Truemors
Not the most pleasant sight of my trip. This burnt car was from a barricade on the way into Mombasa. We drove through several active protests, but we concentrated on getting through the crowd -- my complexion attracted enough unhelpful interest, and I reckoned that a camera in my pale hands would only have made things worse.
As it was, this was taken through the windscreen of a moving car, as we hastened our way out of town.
I came away from those two days in Kenya with renewed appreciation of what many journalists put themselves through to tell the rest of us what's happening in the world.
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at 08:21 on January 2nd, 2008
This burnt car was from a barricade on the road out of Mombasa. I took it through the windscreen of a moving car, as we hastened our way out of town.
We drove through through several active protests the previous night, but we concentrated on getting through the crowd -- my complexion attracted enough unhelpful interest, and I reckoned that a camera in my pale hands would only have made things worse. That night, we were driving through pro-Kibaki demonstrations -- people who were "happy" with the announced result. The crowds were jubilant, BUT they repeatedly stopped our car, to check that we were supporters, too. I was lucky that James, my driver, was a Kenyan and not a Luo -- he managed to talk us out of trouble each time, and he taught me a few key phrases in Swahili that I could use to "show my support". That seemed to satisfy most of the demonstrators, but a few were more difficult (there was an assumption that Europe and the US were backing the opposition). James always managed to explain our way out, but I shudder to think of what would have happened had he been identified with the wrong tribe.
I came away from those two days in Kenya with renewed appreciation of what many journalists put themselves through to tell the rest of us what's happening in the world.