Street boys
on A Serendipitous Journey (Kenya), 02/Feb/2010 12:54, 34 days ago
This morning, I went to an upscale hotel in town where a presentation was being made about a call for fundraising proposals. After the session was over, a friend and I decided to walk into town for a coffee to brainstorm on some project concepts.En route, we were approached by a young man who must have been high on glue and firmly placed himself between us and would not leave us alone. We asked him to go away; when that didn’t work we aggressively raised our voices (I won’t write the exact words used); and finally threatened to get the police (which in reality may not have done any good but it was a nice threat:-). It quickly became apparent that it wasn’t going to be easy to get rid of him -when we slowed down, he slowed down; if we tried to cross the road, he’d follow. Neither one of us was scared, just annoyed, as this definitely isn't the first time this type of thing has happened.After inadvertently drawing attention to ourselves, a group of Kenyans came to the rescue telling us he was clearly trying to rob us (which we knew) and they literally chased him away. It really wasn’t a pleasant situation, but it might have been the first time that a group has come to help when I’ve been in a tricky situation like that, so that part was actually really very nice. ….Deciding not to let it ruin our day, we went for a coffee at Java House in town and continued on with our work days.