Wednesday
18th September 2013
I don’t know what they were expecting but
Terminal 5 was crawling with armed policemen. As we stood in line at
security one poor woman did something to set off the red lights and
pingy noises. As the entire hall watched, she was stroked, poked,
squeezed and generally felt up and down in a search that probably
revealed her family tree. She was them made to remove her shoes and
roll up her trouser legs. This, I might add, when she was a mild
mannered lady of around sixty. Who must have been horribly
embarassed. When absolutely nothing of a combustible or explosive
nature was found in or around her pale kneecaps she was simply handed
her shoes and waved on.
At the other end the Kenyans have turned
an underground carpark into the new arrivals hall, after the huge
fire destroyed the terminals proper. After a tour of the surrounding
area crammed into a bus, the actual arrivals / luggage bit was
impressively swift. My phone is not working so I have to get a cab
instead of David. But I bargain myself a 1000ksh discount.
Just
approaching Dagoretti Corner and home, we are waved down by a police
block. I had left my window open and they must have seen the pale
face. They strafe the interior of the car with torches and then point
them right in my face.
Me : (in Swahili) good evening, is
there a problem ?
Cop 1 : so you know Kiswahili
Me:
yes
Cop 1: (sneeringly) a little
Me : enough
Cop 1 then says
something to Cop 2 who laughs and goes round to the driver’s window.
They get his license. They tell him to get out the car and go round
the back. I also leap out and go round the back. When I am there they
will not try to extort money from the driver.
Cop 1: you
know that you were not wearing your seat belt and that this means you
should pay a fine.
Me: OK. Just take me to the police station and
charge me and I will pay the fine.
Cop 2: It is not for you to
tell us to take you to the police station, it is for us to take
you.
Me: Of course. I was just saying that if I must pay a fine
them it must be official and must be done at the police station.
Cop
1 : Why do you not pay the fine to us now, then it is finished
Me:
Because to pay something here at the side of the road is not a fine,
it is just ‘kitu kidogo’ (a bribe).
Cop 1 So you can just give us
kitu kidogo
Me : I do not give kitu kidogo
They give up.
And
off we went. Usually the first demand doesn’t happen till later on. I
do hope this is not an omen.
Thursday
19th September 2013
The black cat is dead. Killed on Ngong Road.
My lovely fluffy sealpoint has been given away and Mummy Cat has
produced four more kittens. This cat has the fertility equivalent of
diaorrhea. I head to Junction to a) sort out my Kenyan phone –
even more important now that I have discovered that my new 3 Mobile
phone does not want to roam. No signal. At all. Not even a token
attempt to connect to a Kenyan network. Hmmm. Grrr. b) get supplies
for the Tiny Slum Palace. c) meet up with the various Mama B
suppliers who come on a Thursday d) meet Doris and give her her Big
Treat (a Java House Chicken Caesar Salad which she loves) for the
trip
Safaricom are surprisingly quick, I zip round Nakumatt and
head upstairs and order a small truckload from Mama B’s Peeps and
then meet Doris. We embrace
Doris : eh Copi, you have become fat
!
Me: I know, it is the steroids
Doris : (eying my bottom)
what were you eating in Edinburgh ? Your ass is big ! It is moving
like a Kenyan’s.
For some reason I have the Wanted in my head
singing Walks Like Rhianna. Ironically.
We catch up and I try to
get sensible and Zetta-like on the administration front. We arrange
to meet the next day and do all the paperwork.
Doris and I go
wild in the aisles of Nakumatt and we go our separate ways.
FRIDAY
I
meet Catherine (my Maasai and Maai Mahiu sex worker contact). She
has produced the baby and it is a girl. It is two months old and has
a massive ‘fro already.
