The Flame Tree

Finally, the other Kenya

Herding Sheep

A book of poems arrived yesterday evening from a dear friend. M. brought it to the restaurant, he came straight from work. Tonight, if you can, bring someone a new book of poems. They might look at you funny, but it makes all the difference. When you are out buying a new book of poems you are not thinking about taxes bankruptcy arguments on-ramps to highways or diapers. You're just buying a book as a gift---a gesture---for someone, and thus, in several ways, contributing to Peace on Earth.

If it's too overwhelming, start with  A Book of Luminous Things. It's a simple and lovely anthology and may open doors to who knows where.

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I believe in signs and omens and the Patriots losing the Super Bowl on the day I turned 40 I am choosing to interpret not as an omen to my new decade, but as ... my home team losing the Super Bowl.

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February. Morning. Kenya: overcast and cool.

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The babe, who learned to say No a while ago, entered the Yes phase this week. He says, EE-yah-ss. He loves saying Yes! He pronounces it with a certain weight, with care and respect. Not solemn, not mumbled or quickly or taken-for-granted, not insincere. When he says Yes, it's like someone has finally broken through the ice floe after weeks of freezing hunger, opening a perfect circular hole revealing aqua-blue slushy fishy wonderful ocean.

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The new babe who was born on Friday is doing well and so is the Mum. There has been mostly peace in Kenya since that babe was born and I'm thinking he's doing a fine job honoring my request (see previous post). I should have asked him for a Pats win too.

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Yesterday, Today

Yesterday I got a little freaked out and, for a few hours in the middle of the day, I lost perspective. In other words, for the first time since December 27th, I panicked. An opposition minister had been killed in his car the previous night, helicopters were firing on crowds in Naivasha, text messages were coming in with warnings about roads in Nairobi, and for those few hours, the world's distinct lines blurred. Fear informed my every gesture and glance. The men at the end of our road looked menacing. The pile of tires by the back gate of our neighborhood looked like a road block waiting to happen. The gardener carrying a machete next door became a potential murderer.

And then it passed. After a while, it passed. In the late afternoon, I looked out the kitchen window while waiting for the water to boil. The way the light is at 4:30pm here is the same; the way the front garden sort of glows at that time is the same as it was last month. I remembered when I used to look out the kitchen window and think about other things, like writing, or where we might live next, or what I should do with my life. I was looking out at the same light-filled garden not thinking about burning, not thinking about Luo Kikuyu Kalengin Kisii, not thinking about machetes, evacuation, not thinking cash not thinking slums, gangs, roadblocks, not thinking politics, leaders, justice, equality, not thinking.

Back to Normal?

Friends who went down to the Naivasha Boat Club for the weekend, only to become trapped there by mobs and gunfire outside the boat house gate, are home now, and we are relieved. Because they are English---not Luo or Kalenjin, the original perpetrators of violence who are now the targets of the Kikuyu retaliation---they had a much better chance of escape than others. But that didn't make it un-stressful. My friend is a humanitarian worker who has worked in Afghanistan, Cambodia and Somalia---she knows her way around the block. But on Sunday morning she was boating with her husband and two toddlers, and by Sunday night she was laying awake listening to wails of grief echo across the Lake Naivasha.

With what happened this weekend---retaliation, resurgence of violence and looting, 100 dead, roadblocks, police, burning villages and wailing through the night, it seems I can't return to normal writing about normal life, because----having woken up from my few happy weeks of denial----life is not normal here after all.

When I brought the girl to school this morning, three mums stood in the car park, chatting. "Our evac plan is to drive the Magadi route to Tanzania," I overheard one say as I passed. The teacher whose family owns a farm in Naivasha was talking on her mobile outside the classroom, her body was clenched as she nodded her head to the phone. We were late to arrive, the children were already lined up along the edge of the playground waving their arms and jumping up and down, doing some sort of morning jump-for-joy thing. The girl ran over and joined the fray and as I left her, though I'm not sure why, I decided to fill both cars with petrol and stock up on extra groceries.

