takes time to tinker

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“What is extraordinary about this story is that Richard has had no books or access to technical information. He says he does not know where he gets the ideas or the knowledge, and yes, he has given him self plenty of electric shocks.  His father James is proud of his son, and has given him space to tinker and collect bits of gadgetry.”

Things I like about the story I just read on AfriGadget, titled 13 year old Kenyan innovator saves cattle from lions with lights:

a) Richard himself, for being exactly the kind of person we need to hear more about when we talk about sub-Saharan Africa. And at age 13, no less.

b) The dangling modifier. I was really hoping he was saving his cattle from lions that had mastered electricity.

Richard Turere, 13, from Empakesi, Kenya, brings the cows home for the night. Photo: AfriGadget

the ultimate price

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“This is who she was, absolutely who she was and what she believed in: cover the story, not just have pictures of it, but bring it to life in the deepest way you could.” – Rosemarie Colvin, mother of Marie Colvin.

Marie Colvin lived that philosophy to the very end. Her last dispatch from Homs — her last dispatch ever — is haunting and overwhelming. If you haven’t read it, do it now.

A baby born in the basement last week looked as shellshocked as her mother, Fatima, 19, who fled there when her family’s single-storey house was  obliterated. “We survived by a miracle,” she whispers. Fatima is so  traumatised that she cannot breastfeed, so the baby has been fed only sugar and water; there is no formula milk.

That baby must be wondering what the hell she’s gotten herself into.

A damaged house in the Bab Sabaa neighbourhood of Homs. REUTERS/Moulhem Al-Jundi

gardens and grenades

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It’s been (dare I bring it up) more than a week since the last attack in Nairobi, and the new reality is becoming routine. Military guards stand sentry outside hotels and malls, cradling semi-automatics. Entering a grocery store or nightclub requires a swipe of the metal detector, although the screening seems a little selective. If you’re a muzungu trying to get into the popular downtown bar Simmers, the staff just waves you through. (Guess they figure white people are the targets, not the perps.) I think it’s a lot like airport security — it’s there to make the patrons feel safe, rather than serving any real purpose against a serious attack. For example, Simmers is an open-air club, bordered on three sides by sidewalks… not exactly difficult for a pedestrian to lob in a grenade.

The initial panic seems to have subsided, but I don’t know if that’s a return to logical thinking or a false sense of security. I ask my taxi drivers what they think of al-Shabaab and they shrug them off as hooligans. Some Kenyan blogs are covering how to survive a grenade attack. Others are even brazenly going as far as making fun of the whole situation. (Both via Paige.) But I honestly don’t know what to think.

Despite the new reality of living in Nairobi, life goes on. I have a new story in the Nation today. Gathering the material for this piece was really enjoyable — it reminded me of home. I’ve only recently begun to get my fingernails dirty, but I grew up on a diet of vegetables grown in my own front yard, and it’s nice to see people trying to bring some of those same techniques to an area that so desperately needs an agricultural revolution.

note the lush green that Gai has created against the background of a parched savannah

It was also just great to get out of the city — Gai’s farm is on the edge of Nairobi National Park. Canadians have squirrels and deer in their backyards. Gai has giraffes and cheetahs. And also a generally gorgeous home.

My bedroom for the evening.

Also — I finally went to the coast. And I approve.

Dear Canadians, you are suckers.

Breathing space.

But it’s not all coast and cocktails. Next up for me? Some dangerous women are showing Nairobi’s rapists the meaning of the word no. Aw, hell yeah.

perspective needed

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“After two months debating what to do, Emily borrowed $10 from friends – the equivalent of two months’ rent – and sought treatment from a well-known local abortionist. The elderly woman inserted a plastic tube into Emily’s vagina and told her to sit for several hours on a bucket until she heard a pop… Her ex-boyfriend beat her when he found out about the abortion.”

I live in the same city as Emily. The challenges she faces — and the horrors described in this article — provided me with a much needed lesson in perspective today (and left me clutching my abdomen). I don’t want to devalue the lives of the three deceased and dozens injured in this week’s attacks, but… more than 2,600 women dying annually in Kenya because of botched backstreet abortions? That’s a September 11 every. single. year.

However, you can be sure that this man is getting more attention in the news.

three dead

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“Our greatest fears lie in anticipation.” — Balzac

Last night’s second grenade attack killed one person and injured eight. And the news keeps getting worse: yesterday, two victims of the nightclub bombing succumbed to their injuries. That makes three dead in 24 hours.

