I have to say that this morning, as I watched Barack Obama accept the Democratic nomination this morning (well...CNN showed long highlights but I was asleep for the live event), I couldn't help but ache for my classroom in NYC. I envy my colleagues who get to teach this historic moment in American history and I spent at least 15 minutes drafting lesson plan ideas in my head while I was eating breakfast.
Regardless of who individuals are voting for or if Barack Obama wins the election, I cannot imagine that every American watching that speech was not completely moved by the fact that an African American man is a candidate for President. I had goosebumps and I shed a few tears for sure...it was "awesome" in every sense of the word.
But actually, these days in Kenya I have been dealing with a different kind of politics. This week at work, a UNICEF colleague of mine and I had an extremely disappointing experience with another colleague from a different UN agency. It would be highly unprofessional of me to describe the situation in detail here, but I will say that I learned something very interesting.
You see, I expected that the UN system would be rife with political agendas and motivations, as any institution is. But for some reason, I naively thought that the politics at the UN would be different from other politics I have experienced...somehow more mature or worldy. This, as I learned this week, turns out to be completely untrue. The politics at the UN are the same as the politics of a high school in NYC or Washington, DC, the same as the politics at a major private university, and the same as the politics of an American small-town's musical theater company. Some people with a relative degree of power here defend it with their lives, at all costs, and at whatever expense it is to their colleagues. At this point, I am now in the middle of an unexpected and undesired battle, which will hopefully be resolved with mediation from high level administration on Monday. Sheesh! And I am just a consultant - I thought there would be no stress!
That's most of the news from Nairobi this week. Kristoffer has been a little less busy at work this week than last week, or at least he is going in to the office a little bit later than he was last week! We bought some furniture for our house from some friends who are moving back to Denmark today so we are only one room away from being fully furnished at this point. Sadly, it looks as though our efforts with a second internet company are failing and we will need to start our search again, or resign ourselves to not having internet at home. This seems unacceptable to me so I think we won't give up the fight just yet...perhaps we just need to change tactics.
Kenya is certainly proud today of its favorite "half-son" today (Barack Obama, that is) and, again regardless of political affiliation, I think all Americans should be too!
LMW
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