it's been hard

to post a blog entry for the past couple of weeks.

So overwhelmed with the ongoing ugliness around the horrific attack on Flora Tera.

Over 200 emails of support have poured into my inbox. From Kenya, the rest of Africa, Europe, America, Asia. I took the first batch of about 70 to Flora on Monday. Sat on her bed and read them out to her. She cried softly at the realization that people around the world - strangers to her - see her as a beacon of courage and inspiration.

The ugliness continues. Flora's opponnents are circulating all sorts of crapulous slander about the attack. That she deliberately provoked it by singing Meru male circumcision songs (forbidden to women). That she staged it herself to get "American sponsorship".

It's hard to find words for how it makes me feel. One part of me wants to walk away from it all. It's SO relentless, so brutal, so painful. And I can't. To walk away - or turn away - would be to concede this country I love, this country that calls me back, to the thugs and gangsters and megalomaniacs. And to betray all the people - tens of thousands over the past 3 decades - who have held down the islands of sanity, justice, humanity, hope, in Kenya. Even through the most terrible of the Moi years. They are the only reason there is still something left for people like me to return to, and build on.