I vividly remember the joy of closing school for the August Holidays of that year…running home to of course binge watch cartoons and other kids’ activities in our back-then friendly neighbourhood-somewhere in Nairobi.
Got home, switched on the telly and found KBC showing Breaking News: EXPLOSION ROCKS NAIROBI.
Only later did the apocalyptic images on our streets get confirmed that a bomb had gone off bringing down the Ufundi Co-op building, shattering all the glasses of the majestic ‘Bell-Button’ structure that is the Cooperative Bank while the targeted American Embassy stood with dignitaries including then Minister Joseph Kamotho and American Ambassador, Prudence Bushnell getting evacuated with loads of blood down their faces.
Wadau, for a few months, I slept with a Bible beneath my pillow and any blast even from a balloon scared me shitless and just the name Osama gave me shivers of terror any time it was mentioned.
I boarded a mat and the two kanges kept saying things are bad in Nairobi but they had no other info.
There was no social media back then to relay instant news and FM stations had only started a couple of years back ,I guess they were only Capital and Metro. It was only after reaching my destination 2 hours later that I got to learn the magnitude of the attack.
That black friday was one of my luckiest days. Coming from Ungwaro on a matt heading to railways tukadandiwa na ponyi pale library karibu na community juu ya kigonyi kudondoa wathi katikati ya roady. Sisi hao tukapelekwa pale traffic, less than 15 minutes tukiwa bado pale nkaskia hio kitu imeripuka. Only came to know what had happened when I overheard some afandes conversing hapo kando ya ma3.
Lucky…I remember there was a Stagecoach that was totally obliterated which at the time of the blast was along Haile Selassie Avenue. Those images were so haunting man
Was in high school, had someone jumped or fell of some building close to of not Kenya cinema with some glass piece lodged on his head. There was glass all over ,for home found my moms with a bandage on her head and eye. Glass had got here ,she worked at the building just a few metres away, that houses orange now.
It was devastating some friends who’s folk worked in the US embassy passed away. Tough days .
I had passed the scene barely 20 mins earlier while heading to Kajiado on an errand. I was beginning to doze off somewhere after kitengela when an animated hubbub among the other passenger s in the matatu woke me. They had heard the breaking news on the radio. Needless to say that although I completed my errand in time I dared not travel back to Naivasha through the city and spent the night in KJD.
I can’t believe how time has flown…I remember tulikuwa ile final assembly ya shule before closing for the holiday when the blast happened. We thought ilikuwa gas imelipuka kwa hao in the neighbouring esto, until admin ya shule wakapata full info ikabidi tukae hadi situation ikatuliza.
Then kufika home kulikuwa na stress coz a rela who worked hapo bell bottom hakuwa anapatikana. Thankfully alikuwa sawa, aside from minor injuries.
I was 15 yrs by then. I had come to visit my mom at Pangani for the school holidays, there was this big mama who came running all the way from Muthurwa, she is the one who broke the news to us. We were left wondering how she managed to drug her madiamba from town. Pole kwa waathiriwa