In case you couldn't hear Kofi Annan's words over the roar of machete-wielding youths burned villages news reports... this "post-election violence" has morphed into its own slightly ruthless creature. What is happening in Kenya is no longer a fist fight over who actually won the election, it's an explosion of pent-up frustrations, animosities, ambitions and neglect. It is gangs of "unemployed youths" with not much to lose. It's poor people attacking poor people. It's what happens when populations grow to the point where land and resources become so stressed you're willing to kill your neighbor for a water source.

Makes turning 40 seem like a day in the park.

   

The Elections, The End

With what you're still seeing in the news, it seems irresponsible for me to return to normal life, to normal writing, and to writing about normal life. But, life here has returned to normal, for most of us. Not all, but most. And so---though I know this will crush those readers who have come to rely on my acute political analysis (insightful and genius as it is)---I am going to return to my normal programing now. Coming here soon: a series of posts about becoming 40 years old. In other words, I will be re-turning my focus inward, to my own little political crisis these days.

In the meantime, a poem. Thank you CHG for delivering this wonderful, miraculous poet (and for all the wonderful, miraculous things you've delivered since 1984!)

Utopia
by Wislawa Szymborska

Island where all becomes clear.

Solid ground beneath your feet.

The only roads are those that offer access.

Bushes bend beneath the weight of proofs.

The Tree of Valid Supposition grows here
with branches disentangled since time immemorial.

The Tree of Understanding, dazzlingly straight and simple,
sprouts by the spring called Now I Get It.

The thicker the woods, the vaster the vista:
the Valley of Obviously.

If any doubts arise, the wind dispels them instantly.

Echoes stir unsummoned
and eagerly explain all the secrets of the worlds.

On the right a cave where Meaning lies.

On the left the Lake of Deep Conviction.
Truth breaks from bottom and bobs to the surface.

Unshakable Confidence towers over the valley.
Its peak offers an excellent view of the Essence of Things.

For all its charms, the island is uninhabited,
and the faint footprints scattered on its beaches
turn without exception to the sea.

As if all you can do here is leave
and plunge, never to return, into the depths.

Into unfathomable life.

How to Save Kenya

We have lived in various countries of East Africa, M. and I, since 2001, and have only been to The Coast once, when unclegeorgesandshell came to visit. Some people---people we know---go every year, or twice a year, or all the time. They go to Lamu, a mystical island of prayer calls and donkeys; they rent a house north of Malindi; they take a matutu from the airport to Diani. Or they come to this four star beach hotel, complete with camels on the beach, buffets of pineapple and mango, and a African Grey Parrot in cage in the lobby. But we don't do any of those things, usually, because we are frugal, and lazy, and also tropical vacations are totally creep me out.

I feel so sorry for anyone who has to work in a tropical hotel that I go overboard being nice, so much so that I actually clean the room for the maid. I try to speak Swahili (much to M.'s annoyance) having lived in Kenya for four years without even a whim to care to try. I turn myself inside-out accommodating the staff here---it's hard to smile and say Jambo! Habari! to every passing person---that I leave more exhausted than when I arrived. Plus, people are stealing children from hotels all the time now. (M. doesn't believe me, doesn't he read the news?) And, what if, someday, I run out of things to do, and become one of these obese German retirees, lolling on a chaise lounge and wearing (yes, it's true) thong bikinis? Plus, my Puritan-from-New-England heritage has a hard time with the concept of vacation unless it involves "culture" or physical exertion, both of which I am happy to leave behind these days. 

That being said, we decided---sometime after the government coup, after the week of neighborhood arrest, around the time the riot police were shooting guys in Nairobi and the Kalenjin were burning cars in Eldoret, just after the babe and I spent two days in the children's hospital fighting back his dangerous fever and bronchitis while M. was in Eldoret doing an emergency assesment of the damage there---yah, sometime around all that, we decided a little trip to the coast might be nice.

And it is. Especially because, due to the mass cancellations of trips to Kenya, we have almost the whole four star, sprawling, palm-fluttering, beach view, swimming pools, exclusive hotel to ourselves.

Which is another thing I have to sympathize with and apologize to everyone for. Exhausting!