The feedback from the Maasai medical day
is good. The women I thought had mastitis have all responded to the
antibiotics we gave. And as usual, cod liver oil and ibuprofen gel
are hailed as miracle workers tantamount to the Hands of Jesus
himself. We arrange another medical day with a bit of teaching
mastitis avoidance and (if we can persuade the Elders) some HIV
testing). The raincatchers are all working well and the women are
being very good about taking them in when there is no rain so they
last as long as possible. The villages have more or less lived of
the harvested water during the last couple of dry spells. Catherine
and I also arrange a visit to one of the big IDP camps outside Maai
Mahiu. We need to do some medical stuff and she wants me to meet a
woman’s group who have been baking bread for sale but now really
need to ramp up their production. For this they need a space and
proper equipment – like a real oven. There are about twenty women
in the group plus a few men and the possibility of expansion is
endless (apparently the bread is great and schools are ordering plus
little shopkeepers from as far as Longonot and Suswa come for
supplies). The IDP’s are on the cusp of getting properly settled and
this could be a huge huge help to the entire community (OK, not the
ENTIRE community, as there are about 2000 IDPs in the camp). We also
talk sanitary pads. Catherine thinks we could run workshops to
persuade girls to use the reuseable ones that many developing
countries do. My Grand Plan for making pads from sugar cane bagasse
are still bubbling but the people we have out in Awendo are just not
the folk to run the production line. More of this anon.
Doris
arrives. We are on Kenyan time now. Catherine (due at 10) arrived at
11.15. Doris (due at 1pm) arrives just after 2. My next meet is with
Felista so …
Doris and I get out the paperwork. Here are the
highlights
1. With the set up grants we are achieving around a
90% success rate. Maybe 20% of those grants are used to try more
than one business other than the one the grant was given for, but
90% of the people are still in business
2. The nettle business
has grown from 10 women to around 50 people, profitably engaged
3.
Vicky’s Cleaners has now spawned two new teams. The original Vicky’s
lot split themselves into three and now three full strength Vicky’s
teams are working across Nairobi and beyond.
4. The pig boys (who
received a boost when Zetta and Neil were here to buy a boar) have
got their boar and are doing incredibly well. So far, from litters
produced by the boar (who I seem to remember is called Dirty Neil)
Mama B has started two more individuals in their own pig business,
with piglets from Dirty Neil’s litters.
5. The Kucha Kool
Kits handed out in the Kawangware workshop for more mature Bar
Hostesses has resulted in more than 18 of the 28 women being able to
stop bar work altogether. They now do the manicures in people’s
homes. I am going to take Doris to my lovely supply lady who gives
me the best rates for nail varnish and the rest.
6. The
Zimbabwean women who came to me (ones who had come to the Mama B
secret school) for a grant to make Vitamba for a man in Sudan have
done brilliantly. They have taken on another 20 women from the
community and have orders coming out of their ears. PLUS they can
keep good books thanks to the school.
7. There is so much
teaching and training going on across the Mama B community –
knitting and crochet, basic office skills and computer data input,
hair waving and braiding – all are being taught and an impressive
number of people are being found work by Doris’s personal employment
agency. She really really is a wonderful force for good
here.
Felista arrives and we discuss the Dreaded But Probable
Departure of CWAC. She refuses to believe that Mama Biashara cannot
find a way to pay for the teachers at the DECIP school (about £450
per month in total). I feel a stress headache coming on. Luckily at
that point the news comes on the telly and everyone in the place is
glued to the days goings on in the ICC.
It starts to rain.
Heavily. Felista’s son comes in a borrowed car to take her and Doris
to the matatu stage and we all go home.
First workshop tomorrow –
cannot wait.
A bit of a ghastly hoo ha in Nairobi today. 22 dead so far and 29 injured (the fact that they were all taken to the Aga Khan shows that only rich people got shot …). Word on the street is Al Shabbab, but whoever it is they really know what they are doing and are amazingly disciplined. Muslim shoppers have apparently been allowed out. POlice are reacting in their usual boot-faced thuggish manner. At one point teargassing their own civilians in an attempt to dissuade them from being in the area. Up at this end everyone is just glued to the TV. Some are muttering darkly that this is a reaction to the goings on at the ICC. Kenya is, to be fair, not smitten with the ICC. JUst as well I am broke and slum-bound. It is safer here down, down, down, as Dory Previn sang, “where the iguanas play”
Saturday 21
September 2013
It all starts so gently. I know I have no David
today – he told me last night that he could not get a car till
Monday. However when he calls at 9 to say he is outside I know
something is wrong. There has been an addition to the David Clan. A
baby boy. Mother and baby fine except for the fact that David cannot
meet the bill at the hospital. He has paid 6,000ksh and still owes
5000ksh which he does not have. What happens in a Kenyan hospital
when a patient is ready for discharge and cannot pay the bill is that
they are made to leave their bed, leave the ward, leave the building,
in fact, and live rough in the hospital grounds until the bill is
paid and security allow them to leave. Even with a newborn child in
horribly cold weather and daily heavy rain. I lend David the 5000
(about £40)
I feed the cat, show David the kittens and set off to
Dagoretti Corner as he heads to get his wife. At the lovely Maresi
Pharmacy I am greeted like a long lost family member by the
marvellous girls there and we make out an order for 300 deworming
syrup, cough syrup and Calpol (with BA I can not bring nearly as much
stuff with me as I could with Virgin as costs are pretty much
prohibitive and so the famous and much loved Kilkof gets left in
London), painkillers, anti fungal agents of all kinds and as many
free condoms as the girls can get hold of. I’ll get the rest when I
come in to collect on Monday.
