush back to their houses (those who still have them) before it gets dark, and lock themselves in and pray they will make it until tomorrow, and that their neighbours won’t turn on them overnight, and burn them alive as they sleep.

LATEST HALF HOUR: I have just heard that all the wives of the ODM leaders are walking down the road towards State House, to have a few words with the lady of the manor Lucy Kibaki I assume. I think it’s the Hilary Clinton winning some votes in the States that has got them all ‘girl powered’ up. But, they’d better watch out, for as all Kenyans know well, (and more than one reporter and government official has experienced), Lucy Kibaki has a mean backhand on her!
( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Kibaki ) - she's an absolute doll!

I wish some of these rich folk would remove their heads from their arses.

I am so angry, i have tears pouring down my face, and i want to scream.

Instead i will vent my anger on this keyboard and write this down.

I am sitting in my office right now with only about 5 other people, and we are surrounded by riot police and for the past couple of hours there has been gunfire and explosions on and off.

I have about 200 staff out there - all young Kenyans (hardly anyone above the age of 30), who all live in the various slums dotted in and about Nairobi, and today, because of this unrest that we expected, i gave them all the day off.

Well can you believe i have had numerous phone calls in the last hour asking me why my staff are not working and where's their commitment.

For Christ's sake - they are scared and they are locked up in their homes praying that they will live to see tomorrow, and all our directors have to say is that they are showing a lack of commitment as other shops are open and their staff have got to work, and if our staff can't do that, they should lose their jobs.

Why is it that these people with money, have their heads in the sand just because they feel safe in their big fancy cars and their fenced and guarded houses, it is NOT the same for the common wainanchi, I wish that they would wake up and please try and understand that. I am always in trouble for defending my staff - but if i don't - who the hell else will is what i want to know.

Just because we have lost one day's revenue in our shops - surely that is a lot better option than losing any lives of our staff?!?!

International Day for the Eradication of Poverty.

Kibera slums - where one in 3 Nairobians live.

Today is International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, and as much as i sometimes wonder what all those UN types round our parts get up to half the time, I do believe that somehow, some of the time, they do actually do something useful and for once I'd like to stand up with them.

I've stuck in a link at the side of my blog in which you can all join up and support the Global Call to Action Against Poverty - a worldwide alliance that is committed to forcing the world leaders to live up their promises they made at the dawn of the Millennium, to the world’s poor.

The leaders pledged a world where all children complete their elementary education; a world where people have access to safe drinking water, and families are protected from deadly diseases like malaria; a world where nations work together to cut greenhouse gas emissions that contribute to global warming. Above all, our leaders promised a world where people are no longer condemned to a life of extreme and egregious poverty.

This year, International Day for the Eradication of Poverty falls just after the midpoint in the race to reach those commitments -- ( the Millennium Development Goals, as they are known) -- by the target date of 2015. The Day provides an important opportunity to take stock of progress, and it seems that although the proportion of people globally living on less than a dollar a day has fallen, progress has been uneven, and some regions -- particularly sub-Saharan Africa -- are not on track to redeem even a single one of these grand promises.

- Well, that's us folks - the sub-Saharan ones that are stuffing up their statistics, and yet we are surrounded by do-gooders and UN types, so something somewhere must be going on although i'm not sure how its gone so horribly wrong. Although i can't profess to be able to save the world, i would like to think that somehow we can all do something somewhere to save my fellow citizens.

Ban Ki-Moon suggests Governments to become more accountable to their citizens in their efforts to achieve the Millennium Goals - nice try Mr Moon but you're obviously not an African politician as those around these parts are keen on inflating the banana and orange market, meanwhile making empty promises, that seem to fill nothing but their own pockets!

He then goes on to say: "Above all, it requires a true partnership for development -- one in which rich countries do their part in delivering resources and productive employment opportunities through market access, so as to enable the poor to take control of their lives. " - Now, here i could not agree more. We do not need more and more food aid, we need more and more opportunities to give the poor in order to enable them to take control of their own lives and not to have to live on handouts for ever.

Bravo Ban Ki-Moon - and i do hope our politicians also take a little more notice and stop with the empty promises.

Whatever happened to Steve Fossett?

Here in Nairobi last weekend we had an air show. It was an awesome affair, with the highlight being two incredible pilots flying some incredible acrobatics in their Pitt's specials, and it reminded me of another daring man that we all seem to have conveniently wiped out of our minds.

I’m not sure if people have very short memories or Steve Fossett's is just not important enough even though he had many brilliant and historic achievements, but it seems we’ve all just stopped looking. In his career he set 115 new world records or world firsts, and holds current official World Records in 5 sports. Now surely that's something bragable?

I find it kind of disturbing that one night on every news channel headlined the story that he went missing but then, hey, a couple of day's searching – no sign it seems – so stuff him – lets move on.
He wasn’t doing anything exciting enough at the time – just flying his plane, not attempting to break any records or anything so it seems its not very interesting and we can forget that somewhere out there in the Navada dessert is this fellow – or what remains of him. He’s got to be there somewhere – I mean, it’s highly unlikely someone took him, is it? Personally I can’t see high demand for old fat boy adventurers? (No offence to him at all - but really i would hardly say he was the nickable type ..........)
Anyway its been over a month now and not a word and I do think that perhaps it does deserve the odd mention from time to time as it must be horrendous for his family to just never have any idea of what happened or where on earth he ended up.

Thoughts and prayers to them all.

Please take a look at his website www.stevefossett.com

Surviving Nairobi's traffic!

There's been a lot in the press recently, both local where people are furious, and even the international press, where people are probably just amazed really, about the traffic situation in Nairobi.

