When Terror Struck Nairobi AGAIN....

Tuesday, 15th January 2019 was not a day on which we were following our regular routine. School had just reopened the day before, after Christmas break, and tragedy had struck the school community the same afternoon, when a teacher's husband collapsed, while watching his son play after school sports and passed away, despite huge efforts to resuscitate him. The teacher and her family lay heavily on my mind as I hurriedly packed my son's lunch and I remarked to my husband that, at that time, the previous morning, they must have all been having breakfast too, little knowing it would be their last meal together. And I had no inkling then, that the day which had started on a somber note, would end on a horrifying one...
It was not a regular day because my husband, our daughter and I were rushing around getting ready to visit 'Nyayo House', which houses the immigration department and where we trek faithfully every couple of years to get our passports stamped and to get new foreigner cards issued. I personally dread this trip every single time because we need to get through choc a bloc traffic and Nairobi's central business district is not one of my favourite places to visit here. I feel like the proverbial fish out of water there, cocooned as we usually are in our 'golden tower', (only elephants use ivory), from where everything we need is at a stone's throw and where we feel 'safe'.
After an hour's driving in heavy traffic, and narrowly missing being crushed by the public transport buses: the ubiquitous 'Matatus', which were going even faster and more recklessly than usual, given the morning rush hour, we reached our destination by 9:30 am. A couple of hours later, our passports had been stamped and we had been fingerprinted for the 5th time in more than seven years! There were huge sighs of relief all around, even as we wiped off the black ink from our hands! We had just validated our existence in Kenya, God willing, for the next couple of years.
We dropped off my husband to his office on our way home and began discussing our plans for the day. My daughter wanted to visit a couple of restaurants and I agreed, as she had just a few days of her break remaining and I had a rare week day off from teaching online, as students from three of the four schools scheduled for classes that day were in the middle of exams. But, one of the rules we live by is that we never gallivant around with our passports! If we were to, God forbid, lose our passports, between the four of us, we would have had to visit the High Commission Of India, Nairobi, for new passports (one visit would NEVER suffice, make that four trips!), Nyayo House for the Kenyan residence stamp (not AGAIN!), the Embassy of the United States Of American for our American visas which are on our current passports (that's next door to the house but the visas are EXPENSIVE) and last but not least, the Embassy of the United Arab Emirates for my daughter's student visa, as she studies there (and college begins THIS Sunday!). It was simply not worth the risk. And so we asked my husband's driver to take us home first, and this decision prevented my daughter and me from being in a restaurant on the very road, Riverside Drive, where terrorists attacked a five star hotel just a couple of hours later....
Once the passports were under lock and key, we were about to head out, first for coffee at 'The Wasp and Sprout' (which my daughter has been wanting to visit for the last couple of years) and then for lunch at 'Le Grenier A Pain' (The Bread Attic) which is a couple of minutes from DusitD2 Hotel, where tragedy would unfold very soon....But our canine kid refused to let go of my daughter and so we decided to take her for coffee with us. By this time, it was very close to lunch time and we decided to combine lunch and coffee at Wasp and Sprout and not visit Riverside Drive at all, which also happens to be in our old neighbourhood of Westlands and subsequently my former neighbours told me that, like during the Westgate Attack, they could hear the explosions and the exchange of gun fire and see the smoke curling up, from our former building... Had we gone on to have lunch as planned, we would have been in the immediate vicinity and who knows when we would have managed to make it back home, since the road was shut down immediately and people were asked to evacuate every building around the hotel, on foot , as at that point they did not know if it was a single attack or a multi pronged one, like the 26/11 attacks in Mumbai in 2008...
 Just the previous evening, (before we got the news of the death in our school community), we had broken a strict rule of 'not going out when there is school the next day' and taken our daughter and son bowling in a mall very close to our house. Since she is here for a very short time and we will not see her for the next five months, we were trying to cram everything possible in this short visit. In retrospect, we realized that we had visited almost every single place in the previous two weeks that are likely to be on a terrorist organization's radar... At the mall entry check point, the guard opened the boot of the car and gave a cursory glance inside, before waving us in...My son remarked that he had not even bothered to check properly... I jokingly told him that that was probably because we did not 'fit' the classic profile of terrorists, given that we had two 'children' (who are adult size) in tow. My son disagreed and this led to a discussion of children being used as suicide bombers by some organizations...Twenty hours later a suicide bomber blew himself up in DusitD2's Secret Garden restaurant, where my daughter has met friends and had lunch a few times, when she lived in Kenya...Terror is most terrifying when it hits close to home, until then, it just remains another statistic on the news....
And it was closer than we could have imagined. One of my daughter's closest school friends, an Ethiopian girl, who had moved to the United States five years ago, was back in Nairobi this month to meet all her old friends. She had been staying at the luxurious DusitD2 and had checked out to go back home just four days before the attack...What if she had been here last Tuesday? What if my daughter had been visiting her at the hotel that day?
These girls were not there but what about the  people who were? Innocent people who were going about their own business or just trying to earn an honest living? They leave behind heart broken families and loved ones, many of whom are still trying to identify bodies, at the mortuary located, ironically, just down the road from Dusit. Our hearts go out to them. What about the members of the security forces, one of whom lost his life and many others who are grievously wounded? We salute them all for the stellar role they played in rescuing people and in securing the hotel in a comparatively short period of time.
When will we see a peaceful world? What are we doing to each other? Who knows when and how it will all end... All we can do is to have faith in God, live each day as constructively as we can, keep our phones handy and carry identification on our person at all times. (Many people messaged their location from inside the besieged hotel to family members, enabling police to search for and rescue them in record time. A few bodies did not have any identification on them, making the task so much harder than it already is...). These, then are the new 'rules' for living in an unruly and ruthless world.

