He orders a double tequila and orange juice. I think, ‘wow I like the way he rolls, but it is 1pm’ and order a Nile beer. After all, it is 1pm on my first Saturday off in months. We are at a pool with a view, The Best View in Kampala in fact. It is up on the hill overlooking the edge of town and the start of the Great Lake. We are the only people at the pool - it is stunning, the beauty, the quiet, the peace.
In a break in our saga of life stories, the drinks arrive and silence follows. Absolute silence. There is not a church down the hill practicing the organ. There is not a man nailing iron sheets to his roof. There is not a matatu blowing his horn and kicking up dust, there are not kids calling to each other on the football pitch. SILENCE. I instinctively take a deep breath, a sip of beer and lay back on my recliner. This is the life…
It only takes a few minutes for this peace to turn to disquiet. An unknown tense anxiety rolls over me. I can’t place it. I walk to the end of the pool and look out over town. I expect to see tufts of smoke rising over burning Kikuyu businesses and homes. I am taken back to Kenya two years ago. The quiet in the days following the election was deafening - thick with tension.
I am sitting out back of Marcus’ apartment anxiously pretending to read a book about a travel journalist in East Africa, hoping the neighbors will turn on the international news. Kenya broadcast TV and radio have been shut down. Waiting. Every hour or so Nate would check in on me and see if I heard anything. I was going mad - I felt the madness of the country. It wasn’t even my country, but I felt the pulse of the people - quickening. I needed to stop thinking about the what-if’s for a moment, so I walk to the road just as the cops shoot tear gas at empty shops where one too many people had gathered.
It wasn’t my country, but that day when I heard the election results announced on the radio in favor of Kibaki I started crying. The country had stopped, held its breath, waiting, praying that this would not be the result. People knew what was coming long before the announcement. I go inside to tell my friends the result, they don’t believe it. Charles chuckles cynically, knowing he had just won 5,000 Kenyan shillings in a rigged election.
Without really thinking, I immediately leave- I need to talk to people. To get a sense of the destruction that was to come. People that voted for Kibaki were afraid to tell me, and were just as upset by what had happened. They knew that their man had stolen the election, and they too were scared, not just for repercussions of having supported Kibaki, but the repercussions of a government that is derived from corruption. I walk out to the road where I have a decent view of Kericho. It is burning. I hear the pops of gun shots in town. Right in front of me, I see men hoping over fences-running.
I find myself on a rooftop, watching Kenya burn as the sun sets. The people in the apartment nearby invite me in to watch the inauguration of the President. This is thirty minutes after the results were announced. The ceremony is in secret, only about twenty of Kibaki’s closest party members are present. Only one TV station is covering the event, but it is the only thing allowed on air, so there is no real difficulty finding the right station. There is no pomp. There is no circumstance. Just making it official. I felt dirty watching it. I cried with the people gathered in the small room. A few shook their hands at the TV crying, “The blood is on your hands.”
People had hope for this election. They finally had the opportunity to express true democracy. They no longer had to live under a dictator, and they no longer had to make alliances they didn’t believe in inorder to depose that dictator. They had a choice, and looked to the future. But the ruling elite didn’t like their version of the future.
Morgan inquires after my sudden solitude. I begin to go into the moment I was just in but feel myself sinking. I dive into the pool and return to my beer.
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