One of the great tragedies of life is that evil invariably exists in this world and what makes it worse is that this evil is a product of people. There are people whose goal in life is to intentionally go out in the world and commit heinous crimes. I woke up late on Saturday to find Kenya was under attack from the terrorist group, Al Shabaab.
Westgate Mall, one of the newer shopping complexes in Nairobi, the capital city where I lived most of my life and my family still resides, was taken under siege. This is what a bad dream really is.
When I woke up, I did my usual thing, I checked social media, and at first I couldn’t understand my Kenyan friends’ posts about events unfolding back home. It is only when I checked the Kenyan press that I realized what was happening.
I was scared. My worst nightmare had come to life. Not the terrorist attack but the possibility of losing my family. When you grow up your fears change, you are no longer afraid of the dark, when you move away from home your fear also changes. My worst fear is losing the people I love at home.
I saw missed calls from my father, he had left a voicemail; two in fact. They were not really voicemails but silent dead air. And I thought the worst, my dad frequents the city center and also the Westlands area of Nairobi. I don’t have international calling on my phone so my parents are the ones who call me. Now I couldn’t get in touch with them, but luckily my suitemate was gracious enough to lend me his phone.
“Hello. Are you okay?”
“We are okay.”
I don’t think I have never been so relieved in my life, maybe one time. I think this is the Al Shabaab’s intention; to make our nightmares a waking reality.
I found myself feeling profound sorrow for the victims and the families they have left behind. I am a stranger in the land, a foreigner in a country not of my own– I feel for the foreign nationals that have lost their lives in all this violence. I feel for those who are students like me and are away from their families and have lost their loved ones.
I feel for the President of Kenya, Uhuru Kenyatta, who not only has to suffer for the country that he is the leader of, but also suffers personally for the loss of his nephew and his nephew’s fiancée.
As this article goes to press, the end is almost nigh. The Kenya Defense Forces have secured the entire mall complex. Sixty-two lives have been lost, three terrorists killed and the number of attackers is unknown…maybe 10 to 15.
The sorrow I have now for the victims is now mixed with anger – anger at the idiots who dared to attack my city, my country, my family. These terrorists are idiots if they think they are going to change anything in Kenya. We will live as we have always lived and even though they have tried to sow the seeds of religious discord among the people it will not work.
I realize the Al Shabaab are militants just hell bent on causing mayhem and destruction. Whatever Al Shabaab thinks they are going to do, it is not going to happen. They have already failed. I know who the real culprits are and I know it wasn’t the devil.
