Still from Africa

News

Our hotel rooms in Ethiopia and Kenya did not have TV and usually they did not have phones.  There were never newspapers in the lobby.  Usually the only place we would see a TV was in the airports.  As we were waiting one morning for a flight from Gondar to Lalibella I noticed pictures of Times Square on the news.  I moved closer so I could read the sub-titles and learned there had been an attempted bombing in Times Square three days earlier.  It was still the top story even though the bomb failed, no one was injured and no one was killed.  Two months later when we returned to the states the story was still on the front page of the New York Times.

On Saturday, June 12^th we checked in for one night at the Serena Hotel in Nairobi.  We were traveling to Amboseli on Sunday.  We had a room on the fifth floor overlooking a beautiful park.  I looked in my handy-dandy Lonely Planet guide and discovered our hotel was right in the corner of Uhuru Park in Nairobi.  We checked out Sunday morning and drove out of town through the park.

That evening we were in Amboseli.  But in Uhuru Park in Nairobi, very near the hotel we just left, three hand grenades went off at a political rally killing seven people and injuring more than 120 others.

My first thought was that we needed to send an email and let everyone know we were OK.  Then I realized that no one knew we had been in Nairobi that night so maybe no one would worry.  That was also the time when my computer battery ran down and our transformer caught fire and exploded so we could not recharge anything.   I worried that folks at home might be worried.  I never suspected that the bombing would not even make US news.  We decided finally to wait and see if anyone had heard the news.  Sara finally admitted she saw a tiny article in the back section of the paper and did worry for a moment.  No one else ever even knew.

A non-bombing with no injuries is worldwide news for two months, but a real bombing that takes lives and injures many is basically ignored outside of Kenya.  Why the difference?

It is the same question this trip has raised for me around HIV/AIDS and the orphans.  If we had a school where one half of the student body were orphans due to HIV/AIDS wouldn’t we do something?  Half of the students in this elementary school are living in what they call “Child headed households”.  That means there is no adult in the house.  The parents are dead and the oldest sibling is trying to raise the rest.  It might be a fifth grader trying to care for a second grader and a toddler.  Could your fifth grader do that?  Would you want them to?

The politicians in Ethiopia and Kenya are frequently accused of taking bribes or pay offs for voting one way or another.  That is called political corruption.  When we do it in the US it is called lobbying.  Seems like a distinction without a difference.

Why is there this disparity?  Why are different lives seemingly valued differently?  It simply cannot be a matter of black and white, can it?