Friday, 22 April

Good Friday and terrorist threats

It’s Good Friday today.  I have a lie in for the first time in weeks.  I’m up at about 11am.  

I have breakfast and lunch, and head out to a coffee shop with Eyrun.  We sit outside.  It’s too hot for a coffee so I have a strawberry yoghurt smoothie instead.  It’s really good, like Eyrun says with everything in this cafe / restaurant.  This is a nice chilled out place.  It’s a restaurant, bar, cafe with free wifi access too.  It’s a popular place.  Eyrun and I talk away.  We talk about work.  We also talk about the news the night before.  The Kenyan police are on terrorist alert this weekend following information on terrorist threats.  It’s a scary thought.  We cover every possible question.  Where’s best to go (for a coffee)?  Is it advisable to stay indoors all the time?  Whom are ‘they targeting’ – locals, westerners, anyone?  Why?  News like this does make one tentative.  In particular, in Kenya where an act like this would not be new.  

What’s the terrorist attack drill?

Much like a fire drill, we talk rather candidly about this – me sipping my smoothie, Eyrun on her chocolate chip milkshake.   I even tell Eyrun that it’s probably best to sit out in the open at places like these as I reckon there’s more chance of survival should there be an attack.  Eyrun then says that she had heard that the terrorists would strike over Easter weekend.   She could be right, but I find this amusing, and I tell her so.  If ‘they’ would tell us where and when, it’d make our life, and the life of the intelligent police, a hell of a lot easier.  

We spend about three hours at the cafe; we take a walk round the shops and then head back home.  Tomorrow I plan to visit the National Park / Safari in Nairobi.