If you read anyone's experiences of travel by road in Nairobi, I doubt you'll find one of them that doesn't mention the unbelievable traffic experience, the shocking state of the roads and the ridiculous drivers that we have to endure on them daily!

Sadly, our country has gone through various degrees of corruption and one of the offshoots of this state of affairs is that half the people on the road have probably never taken a driving test and although they hold licences, these have been bought for a small price off some dealer in River Road somewhere. Then there are the hundreds of unroadworthy vehicles that block the lanes all passing through the traffic police with a quick backhander or (a favourite with the hundreds of matatu drivers) just slow down through the road block and throw the money out the window! This means that all those marvellous vehicles just keep on going - no brake lights, bald tyres and that's probably just for starters.

Finally we have the roads themselves. Well it turns out that we are gaily running along on a road system that was put into effect through a plan approved for Nairobi by the colonials back in 1948. Since then it seems that apart from the widening of a few roads and one new 'Processional Way' (to create a short cut from State House to town - very useful i might add...) that has been built in the last one year, we have not built a single road since independence in 1963.

That's good news all round considering the number of new cars estimated to be put onto Kenyan roads every month is around 5000. You could basically say 'We are well and truly stuffed!'

What this all means for the traffic is that of course you need to find ever more ingenious ways to get through it.

The matatus have a great plan. They zoom up the inside on the dirt on the side of the road where all innocent pedestrians get wildly hooted at and have to keep jumping into the ditch in order to survive. Then of course when they get to the junctions and back to single lane traffic, they just charge into you at full speed hoping you'll dive out of the way to save your own car, which of course you generally do at all costs, ... and they win!

This daily survival course is played out every morning on our way to school. I have taken to using a driver as i can't be doing with the stress of it all. What amuses me is that if you dare to take on these matatus (which my driver will as he's so much braver than me - and of course won't have to pay the bill if he loses the battle!!) the drivers of these vehicles give you the most filthy looks and then hang out of their windows and start shouting at you for not allowing them in! ....

We had a great discussion the other day on what car you should be driving in order to survive (or not), and what it says about you. It was summed up as follows:

1. Range Rover/Land Rover or some other large sturdy 4x4 with the biggest 'f... off' bull bar you can find.
- This says 'Don't mess with me. I'm not afraid to use it! I can hit you harder!'

2. Merc
- This comes with a status tag and will generally gain you some respect on the road as generally all 'WaBenzies' (as those who drive them are known) will not allow you to even touch the paintwork without calling the cops and making you waste half your day standing on the side of the road waiting for them to show up.

3. Toyota Corolla
- Generally only driven by those with a death wish or keen on a seriously exciting, although sometimes lethal, game of dodgems of a morning. Matatu drivers have absolutely no shame about driving one of those straight off the road and into the nearest ditch, or, if you get caught on the wrong side, straight into the oncoming traffic. And seeing as almost half the cars on the road are Toyota corollas - it is incredibly tricky surviving in one.

So, my advice to anyone about to buy themselves a car in Kenya. First of all, new is not recommended. If it has a few scratches on the side before you buy it, so much the better as then you won't feel so bad when you have your first ding - because you will have one no matter how safe a driver you think you are. It's not about you darlin', it's about the other mad b.........s on the road. For god's sake, do not, whatever you do, buy yourself a Corolla as you'll be lucky if you last a week without getting side swipped. The best recommendation is to invest in a whopping great 4x4 - the older the better - and fit the biggest and most solid bull bar you can find on the front, put your aggressive hat on and take to the road. - You'll feel just like 'Moses' when the traffic parts ahead of you!

"My Dream"

Today my son came home with a big piece of paper all folded up in his homework folder. Wondering what it was i opened it up and there were only 2 words at the top of the blank white page.

"My Dream"

When i questioned him what the paper was about, he told me it was something he didn't finish in school. When i asked why - he said he was because he didn't have a dream.

It made me really sad that comment, and as usual in parent world, I felt guilty that I had not given this boy any dreams.

BUT then i had a bit of a think.

Perhaps if you have no dreams, then you have no expectations and then perhaps life doesn't continuously disappoint you.

I have dreams - big dreams - but chances are i will be disappointed as I've been so many times before BUT then again dreams keep me moving forward - always thinking that things will definitely get better and over the next hill will be a smashing green pasture!!

But hold on - who's the pessimist who came out with the 'The grass is always greener on the other side' - yet it means it generally isn't and you shouldn't continually go chasing that greener pasture. It's really very confusing and really quite philosophical for a dumb arse such as me but interesting.

I thought of all those kids you see living their lives day to day in some of the kijiji's around my office. (Kijijis being slums or shanties that appear overnight all over Nairobi. Houses built with tin sheets and cardboard boxes and, on average, get mowed down once a month by a City Council bulldozer).

But you'd be amazed by the children who live in these places. Generally they have crusty snot dried on their faces, layers upon layers of dirty ragged clothes - even in the hot season - but their little faces are gorgeous. They smile, they laugh, they run about in puddles, they scream, they shout, they fall down and .. like so many millions of children the world over, they know no different.

They somehow seem so perfectly happy in their little existence, and without some smart arse expatriate or 'do-gooder' telling them they shouldn't be living like this, they seem to be quite content in their worlds. Yes it may be that they don't wear new clothes, new shoes or live in houses with perfectly sound brick walls - but perhaps that's it. You don't miss what you don't know about.

I'm not trying to be cynical but perhaps trying to understand a young child with no dream. It's not that i don't believe one day these kids, together with mine, will have dreams - big dreams - and i wish for all of them that they can all come true because it's a damn cruel world out there and sadly one day it'll dawn on each one of them in it's own way.

But when you're 7 years old and live in an oblivious existence of that world - it must be such a wonderful place.

My dream is that i could remember being 7 and remember being in that place!