there's a first time for everything

Well, I've made it to Kenya, but it seems as though I'm going to be hanging out in Nairobi for a few more days than planned...

As far as I can tell, it's been kind of drowned out in the Western media by the Bhutto assassination, but if you look for it, you'll see that Kenya's national elections were this past Thursday. Since the British departed Kenya about forty years ago, democratic elections have historically taken place without much chaos here. This time around, though, has been unfortunately somewhat different. The opposition candidate, Raila Odinga, appeared to have a healthy lead against the incumbent president, Mwai Kubaki, leading up to the elections and in the early tallying. Frustrations started to increase, however, when results weren't announced within the first few days following the elections, and there were small outbursts of violence, primarily in the slums of Nairobi and mostly between members of the Kikuyu and Luo tribes (Odinga is Luo, Kibaki a Kikuyu). Kibaki was finally announced winner on Sunday evening and rather hurriedly re-sworn in.

Consequently, there's been quite a bit of talk that the Kibaki government has rigged the election results, given the uniformity of polls showing the lead for Odinga prior to the elections, and unfortunately there's been quite a bit of resultant violence in the slums. Last night a media blackout was instituted and the roads were eerily quiet on the drive from the airport to the apartment complex where I'm currently staying.

Where does that leave me (and the six other volunteers who arrived last night)? Well, still in Nairobi, experiencing the effects of political instability for the first time. We're hoping to fly out to Tenwek (rather than drive, since it will be safer to avoid potential roadblocks and checkpoints) on Wednesday, and until then, we'll probably just be hanging out in the Samaritan's Purse guesthouse in an apartment complex in suburban Nairobi. We're currently pretty comfortable in our accommodations, and I actually slept pretty well last night, so overall I'm thankful, and I don't want anyone to worry about us.

But the reality is that Odinga's party is saying he will be sworn in today as the "people's president" and Kibaki has, in no uncertain terms, stated that that would be tantamount to an attempted coup. Because of the media blackout, it's been difficult to really tell what's going on in town, though Alex (the country director for Samaritan's Purse) just dropped by to say that things are pretty clamped-down in town and most of the violence has been confined to the slums, like Kibera. Tribal tensions are sadly still a part of life in Kenya and this situation has brought them to the forefront. The country and the government need our prayers for peace...

the haze lifting

It's been twelve weeks since I started my long run of q4 call, and this evening I woke up - thanks to the low-battery reminder beep on my smoke detector - from my final post-MICU call coma and realized that in eleven days, I'm packing my bags and getting on a plane to Kenya. Actually, I hope that my bags will be packed before eleven days from now, but the point is really that the weeks have snuck by me, and I'm now left with a far shorter time to really focus on preparing for my return to Tenwek than I would have liked. There's a long to-do list in my head and a somewhat disbelieving spirit in my heart that I can accomplish anywhere near as much of it as I'd like... but at this point, all I can do is be thankful for vacation and relieved that my attention no longer needs to be split between work and trip preparations. There's plenty of minute details to be sorted, support emails to be penned, prescriptions to be filled (doxycycline!), and suitcase corners to be crammed, but there's also a very real need to re-commit myself to prayer for this trip, because there's not much I can do with what little strength and energy I have remaining at this point, and I expect that God wants a lot more from me than that. Pray with me?

That being said, I'm also looking forward to the next eleven days with great joy: Christmas is mere moments away, it's been snowing off and on, and I'm going to home to be with my whole family for the first time in more than six months. What better way to celebrate the incarnation of the Savior of the world?