Just after 10:30 on a sunny August morning in downtown Nairobi, 48-year-old Ali Mwadama was walking toward a bank opposite the U.S. embassy, a cheque in hand. He was less than 50 metres (yards) from the embassy on Aug. 7, 1998 when a truck bomb detonated, transforming the normally bustling business district into a war zone. It was Osama bin Laden’s announcement to the world that his al Qaeda was a global threat: a coordinated bombing of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and neighbouring Tanzania. The two bombings killed 258 people, the majority in Nairobi. Three years later, al Qaeda would conduct its most notorious attack, flying passenger planes into New York’s World Trade Center and the Pentagon, killing some 3,000 people. Mwadama does not remember who pulled him out of the rubble, bleeding from a gash in his neck caused by a flying shard of glass. He recalls hearing screams and ambulance sirens. People in bloodsoaked clothing were carried on makeshift stretchers past what was left of the embassy. He lost two friends that day, his livelihood as a voiceover artist and public speaker, and the cheque he was going to cash, earned for voicing a Coca-Cola ad aired during the 1998 soccer World Cup. Twenty years later, he struggles to turn his head to the left. A scar runs from the below the grey hair on the back of his head to the bottom of his ear. Published in Daily Times, August 8th 2018.