101 With a Terrorist Attack Survivor in Kenya

I was talking with this lady in a beauty salon, chit-chatting while she was servicing me. As the conversation progressed and felt free to talk about anything, I noticed that she has scars of what looked like deep cuts and burns on her arms. I asked her what happened and she told me she is a terrorist bomb attack survivor of a hotel that was hit by terrorists almost 10 years ago in Kenya. She told me that she used to work there and the attack was so sudden. She went ahead and lifted her blouse to show me the marks and scars on her
belly.

I wanted to know if they were compensated - of course I expected them to be – they were injured while working. A beach hotel being their employer, I thought they must
have had some kind of insurance policy for their workers. To my surprise, they did not receive any monetary compensation for the damages caused psychological, only the medical bills were paid.. They have the scars forever and they are a window of what happened in their lives.  She said they were promised payment which was always postponed until they got tired of following up and finally gave up.

The most interesting thing is that this lady was not even bitter when narrating her story. She just talked like its a past event that happened and she has moved on with her life, which she really has. But that was the last hotel she ever worked, when I asked why, to my surprise she said gave me other reasons completely unrelated to the terror attack event.  That was the only hotel ever to be attacked by terrorists, it was owned by an Israeli and they were targeting the Israeli tourists. It is also speculated that the attack was organised by the owner to kick out the shareholders.

When I look in the television, the victims of the September 11 in the USA are still victims up to now, they live bitter and so revengeful, feeding the terrorists the reaction they expected. I also don't think that showing the events over and over on television  helps in the healing, it just reminds people of the pain they went through and keep the wounds fresh all the time. I imagine what would have happened to me if growing up I used to see the videos of slavery and colonisation, I guess I would be a very bitter person and a racist too. Thank God I was not introduced to that instead was taught to see people for who they are on the inside, respecting and welcoming people from other cultures.


This article is continued in the next post…..