Westgate

I live ten minutes down the road from Westgate Mall, in a affluent Nairobi suburb 8 km from the city center. A year ago no one in the world would have known about Westgate Mall except those who live here. After the recent terrorist attack that left over 70 people dead, Kenya entered the world's radar as a place not so pleasant to be.

As these things go in the public eye, years of progress can be shattered by one bad thing. It is a shame a beautiful place with beautiful people can be meaningless next to one United States of America travel warning. I have walked around some dangerous cities, from the capital of Guatemala to the capital of Texas, and as you go around and around and around and turn on the local news you start to realize bad things, catastrophes, little tragedies, they happen everywhere in the world with no real rhyme or reason. Sometimes I really think it's dumb luck alone that gets us to 80.

Our perceptions of safety are always curious to me, especially in deciding where we will and will not go. I know that on the streets of Nairobi, I am one of very few white people, wearing a nice suit; there is certainly no blending in, and I am probably perceived to have money. Yet nothing has happened yet, beyond the many casual encounters with the kindest Kenyans up and down the dirt roads and paved highways and offices and bars. Maybe I will get unsuspectingly robbed one night and maybe not; maybe I will even get kidnapped, tortured, killed, and buried in an unmarked grave, but probably not. Back home in those quiet safe American cities, the murder rate is still uncomfortably high, psychological counseling severely underfunded, and firearms widely available without background checks. What happened at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut is as bad as it gets. These days no place makes me nervous like the USA, and nowhere is actually all that utopian.

A friend working in Guatemala for five years once told me that, despite a number of stories of late night muggings and midday break-ins, she refuses to live in fear. I tend to agree; you make smart decisions and do the intuitive thing, but that doesn't mean you board up your house, live every day in a box, and retreat from the ups and downs of real life. Those who do are pretty much dead already; at least that's my view, and one probably different from others. The urgent urgings continue to pour in: be careful, be careful, be careful, ten cuidado, be careful. I am, very much so, and I hope everyone else is too, wherever in the world they are.