Popo almost got arrested today...seriously. so there is this huge uprising amongst people here b/c the kenyan members of parliment (like our congress) are refusing to pay taxes. they get paid lots of money. matt told me that government officials in kenya get paid more than anyone in the world. don't know for sure if that's true, but they are definitely way overpaid. so lots of people have been protesting about this. popo wore a shirt today that said something about if MPs (members of parliment) don't pay taxes then other people shouldn't either. someone organized the shirt making and many people wore them (it was independence day here today). on our way back from BOLM popo got a text from Julius saying that the police were arresting people with the shirts on. popo and i got off at Nakumatt (like walmart) before going to kibera. i went to the bathroom there (b/c it's clean and has soap). he was waiting for me and saw a police officer coming. so he slipped in the bathroom and turned his shirt inside out. then he heard the policeman talking to another person asking if they'd seen popo. the person hadn't. the officer left, but as popo and i walked out there was an entire truckload of officers right by the store. we kept walking and he finally told me what was wrong. he said, "feel my heart." it was pounding. i've never seen him scared before. apparently, there isn't much freedom of speech here. people can get arrested for booing the president too. they passed some sort of law this week that is going to limit what the media can say about the government. i feel like things are turning into a dictatorship or communist government or something.
in better news, popo, julius, and i spent the rest of the day christmas shopping for kids. popo wants to go to his rural home (a village farther away) and take presents to the kids there. we went to this market and bought clothes and shoes. most of the stuff is brand new. a few of the shoes are slightly used but they look in really good condition. for most of it they were giving us good deals, even though i'm a mzungu. but towards the end we had to stop b/c we had lots of bags of stuff and they started seeing me and raising the prices a lot. so popo was heading back to do the rest on his own. we also wrapped the rest of the juvenile gifts yesterday. i've never wrapped so many things at once.
we started making pinatas with the BOLM kids today. we were all covered in flour. speaking of flour yesterday we made 80 chapatis with the juvenile boys. it's really great now that alex is back from college b/c he's great at leading the Bible lessons. he's really funny and they all seem to listen.
yesterday in the matatu on the way home the conductor and the passenger beside me were carrying on a conversation overtop of me. they kept trading the conductor's phone back and forth. this was a super nice phone with all these fancy features...nicer than anything i'll ever own. i found myself thinking that it probably was stolen (julius and popo agreed). but the scary part was they kept looking at this picture of a gun. they kept talking about it in swahili. and it wasn't just some random picture. i'm really thinking they were planning to buy it or sell it or something (popo and julius also agreed). it's bad that i automatically jump to all these conclusions and judgements when i don't know people. and it's really not my place to judge. hopefully i'm wrong. peter tells me that in somalia they sell guns right on the streets. awesome, definitely think i'll be visiting soon :)
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