Well… the Kenyan elections have finally come to a close. We had thought that would be good news.Actually, not to sound dramatic, but Kenya is in trouble. We’re asking our friends and supporters to pray for the situation here.

We’ve been reading articles for weeks about how this coming election in Kenya could be a model of free, fair, and peaceful elections for the rest of Africa. Kenya’s always been a pretty stable place, especially compared its neighbors (like Somalia, Sudan, Ethiopia, Uganda, Rwanda, etc). Unfortunately, the elections don’t seem to have been fair, and people are starting to react violently.

Like Amanda said in the last post, things were already starting to seem fishy yesterday. On Firday, when over 50% of the votes were counted, Raila Odinga (the pro-poor, fiery leftist) was leading Kibaki (the incumbent), 59% to 39%. To us, the elections seemed over - it would take a statistical miracle for Kibaki to overcome those trends. I might be wrong, but don’t we mostly find out who win elections through exit polls that only account for 11% of all constituencies?

But of course, the ballot tallies that were “taking longer” to reach the capital were overwhelmingly pro-Kibaki, which was enough to raise people’s eyebrows. The opposition was already claiming inconsistencies between the vote counts reported by local agents and the numbers that the Electoral Commission of Kenya (ECK) were reporting. Yesterday, inconsistencies started becoming really obvious, and the ECK meetings started becoming chaotic (which was matched by chaos on the streets). The ECK refused to acknowledge these complaints, and when things were getting really bad, they instead kicked out all the opposition agents from the meetings, as well as all the national and international media (except, of course, for the state-run pro-Kibaki TV station).

So for most of the day, the ECK (which is, by the way, the Kibaki-appointed electoral board) held tallying meeting completely in private - hardly the openness and transparency everyone the world was expecting. The opposition held a press conference with some hard evidence of discrepancies. For example, in one one constituency the ECK announce 50% more Kibaki votes than the returning agent had officially reported. They also had an ECK insider who was backing up claims of cooked results. It did seem strange that Kibaki was making such a comeback - the opposition party completely wiped out Kibaki’s party in parliment, including most of Kibaki’s cabinent (even his vice-president was voted out!).

Instead of addressing the claims, the ECK instead made a surprise announcement that Kibaki had won, by an incredibly slim margin. They made this announcement only in the presence of the state-run TV channel. Amazingly, they had already prepared the inauguration at a private location, and they rushed to swear him in within a half hour. The first time Kibaki was sworn in, he did so in front of crowds of hundreds of thousands. This time, it was in private, in front of only a few of his political friends.

There were immediate riots in the streets - not just in Nairobi, but all across the country. I saw some scenes on the news from Kisumu, where the whole city seemed to be on fire! That was, however, when we could get news. One of the first things the new government did yesterday was to temporarily shut down all live media broadcasting. Apparently, they didn’t want media to incite people to further violence, but to me it seems like a way to try to silence any protests against the sham elections. Its bad though - this country is in trouble, and people don’t even know whats going on!

Nairobi right now is really uneasy. Raila announced that he is  creating a parallel government, and that there will soon be a giant rally downtown to swear him in. Yikes! I don’t know how much I can blame him - even the international observers are saying there were serious problems with the election process. The scary things is that these political parties are split on tribal lines, and that this could easily escalate into big ethnic conflicts. If the military swings its allegiance to Raila, there could be a coup! In Nairobi, there’s a huge military presence, and downtown is a ghost town. Many rioters have been killed already.

Actually, I lied. The first thing the government did was to call today a national holiday. We were horrified! The last 6 workdays have been public holidays, and this country is at a complete standstill! Stores are shut down all across the country, and the ones that open up temporarily are out of stock of necessities.  Today, we managed to get into a supermarket, only to find the bread shelf completely empty, and the lines winding all the way through the isles. When we left, there were lines winding through the parking lot just to get inside. Fortunately, we have all the food we need at home. What we don’t have is phone credit, sold all across the city, which is making me feel isolated.

But to assure everyone at home, we are safe, for sure. Most of the violence in Nairobi takes place in slums and riots that come out of them, and violence has all been far from us. In fact we’ve been spending a lot of time at a friends house well outside of Nairobi, which is the only way we’ve had access to internet or news. But please pray for Kenya. We love this country and its really saddens us to see such bitterness, especially when it erupts ito violence.

We wish everyone a happy New Year! Please remember this country in your prayers!

Four days since elections and counting. You know you are in a third world country when the entire economy shuts down due to Presidential elections.

 Democracy at work in a country that is less than 50 years old turns out to be rather circus-like. You have to hand it to Kenyans. They are passionate about politics, and they love their right to vote. Leading up to the election, the political buzz was deafening, even to a political junkie like myself.

 Official election day was Thursday, but here we are on Sunday and no winner as of yet. Some mostly young men have been rioting over the delay and the opposition party alleges vote rigging. I tend to find the opposition ODM party to be a coalition of disgruntled youth with socialist dreams and tribalists who resent the majority ethnic group, but I have to admit, the loss of ballot boxes and discrepancies in  the counting are fishy. Kenyans count presidential votes by popular vote, not the electoral college like in America. So, a nationwide election that has the two leading candidates less than 40,000 votes apart is the perfect scenario for controversy and fraud.

