Anguished Kenyans Asking: Why Here?

There is an old saying in Swahili, the language of most Kenyans, that when two elephants fight, it is the grass that gets trampled.

A lot of Kenyans are feeling like grass these days.

“The bombers have differences with the Americans, but it is our people who are taking a hammering here,” said Supt. Mike Harries, a Nairobi police chaplain surveying the scene of Friday’s deadly bomb blast near the U.S. Embassy. “Just look at this place.”

The wounded are being treated in hospitals. The dead are being prepared for burial. Rescue operations are winding down. But few Kenyans on Sunday were able to put last week’s terrorist attack behind them.

At the core of their disquiet is a basic question no one has been able to answer: Why here?

“We are not a big country. We are a poor people. We have no quarrels,” said Gitau Kamau, a driver for a tour company who welcomed home a hospitalized relative Sunday. “Yet they do this to us. What is there to gain?”

There have been suggestions, of course, that this crumbling, pothole-ridden capital was targeted because of lax security, the embassy’s central setting and the relative ease of transporting dangerous explosives within the developing world.

But Kenyans see such explanations as the elephant-and-grass variety: Beyond describing an awful event, they offer no insight. Why couldn’t the elephants battle at home?

“I don’t know who to be angry at, the Americans or the Arabs who are fighting in our country,” said the distraught owner of an insurance company whose headquarters was destroyed by the blast.

Unlike in many parts of the world, Americans are not disliked in Kenya, a former British colony best known in the United States for its tea, coffee and spectacular wildlife. If anything, their tourist dollars are a welcome antidote for the country’s ailing economy, which limps along on the strength of overseas visitors and commerce.

But with Friday’s attack and its fallout for Kenya’s international standing, people here are learning that friendship with the United States can come at a high price.

“We are innocent bystanders,” said Frank Ngenga, a psychiatrist at one Nairobi hospital who has been counseling traumatized blast victims. “We are angry. We are frustrated. We are now starting to feel insecure.”

By Sunday, the mix of emotions reached well beyond the agony of seeing friends and family bloodied by a senseless act of terrorism. Looking toward tomorrow and the next day, Kenyans have more worries.

Scores of damaged businesses, from tiny beauty salons to huge banks, have little or no insurance to rebuild or make repairs. Hotel rooms are emptying. Tour packages are being canceled. Many shops across central Nairobi, their windows in shards, are not reopening.

“With things calming down, people think the situation is over,” said Nina Galbe, a spokeswoman for the International Red Cross. “It is far from over. There are thousands of untold stories of suffering.”

To make matters worse, the American government has even warned travelers to stay away from Kenya and neighboring Tanzania, site of a second blast Friday.

U.S. Warning Decried

Some Kenyans see the instructions as a betrayal by the country that brought them terrorism, albeit unintentionally. More than 150,000 American tourists visit Kenya each year, and August traditionally is one of the busiest months.

“This is scaring off people,” said Samuel Kariuki, assistant manager of Carnivore Restaurant, a favorite Nairobi tourist destination where diners can order zebra, giraffe, crocodile and other exotic dishes. “This is still a peaceful country. It is not fair to say otherwise.”

The Kenya Tourist Board, stung by the U.S. travel advisory, has asked that it be withdrawn. The Americans have refused.

“It is not Kenya that was the target of this attack,” said Steven Kabinu of the tourist agency.

“We would be remiss if we did not put it out,” countered a U.S. official, who asked not to be identified.

Kenyan President Daniel Arap Moi convened a meeting this weekend of the diplomatic community here to remind ambassadors that his country should not be further victimized by having visitors scared away. Tourism here supports 500,000 jobs and accounts for one-fifth of the country’s economic activity. After tea and coffee, it is the country’s biggest money-earner.

“Even if they wanted the U.S. Embassy, they should not have targeted Kenya,” Moi said Sunday. “Kenyans are peaceful people.”

Little Resentment Seen

Yet for all the consternation, most Kenyans still seem willing to give Americans the benefit of the doubt. Few have directed their resentment at the American presence here, where U.S. diplomats are consumed by their own traumas and have retreated from daily life.

From the moment the gigantic bomb exploded in a parking lane behind the U.S. Embassy, there have been two disasters playing out in Nairobi: one behind the iron fences of the embassy building and the other in the chaotic streets of the capital.

Rescue efforts, conducted several yards apart, have been separated by armed U.S. soldiers. Kenyan police have not been allowed to set foot on embassy property. Many of the embassy’s injured were flown to hospitals in South Africa, the best on the continent, while ordinary Kenyans competed for beds in crowded Nairobi hospitals.

Even Sunday’s memorial service for those killed in the embassy was held in the privacy of Ambassador Prudence Bushnell’s home. Kenyans, meanwhile, poured into churches across the city to mourn their dead.

U.S. officials say that such duality is common in diplomatic life but becomes an absolute necessity when Americans are under threat. “The welfare of American citizens is a top priority,” one U.S. official explained.

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BLOOD FOR LIFE

Kenyans flock to donate blood for the victims of the bomb blast in Nairobi. A8