Al-Shabaab hasn’t claimed responsibility for the attacks. News articles are clear on that fact, but the situation in Nairobi is still being framed as part of Kenya’s war with al-Shabaab. I wonder, though. The grenades were detonated in crowded areas downtown, but they’re not areas that foreigners frequent. So far, only Kenyans have been injured or killed. That, combined with al-Shabaab’s silence on these attacks, makes me wonder where the attacks are actually coming from. Al-Shabaab swore they would destroy skyscrapers and target foreigners, which hasn’t happened so far. These attacks could just be a rogue element within al-Shabaab who’s decided to take matters into his (her?) own hands, or just some crazy person with access to grenades.

Kimathi Avenue, downtown Nairobi

It’s business as usual in Nairobi. Sort of. On my walk to get groceries today, a rifle-wielding soldier stood sentry outside the posh colonial Norfolk Hotel (alongside the hotel’s regular private security), watching the ex-pats come and go. I wondered if every loitering car had a trunk full of explosives. I usually just buy a day or two’s worth of food at a time, but today I stocked up on as much as I could carry — if everything goes to hell, at least we’ll be well-fed for the first week.

I’m touched by the number of friends and colleagues who’ve gotten in touch over the last 24 hours to ask if I’m okay, wish me well, and tell me to stay safe. I’m not going to lie that I’m unsettled by what’s happening here, but the fact remains that I am incredibly fortunate: if things get worse, either the Aga Khan Foundation or the Canadian government will get me up-on-outta-here in a hurry. I can’t say the same for the millions of Kenyans who call this country home. I hope for their sakes — and selfishly for mine, as I really don’t want to leave this otherwise fantastic city — that it doesn’t come to that.

I especially feel for the Somalis living in Kenya (and abroad) who have nothing to do with al-Shabaab but get lumped into the same camp. No doubt they’ll be taking the brunt of some Kenyans’ anger over the coming weeks.

the I&M building, one of Nairobi's tallest skyscrapers

Aside from the regular warnings I receive from the Canadian government, Nation Media has started sending “Security Bulletins” — complete with emergency numbers and evacuation procedures. I’ve already stored the numbers of multiple private ambulance companies in my phone, as well as the emergency response number for the Red Cross (1199, if any Kenyans are reading). Other than that, there’s nothing I can really do, aside from avoiding crowded areas, following my instincts, and hoping for the best.

Being in a situation like this changes your perspective. My biggest complaint about life here used to be pollution and traffic, but yesterday I found myself flipping through my medical insurance policy to find out what kind of coverage I have if my legs get blown off by a terrorist. Sirens are no longer background traffic noise — my mind immediately jumps to grenades, carnage and debris.

When I accepted this contract, I weighed the risks and benefits… and in terms of personal safety, I wasn’t too concerned. Nairobi is known for being a crime-ridden city — but that means robberies and car-jackings, which are unpleasant but don’t usually end in death or mortal injury. There are diseases too, but that’s more of a risk outside Nairobi. There’s no malaria in the city, and there’s good sanitation in the areas where ex-pats live… plus some of the best hospitals on the continent. So, when I told people I was moving to Kenya, I was overly flippant in response to widened eyes and is-that-safe-be-careful. I never imagined that the city would become a war zone. Two low-casualty grenade attacks are not on the same level as the devastation and horrors of places like Somalia and Afghanistan, but things are definitely not heading in a peaceful direction here. Even the Amurrrrrrcahns are admitting they may get involved (in fact, I would be surprised if they’re not already on the hunt).

In the meantime, I’ll be here on my balcony filing stories with a mug of tea and a watchful eye on Nairobi’s skyline. I may be in more danger than friends and family back home, but when you take a good hard look at the grand scheme of global poverty, violence, rape, fear, and torture, I’m still incredibly fortunate. I just have to hope that luck holds.

crisis in paradise

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I woke up this morning to an email asking if I was still alive. Tangled in the sheets and still half asleep, I squinted in the blinding glow of my Blackberry screen, trying to make sense of what was going on. Turns out, while I was peacefully sleeping off my long weekend, someone lobbed a grenade into a nightclub downtown. At least a dozen confirmed injured. The police are blaming al-Shabaab, and the anti-terrorism squad has sealed off the bar. It’s begun.

bloodstains on the floor of Mwaura's Bar in Nairobi (Mukoya/Reuters)

Since Kenyan troops went to war with al-Shabaab last week, there have been escalating threats of terrorism — threats that the international community are taking seriously. The Canadian government emails me once a week to warn me to stay away from anywhere crowded or popular with foreigners. No bars, malls, sporting events, or anything fun at all. And don’t even think about going anywhere near the border with Somalia. The Americans have also issued a travel advisory for Kenya, warning of terrorist threats… although they’re denying involvement beyond that.