This morning we read that the tourist industry in Kenya will lose 500 million dollars this year due to the election turmoil. "That's a lot," M. said, "in a place where most people make $1 a day." It was a bit strange, I admit, watching scenes on BBC last night of cars burning in Mombasa, which is where we are. But there are two worlds here, in Kenya, and rarely do they converge.

V. Just after

I do not know which to prefer,
The beauty of inflections
Or the beauty of innuendos,
The blackbird whistling
Or just after.

(from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, by Wallace Stevens. Scroll way down to read poem in its entirety.)

It hasn't rained in a few weeks and already the grass is parched, the trees limp and still, and the lavender along the back porch drooping and brownish. The leaves of the geraniums are beginning yellow. Only the bougainvillea continues to creep and bloom. I know everything will live because it always does, but I miss the lush, easy ways of what has been Nairobi's eternal rainy season.

Meanwhile, the tides of anarchy, if you will, have retreated, leaving debris, disorientation, and a lingering malaise. Negotiations and love songs continue between the two political parties, but nothing is resolved. Heads of This and Secretaries of That arrive in Nairobi daily. They are sometimes met at the airport by a beaming President Kibaki. He reminds me of a child, the way he stands there smiling, so proud of the crazy painting he's just smeared all over the living room wall. He nods his head with these Important Dignitaries, and agrees there must be compromise, and then he goes home and assigns his cabinet, buys off a few more Parliamentarians, or maybe re-decorates the State House. He is saying one thing, folks, and doing another.

And so this is what it's like, this is how it happens. A political injustice: quick and shocking. The disorientation and chaos, quickly repressed by armies of police. The lies, the slants of truth, the confusion and pain. And then the insidious, relentless, and creepy months that follow. I wake up and the sun slants into the bedroom the same way it did last week and last year. The children still have their morning demands, they are not sensitive to political upheaval. I take the girl to school after a ridiculously long (extended) holiday, and there are warm greetings and hugs and kisses among the mothers. The kids stand back, smiling at each other. Some of them seem to have grown since the Christmas play, which seems an eternity ago.

Everything is back to normal, but something is different. Up the street, military police stand in front of the gates of judges and government people. Along Thigiri Road on the way to the UN, street boys rummage through garbage. It's not unusual now to pass a family walking along the road in Westlands with large burdens, plastic tubs and babies on their backs, refugee-like. The other day, a woman and her children were collecting wood at the end of our road. These are familiar scenes in much of Kenya, but in certain parts of Nairobi, no. Meanwhile, even the slightest protest is stopped---before it even happens---by government police. For Kenyans, suspicion now looms over certain conversations until ones tribe is determined. And Evans, our esteemed day guard, was attacked and robbed by four guys on his way to work last Thursday morning.

So this is how it happens, this is what it's like. The inflections, the innuendos... The blackbird singing, and just after.

(Photo courtesy of M. The road to Eldoret, January 3, 2008)

The Blue Afternoon

The international correspondents are starting to return to the neighborhood, bleary eyed. "I haven't slept in four days," said a friend I ran into on the road yesterday. "I was skiing in Vermont, then suddenly..." Friends are returning on flights that were booked, but are now wide open, from holidays with family in the UK. Some of them have staff who are trapped in western Kenya. "If I leave my house, they will kill me," a friend's ayah said on the phone. Arrangements are made. On Friday morning, M. left for Eldoret, where the worst violence has been carried out, to start UN assessments. He's only had a moment to call, and that was to say that he'll be five days late returning. Things have calmed down, he reports, but there's a lot of displacement and ruin.

This sounds a little like a news piece, which I'm deliberately avoiding to write. But I just spent the last hour reading the latest internet stories, and the rhythm is in my head. "Kabaki Backs Formation of Unity Government," writes Bloomberg. "Kenya Opposition Rejects Unity Call," writes Al Jazeera. "Kikuyus Still Shelter in Church Despite Massacre" writes Reuters. Kenya carries on stolen tradition, in the LA Times. How this will affect the US place in the region, how this will affect tourism, how this will affect tribalism, and how this is not Rwanda... all covered... What more can I say?

I confess, I just paused here.. for an hour. Writing a blog is supposed to be easy. Writing a blog is just supposed to happen. But I'm stuck, what more can I say? Anything I write is trite compared to the news.

