Experiences in Chaos
Yesterday started as one of those rare days where my wife, Liisa, and I get somebody to watch our kids and we go do something unfamiliar and terribly exciting.  We were going to buy paint.  Passing by the expensive department store, we headed downtown Nairobi to the dirty little shops where the prices are really good and the people, when not violent, are friendly.
We got there a little before they opened up from their lunch hour.  We sat in the van facing the many store fronts congesting the alley, an alley typically teeming with people walking and donkey carts trying not to run them over and truck drivers threatening the donkey carts with honks, shouts, and racing engines.  Friendly noises.  Then the noise changed.
The thundering of feet and the excited, even frightened voices rose above the friendly noises, and I watched Liisa’s eyes widen as she saw a hundred people come running down the street, fleeing some unidentified danger.  In situations like this you don’t take the time to find out what’s going on, you just leave.  I immediately looked in the direction the crowd was running and saw other drivers, in near panic, trying to escape and getting hopelessly clogged among themselves, the donkey carts, and the fleeing people.  There would be no escape by van.
Liisa looked at me and said, “Lets pray.”  So we prayed a very genuine and heart-felt prayer for peace and protection.  I didn’t close my eyes though; I was in code red.  The crowd slowed down and thinned a bit, and I caught various words, one meaningful one was “police.”  Just then they opened up the paint store and the concerned door keeper beckoned us in.  As we ran inside the giant steel door a tremendous BANG! followed us down the alley, and having been through the political violence of six months ago, I could now easily recognize that sound as the discharge of a tear gas grenade.  The commotion instantly increased and they slammed shut the steel doors behind us.
I called another AIM missionary, wanting someone else to know where we were and what was going on, but before he answered I was being motioned to slip through the steel doors to go outside.  Apparently they thought that in the panic somebody had hit the van.  Having given the phone to Liisa, I took a peek outside.  The chaos and panic had degraded to curiosity and bewilderment, with people wandering in both directions now.  I started to feel a tingly sensation in my sinuses, my nose started running, and by the time I got to the car my eyes were watering up.  I looked around and everybody else looked equally emotional.  Tear gas really works, I can’t imagine experiencing it closer!
I couldn’t tell if any of the dents in the van were new, and the driver insisted he hadn’t hit the van, so we just let it go.  Besides the now common sniffling and squinty teary eyes, business was back to normal.  The alley began teaming with people again, with donkey carts trying not to run them over, and truck drivers threatening the donkey carts with honks, shouts, and racing engines.  Everybody’s sniffling.  Friendly noises.