So it shouldn’t be surprising, but somehow it’s still a shock. We knew something like this was coming, and we’ve been speculating for days on what it would be. Al-Shabaab promised the destruction of Nairobi’s skyscrapers and the decimation of the country’s tourism industry, so maybe I expected them to start with shock and awe. Images abound: explosions in hotel lobbies, suicide bombers on buses, car bombs in the underground parking of my office building (a prime target since it’s also home to foreign embassies and the stock exchange… great). Last night’s attack may not have been on that scale, but it makes those visions seem more likely. Al-Shabaab is clearly walking their talk, and this could just be the beginning.

It’s surreal to live with a real threat of terrorism — from my balcony I can see the skyscrapers of downtown just a few blocks away, and I keep expecting them to burst into flames. I remember in the days after 9/11, when the planes finally took to the skies again, I wondered if every jet I saw was headed for Parliament. This is a similar feeling, but doubled in intensity. This is an actual threat, one that has been carried out, first in Uganda and now in Kenya. I’ve spent long enough living in different parts of Africa that being a visible minority no longer throws me, but it’s strange to know that al-Shabaab is thinking about people like me when they plot their next move.

I can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up somewhere like Afghanistan, where this uncertainty is just a fact of life. (All life is uncertain, but a terrorist attack a few blocks from home throws it into harsh relief.) I guess the only attitude to take in this situation is fatalism — if it’s going to happen, so be it. I can’t hide inside my apartment until all the baddies of the world are captured (or buried at sea). And anyway, I’m more likely to get robbed or die in a car accident than get-gotten by terrorists, if Dan Gardner has taught me anything.

But it’s all an especially harsh crash back to reality, after spending the weekend on the south coast drinking rum punch and making friends with starfish. What a country.

UPDATE: a second grenade attack in less than 24 hours, this time at a bus stop. It’s getting real.

a day of contradictions

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As Nairobi shook itself awake on Saturday morning, I was already beelining through downtown, averting taxi-drivers and newspaper vendors with a smile and “hapana, asante” (“no, thanks” — one of the Swahili phrases I use the most). It was nice to be out early, before the crowds gobbled the streets and it became more a matter of weaving than walking. I was off to visit my cousin — in town on business from Ottawa — who had kindly offered to treat me to breakfast at his glorious hotel. But when I entered into the lobby of the Serena Hotel, I thought maybe I was still dreaming. A day of contradictions began.

one of many tables sagging under the weight of my desire

The breakfast spread was stunning. It would have been decadent in North America or Europe, but the smorgasbord of food on display was even more amazing when you think that just a few hours’ drive north, Kenyans are literally on their deathbeds due to malnutrition. There was hot and cold cereal with all the toppings: hazelnuts, walnuts, raisins, dates, pecans, toasted coconut. There were fresh-squeezed  juices: watermelon, passionfruit, paw-paw, papaya, cucumber, orange. A server was on hand to make custom waffles or crepes, topped with maple syrup, whipped cream, chocolate sauce. There was lime jam, croissants, chocolate ganache, brioche, crusty breads, marmite, pain au chocolat, peanut butter, marmalade. There were foods I couldn’t recognize and can’t pronounce. Cut fruit was piled high on platters: papaya, jackfruit, watermelon, pineapple, kiwi, banana, strawberries, passion fruit, honeydew melon. Smoked sailfish, ham, Italian salami. Most of all, there was cheese. Gouda, blue, herbed goat… OH MY.

Oh, and that’s not even including the hot buffet — eggs with caviar, lemon chicken, two kinds of sausages, potatoes fried or curried, rice, beans, grilled tomatoes, sauteed mushrooms, chapati, ratatouille, grilled fish, Mount Kenya toast. I can’t even remember what else. Oh. BACON. (My now-favourite cousin — I’m easily bought — invited me back for breakfast again this morning, and it’s possible that I’ve eaten an entire pig in the last 48 hours.)

there's a famine in this country?

