Kenya Christmas

Kenya was my Christmas destination. Andrea, my Dordt roommate, was working in Kenya so Jena, another Dordt roommate who is teaching in Bahrain, and I decided to have a roommate reunion in Africa while spending Christmas together.

We went to spend some time in the village in the western part of Kenya where Andrea was working. (If you want to check out a map we were in a village between Kakamega and Kisumu). It was a beautiful village in the green hills of western Kenya. We decided to spend Christmas there and since the elections were on the 27th we thought it would be safest to leave after the election hype had gone down because travelling around elections wasn't recommended.

While watching the news on the 27th we realized that perhaps tallying the polls would be rather cumbersome. There was someone who held up each vote and called out who that vote was for while they were showing the ballot to everyone in the room. By the 29th when the president had not been elected there were riots in the streets because the tallying was taking too slowly. Because of the riots they decided to stop counting the votes until the rioting stopped, I'm not sure about the logic behind that. People were getting rather excited in western Kenya as it was appearing that Raila Odinga would become the next president as he was leading by one million votes. But an hour later, Kibaki was announced as president and sworn in an hour later (which is really fast since he was supposed to wait for representatives from Uganda and Tanzania). Obviously, this would cause an uproar because Kibaki obviously rigged the elections. Since Kibaki is Kikuyu and Raila is Luo, the Luo tribe started to kill people of the Kikuyu tribe. The biggest problems were in Luo areas where Kikuyus have moved in. Kikuyu houses, markets, and shops were looted or burnt. Bonfires started on the roads, riots, and shootings were starting all over these areas.

Because the excitement wasn't in our house, we decided to get some fun of our own. We went to flush the toilet and wash our hands and the toilet didn't flush and the facet didn't pour out water as usual, we had run out of water. We learned that the pump of the well wasn't working anymore and we couldn't get anyone to fix it because no one was moving because of election problems, the roads were blocked, and there was no gas available because it could not be transported across the blocked roads - but who wants gas if things are being set on fire?! A couple days later, while we were keeping tabs on the situation around us on the television, the electricity went off. We went 6 days without water and 3 days without electricity because no one could come fix the electrical wires or the well pump.

We weren't in danger unless you consider going crazy after being in one house reading books, entertaining each other while cooking and eating strange things as a danger. Our diet started to change to eating fried brownie dough batter, cookie dough (there was no gas oven to cook them in!), fried green bananas, popcorn, and biscuits. We did get out to walk to the market and buy a few vegetables as well as the popular sodas and people watch. We also went to visit a few homes which were one room mud huts but it was interesting to speak to the people living there.

Anyways, while we were minding ourselves in the village there was quite a chaos down the street from us - which I'm sure you could hear on the news. On January 1st, 6 days after the election, we get a phone call late at night while we are in bed and we are told that we are told that we need to have our bags packed because we are leaving tomorrow in a Cessna, a 6 seater plane. We all laughed, because this is Africa and nothing ever happens when they say it will happen. So, we woke up the next morning unsure if we should pack because we had been told to pack before and ended up unpacking everything because we weren't leaving. Finally, someone tells us that the police escort is coming very soon and we need to be ready. So, although very soon is very vague in Africa, we scramble to get all of our stuff into bags. Soon enough there is a huge Toyota truck with army officers with guns at our place who take our stuff and fit us into the truck. On our way to the Kakamega airstrip we see the stones which were used as roadblocks and buildings that are burnt. But the strangest thing is that no one was around, and this is Africa there are always people walking on the sides of the streets but the place was empty. We arrived at the airstrip in time to see the little plane land. We piled in through small doors and held on tight for an hour long turbulent roller coaster ride without tracks. We landed in Nairobi and were picked up by people working with Andrea's organization. We quickly made it across Nairobi as the only people on the streets were army officers. The next day I left on a flight for Entebbe, Uganda and I made it safely home from there. The only issue now is that there is hardly any gas so it costs $4-6/litre or $16-24/gallon.