Mainstory: I saw the great city of Nairobi, and then something else

December is often a month characterised by a common celebratory mood where some people take time off work to either spend quality time with their families or even go for holidays in far off places. I happened to be among that category of people and I ended up in Kenya where I saw the great city of Nairobi, and then something else. On 18th December, I went to the Akamba bus offices in Kampala to book myself a travel ticket to the Tanzanian town of Moshi. This I later found to be quite a problem as the number of prospective passengers had sharply risen thanks to the many Kenyan and Tanzanian students who attend Ugandan universities and were then heading back home. I eventually got myself a ticket to travel five days later. The day came and at exactly 2 p.m. (E.A time) we boarded the bus and departed for the long hectic trip. The bus was full to capacity with the lingua franca largely Kiswahili. By 6 p.m. we crossed into Kenyan territory at the border town of Busia. To Nairobi, then Moshi The ride from the border to Kisumu was extremely thwarting due to the potholed road which I believe ranks among the worst roads in the region. My colleague even commented that with such a road, President Mwai Kibaki should not expect any votes from Kenyans in the Western region. Kisumu town was well decorated not just because it was Christmas time but largely because of the much-awaited Kenyan presidential, parliamentary and civic elections that were to be held simultaneously on the 27th of December. Almost all the streetlight poles had bright coloured illuminated billboards of mainly Raila Odinga who stood as a presidential candidate on the ticket of the Orange Democratic Movement. I also saw huge billboards of the incumbent President Mwai Kibaki with the election campaign slogan of ‘kazi iendelee’ whose loose translation means ‘let the work continue’. I was later to discover that his main opponent Raila was having a field day during the campaigns where he claimed that Kibaki’s slogan actually meant that corruption and bad governance should continue. By the morning hours of 24th December we were in Nairobi having our breakfast and a short break as we waited for the bus connecting us to Arusha-Moshi-Dar es Salaam. Nairobi was a breathtaking sight with its numerous expansive shopping malls and many high rise office blocks that make the city a giant among regional dwarfs. During this particular morning, Nairobi was at its finest largely because the election-mania had gripped the city, and to say it was coloured would be an under-statement. Streets were lined with either Raila Odinga’s posters or those of Mzee Kibaki. Posters for the other presidential candidates seemed quite a rarity just like democracy in Africa. The traditional Christmas decorations also fought for space. Kenya’s electoral body, the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) led by the distinguished (but now disgraced) Samuel Kivuitu, also did a great job putting up billboards urging people to exercise their rights and vote for the leader they wanted to lead them for the next five years. At the Nairobi Akamba bus services’ passenger lounge, many passengers were glued to the two large-screen TVs in the room. They were closely following events as different channels struggled to outdo themselves in relaying the footage of the final campaigns for the presidential election that was slated for 27th December. Mwai Kibaki, Raila Odinga and to some extent Kalonzo Musyoka seemed to be the darlings of the media. Controversial Mama Lucy Kibaki also featured. As the bus snaked its way through the huge Nairobi industrial area, I could not help but think of the residents of Africa’s largest slum, Kibera, and those in Mathare who make up a significant percentage of the industrial labour force. Hundreds of them could be seen hurriedly walking to their places of work. Kibera slum is located in Lang’ata Constituency that has for long been represented by Raila Odinga. Hours later Nairobi was no more as the bus sped off into the large expanse of Masai land. Masai land extends far into Tanzanian territory highlighting the folly of colonialists who divided communities with the same culture, with what are now called ‘international borders’. With nothing much to see in this sparsely populated area I succumbed to sleep, only waking up at the border crossing of Namanga and falling back to sleep until the bus reached East Africa’s capital city, Arusha. At exactly 2 p.m. I reached my destination of Moshi that is found in the Kilimanjaro region. Moshi is a very beautiful town, offering splendid views of the mighty Mountain Kilimanjaro. Although the town is at the slopes of the mountain it has got rather high temperatures. Elections and the aftermath Soon after Christmas I keenly followed the news bulletins on the different channels to keep pace with developments on the Kenyan elections. Kenyans came out in record numbers to vote. For some strange reason that the ECK fought to explain, all names starting with letter A or O were conspicuously absent from the voters’ registers in Lang’ata area. This of course included the ODM man Raila Odinga and thousands of Luos whose names usually begin that way. The early results gave an early lead to the opposition candidate Raila Odinga. For the first two days, Kibaki was trailing with a significant gap. Eventually results from areas of Nakuru and other places that are considered to be strongholds for the incumbent president started trickling in and the gap between the two quickly narrowed to a mere 38,000. It was at this moment that the opposition started crying foul. The flow of election results was then interrupted by an inordinate delay which the opposition supporters quickly sensed as a foul move aimed at cheating them of an election they considered already won. This moment caused a lot of anxiety and consequent violence that engulfed Kenya. Matters were then made worse when the chairman of the ECK rushed to announce the final results and an unusually rushed swearing-in ceremony followed. Within close to sixty minutes, President Kibaki had been declared winner and hurriedly sworn in. This must have been a world record of sorts. Why the hurry? Many asked, and are still asking. Soon after the rushed events a new Kenya was aired live on Al Jazeera, CNN, BBC, Sky News, CCTV, KBC, NTV, KTN, and a host of other Tanzanian television stations. All major broadcasters in the region and the world over turned their cameras to Nairobi’s slum areas of Kibera, Mathare, parts of Mombasa, Kisumu as all hell broke loose. I could not easily comprehend the fact that the same towns that I had just seen beaming with life and commerce had quickly