Nick Wadhams

Et Voila

Sascha Helen Wadhams
Born at 3:37 p.m., Wednesday, February 27
8 pounds, 1 ounce, 52 centimeters long
Z doing great

The trouble with think tanks

The International Crisis Group recently released its assessment of the Kenyan political crisis. The 34-page document caused quite a stir in Nairobi, and it provides a pretty good overview of the situation, though there wasn't much in there that seemed all that new.

A couple of things that strike me as seriously flawed:

1. The athletes. The report got the most attention for a single paragraph on page 12 which claimed that Kenyan athletes had sponsored some of the fighters. This is a case of about 95 percent of the back story being left out. By "athletes" the report means "runners" and specifically those living in and around the city of Eldoret. The report mentions one person, Lucas Sang, who can't defend himself against the allegation because he was killed _ according to ICG, while leading a band of militias in the fighting.

The trouble with this claim is sourcing. The report bases the allegation on interviews with unnamed people in Eldoret. By not naming the suspects the authors of the report apparently believe they spared themselves the responsibility of speaking with the "athletes" in question and hearing their inevitable denials. That seems a little unfair because every Kenyan who reads of the report will know whom it refers to, and if anyone wants to seek retribution, he will.

Saturday Night Tap Water

I know I should consider myself lucky to even have tap water in Nairobi, but this is icky.

On the right is the drinking water we buy in 20-liter bottles every week or so. On the left is the water that came out of the tap on Saturday night. Ah, the benefits of water treatment! To the city's credit, it's usually not this bad.

The Anticipation (Part II)

Still no kid just yet. Z is at 40 weeks plus six, so the wee lassie is imminent. We are now trying to figure out whether her arrival will coincide with the achievement of a power-sharing deal or with the beginning of mass demonstrations to protest the collapse of talks aimed at  the achievement of a power-sharing deal. Kind of hoping the former.

When you get into this whole baby thing, you wade into some truly ridiculous crap. For example, the vile baby products store "Buy Buy Baby," where every purchase is laden with guilt (you're thinking the $4 bottle? What, too cheap to give your child the $20 anti-colic ozone-free super delux bottle?). And, of course, Babycenter.com, one of the most evil web sites on the planet. Today I came across its Top 100 baby names list. The name we've chosen for the little one does not appear, which I take to be a good thing. "Kaelyn?" "Bailey?" Blech. To find out what baby name is best for you, take this handy quiz.

I wonder if the incredible popularity of the boy's name Aiden is the result of Aidan Hartley's booze and drug addled tales of adventure across East Africa, as depicted in The Zanzibar Chest. Presumably not. The judgment of this book among the hoity toity press corps in Nairobi was not all that charitable, but I liked it.

Konvoy Kraziness

Just saw President Kibaki's convoy drive by. It was comprised of four police motorcycles and a whopping 18 cars, most of them black or dark blue Mercedes. Who the heck is in all those things?

Rice and the Media

Condoleezza Rice held a news conference last night that was scheduled to start at 4:50 p.m. but began at 5:15. Early yesterday, the U.S. Embassy sent out an advisory requesting that the media start arriving at 12 p.m., five hours early. Reporters showing up later than 3:15 p.m. _ still 1 hour and 35 minutes early _ would not be admitted.

This reminded me of the time a couple years back when I went to a press thing that Rice held at the Waldorf Astoria in New York. It was the annual U.N. General Assembly session or something, and she was meeting with one important diplomat or another. About 20 of us from the media were herded into a back entrance of the Waldorf and sent up to Rice's floor in a service elevator. We then spent two hours waiting in the small space between the elevator and the door that opened onto the carpeted floor of the hotel.

We were finally admitted into Rice's presence and began scribbling as she and the other important person said a few platitudes and shook hands. When we began asking questions about 30 seconds later, her security guards shut us up by repeatedly baying "Thank you very much," "Thank you very much," and muscled us out of the room. Their hostility was a little unnerving. I felt like I and my pint-sized voice recorder were about to be taken down and hog-tied with monogrammed Waldorf dinner napkins. I am still trying to figure out why Rice decided to make herself available to the press on that fine New York day.

Then again, who do you respect less? Rice for engaging in this little bit of theater for the media, or the media for buying into it? I guess if I were one of Rice's security guys, I'd probably hate the media too.

Whose Colony?

Kenya's foreign minister, Moses Wetangula, has been outspoken in his general belief that the international community should shut up and butt out of the Kenyan crisis. On Sunday, he brought up the "We are not anyone's colony" argument.

This line of reasoning seems awfully cynical, employing a sort of suggested reverse racism that panders to President Kibaki's supporters. Britain indeed committed many, many horrible injustices against Kenya before Kenya gained independence in 1963. But no one is saying Kenya is anyone's colony. Kenya is certainly not obliged to do anything that anyone tells it to. In fact, by criticizing the vote and the government's intransigence, the international community is saying just the opposite: That Kibaki and his government should start upholding the principles of a legitimate sovereign government that it proclaims to be.

But Wetangula and the rest of Kibaki's coterie seem singularly unconcerned that most observers (the U.S., the E.U., various other domestic and international monitors) agree that the election was rigged, and that most of the rigging occurred during the counting process, and that the final count gave Kibaki the win, and that all of the above would thus suggest that Kibaki's team did most of the rigging. That's what the criticism is about, not colonialism.

Bribery

I guess it's just plain ol' political expediency. When dealing with a government as corrupt as President Mwai Kibaki's, the best thing to do is offer a bribe. So seems to have been Condoleezza Rice's tactic as Kenya muddles its way through a major political crisis.

“I’m going to emphasize that there is a lot to be gained in a relationship with the United States through resolution of this political crisis,” Rice said as she arrived in Kenya today. Hmmm.

Incidentally, it occurs to me that President Bush was probably smart not to come to Kenya. His administration has argued that he decided not to stop in Kenya because he didn't want to distract from Kofi Annan's mediation efforts. Possible. But the real reason is probably that he didn't want to bestow any more legitimacy on a government whose election victory was flawed. You can't have President Bush paying a state visit to a nation that has no recognized leader.

The Anticipation!

The wife is due with our first kid, um, today. February 17. The little lassie has given no indication that her arrival is imminent, so we're just sort of hanging out, staring at the belly in anticipation of some sort of new development aside from the usual karate chops and back flips.

It's all very exciting. And to put Kenya's crisis in perspective: There was only one time early in the chaos, when stores in Nairobi were closed for most of the day, that I was at all concerned about our decision to have the baby in Nairobi. Our anesthesiologist canceled an appointment a couple weeks back because she had to get her kids out of school after the assassination of an ODM lawmaker. But otherwise, smooth sailing. And of course, Kenyan women happen to give birth in Kenya all the time, which puts things in even greater perspective.

An aside: All the books say to fill your head with "happy thoughts" before the birth, as if unhappy thoughts will turn your child into something out of Doris Lessing. So we've been trying to watch movies with happy endings. "The Kite Runner" and "Michael Clayton" did it for both of us, but I really, really, really would discourage expecting mothers from seeing "Pan's Labyrinth." That threw us for a bit of a loop last night. I have lobbied for the inexplicably titled "Dragon Wars: D War" as our next selection, but Z, for reasons I cannot understand, is less keen. She is arguing for "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind." I'm not quite sure what to make of that.

Tourists return

Tourism has been hit so hard by Kenya's crisis that Saturday's arrival of 355 western visitors to Mombasa merited a story in the Daily Nation newspaper. Kind of depressing, though I suppose it is news, given how most people are so completely (and unjustifiably) terrified of coming to Kenya.