I’m not going to lie. I gorged. Many, many thanks are due to my amazing cousin Curtis for his generousity. And for not judging how many times I went back to the buffet.

Stuffed to the point of verging on pain, I returned to reality to do a few more interviews for my feature article on the Kenyans for Kenya campaign. Across the street was Uhuru (“freedom”) Park, where hundreds were gathered to raise money for the 3.5 million Kenyans at the complete opposite end of the spectrum from my fortunate self — those that are at risk of starvation, living in the arid and semi-arid areas of the north, north-east and south of the country. It was the last day of the four-week campaign, which mobilized corporate and individual Kenyans to donate to the Kenya Red Cross — and had raised more than 680 million shillings (CDN$7.2 million) before the concert even started on Saturday.

400 tonnes of UNIMIX -- high-nutrition porridge -- bound for southern districts of Kenya

Even though the campaign only ended this weekend, the Kenya Red Cross has already been able to use 101 million shillings of the funding to buy 1000 metric tonnes of high-nutrition porridge, which has been distributed to about 200,000 children through school feeding programs. The outpouring from “ordinary” Kenyans has amazed many of the organizers, as donations as small as 10 shillings rolled in from thousands of people. Kenyans gave what they could. I spoke with the partnership coordinator of the Kenya Red Cross, Rosemary Mutunkei, and she said that in a strange way (a contradictory way, one might say, if they were trying to engineer a unifying theme for their blog post), this crisis is actually allowing Kenyans to regain their dignity — to demonstrate to the international community that Kenyans can look inwards and test out local solutions to their internal problems. Aside from food aid, the Kenya Red Cross is working on a number of long-term food security initiatives for the drought-affected areas, like greenhouses and boreholes… initiatives that have been successful in other parts of the country. (For more, pick up Wednesday’s copy of the Daily Nation!)

The Kenyans for Kenya benefit concert in Uhuru Park -- the skyline of Nairobi in the background.

The concert was uplifting — the sunshine and the dancing and the laughter in the lush greens of Uhuru Park made it easy to forget that it was a fundraiser for people who are on the verge of death, in parched lands only a few hundred kilometers away. As the head of the Kenya Red Cross, Abbas Gullet, said, “You just have to get a few hundred kilometers out of Nairobi and you face a different terrain.” It’s easy to forget that Nairobi isn’t Kenya — gotta get out of the city soon.

Brynania uncovered

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McGill public affairs made a mini-doc on Rex Brynen’s fabled peacebuilding simulation this spring, and I finally tracked it down. It does a good job of capturing the elements of the sim, from formal meetings to whispers in hallways. The only problem is no one looks tired enough.

The simulation remains one of the most valuable experiences of my master’s degree, and not only because it was when this guy and I became ridiculously close ridiculously fast. (We’ve since concluded that one week of sim bonding is like being friends for three years in real life. It also explains why, more than a year later, we still reminisce about the sim with the excitement of recounting a crazy three-day bachelor party in Vegas where we met Bono and stole a private jet, instead of the 18-hour-per-day laptop-and-coffee marathon that it really was.)

The simulation gave me my first taste of what it’s like to actually go out there and work in development, instead of reading in my cushy office and criticizing what’s going on in the field. Turns out, the world out there is incredibly complex and confusing, even when it’s just a bunch of 20-something McGill students playing make-believe. There are so many choices to be made, and the options are rarely ideal. There are the relationships and informal channels under the surface that foreigners can’t see at first, or may never see at all. And finally, you just can’t know if the information you’re getting is reliable. It felt like running blindfolded and backwards into a minefield.

I can’t say enough about how useful and valuable simulations are, and I think they should be incorporated into the classroom more often. I actually loved the sim so much that this year, I put together an item for CBC Montreal, as well as harassed Brynen until he rewarded me a minor role as a political prisoner — which mostly meant I wrote revolutionary poetry and checked my email 95 times a day. (Bonus: I make a guest appearance in the mini-doc.) The year I participated, I was the head of the U.N. mission. Looking back, it would have been way more fun to be a rebel, so I’ll keep that in mind as a career path if this journalism thing doesn’t work out.

Finally, what I imagine will be the highlight for POLI450/650 students: we finally get to see inside Rex Brynen’s torture chamber, where he is literally rolling the dice. Honestly, I expected it to look a little more like a panic room.

Rex Brynen runs a blog on simulations, if you’re intrigued.