Nairobi

By Azad Essa in Africa on November 22nd, 2011

It is a beautiful sight: watching a thunderstorm rock the Nairobi night skyline. Driving on the roads of the Kenyan capital the following morning is somewhat less pleasant.

With last minute arrangements already causing some dithering, the first leg of our journey to cover the elections in the Democratic Republic of Congo almost turns disastrous when one smart Aleck instructs the local driver to take a "slip road" to the airport in order to avoid Nairobi's monstrous early morning traffic. 

The slip road starts as an impressive sand track but soon enough turns into a mud pit, complete with dancing cars and tilted trucks -- left mostly immobile after making some wrong moves on the gooey roadway.

It seems we might miss that flight after all.

To put the drama into perspective: we need to catch a plane from Nairobi to Kigali via the Burundi capital, Bujumbura.

By Azad Essa in Africa on July 7th, 2011
Photo by GALLO/GETTY

Gerissa, Kenya - It takes a while to weave your way through the dusty streets of Nairobi and surface from the coagulated gunk that is the city's air.

The city confuses me.

In one moment it takes me home, further south the African coast, to Durban. And in the the next moment it startles me with an air of Delhi.

The orchestrated chaos of informal traders unwrapping their bright, fresh vegetables onto wooden tray tables beside oversized football shirts and mobile phone batteries would pass easily for a scene from Durban's central business district where messy informality and sneaky formality contest each other for the remaining vestiges of crucial business space.

But then, the area around Nairobi's Jomo Kenyatta monument, opulently wide, with an affectation of stateliness, together with the perennial haze that hangs over the city skyline like a soiled sheet, takes me back to the Indian capital.

By Ranjit Bhaskar in Africa on December 30th, 2010
Photo by Ranjit Bhaskar
There is not much drama as the Kenya Airways Embraer jet prepares to land in Juba after an hour and a half flight from Nairobi.
 
Considering its status as the latest frontier town for a hoard of NGO employees, get-rich-quick businessmen and journalists, one almost expected something out of the ordinary. Like, for instance, the corkscrew landing manoeuvre adopted by pilots while landing in Baghdad when the city was still a place visited only by the aforementioned folk.
 
Instead, all you get to see is the pleasant site of the White Nile. You notice more trees on the western side of the river after the hardscrabble landscape of eastern Africa through much of the journey.
 
For reasons unknown or primordial, the very sight of plentiful water and greenery comes as a sign of hope.
By Kristen Saloomey in Americas on November 10th, 2010
Photo from EPA

The New York jury deliberating in the trial of accused embassy bomber Ahmed Khalfan Ghailani has more than the defendant's fate in its hands. A guilty verdict, should there be one, is likely to revive the Obama administration's plans to try other Guantanamo Bay detainees in civilian courts.

The US government contends Ghailani played a key role in the al-Qaeda plot to blow up American embassies in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998. The attacks killed 224 people, the vast majority of whom were in Kenya's capital Nairobi, and injured thousands.

Ghailani was indicted shortly after the bombings, but it wasn't until 2004 – after the September 11th attacks - that US authorities caught up with him in Pakistan.

By Zeina Awad in Africa on June 14th, 2010
Picture from AFP

There is no shortage of theories about who was behind Sunday's blasts in Nairobi. But one theory stands above the rest.

The timing of the blasts is crucial here - less than 2 months ahead of a referendum in which Kenyans wil be voting on whether or not to adopt a new constitution. A huge amount is riding on this vote - the draft constitution is a key part of the the deal that ended Kenya's violence in 2008. The Kibaki - Raila unity government wants the constitution to pass.

Badly.

But the target of the blasts - thousands of Evangelican Christians - do not. They were attacked while gathering in a public park to pray and listen to their leaders preach about the virtues of voting No in the upcoming constitution. They believe the blasts were planted by supporters of the Yes camp with the backing of the government.

And this is where the danger lies in as far as many Kenyans are concerned. The blasts are still being investigated.

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