Kenyan Elections
It has been an interesting week here with the Kenyan presidential election, which was held last Thursday, the 27th. The polls prior to the election showed an extremely close race between the top 2 candidates, and that has indeed been the case. Because the numbers were so close, the winner wasn't announced until yesterday (Sunday), after all districts had reported their votes. Riots, mobs, and other violence started in Nairobi on Friday afternoon due to the delay in the results being announced. The voting was very much divided along tribal lines, which is one cause for the upheaval. The candidates were the current president, Kibake, who is of the Kikuyu tribe and Odinga, who is a Luo and has the support of almost all who are not Kikuyu. It appeared at first that Odinga would be the winner, and his supporters were accusing Kibake of purposely delaying announcing a winner. However, once all the votes were in, Kibake was announced the winner yesterday. This brought on even more demonstrations, mobs, riots, etc., because now the Odinga supporters don't believe the voting results are valid. Fifteen people have been killed so far.
Due to the unrest in Nairobi, we and the other missionaries here have been unable to travel there since last Thursday. We feel very safe here in our small town, and the main affect we are seeing personally is the lack of supplies that would normally come here from Nairobi. Our little local grocery shop is very low on supplies, because they haven't been able to get more from Nairobi due to both the Christmas holidays and the election problems. Some of the items we are out of and can't get right now are cheese, orange juice, and ice cream. Our gas station is out of fuel. Also, we can usually get a good variety of fresh vegetables from our local vegetable market. However, they haven't been able to get vegetables from their suppliers, so all they have to sell right now is potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, and onions. So, I'll have to be a little creative at preparing meals this week.
The opening of our school here has been delayed by a week, since many students fly into Nairobi, and it's not really safe for them to be arriving there right now. We are hoping and praying that the unrest will resolve this week and that school will be able to resume next week. We appreciate your prayers for peace in Kenya.
Due to the unrest in Nairobi, we and the other missionaries here have been unable to travel there since last Thursday. We feel very safe here in our small town, and the main affect we are seeing personally is the lack of supplies that would normally come here from Nairobi. Our little local grocery shop is very low on supplies, because they haven't been able to get more from Nairobi due to both the Christmas holidays and the election problems. Some of the items we are out of and can't get right now are cheese, orange juice, and ice cream. Our gas station is out of fuel. Also, we can usually get a good variety of fresh vegetables from our local vegetable market. However, they haven't been able to get vegetables from their suppliers, so all they have to sell right now is potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, and onions. So, I'll have to be a little creative at preparing meals this week.
The opening of our school here has been delayed by a week, since many students fly into Nairobi, and it's not really safe for them to be arriving there right now. We are hoping and praying that the unrest will resolve this week and that school will be able to resume next week. We appreciate your prayers for peace in Kenya.
posted by Sharon at 8:02 PM
2 Comments:
You can try making the wonderful dutch speciality of "hutspot", which consists of boiling onions, potatos and carrots together until well done, then mashing them up with butter, salt, pepper and nutmeg. Add a meatball and some gravy and you'll have yourself some dutch farmers food.
Thanks for your blog. We hope and pray the best for all of Kenya. Much blessings to you and your fellow Kenyans in the New Year ~ 2008.
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