Like many Kenyans I watched with disbelief as my country slide into violence in the past week. One thing that shocked everyone was the speed at which things escalated.
If you had told anyone one week ago as they stood in those long lines to vote that just seven days later the country would reeling from being plunged into violence, supermarkets would be forced to shut and there would be long queues for basics such as bread...
...that a church with mainly women and children would be burnt to the ground killing around 30, most people would have thought you were mad.
So what are people doing? One important thing to repeat is that no one expected this and therefore, understandably, no one had a contingency plan in place for the country going up in flames. However, once the shock subsided, Kenyans swung into action.
However, there was one big problem, communication. The severe lack of mobile phone airtime vouchers meant that information could not flow up from the ground. Many of us in Nairobi and other urban areas were running around looking for airtime vouchers which we can send directly to another mobile phone enabling them to make calls and send text. Another problem was that as these CBOs are, as the name suggests, embedded in their community, many of them were caught up in the violence and were displaced themselves.
Originally Posted by carl
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