After weeks of waffling and infighting from the government and anxiety on the part of the public, a cabinet was finally named on Sunday. It’s a gigantic cabinet of 40 people, the largest in Africa by a good 16 ministers. This means that some ministries, such as the Ministry of Roads and Public Works, were split in two. Other new ministries had to be created. But still, for some reason the ministry that deals with gender equity remains the Ministry of Gender and Children, which I find very irritating. It’s also worth mentioning that out of the 40 ministers, only 7 are women. Pathetic. However flawed, though, the naming of the cabinet is a big relief. If it hadn’t been named now, I don’t know what would have happened. Though officially another election would have to have been called, it would have been nearly impossible with such a high number of voters displaced. There have been mixed reactions, as most people are happy that a cabinet has been named, but grumble that it is much too large, and will be inefficient and expensive to maintain. But at least now the tensions from people protesting about the delays have been resolved and maybe parliament can finally move on and start working on some programs, particularly for the IDPs.

The naming of the cabinet came at the end of a good weekend. On Friday, George and I went out to an Indian restaurant that we used to frequent when I last lived around here. I’d forgotten how expensive non-Kenyan food is here, but it was delicious and very much worth it. On Saturday, I attended a wedding in Kibera that my friend Sebi had invited me to. It was a very interesting wedding; the groom was Luhya, a traditionally Christian group, and the bride was Nubi, who are usually Muslim. The groom had actually converted to Islam, both in order to get permission from the bride’s family to marry her, and to fit in more with his community, as in that area of Kibera most of the families are Muslim. The wedding was a day-long affair, filled with dancing and food and traditions from both the Luhya and Muslim communities. There was a long procession through Kibera to reach the bride’s home, while the bride’s family and the groom were at the mosque making arrangements amongst themselves. There were fancy umbrellas, drummers and singers, and everyone danced and sang their way through the streets and muddy alleyways as Kibera residents looked on. We all crammed ourselves into a tiny, sweltering room and danced before the bride, who was at that point covered with a white sheet. Later, Sebi’s sisters decided that I needed to wear a tradition Nubian outfit like them, so they wrapped meters and meters of cloth around me. They had even devised a method of tucking a cell phone into the folds at the front of the outfit. Though the outfit looked good and natural on everyone else, I felt a bit like I was wearing a bedsheet and didn’t quite know what to do with the loose end, which kept falling off my shoulder. But they pronounced me beautiful, and the wedding guests seemed to agree.

After eating about our fifth meal of the day, we went to visit the bride again, as she was uncovered and receiving individual guests at home. She was wearing elaborate gold jewelry on her head and hands, had a silver tiara and was covered with lovely henna designs. I guess that usually one is meant to pay to see the bride, but since none of us had money, we were let in on credit. The rest of the night was spent dancing to the drumming and singing, as I tried with not much success to follow along with the traditional steps and movements. I had a great time.

For Sebi and his friends, the day was one of mourning as well as celebration. The previous day, one of their friends passed away. He was only 21, and was shot by police during the December riots in Kibera. From what they told me, he was not shot by accident; they had all been protesting and the police targeted them and opened fire without warning. Their friend was shot twice, once in his left arm and once in his side. The bullet passed through and shattered his spinal cord. He had been in the hospital for three months, and was hoping for a full recovery although he would have spent his life in a wheelchair. Instead, he died on Friday, leaving his friends and family devastated and stuck with a hospital bill that they can’t possibly afford to pay. So although it was happy day for Sebi and co. as one of their friends was getting married, there was also an undercurrent of pain. It was a very emotional evening.

A friend of mine, Silvanos, was also killed in Nairobi in December, in an incident unrelated to the post-election violence. His death was heartbreaking – he was an amazing person, one of the most caring, happy and optimistic people I have had the privilege to know. When he was killed, it was impossible to understand how something like that could happen to such a beautiful person. I still miss him a lot; Nairobi isn’t the same without him here. But at the same time, I feel blessed to have met him and to have been his friend. Sebi and his friends seemed to be looking at the death of their friend in a similar manner. In a place like Kibera, where your friends and family can be killed by the cops, lynched or die of AIDS with much higher frequency than other places, you have to develop coping mechanisms to allow you to carry on. Having a strong support system is one way of dealing with it. The community members look after one another, and friends are as tight as siblings and feel family-like obligations to one another. Somehow, most of them seem to maintain a positive attitude despite everything they’ve gone through.

Hopefully no one else will be losing friends anytime soon, because right now things are a bit unsettled. On Wednesday, the wife of the Mungiki sect leader and her driver were killed. On Tuesday, Virginia Nyakio and George Njoroge were abducted in Nairobi, and on Wednesday their bodies were found with throats slit in Gakoe Forest, Gatundu. Nyakio’s husband, Maina Njenga, is currently in jail for illegal weapons possession. He is suspected of being the leader of the Mungiki, although of course none of this shadowy business is fully confirmed. Some of you may remember the Mungiki from last summer, when there was a police operation to flush them out of Mathare. Many Mathare residents who were “suspected” of being Mungiki members (i.e. they were young and looked suspicious) were arrested, shipped out of the slum, shot and tortured during that operation, while a few police officers were beheaded by the Mungiki. The Mungiki are a gang-cum-quasi-religious sect, which maintains economic control over a few industries in Nairobi and elsewhere in Kenya with the threat of violence. They exert a lot of their influence on chang’aa brewers (local, illegal alcohol mostly brewed by and sold to slum residents), and on matatu operators by demanding fees for “protection”. They used to try to push for a return to “traditional” Kikuyu and/or African values such as circumcision for both sexes and strictly defined gender roles. These days, though, they seem to deal more in regular gang activities – drugs, alcohol, extortion and connections with powerful figures. However, there were reports of Mungiki members in Nakuru and Nanyuki stripping, beating and raping women who were wearing pants during the post-election unrest, so I guess the brutalization and subjugation of women with the excuse of reinstating traditional African values is still part of the mandate.

The Mungiki certainly organized themselves quickly after Nyakio’s death. There have been rumours that she was murdered by Mungiki members vying for status within the gang, but the Mungiki have been acting on the assumption (or knowledge?) that she was murdered by the police, and launched co-ordinated protests. Apparently the riots started simultaneously on Monday at 3am in more than eight cities across Nairobi, Central and Rift Valley provinces. Yesterday, I decided to stay home by coincidence to work on some documents here, although someone had called George in the morning to warn him about the news. So far in Nairobi, many of the major roads have been blocked and some cars and trucks have been burned. Today Lucy told me to stay home, as everyone else in the office is stuck in their own neighbourhoods because many matatu drivers have decided to shut down their routes for the time being. There has been some violence between the police and suspected Mugiki members, and something like 14 Mungiki members and a few police officers have been killed. It seems that civilians are not being specifically targeted, although as with any rioting, it is easy to be caught in the crossfire if one is not careful. The police especially are known to be overzealous, and those guys don’t hesitate to use force. I’m not sure who I trust less, the criminals or the police.

Needless to say, I am staying home until all of this blows over. I’m very thankful that we’re in South C, as it’s one of the safest neighbourhoods in the city and I’m not worried about security at all if I stay around this area. The matatus are still running here, although there’s no way I’m going into town now. I do worry about George and his friends, though. As he and some of his friends are young Kikuyu men, they are prime targets for arrest or attack by overenthusiastic police. All I can really do right now is hope that this resolves itself quickly so that we can all get back to our regular activities. This really demonstrates how crucial peace and security are to development – without peace, the economy goes down the drain, travel is impossible and everything grinds to a halt.