why 8/7 is not equal to 9/11

the last time i was in kenya in 2003, i spent an afternoon with some friends listening in horror at their recollections of the bomb blast in nairobi on 8/7/98. shattered windows a mile away from ground zero, with dust, smoke and paper flying everywhere. the panic and anguish when friends and loved ones couldn’t be reached by phone. people ferrying blood soaked strangers in their cars to local hospitals.

judging from those stories, what happened in nairobi that morning is no different to what happened in london on 7/7, in madrid on 3/11, and in new york on 9/11 in terms of the impact to the cities and their citizens’ sense of security. even though the nairobi bombing hit closer to home metaphorically speaking, i am so much more intimately familiar with the details of the pain surrounding 9/11.

why is that? it could be that new york, london, madrid are media-saturated cities. journalists, photographers (professional and otherwise), digital cameras, cell phone cameras, security cameras, blogs, vlogs, e-mail all helped diseminate the stories surrounding those events in the most intimate detail throughout the world over and over again for days on end.

8/7 is a huge story in nairobi but nowhere else. not because the world doesn’t care what happened there, but because so few stories traveled beyond east africa to capture the world’s attention/sympathy/empathy and elevate the event into the global consciousness. that is the reality of these times. people in london or new york did not suffer more or less than those in nairobi, kikambala, dar-es-salaam, they were just better able to get attention.

i started this post with some research (aka googling) to link to some images in remembrance. the paltry results saddened me and prompted me to blog pensive about it. so, anyway, the images:
pulitzer site: AP staff images
washington post photo gallery: searching for victims and clues
nytimes coverage: embassy bombings in east africa