Up until last week, I lived in a stable and peaceful country surrounded by a community---aid workers, journalists---whose livelihoods depend on emergency, strife, and suffering. Husbands work in Sudan and Congo. Pregnant wives fly into Somalia for a week of assessments. And so, this community kind of clicks into action when cities start to burn. Your war, my job... as the saying goes. As the violence ebbs, the journalists are returning, pretty exhausted; the aid workers are leaving, to assess and deliver services. And I'm trapped in a little personal whirlwind, trying to figure out what an expat housewife, writing about AIDS in India, should do. So, naturally, I take down the Christmas tree.

I will do this: I will write about the New Year---which I had almost forgot happened---and about maintaining perspective in 2008. I hope there is something to be gained by starting the new year off in a place of sudden chaos and horror.  It reminds me how precarious life is, how uncertain, how nothing should be taken for granted. On Monday, in the panic the day after the election results were announced, there was a general feeling that supplies would not get into the country. Lines to get into stores were an hour long; lines to the cashier were so long that, as one friend describes it, "the frozen chicken was thawed by the time we paid." By the end of the day, what stores had opened their doors were pretty much cleaned out. 

It was a bit unsettling, and I vowed to not feel irritated waiting in a grocery line, under normal circumstances, again.

I usually don't adhere to the "eat your peas because there are children starving in Africa" policy. People's problems are real and legitimate, even if they are not starving, even if they have a secure house and an well stocked organic market down the street. But what I hope to practice in 2008---ultimately not for altruistic reasons, but because it will actually make me a happier person----is keeping things in perspective. To be grateful for an income, for work, for a home. To be grateful for a secure society, to be able to walk down the street, have a conversation without fear of imprisonment. To be grateful for each other as a family. To be grateful for each meal... There is so much to be grateful for.  And it seems so simple. So, why do we make it so complicated?

The Kenya...

Every evening I clear my head. I tell myself, Ok, tomorrow, I'm going to be normal, no matter what the situation. I will go for a walk in the morning, get some work done after that. My anxiety and fatigue contributes nothing to the situation...

And then every morning I wake up. Text messages and calls from friends start coming in as I make coffee. One friend is returning from Wilson airport saying, "No no no, things are not fine today. We're heading back." The kids are picking up the stress and are impatient and prone to tantrums. The Italian journalist friend, who flew in this morning, needs to get a driver lined up immediately so she can join the UN convey about to head out to Eldoret. Her phone isn't working. We can't find a new SIM card for her, and three little girls have arrived to play and heated discussions are underway about the princess dresses.

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But we are safe and fine and actually, today (it's 4pm now, I wrote the above at 10am), the friends and journalists and neighbors coming through are more of a hindrance to returning to normal life than the riots and threats and insecurity.

There is a short story by Ursula LeGuin that I haven't read in about 20 years. My recollection of it is vague, and I don't remember its title, but basically the story is about a perfect village---the residents all have work, food and prosperity. There are cafes and sunny days and white picket fences. Everyone is happy. But there is one catch: a starving, neglected child lives in a basement somewhere in the village. There is a basic understanding among the residents that the village will prosper only if this child continues to be ignored or, as they say in the UN, "denied his basic rights".

It's a weird story, but it haunts me, especially at times like this. Life in Spring Valley is returning to normal. The shops are opening, people are driving around. The panic has subsided. We are tired, and sad, and feel a little helpless, but... "It's weird," a friend called to say. "The t-shirt shop is open at Village Market." Meanwhile, police in riot gear, army trucks with guns bristling out of them, are hovering by the slum areas, where a million people who make less than a dollar a day have been forced back from protest.

And of course, I'm oversimplifying (and I admit I'm prone to sentimentality today----it's not pleasant to watch poor people who live down the road being threatened by riot police and pushed back with water hoses.) As with so much in Africa, the situation in Kenya this week is intricate, and things are not what they seem.

And, as with so much in Africa, Kenya is a peaceful place: people just want to do their lives. They want to send their children to school. They want business, and they want justice to assure all that. M. is on his way out to western Kenya today with the UN. So far, he reports, he has passed only abandoned road blocks. The vigilantes have dispersed. The government and the opposition are closer to a temporary agreement. And the rabbit is looking a lot less nervous.