 DO VISIT KENYA. One swallow doth not a summer make.... Don't give up and don't give in. Together we stand!

A Kenyan Wedding

It has been exactly a year since I attended the wedding of the daughter of very close family friends of my parents, which was held in Guwahati, Assam, a place where I spent three of my pre teen years. To go back to a city you once lived in, after nearly thirty long years and to meet old school friends, is emotional beyond belief and probably the reason why I still haven't been able to write about it....But I will, very soon... A number of people sent me messages on my birthday last week, urging me to keep writing and keep inspiring, which made me realize that my output for 2018 has been my lowest since I first began blogging way back in 2011, after moving to Nairobi. So that is something I definitely need to rectify in 2019. A major reason why I did not write much was also that a dear friend here went through a major upheaval in her life and since the blog is all about things that actually happen around me and always contains the unadulterated truth, as I see it, I had to curb myself, since the matter was and remains subjudice....One more reason to start afresh in 2019 and utilize each day to its utmost, as one does not know what lies around the next bend on the hard and some times rocky road of life.
In the mean time, an exciting thing happened last month! We got invited to a Kenyan wedding! While I have attended a few KenIndian weddings here in the past, courtesy of the Indian origin business community my husband works with, I had never, ever, attended a truly Kenyan wedding. I love weddings, so you can imagine how excited I was...The bride is a security guard in my son's school and I felt truly privileged to be one of the handful of school parents whom she had invited to grace her big day. I have tremendous respect for security guards in the malls, government offices and educational institutions of both India and Kenya, because, in the unfortunate event of an attack, they are always in the direct line of fire, which is exactly what had happened during the terrorist attack at Westgate Mall.
I happily assured her that I wasn't travelling on the Saturday of her wedding. She was worried whether I would be there or not,since the school holidays would have just begun and I told her I would definitely attend the post church wedding reception in our school gymnasium. I was touched that the school had offered the space to host the function for one their staff members. I spent a long time shopping for the perfect wedding gift for her, as a mark of gratitude, for keeping our children safe at school. I wanted something pretty and yet functional and I finally found it and then splurged some more on choosing wedding appropriate wrapping paper. Wrapping paper in Kenya, unlike in India, does not automatically come free with the gift, but has to be bought separately, a fact that irks me to this day! 'Free' habits die hard....
Since the church was rather far from the reception venue, I was in touch with another security guard from our school and my son and I left home only when he assured me that the bridal party was on their way from church. We still ended up being the first ones at the beautifully decorated and colour coordinated venue but were soon joined by another parent I knew from school, who had come straight from the wedding ceremony. It was to be another hour before the family and friends of the bride and groom would arrive and THREE more hours before the couple du jour would show up, since they had a two hour photo session in between the wedding ceremony and the reception! Wow! This was certainly a new experience for me.

