Proud to be Dutch?

Normally I buy my vegetables with the stalls along the road, but the stalls disappeared, so I went to the supermarket today. The guy who priced my vegetables asked me in swahili ‘Where are you from?’ I answered that I am from The Netherlands. ‘Oh, that is the country where they stabbed somebody to death in the midde of a city, i saw it in the news.’ I nodded. ‘So even in your country, there is still a lot of insecurity’, the guy said. I had to agree. ‘But’, I said, ‘…in Nairobi the police is killing 21 people in a week, that is only the police and not even alll the killings.’ He was laughing. I had the impression that this guy felt releaved that Kenyans are not the only people that have to deal with insecurity and people that are being murdered. At the same moment I realised that The Netherlands does not always get good headlines here. Yesterday there was this item in the paper that foreign journalists had problems with covering the referendum about the European Constitution. Minutes before some colleagues had to go on air, the police had come and ordered them to move the car with the satellite dish because it was not allowed to parc there. I was surprised. These things are happening in Kenya, but not in Holland. Maybe I should tell this story to the vegetable guy in the supermarket. He might feel more releaved when he hears this story.