turned into a replica mixture of Palestine’s Gaza strip, Somalia and later Rwanda of 1994 combined. What is it that gives mankind the power to self-destruct with so much ease? Just like in Rwanda during the 1994 Genocide, neighbours turned on each other with machetes, huge sticks, pick axes and anything that they could use to inflict grave harm or precisely death to their foes. Raila Odinga whose campaign slogan was ‘Pamoja tusonge mbele’ was quickly ignored by some of his enraged supporters who went chanting “No Raila No Peace”. The slum areas of Kibera and Mathare where Raila draws huge support were surrounded by trigger happy cops with a shoot-to-kill policy. Within hours they had sent close to 100 Kenyans to the next world. A killing orgy I called it. In response, opposition supporters in areas where the police could not contain the violence, evicted, killed and harmed those of tribes they assumed had voted for President Kibaki. Eldoret and Kisumu areas had worse stories than Nairobi. Kenyans who for ages had been watching other African crises on CNN were now experiencing the worst era of their politics. With estimates of over 600 people killed and more than 300,000 displaced, I keep reflecting on how things can change so suddenly from one extreme to another. Food aid that has for years passed through the Kenyan port city of Mombasa and other Kenyan towns headed for Southern Sudan, Northern Uganda, Somalia, Congo and Rwanda is now being directed to parts of Nakuru and Eldoret that are now full of displaced people in camps. At the end of the day we had politics, tribalism, anger, frustrations and hatred fusing to form a crisis that put the neighbouring countries on their knees. I am talking of fuel, humanitarian aid and even foreign personnel that could not move to their destinations including myself. I had to wait for the dust to settle before moving. During this entire fracas, life in Tanzania went on as usual. All they had were civilized debates on the Kenyan situation.Personally, it has been and still is a very enigmatic experience. I never thought that in my lifetime I would see a Kenyan on BBC holding a machete and hacking another Kenyan. It has proved very hard for me to reconcile the Kenya that I saw on my way to Tanzania and the one I saw on BBC, CNN and Al Jazeera news bulletins. Return journey – unedited footage! Many times we blame the international media for portraying Africa as a disaster area of the world, and we even accuse them of exaggerating. The good descriptive tone used by the polished news anchors to describe the ‘madness’ that happens often in Africa is quickly dismissed by people in denial as media hype by BBC or CNN. However, what I saw on my way back from Moshi to Kampala through Nairobi was quite unnerving and no exaggeration at all. It was what you can call the unedited stuff. For starters I spent days inquiring from fellows at the Akamba Moshi office when it would be safe to travel. Eventually we were assured that some level of calm in Kenya had developed and that it was safe to travel. However, we had to spend the night in Nairobi because it was not safe to travel through Western Kenya during the night. So on a very hot afternoon of Tuesday 8th January I and several other passengers stood outside waiting for the bus to show up. All the while we were praying to have a safe ride through the volatile Western Kenya. With me was a gentleman hailing from the Meru area of Kenya whose people are said to be part of the ‘GEMA alliance’ that is said to be in power with Kibaki. I was told GEMA stood for Gikuyu, Embu, Meru and Akamba. These four tribes are accused of supporting Kibaki and monopolising power in Kenya. At approximately 3 p.m. the bus arrived with passengers from Dar es Salaam. We boarded, and by 9:30 p.m. we had arrived at the Nairobi Akamba bus office. We spent the night in the passenger lounge. At first everyone closely watched the news bulletins on Kenya’s KTN and NTV stations. The hot stories were Kibaki’s surprise announcement of the new cabinet and the arrival of Ghanaian leader John Kufour for the peace negotiations. At midnight the television sets were switched off and so were the lights. Everyone fell asleep. I tried to stay awake for most of the night because I feared for the worst. The Nairobi slums from where the riots always spring from were not that far. I just wanted to get back home in one piece. Dawn came and we all woke up ready to continue our ride to Kampala. The Kenyan riots had got many people stuck and therefore there were hundreds hurrying to return home before the situation could get worse. Through the public address system, it was announced that there were five buses headed for Kampala and departing at the same time – 7 a.m. We went to the booking office to cross check on which bus we were to board. Bus number one it was and we boarded soon after a light breakfast. As the bus sped off through Nairobi, it was possible to see the signs of destruction. By and large Nairobi was quite intact save for the Kibera and Mathare areas. The real magnitude of the destruction was visible in the areas of Kericho, Kisumu and some parts of Busia. I saw many foundations not houses as these had been cleared and the foundation was all you could see. Shops and fuel stations were burnt to ashes. Kisumu was the worst affected with several of its fuel stations torched. In central Kisumu I saw at least four fuel stations that were no more. I also saw the town’s biggest shopping mall, Ukwala Supermarket, a shell of its former self. Then there was a car showroom that was now just showing off smoke and the frames of new cars that had been burnt beyond recognition. There is a restaurant in Kisumu town (Kimwa Annex Restaurant) that we went to on the night of 23rd December. On 9th December we stopped at the same place and it was no more. It had been burnt to cinders. In other words I saw it for my first and last time. Most road junctions had ashes of burnt tires and firewood. Outside Kisumu town the road was lined with huge rocks that had been used by gangs of rowdy men to stop cars and loot or simply beat up the passengers especially if they were assumed to be Kikuyu. This is why the several buses heading for Kampala were given armed escorts. Finally, in Busia town I saw Shark Lodge Hotel. It too was burnt to ashes. We finally crossed into Uganda and for once felt safe and relieved. In fact when the Ugandan immigration officer got hold of my passport and noticed that I was Ugandan he looked at me and said, “Kulikayo Ssebo”, meaning welcome back sir. The welcome was like music to my ears after what I saw; the great city of Nairobi, and then something else For my Kenyan brothers and sisters, we pray for you. Contact: ssenyonga@gmail.com