                                                The multiple cakes matched the decor colours!

In the meantime, the two hundred odd guests began queueing up to help themselves to the buffet lunch. Waiting for the 'couple of the day' was not part of the custom. One of the hostesses urged those around my table to get up and help themselves. After a while, she observed that my son and I had no plates in front of us. She cut through the queue and brought us two plates heaped with food. I was touched by her kind gesture but had to explain to her that we could not eat anything since we are strict vegetarians...She was puzzled but accepted my explanation. I urged my son to go and help himself to a soft drink since I felt that it would seem rather rude if neither of us had absolutely nothing! (This was a huge concession on my part, since I am always urging my son to stay away from the pure poison that I feel these bottles contain, and don't even get me started on my thoughts about alcohol! Mercifully, the school is a drug, alcohol and tobacco free campus....) My son shot off like a bullet to grab his bottle of Stoney, the famous ginger flavoured drink of East Africa!
Meanwhile, where were the bride and groom? No matter! The guests had happily feasted and the uncles, aunts and cousins were called by the Master Of Ceremonies, to join the line, that was already snaking around the tables and chairs. Traditional African music began being played and the entire wedding party began doing a line dance, weaving themselves between the tables and chairs. The sheer joie de vivre on their faces would put the guests at the recent mega Bollywood weddings that we had been forcefully subjected to, by the Indian media, to shame! My son, after having been very patient for three whole hours of basically doing and eating nothing, was ready to go home and so I sent him off ( oh the advantages of residing just outside the school gate!) but I was not ready to budge until I had seen the bride.
Finally there was an announcement that the much awaited moment had come and the couple was outside. All the ladies were asked to come outside to welcome them in and so we walked out of the gym. I found this custom really nice as I am sure the bride and groom, followed by the brides maids and groomsmen, felt very special as they danced into the gym, to the beat of traditional Kenyan chants and songs. Once again the entire line danced around the periphery of the hall, this time led by the new couple, until they reached the decorated table at the head of the hall, where their lunch had been kept warm for them. Everyone's happiness was palpable and again brought home the fact that one does not really need much to enjoy life....

                                    The beautiful and glowing bride dances her way in, into the hall

Unlike in India, the presents were not handed over directly to the bride or the groom. A chief usher sat at a large table and the gifts had to be deposited there. She put a number on a sticker which was then stuck to the gift. The same number was then entered into a little ledger which also had the giver's name against it. For those who wanted to gift cash, little brown envelopes were handed around long before the couple made an appearance. This, I thought, certainly saved the mad scramble I have experienced many, many times, while leaving home to attend a wedding, when the fancy gift envelope I had so carefully kept, absolutely refuses to be found, necessitating a stop on the way to the venue, to purchase an envelope! The little brown envelopes were then popped into a box with a small slit, which would be handed over to the couple later, with all the cash safe and sound inside. What an ingenious idea!
Once the couple and their immediate entourage were seated, the few other parents and I decided it was time to leave. But, as another guest told us when she saw us leaving, the fun had just begun! As we waved to the bride and smiled at everyone and walked out, we knew the guests would dance and sing and eat cake late into the evening....It seemed a perfect metaphor for the new couple's life together that had begun that day and actually seemed like a good mantra for the rest of us to follow too....

                          The wedding gift we gave, I loved those red roses on the paper I chose!
                          Any guesses for what's inside? It's functional but fragile!