True Deal Mommy Confession: The events in Nairobi have hit me hard.
They won’t keep me home, but two words kept me up last night: “Children’s Day”.
The upscale Westgate Mall was hosting a Children’s Day when all hell rained down. The savages who planned this carnage not only targeted Westerners, not only targeted rich people, they targeted children and their mothers.
They targeted my mother and my sisters.
And unfortunately it’s not the first time.
As a college student, I was lucky enough to snag a part time job at the HR office in the American Embassy in Beijing. It was the fall of 1997 and during the three mile walk to work I would buy a 2 RMB (a quarter) hot sweet potato off of an oil drum and eat it like a popsicle…still my favorite way to eat any veggie.
My boss at that job was an embassy wife named Barbara. I hesitate to call her a boss because she was having as much fun on the job as I was- two Americans living the dream overseas. Her husband was a career officer and they had been stationed most recently in Abidjan. She really missed the beaches of the Ivory Coast but was an expert expat Mom with two kids.
Five years later, Barbara and her daughter were murdered by Islamic Extremists in a church bombing in Islamabad in an attack “clearly aimed at Pakistan’s foreign community”.
My own family retired from foreign service and came home safely, but I keep thinking about all of the expat mothers and children doing nothing but going to church or children’s day at the mall. We thank the soldiers for their service, and I certainly don’t want to dismiss their vital work, but I want to take a minute to thank their families as well.
And the trunkful of cocaine? Well, I wanted to end the post on a high (pun intended) note with a story from my own childhood. My own family didn’t go fully foreign until I was college age, but my dad had stories I think I am grateful I never heard. All I DO know for sure is that he had to transport 100 kilos of “evidence” and his 12 year old thought it was the most badass thing she had ever seen.
So my sister just had to tell her 1/2 Kenyan children that they will not be visiting their grandmother this Christmas. They have to look at the pictures of the mall they love to go to stained with blood and smoke. If they would have been in town, they would have definitely been at Children’s Day. Hopefully, peace will be restored soon.
Smitty,
I’m so sorry to hear of kids personally touched by this in any way. I’m more sorry it is keeping the family apart, but I would make the same decision in a heartbeat.
I was talking to my Mom last night and I think another reason this one got me is because my family was often stationed in the “safe” country one country away from chaos…like Kenya.