The Kenya Elections, continued

There are scenes on tv of the road I take to the vegetable market. Under the pedestrian bridge, where there is always some broken down truck disrupting traffic, today young men with sticks are confronting police in riot gear. You want to cry for the young men, because they are wearing just t-shirts and pants and not riot gear, and they are so vulnerable. They are lighting fires and one man, who is crippled, is hugging an election poster of Raila and crying.

Opposition supporters are trying to make their way to Uhuru Park, where a rally was scheduled to begin at 10am to protest against the government who took the elections on Sunday. It's 11:50 and skirmishes are breaking out in pockets across the city. The sky is so blue and perfect, we have filled the baby pool again for the children; the nannies are on their mobiles assuring evacuation of relatives from western Kenya where the violence is bordering on ethnic cleansing. It's not recommended to leave the neighborhood. M. found cooking gas yesterday, after two days of waiting in lines.

Things are very normal. "You girls need to go back outside..." says Issy's mom as I write. Two girls in bathing suits skip by me and out the door. And things are very weird and scary and sad. "The media houses have taken the initiative today to help save our country today... Please call and share how to end the anarchy. There have been 75,000 displaced, 300 dead, and the anarchy continues," the newscaster is saying as I write. 

The Kenya Elections, continued

Kenya Elections, Sunday, December 30
It reminded me of pregnancy, a little. Well, not really, but looking back, last week was like waiting for the babe to arrive... waiting, waiting, waiting. Getting bored. Husband getting restless. Days of meandering around waiting for something to happen, because you know it's going to happen and you can't really do much until it does, and then, it happens (the baby is coming! the results are being announced!) and, in the sudden mayhem and chaos, you yearn a little for that blissful time of waiting. Wow, that's a really lame analogy...

Sunday afternoon, insiders texted that the results would be announced at 3pm and to stay in the house. Everyone was already in the house, things were getting stressful. We inferred from the message that the announcement would not be pleasant. We rounded up the 2 to 4 year old set, the ayahs, the cigarettes, the cell phones, and the pie platter I had been meaning to return and went down the street to a friend's to watch the press conference. We waited some more. We filled the plastic pool with water for the kids. They played with a ball, and got in fights and cried, and were appeased. And then, the things started to get weird.

The ECK commissioner was reading the results, district by district. We left the kids with the pool and the ayahs and went inside to watch. But this was boring and, to me, too much information: by the time he read out the numbers for Raila, I had forgotten the numbers for Kabaki. Was I supposed to add up the figures myself to determine the results? (And, by the way, do you see why this is not a political blog?)

Then something very odd happened. When something very odd is happening, I tend to think it's not really that odd. My mind un-odds it. I think, OK so odd things are happening all the time, and I've just been too distracted with emails and grocery shopping and playgroups to look up and see how the world works. This is what I was thinking as, in the drone of announcing numbers, the commissioner said, "Molo:..." Am I adding dramatic effect to say he paused? Do I remember a smirk? He started to read the numbers and then there was shouting, like a heckler. There was no commentary (a refreshing way to watch live tv, by the way) and the camera starting doing that swingy thing, catching the back of bald men's heads and the profiles of other cameramen. They were trying to show us something, but what? There was shouting and weirdness and it felt sort of Kennedy-esque. One had the very unsettling feeling a shot was about to ring out.

Then Riala was walking out, with a bunch of his guys in suits surrounding him. Some of the suits were nice, I was thinking, and some that were not so nice. They were walking up stairs, and looking back in disgust and anger, kind of like a guy leaving a bar after having a fight with his girlfriend.

Then, we were watching a separate press conference with Raila, and an ECK member then spoke, publicly accusing the commission of rigging. There was nothing polished in his speech. He was sort of pleading to the press. He was explaining a certain form, and trying to explain how this form was doctored. Raila was sitting next to the ECK member, and took out a handkerchief and wiped his eye. "Is he sweating or crying?" I asked. Someone in the room mumbled that Raila had a problem with his right eye, but later I learned he was wiping away a tear. I believe that it was not done for dramatic or sentimental effect.

