This is Sunday and, as usual, I went swimming in the afternoon at the pool in a nearby school. From there I could hear the roar of a huge crowd that had gathered along the ocean nearby in a rally for the opposition party. They have refused to participate in the rerun of the presidential election on Oct 26th. They have called for daily demonstrations to begin tomorrow in Nairobi, Mombasa and Kisumu (the major town in the opposition area of Kenya). The political rhetoric is increasingly angry in tone and the opposition calls for their supporters to boycott the poll. The government insists the polls will be held. The IEBC says they are ready to run the elections properly and will print the ballots at the end of this week with all eight names of the original contenders in the first poll. Tension is increasing in the country and no one is sure what will happen from day to day.
Meanwhile, the nurses' strike continues since June 5th. Marsabit county, which is semi-arid and very poor, has 20 women dying daily due to complications of childbirth. Maternal deaths from Jan to June were 857 compared to 413 last year. No child has received an immunization since June. The big fear is that an outbreak of measles will occur and this virus kills. The nurses' strike will not be solved until we get a president and a government that is functioning.
I will go to a clinic here in Bangladesh informal settlement, Mombasa tomorrow, hoping peace will continue. So far Mombasa has been relatively calm.
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