Kenya, My Kenya

The situation in Kenya has lost all sense and civilization. I am heartbroken to read today that the ethnic warfare has taken on a life of its own, pitting the Kikuyu, the tribe of business and power, against everyone else. It seems that no lesson was learned from the genocide in Rwanda in 1994 when up to a million Tutsis lost their lives at the hands of the Hutus. Can you imagine 750,000 Latino-Americans being slaughtered on the streets of Los Angeles and then swept into the La Brea tar pits? What about 1,000,000 African-Americans mass-murdered in New York City, dumped into sanitation trucks and buried in the Staten Island waste fill? Kenya was supposed to be a bastion of peace and stability, where the numerous tribes forged together as the economic engine that powered East Africa. And yet today I read it was all just a myth. That ethnic tensions had been simmering all along. That the tranquility I saw eleven years ago in Nairobi was just a facade. Indeed, the pictures of Kibera, the slum where I taught math, show that nothing has improved for the poor. Discontent is rearing a head with blood in its eyes. Where once there were arms that stood to welcome me, now there are only hands wielding machetes. How could it all have been such an illusion? No one who looks at me--a picture of health and strength--would ever think that I harbor a deadly virus within my bloodstream, one that's been forced into remission for the moment but waits silently within my brain and organs to strike. I look into the mirror today and see the failure of Kenya and humanity.

Galactic News for January 3, 2008

Major activity was reported from all quadrants of the Earth today. In the Americas Galaxy, the Northern Alliance began its bizarre, quadrennial ritual of burning hundreds of millions of dollars to select its Supreme Leader. Although too early to predict a winner, the one called Barack Obama has emerged as the early head of the Democratic Faction while the Republican Assembly has voiced approval for the one known as Mike Huckabee. It is Obama, however, who is of special interest this year for a father who terraported from the Kenya Cluster in the Africa Galaxy. Speaking of which, telecameras pointed at the Kenya Cluster revealed a fifth consecutive day of rioting, looting, raping and killing in this normally stable zone, triggered by the announcement that the incumbent leader Mwai Kibaki had rigged the election there to retain his stranglehold on power. This terranaut was particularly shaken by the events as he had terraported to the Kenya Cluster eleven years ago to see its famed giraffes and elephants roaming the mighty grasslands--he could never have imagined this kind of violence between the Luo and Kikuyu who had made his journey such a memorable one. In the Hawaii Belt, a display of calming light colored the skies as its inhabitants kicked off a season of golf in Kapalua. More beautiful lights will flood the southern firmaments when the Australia Galaxy begins its summer festival of tennis in a few weeks.