Bush And Kindergarten

My son, only 6, is apparently mildly puzzled by the closure of the US Embassy in Nairobi. There is sometalk on the kindergarten grapevine that American children are at risk of being attacked by Kenyan children.The word 'terrorist' has been mentioned by tongues that can barely pronounce the word.

Of course, none of the children know who or what exactly terrorists are, but they suspect that they are BadGuys and probably fire guns at people, like they show on TV. The US authorities have stated, with the sameprescience and cocksure certainty that marked their assertions of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, thatthere are terrorists in Kenya, and that a few of them are know to be Kenyans.

For a while now Kenya has chafed under these accusations. Britain and certain other European countries haveissued travel advisories, and suspended flights, which have led to a sharp drop in tourism revenues, one ofthe few stable sources of this country's income. There is a sense of somehow being tainted, much like beinginfected by one's promiscuous partner and then reviled by the same person for harboring a loathsome sexuallytransmitted disease and doing nothing about it.

An editorial in The East African Standard has put it thus:

America's fear of terrorists is making Kenya look like the guilty party while it is indeed a victim by itsassociation with the US. It is a fact that America is the target of terrorists. It is also a fact that theonly reason why terrorists would target Kenya is because we host Americans. Were not the presence of Americansand Britons so heavy on our soil, Kenya would not have anything to fear from terrorists. . .[they arebehaving] like the visitor who seeks refuge in a house and then proceeds to warn other visitors, who havenothing to fear, not to set foot there lest they be targeted together with him.

Ignore the stridency for a moment, because Nairobi does have its share of crime, and is certainly not thesafest of places. My compound has electrical fencing, and my home has safe havens, motion detectors, and panicbuttons.

But while petty theft, burglaries and carjacking are common, killing is not the norm. Some of my friendshave been carjacked by polite and cheerful young unemployed men of reasonable education, who have been atpains to explain the dire circumstances that have forced them into such diversions.

There is another city where I was cautioned, just a year ago, to exercise extreme caution, and it wasWashington DC. I was told that its crime rate was horrifying, and that I should be specially careful not toventure into certain marginal areas of the city, such as where the blacks and latinos live. In Nairobi, youwill be similarly warned not to move around in Eastleigh and certain colonies in the industrial belt.

I was struck by another similarity with Nairobi - just as the US Embassy in Nairobi was the target of an AlQaeda terrorist attack in 1998 (in which mostly Kenyan bystanders perished), the Pentagon in Washington DC washit, on September 11, 2001, by an aircraft manned by Al Qaeda terrorists.

I made enquiries to find out if there was a travel advisory out against Washington DC, or against othercities in the United States. I was told that Washington's gates remained wide open to tourism (and other isms,like neoconservatism). Indeed, it transpired that there is no travel advisory out against any US city at all,though reliable sources such as CNN and BBC routinely report that people there live under constant threat ofunexpected attack by viruses, microbes, Kalashnikovs, snipers, serial killers, shoe bombs, water supplypoisoning, anthrax, truck bombs, nuclear strikes, radiation leaks, surveillance, loss of civil liberties, andso on.

In Kenya, there is relatively smaller fear of terrorists, though the malarial mosquito and the petty thiefare both dreaded.

Let me cut to the chase. When I look at the facts, it seems to me that there should be a travel advisoryout warning tourists against travel to any city on this planet. All US Embassies should retreat to safer cover- probably on another planet, for it is hard to see where on earth, in the US and out of it, they would beimmune to attack. All Americans, in and out of the US, should probably wear protective armor, includebioterror suits, from an early age.

The British High Commissioner in Nairobi, Edward Clay, reacting to accusations that USA and UK are imposingonly mild warnings on countries where security is far worse than Kenya, reacted with, "There is no directthreat to Saudi Arabia, Morocco, and Israel." What a marvelous revelation that is. But would theIsraelis, who not so long ago were talking of wiping out Hamas, agree? Would the Palestinians, killingthemselves to end the killing, agree? Would CNN agree?

I wonder if my son would agree. His kindergarten has children of all nationalities, and they are allaffectionate friends. Though they may occasionally sense that all is not so well in the vicious world outside,they hang on to their smiles, and a sense that life is not so bad after all. But the other night, reading tohim from his Biblical scriptures text, I was startled by yet another intrusion of unwelcome reality: he wasalready acquiring the mild suspicion that Palestinians were not very Good People.

We are not Christians in my family, nor indeed Hindus really, but instead strive to somehow create in ourchildren a sense of a supreme divinity. This divinity, we tell them, is kind, not vindictive, omniscient, andyet unobtrusive. He is a watcher, and his eyes keenly follow how his children exercise the judgment and mindshe gave them to make choices that bring them nearer to him. He tolerates mistakes, and is endlessly generousin giving each of us opportunities to make choices. We hope that our children will learn that we are made - orunmade - by the choices we make in life. We also want them to understand that one of those is not choices isnot God to subscribe to. Though school teaches him about Bush's God, we make up the deficit at home. His mindalready has room for a larger, kinder intelligence.

The story I found myself preparing my son to tell at his Scriptures test was of Samson and Delilah."God chose Samson to deliver the Israelis from the Philistines. But Samson fell in love with Delilah. ThePhilistines bribed Delilah to discover the secret of Samson's strength. He told her that the longer his hair,the stronger he was. One night, when he was asleep, the Philistines came and cut off his locks and gouged outhis eyes, leaving him powerless. The evil Philistines captured Samson. One night, when the Philistines werecelebrating, they brought out Samson, and tied him to the pillars of their temple, and abused him and threwrocks at him. Samson prayed to God to give him his strength one last time, and God did. Samson pushed at thepillars until they fell, and brought down the temple, killing all the Philistines. He himself also died."

Are there still any Philistines and Israelis, my son asked? Indeed there are, I replied, and they are stillkilling each other. The Philistines are now called Palestinians, that's the only difference.

He had a flood of questions: Are Palestinians evil? Why does God hate Palestinians?

Did God make Palestinians? Why does God help the Israelis but not the Palestinians? If he is on theIsraelis' side, why haven't they won the war yet? Do the Palestinians have a different God? Doesn't he helpthem?

How to explain to a child a God who sounds like Bush speaking: If you are not with me, then you are againstme. Here is a God who annihilates like Bush: he arms his followers with secret strength, he decimates hisout-of-favour children by the thousands. Here is a God who, children are told, punishes those who worshipanother God, hates anyone he has not chosen, segregates his own children, strikes terror, and is relentless.You must live in fear of him, or not live at all.

Is this the same God who made my son, or me, or little orphan Abdul with neither arms left nor future? Idoubt it. Maybe Bush should return to kindergarten. He might learn there that while he is bulldozing the worldtowards his dreadful peace with hamburgers, Coca Cola and freedom fries, he is leading our trusting childrentowards a hellish tomorrow.

C.Y. Gopinath works for an international health NGO in Nairobi, Kenya, and is the author of TravelsWith The Fish.