The Garissa Attack

Last week's terrorist attack at Garissa College University has weighed heavily on our minds and hearts for the past number of days. On Thursday April 2nd, university students were asleep in their residence halls or just waking up when four armed men began Kenya's deadliest attack since the 1998 bombing of the US embassy. By the end of the day, one hundred and forty-seven Kenyans had died. Al-Shabaab, an Al-Qaeda affiliate in East Africa, claimed responsibility for the attack and released a statement recently providing justification and petitioning the Kenyan public to stand up to the Kenyan government's military campaign in Somalia. Al-Shabaab was also responsible for the attacks in Mandera and Wajir last December  and for the September 2013 attack on Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi, in which 67 people died. 

How to move on from something like this? Things in Nairobi have been pretty calm, if a little more tense than usual with the increased presence of military personnel at some shopping centres. A moving vigil ceremony was held in the centre of Nairobi last night to honor the victims. A social media remembrance campaign called #147notjustanumber aims to humanize the victims of the Garissa Attack. There's also a public forum where personal details about each of the victims can be added by those who knew them. So often the human lives get lost in the staggering numbers, and it's crucial that we remember those who died were individuals with ambitions and full lives.