Thursday, March 26, 2009

True stories from Kenya



Yeah, I didn't take that photo since I haven't seen any elephants here.

I SO PROMISE that I am not making the following up.

Kenya can be a very interesting place. One thing that I LOVE is that there is NO AMERICAN FAST FOOD here. Not a McDonalds or Burger King to be found. ANYWHERE. I LOVE THAT.

And some of the store names are hilarious. For example, the other day I passed the Jambo Hair Saloon... yep.

So, the Fire Marshall came to the Office at our request to train the staff in fire safety. He related a couple of stories about the lack of understanding in fire safety, here in Kenya.

Apparently, there was a big fire in a store here, and when the Fire Marshall went there he asked the Store Manager what they had done with the Fire Extinguishers. The Manager said, "We tried them, but they didn't work! We threw them all into the fire and nothing happened."

No, I'm serious. No, SERIOUSLY, I'm serious.

A very sad situation is the looting situation. There was a fire in a department store and the managers were so worried about people looting the store that they locked the door and there were still people in who burned to death. True, sad story.

And there was a tanker filled with petrol that overturned and people were clambering over it in an INSTANT looting the petrol. Some guy who was looting as well lit up a CIGARETTE and the whole thing blew up and killed hundreds of people. They ran a story about it in the paper, obviously, as it was such a tragedy.

The following week another tanker overturned. filled with flour. Some guy lit up a cigarette and the other looters turned on him, shouting, "Did you not read the papers? You're going to blow the whole thing up..."

And then they beat him so severely that he ended up in the hospital. But... you must take flour explosions seriously.

4 comments:

  1. Umm.. where have I been? You're in Kenya! I aboslutely LOVE Kenya! One of my favorite places in the whole world!

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  2. WOW! That's crazy!!!

    So did the fire marshall teach you all anything "interesting"?

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  3. My word. I'm glad someone is spreading some skeelz, aren't you??

    ReplyDelete