The Kenyans' attitude to celebrating is well known. The poor people's bad life is made cheerful by the government's allowances and the pleasure of spending a nice evening without having to think about going to work the next morning. The 10 million unemployed Kenyans don't care much about this, but they still enjoy it as much as if they were at a friend's birthday party or sneaking into a stranger's.
Even in the case of May 1, a workers' holiday celebrated all over the world, Kenya applies what has always been its "let's celebrate?" formula: if the "public holiday" falls on a Sunday, it is moved to Monday. So it happens this year, but the weekend was already assured by Friday, because there is another rule in the implementation of lazy days. When a former president or a personality deemed of fundamental value to the nation dies, the day of the state funeral is declared a holiday. Such was the case last February 11, 2020, the day of the funeral of Kenya's deceased second president Daniel Arap Moi. The third, Emilio Mwai Kibaki, passed away this week, and the formal funeral will be held next Friday, April 29.
So Friday, Saturday, Sunday and Monday of celebration!
But it's not over, because Kenyans have great respect for all religions (and this is true, beyond the joke, here believers from all over the world live in harmony with each other, except on the border with Somalia perhaps). So on Tuesday, May 3, Ramadan ends and as is customary the day of celebration of the end of spiritual cleansing and return to eating every delicacy and fried crap even during the day, IDD ul Fitr, is a national holiday. So in an unexpected way, here is that after the Easter week and before the reopening of schools (which was scheduled for May 3) another five days of vacations. And those who persist in wanting to work, or have to keep open because a restaurant or hotel hopes to have customers, clearly have to pay their employees double.
But in the end, even those who complain are happy in Kenya because it always feels like a bit of a vacation in this country.