Then, police in military gear were walking down corridors on the tv, and the kids came in, hungry, tired, whining. My girl wanted the blue princess dress that Issy was wearing. Issy offered my girl every other princess dress on the planet, but none would do: she had to have the blue one. Tears, breakdowns... We looked at our watches, it was an hour past dinnertime.

On the tv, banter in newsrooms. Then, along the bottom of the screen, as if it had been announced but it had not: "Kabaki wins election". Five minutes later we're watching a refined and formal occasion on the State House lawn. The lawn is manicured, the tent is white. There are dashes of red---red carpet, a red coat. The ECK commissioner makes a little joke to start the ceremony, "We better do this before others get the idea they can." Or something of that nature. We are watching Kabaki being sworn in. Or something of that nature. The judge in the powdered wig and red coat who hands Kabaki papers to sign looks like Santa Claus and we try to distract the hungry irritable and tired children, Look it's Santa!

Why not, everything else that's happening seems make-believe.

Two hours later, all live broadcasting is shut down.

Kenya Elections, Monday, December 31
Due to The Violence and the looting and the burning and the strife and the anger and the frustration and the sadness, we are restricted to our neighborhood. Monday morning neighbors begin to arrive. Coffee is made. Children are given cardboard toilet paper rolls to make animals with, the ayahs gossip in low tones in Swahili.  Rumors are flying that Riala has been arrested, that the phone networks will be cut off soon, a state of emergency declared. More coffee is made and, though I haven't done this since 1999, I smoke a cigarette in the morning, and it sort of hits the spot.

The lines to get into the few open stores are an hour long; the lines for the cashier are over two hours. I keep making coffee and trying to organize things around the house, it gives me a sense of control, while the husbands make calls and gather what little information is out there. The EU husband is still negotiating the hostage situation in Somalia. He's beginning to look a bit drained.

I get a little annoyed when the ayah feeds a carrot to the rabbit, there are no vegetables left in the stores and no word for how long this will be. I try to be patient and keep things in perspective, and yet, as I pass the rabbit's cage a while later, I wonder if we'll be making rabbit soup next week at this time, and think perhaps it's best he got the carrot.

You see what can happen, so quickly. This is what is most amazing to me, this is what is blowing my mind. On Saturday evening I was making lists for the New Year's Eve dinner and planning menus on Epicurus.com. On Monday morning, I was wondering what it would be like to eat our pets.

We do not live in the slums here, we do not having nothing to lose. We are really sad---this has huge implications for Kenya and for the region---but we are not out looting to express our frustration. We are not being burned out of our houses either, we are not being held back with tear gas. We are restricted to our neighborhood, yes, which (aside from the markets) shows no tragic signs of disruption. But one wonders how long the anger and violence will go on. One wonders what the opposition will do now, and what the effect will be. So, suddenly, one wonders what the next day holds. And, despite boarding school and university and blond hair and poise, how vaguely but seriously I sense my innermost instincts---the ability to shift into survival mode---hovering on the edge of my day now.

The Kenya Elections, Tuesday, January 1, 2008
It is quiet today. I've calmed down with the pet rabbit-eating thoughts. We are all, like you, praying for peace and harmony and perspective, for 2008.

(For more accurate information on what's happening in Kenya, please read this.)

The Kenya Elections

Kenya Elections, Friday December 28th
We await the results
The Kenyan elections, from my point of view, are this: the husbands are home from work for the entire week. The husbands are home all week because of Christmas Day (25th), naturally, when they are allowed and even welcome to be home. They are also home the day before the elections (26th) for some reason I can't determine; the day of the elections (27th); and the day after the elections because The Post-Election Violence is scheduled to begin at noon (28th). Even the shops will close by 12 today, and remain so until Monday, when The Violence is scheduled to have petered out (31st). (It's 1:00, by the way, and though they're still counting, it seems that Raila will be Kenya's next President, thus limiting the threat of violence this weekend because.. well, as this is certainly not a political blog, so in a nutshell, the Raila supporters, mainly Luo, will be very suspicious of fraud, and irritated, and likely to show it, if the incumbent Kibaki, who is mainly supported by the Kikuyu, wins.)

