Kibaki comes to Kimana

Yesterday we heard that the Kenyan President, Kibaki, was coming to our town to do a ribbon cutting for the new paved road and give a speech.  After class today we headed into Kimana and over to the tents set up for his speech.  It was a good setup, with lots of shade for the audience and a legit sound system with tribal dancing while everyone waited for him to arrive. 

We ended up waiting three hours before he finally came in an entourage of Mercedes station wagons.  He got out and was surrounded by some security guys in suits.  All of the students in my group were standing along the side of the road, dying of heat stroke and waiting for him to cut the ribbon and proceed in to give his speech.  All of a sudden we realized that one of the guys in the group was heading onto the road with a group of Kenyans.  He apparently told them that he was part of the press, since he had a voice recorder and camera.  For whatever reason they believed him and he was several feet away from the President, documenting the entire event.  They even ushered him into the arena to some VIP seating for the actual speech part.  At that point we had to leave and head back to camp so he was able to get away. 

It wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, since I only saw him for a few seconds, but we did get to interact with the locals quite a bit.  At one point I was sitting down waiting for the President to arrive in the midst of the crowd and was completely surrounded by African children 10 and under who were stroking my hair and clinging to me.  We also got to see some of my favorite Maasai, the junior warriors, decked out in beads and weapons with long dyed-red dreadlocks. 

That was pretty much the highlight of the day and tomorrow we start all kinds of statistical work for direct research.  I’m working on water usage and human encroachment in the Noolturesh river system, which should be pretty interesting considering how important water is to the community and its scarcity.  Hope all is well back at home!