Ghost Town

Saturday December 29, 2007

Nairobi was a ghost town today. It was eerie. I took a walk downtown in the blazing heat this afternoon just for a walk and maybe a cup of coffee and to get some phone airtime and literally everything was closed, even more stuff than on actual election day, even the 24 hour Nakumatt Downtown was closed. This whole week because of election day and Christmas the whole city has literally closed up. We still don’t know who the winner is although I glanced at the news for a few minutes this morning. There has been no regular TV for the past 3 days, it’s all constant election updating, saying how many votes for each district they’ve counted so far. Raila was way ahead for awhile, by over a million votes, but Kibaki has almost caught up now and people are saying it’s rigging. Every night on the news, they always have a yes or no question they ask the viewers and they’re supposed to text their answers in and they present the results the next night. The question a few weeks ago was “Do you think this year’s elections are going to be rigged?” 87% of respondents said Yes, which I thought was extremely interesting. There are all kinds of watchdog organizations trying to make sure the election is transparent and fair and free of rigging and the votes are counted in public, but according to what everyone’s told me, there are all kinds of ways to rig this election. Sell your voter’s card, make fake id cards, bribe the election officials, switch the ballot boxes, violence to keep people away from the polling stations, etc. Everyone thought they would know the new president by the next morning, but it’s getting so close now that I don’t know how long it will be before we know….Sound a little familiar?? Anyway, I was disappointed because Java House was even closed, and I thought it would be open, because it was even open on election day. So much for the election, I want coffee!