  We wanted to contact everyone through the blog yesterday, but we use an internet cafe to send emails and all malls shut down in the early afternoon yesterday. I stopped at the grocery store and the bread shelves were bare and the milk supply was dwindling. The country is literally at an economic standstill, with Christmas day on Tuesday, followed by boxing day and two official public holidays to vote on Thursday and wait for the tally on Friday.  It is Sunday and business has yet to resume, partly because of violence in the slums, but the whole country seems to be uneasy. We are at a friend’s house in the suburbs using their internet to get this email out to you.

 Even the roadside dukas are virtually abandoned. Yesterday a vendor tried to double the price of bananas for me. I declined to purchase them, but am kind of regretting it now. I literally saw an entire duka with nothing but 8 mangos.  The normally chaotic streets are eerily quite and pieces of destroyed political posters blow about in the empty streets. I just hope this is not the quiet before the storm. The conditions are ripe for throuble if incumbent President Kibaki pulls through with a victory.

 Our prayer is for peace and a quick resolution.

Merry Christmas from Kenya!

*our first family Christmas tree. 4-ft, plastic, and purchased at Nakumatt!

We wish you all a blessed Christmas! We wish we could be there with you!

We’ve been wanting to go more in depth about our decision to stay for an extra year for everyone at home, but getting things on the blog has been a little problematic lately. Basically we wanted to clarify three things: 1) what led to our decision, 2) what our decision actually means, and 3) what this means for our supporters.

First of all, thanks so much to everyone that has given us input on whether we should stay next year! Any input is still welcome – the process isn’t exactly over. Really though, we’ve gotten a ton of emails. Some people had been talking to us about this long before the blog post, and have some really challenging advice and questions (about priorities, long-term goals, etc.). Seriously, thanks to everyone who has been praying with us.

As to the factors that led to our decision, it’s been kind-of a myriad of things. We’ve been praying and thinking through these things since West Nairobi School started up. Amanda really enjoys her job. And man, I’m so proud of her. She’s been great at engaging with these kids, in meaningful ways. To her, she’s already investing in her most demanding year - developing all her lesson plans from scratch, learning entire curriculums – and she looks forward to spending more energy on the kids themselves. As for me, I’ve been studying development for a while now, and I’m excited about finally putting things into action – starting with an internship in January. In the long run, I hope to work for a Christian development organization, either based out of the US or abroad. I can talk more about my passions later, but getting a year of real experience in the field would incredible, both in the present and for the long-run.

And we do feel like this is where God is pushing us towards. We’ve tried to dedicate ourselves to praying about this, and to really try to listen and observe. Of course Amanda’s school has given her an open invitation, but we’ve also seen some doors opening for me too. I’ve made some great connections with organizations like The Reckoning, World Concern, and World Vision, and I feel confident about having a place to serve next year. But we don’t want to over-spiritualize the whole deal, either. We both think that we can meaningfully invest ourselves here.

I know we’ve been a little vague as to what we actually committed to – what does a “statement of intent” mean??? Basically, we told the school officially that we intended to stay. (They wanted an early gauge of which jobs to post.) Amanda will be asked to sign an actual job contract later in the spring, which is more binding and committal. Our intentions are that I will find a job with a Christian development organization, for us to be able to secure a financial situation (through a salary or support, depending on the position), and for Amanda to stay on teaching for another year. If the doors open for a position for me, we have a viable financial situation, and if we don’t feel like we’re being led in a different direction, we will be signing the real contract. Like I said earlier – the process isn’t exactly over!

So for our supporters this means… well, not much, in once sense at least. We don’t want anyone who is supporting us throughout this year to feel that they are expected or obliged to continue through an additional year. We are so thankful for how people have teamed with us this year. Actually, it’s difficult to say what our financial situation would be next year. Some larger Christian development orgs have fully-paid staff. In reality, its likely that we will have to raise support again, and if so we’ll be devoting a lot of our summer to that.

So hopefully that is a little better of a picture of our intentions for next year. We’re at a really cool place where we’re just out of college, or soon to be, and we’re trying to figure out what God wants with our lives. We feel like we’re in the process of sticking our toes in the water in order to test out our inklings that we should jump in. So far, things have been successful for both of us, and we’re trying to follow through with a deeper commitment. I feel like I’m still just scratching the surface of this, so please email either of us if you’d like to ask us any questions about the whole deal.

the rumors are true….

my nephew was born!! The tiny man was born at 8:53 on Thursday morning. He’s a healthy dude, at 8 lbs 11 oz and 19″ long. His name is Braden William Seeley. Nicole, my sister, made out well, despite having a couple cracked ribs after a battle with bronchitis. (crazy, i agree…) Praise God, eh?!!

without further adieu….

Congrats Nicole & Bill!!! We love you three, and we can’t wait to meet Braden!