The whole of last week felt like a holiday. All our kids are at home, school closed last Tuesday, almost no traffic on the roads, everything quite. It’s a nice opportunity to spent more time with the kids. The national re-elections in Kenya happened last Thursday 26th but a big part of the population didn’t actually vote. What struck even more is that many regional governments boycotted the elections and by constitutional law, an election is invalid if not all regions vote.

So first the government wanted to do another run of re-re-elections in these regions yesterday, but that got postponed until no one knows, due to lack of support of these regions. Quite hilarious. Basically they want to hold the elections, so that they are constitutional, only to fake all the votes anyways.

People are saying he shall just elect himself president without an elections. The results are the same anyways.

So yeah, quite wild times. The opposition party renamed themselves now to National Resistance Movement. Also a bold move that’s sending a big message. No one really knows what’s happening now. It’s a bit tense I’d say. These guys playing a chess game on national level and every move has strategically chosen and thought through down to the finest detail.

Can’t believe this is really happening in this time and age. Sad.

For security reasons we spent the whole week in our compound. We stocked up on supplies a week ago and we have enough for several weeks to last. Apparently today it’s safe again to drive into Kisumu, the nearest city to us. On protest days there are countless roadblocks, burning tires and so on. So moving around is really difficult and generally not recommended. But today seems fine and we will finally get some fresh breeze. At least for a few hours. Who knows what’s next week will be like.

These elections bring a lot of insecurity, shops are closed and generally public life comes to an halt. In specific areas the police is clashing with protesters on these protest days. Some people got shot. And even 2 nights ago we heard shots just 500m from our compound. Some people erected a roadblock and charged passing cars a fee. The police came and cleared it. No one got hurt. I assume shots have been fired into the air to make them run. But who knows. Things are twisted.

Anyways, we are really safe. There’s no reason that anything could happen here in the area where we live. For the locals life goes on, just much slower and much more expensive. Prices went up everywhere due to broken supply chains. Let’s hope all this is over soon. For now the best outcome seems to be that this guys just elects himself president and the resistance will act peacefully for the next few months/ years until the pressure becomes too big and he steps down. Maybe that’s wishful thinking. Another options would be that the country gets split into half, or that he gets overthrown. Rather risky options.

To end on something positive; our doggy Cynthia gave birth to four puppies on election day! Surly that’s something to celebrate!

So yea, I’m positive things will work out.

loVe from Kenya