AF Nairobi - The City

The Nairobi  skyline. In the foreground is Uhuru ( Freedom) Park.

Nairobi is  different than most cities in Africa.

The tower seen to the left is a landmark sight in Nairobi, the way the Empire State building is for New York.

Why are all the best built structures bank buildings ?  It is a rhetorical question, of course.

Nairobi's signature building. It is actually a conference center.

The building in the very center is now a bank buiding but built in 1903 it is one of the oldest buildings here and once served as an army administration building during World War 1

City Hall

Parliament

 A Hindu temple, one of many,  serving the needs of the Indian community which controls the commerce of the city.

I actually think some just sit there.

This lady, on the other hand, did refuse to just sit there and is on her way to making a change.

The city "hoppa" gets you to and fro

I have seen this in a few cities : a marker of the dead center of the city.

A memorial to the Kenyans who fought in World Wars 1 & 2.

Another memorial to the vets of the World Wars.

AF Nairobi Embassy Bombing Memorials

This is a simple memorial at the site of the new embassy honoring the US and Kenyan employes who were killed in the '98 bombing.  A dynamic young officer, Prabhi Kabvaler, who I first met when she served in Jeruslaem and I served in Amman in 1982, was killed in the bombing.

Inside the embassy, along one long corridor wall  is a recognition, in photos, to the many Kenyan employees who survived the bombing and still work for the USG.  One of them, first name , Livingston , is one of the warmest, nicest, most caring people I have ever met. Livingston lost 90% of his eyesight in the blast.

From Wikipedia:

The 1998 United States embassy bombings were a series of attacks that occurred on August 7, 1998, in which hundreds of people were killed in simultaneous truck bomb explosions at the United States embassies in the East African capitals of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and Nairobi, Kenya. The date of the bombings marked the eighth anniversary of the arrival of American forces in Saudi Arabia.^[1]
The attacks were linked to local members of the Egyptian Islamic Jihad, brought Osama bin Laden and Ayman al-Zawahiri to the attention of the American public for the first time, and resulted in the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation placing bin Laden on its Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list. The FBI also connected the attack to Azerbaijan, as 60 calls via satellite phone were placed by Bin Laden to associates in Baku regarding the strike.^[2] Fazul Abdullah Mohammed was credited for being the mastermind behind the bombings.^[3][4] Since that time, Saif al-Adel, an Egyptian explosives expert and member of al-Qaeda, has also been indicted for his part in the bombings.

This monument is for all the people killed in the bombing - in the embassy and in the secretarial college building next door.

Prabhi's name , as well as the names of all the embassy employees  and that of the secretarial students and staff, is listed here.

Wikipedia

On August 7, between 10:30 am and 10:40 am local time suicide bombers in trucks laden with explosives parked outside the embassies in Dar es Salaam and Nairobi, and almost simultaneously detonated.^[15] In Nairobi, approximately 212 people were killed, and an estimated 4,000 wounded Although the attacks were directed at American facilities, the vast majority of casualties were local citizens; 12 Americans were killed,^[18] including two Central Intelligence Agency employees in the Nairobi embassy, Tom Shah and Molly Huckaby Hardy,^[19] and one Marine, Sergeant Jesse Aliganga, a Marine Security Guard at the Nairobi embassy.^[20][21]

The city turned the blast site into a memorial park. It sits at the juncture of the two most importsnt rodes in Nairobi.  In the memorial park , dwarfed by the high rises of the city, sits the Peace Museum, honoring the victims.

The outside of the museum.

A better view of the museum.

AF Addis Ababa

This is the view of Addis from my hotel room. Because I got in late Sunday and left on Thursday morning, I was only able to take pictures  from the taxi on the way to work. They are not my best photos but show some of  city life.

Crossing the street, even in a crosswalk, was a death defying experience.

Street scene . Elegant man is yellow is actually begging.

The buses had colorful logos.

Like in many third world countries, billboards tout Western beauty and rich living

Waiting for the bus.

The morning I left, there must have been 15 - 20 army generals and colonels, all decked out in gold braids, epilets and red striped trouses.  While the uniforms struck me as colorful,  I focused on the fact they were all about 6 '2", maybe one inch below or above.  I wondered if they were all from the same tribe and that was why they were all so similar. Or is being tall part of the "right stuff"

Later at the airport, I watched teams of Ethiopian Air flight attendants go by and noticed they were all the same height or at most one inch different.  Why is that?



At the airport , I had a weird experience. I was deep into a book when they called my flight to Djibouti.  With that, everyone got up and went down the stairs to gate 7 , my boarding gate, as listed on my ticket. I was amazed that there were only white faces on the line  going to an African country. And to boot, they were all speaking German. As the airline rep came by, she told me  I was on the wrong line as that flight was going to Frankfurt. I went back upstairs to see the gate had changed to gate 8 and, just then, we all went down the same stairs as gate 7 and lined up next to the Frankfurt group  to board buses to our respective flights. Madness ,I thought. Then, our line turned around so that the end of the line became the front of the line and we went through separate doors. Whew !

Rangoon The Sellers

A fish food seller. People could buy fish food to offer to the many fish in the ponds in and outside the temple as a kinf of offering.

A flower seller sold flowers people could use to put on the altar.

This young girl positioned her scale just in front of an incredibly long stairway up to the temple.   The worshipper could know his weight before the climb.

The shoe checker does a bustling business as the sign above instructs visitors to remove their shoes

Stores like this were never too far from a temple.

This bird seller would release a bird for a small donation which in turn would ensure that a prisoner somewhere in the world would be released .

There were an amazing number of stores outside a popular temple . But, then again, that was where the people were.

Food vendors were everywhere

The broom man sold necessary items.

Rangoon - The Sights

It seemed that anywhere I went there was a structure of wonder and spirituality.
Some were very large.



















Some were smaller but more numerous.

Some people came on their birthday to wish for luck in the upcoming year by pouring a cup of water over the image equal to their age plus one cup for good luck.

Every person knows the day and hour of their birth.  There are eight statues to worship at , one for each day of the week except for Wednesday which has two images. The day and hour of birth shows the major and minor planet affecting their life and the planets determine everything in life.

Some go simply to pray

Some may check their Ipads to remember a long prayer.

Some like these novice nuns, some as young as five, may think all of life is for prayer.

Some may go simply to sell their skin lightening product which this girl at her small stall demonstrates.

Most, like this old monk,  go to the pagoda for spiritual, not commercial,  reasons.