Today is a national holiday in Kenya - "Daniel Arap Moi Day". Moi was the second president of Kenya and is generally known to have been more of an authoritarian dictator than a democratic president. He used torture and intimidation to defeat his enemies and increase his own power, and he only allowed Kenya to become a multi-party system again (after of course he made it a single-party system) under extreme pressure from the US and other democratic countries. In the last two elections he "won" (1992 and 1997) there was substantial ethnic violence in the country (although not as much as this past election). It is strange to me that Kenyans still love and respect him so much, even though in 1999 Amnesty International and the UN determined that substantial human rights abuses were committed in Kenya under his leadership (1978-2002).
Anyway, the United Nations here does not recognize the holiday for good reason (the UN should generally not recognize holidays for despots) and even the Kenyan government is thinking of getting rid of it - except there is fear that people will be outraged (particularly people from Moi's tribe, the Kalenjin's) and will react strongly to ending the holiday (read "strongly" as "violently"). When I took a taxi to work this morning there were very few cars on the road and the UN compound is very quiet. It is also a Friday, which is always a lazy work day in Kenya, but I suspect that some UN-employed Kenyans took the day off of work given that everything else is shut down for the day! I mean...who hasn't been guilty of stealing a 3-day weekend at some point?
As I was home alone last night watching the global financial news in horror, I decided to start a new routine for the baby. I put my big headphones (usually used for internet chat) on my belly and pumped some music into my belly from the iPod. I am hoping that soon I will feel Simba move and I was thinking that if I gave him/her some good tunes to groove to that might speed up the process. So far I have not felt anything definite...during pregnancy women often feel all kinds of crazy things so it is difficult to know what is fetal movement and what is just gas or indigestion! As I said to my sister on skype, I sort of wonder what the acoustics are like in utero, but I imagine they are a bit echo-ey, so I was careful not to play anything too loud or crazy. We do want Simba to have good taste in music!
Kristoffer returns to me tonight. He was supposed to monitor schools again today but because of the holiday they are closed! It is at least an 8-hour drive from where he is (a place called West Pokot in northern Kenya near Uganda) and it is a beautiful day (at least in Nairobi) for his ride. I am glad he won't spend half his weekend driving back tomorrow! He said on the phone that his last two days of monitoring went very well, but yesterday the schools he visited were SO far away from any place that his team had to walk a few hours to get there and back because they were not accessible by roads. Let's hope he has some interesting pictures to share with us! This weekend I hope we will start tracking down stores that sell baby stuff so we can figure out what things we can and will get here, and what things we need to bring or import from home. I think I am starting to "nest" :)
LMW
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