So, Kenya's elections, the second free elections, with the highest turnout ever, etc. etc. are very exciting, No one is talking of anything else, and the husbands are home for the whole week. And they're starting to get bored. They are even starting, it seems, to arrange little playgroups. One husband (EU/Somalia) is actually making coffee for another husband (UNICEF/Emergency) as I write. The UNICEF husband has brought the children to EU house, as well as the leftover Christmas cake, to "get rid of it", and I imagine the husbands are sitting in the kitchen right now, as I write, bitching about how their wives just do not understand the amount of work involved in running a household. They are probably saying ("Could you break off another tiny, little piece of that cake... it's too good!") that yes, they have nannies and yes, it's much easier than if they were back in Europe, but there's still so much to do.. I mean, sometimes you have almost more work with a staff to deal with as well as a family!

Kenya Elections, Saturday December 29th
We continue to await the results, and things begin to get tingly
Overcome with curiosity as I finished the last paragraph above, I meandered over to the EU household to determine just what those husbands were saying. To be fair, despite his holiday, the EU husband was on the phone negotiating the situation of the MSF hostages in Somalia. To be fair, the UNICEF husband was on the internet fielding emails. No, the husbands were not eating the cake, but on the veranda was a half-finished bottle of red wine, two empty plates and an ashtray full of butts. The girls were watching cartoons downstairs. "Is this what you think Stay-at-home-Mom means?" I asked. They looked at me vaguely and returned to their negotiations and emails, interspersed with arguments about democracy in Kenya.

This morning, Saturday, I walked for a half hour without passing a car. The street was silent. Certain glimpses over hedges of the tops of cottages reminded me of rural France, the depth of silence was remarkable----no distant traffic, no hum of industry. I thought of Collette, I thought of Proust. I thought of life before cars. But no, it was just the third day of the Kenyan Elections, and The Violence was starting to flicker, and people were not going out.

M., on his fifth day home, has begun to cook. Tomato soup for dinner; the tomatoes peeled by the little hands of a three year old daughter. We stockpile cheap champagne bought at the UN commissary for New Year's Eve, because we totally have our priorities straight. M., a Norwegian who grew up in Madagascar in the 80s when the shelves were often sparse, did stockpile about 40 jars of pasta sauce the other day. It's his instinct to hoard, like your grandmother who survived the depression. Every 20 minutes we check the internet for news. Cars are being tossed and burned over by The Junction, riots in the west, residents of Kibera slum (mainly Luo) are being held back by tear gas. Their shanties are being burned. When I tuck the baby in before I turn out the lights, I think of mothers in Kibera tucking their babies in, and, feeling the helplessness and frustration that I so often feel here, I want to leave Kenya forever.

Kenya Elections, Sunday December 30th
We continue to wait, and things get sort of boring... for us.
M. makes breakfast! Eggs, any way I want them! Well, he says, this might be our last meal before it's just pasta sauce and champagne...

The girls are dressed like princesses. The EU husband is at our house now, and between phone conversations in Spanish and French and English, still dealing with the hostages in Somalia, he smokes another cigarette and spins ideas on taking another vacation, this time out of his mobile phone range. M. went down to the petrol station to fill up the cars this morning, and met the Washington Post correspondent, but we were interrupted before he reported to me what she knew. The Economist journalist last night knew a lot. It's one of the weird perks of living here that we get our news so fresh and unedited.

The results were supposed to be tallied and announced by noon on Friday. It's Sunday morning and there is something tricky going on, and the Kenyan folks suspect it. They are holding off on announcing the results until things quiet down. As long as they hold off, things will not quiet down. And the Kenya folks will continue to burn down their own villages. "Yes, it's a paradox," M. says smiling. "Paradox" is the word his father and he have been using lately, to explain everything having to do with Africa. The meaning of the word is so elusive, it appeals to me; and it seems to do the job for Africa as well. It settles the arguments, it calms the confusion. M.'s father has been a diplomat in six African countries over the last 30 years, he is one of the most respected ambassadors in the region, and that's the word he left Angola with the other day, leaving his last African post, returning to Norway to retire.