The market at the Law Courts is, it
seems, full of people who have been pining away since June without my
company. To say nothing of custom. I get the stuff I really need to,
chat to a few pals and browbeat a nice young taxi man into a massive
discount on the ride home.
Dropping the stuff at home, I make for
Corner again, pick up my boots (which have been reconstituted from
tatters yet again by the local shoe fundi – for 80p) and get a
matatu to Kawangware.
Today’s workshop is with women who are
having to do Bar Hostess work. Which almost inevitably leads to full
time commercial sex work. The pay is diabolical, the hours are
appalling, they are treated like dirt and constantly pushed for sex.
We set up a good wholesale business, supplying rice to local
hospitals and schools, a fresh ginger group who will wholesale and
retail, a quintet of ladies selling fresh eggs by the tray, and a
group of chicken sellers – live chicken. There is one single woman
who wants to sell lessos and a great group of young girls who have
been working as strippers in a hellhole with an appalling boss. They
have a great business idea – selling chicken gizzards both raw and
fried. Fantastic profit margin and they really know what they are
doing. Best of all this group are all HIV negative and all without
children. The best possible start to a good independent life. Five
years down the road then they get to choose what they want to do with
their lives.
Funding the businesses is about to get more
expensive. The Kenyatta government has seen fit to push through a
bill imposing VAT on practically everything. It is, as a piece of
legislation, a car crash. They almost immediately were forced to put
through an amendment exempting basics like flour and milk and so
forth. But it was too late. Some prices for basic things have almost
doubled. There is VAT on chicken feed so now the prices of chickens
and eggs have soared. The poor people don’t know what to do. It is a
nightmare. I would like to think that old Jomo will be birling in his
grave to see what the latest Kenyatta is doing …
After the
girls, we go and meet a young man who is doing amazing work in an
area outside Nairobi past Kenol where Doris lives. He rescues young
men and women off the streets, he gets them clean of glue or drugs or
chang’aa, he trains them in a football team, gets them fit, gets them
disciplined and tries to get them some small jobs to keep them fed
(them and their children … they each have at least a couple). There
are also some much younger children he has also rescued and has got
them places at schools.
As we cross the road Doris remarks
“Eh, I like it when you wear the small shoes, I can see your legs”
I ready myself for a compliment. “I thought you would have small
legs but they are BIG. Like an African.” I believe she is referring
to my puffy knees and the Copstickian Cankles. Hmmm.
We get to the
cafe/meeting place and watch with horror as the TV unfolds the tale
of the siege at Westgate. 22 dead. 29 injured. “You see, they are
all rich !” says Doris “they are taking them to the Aga Khan”.
People are muttering about some sort of retaliation against white
people because of the ICC trials. Others think AL Shabbab. Just as we
watch a report that the Kenyan police have started to teargas their
own civilians, the Football Coach arrives. With half an eye on the TV
we discuss possibilities.
To keep going – and to make staying
straight and fit a viable option for the 40 young men and women (aged
22 – 28) in the project, he needs a source of income for the
project (as well as the tiny bits and bobs the people get
individually). They had an offer of a place to use as a base for a
business. They also had an offer of regular orders for bananas,
potatoes and tomatoes from local hospitals, schools and hotels. The
potatoes had little profit and needed a huge layout of cash. But the
bananas have good profitability and so – as long as he can get back
to me with a decent transport costing, Mama B is going to set the
group up in a banana wholesaling business (selling by the branch)
that will make the group just under £500 per week. Enbough to give
every member something to be going on with and some to save / invest
/ do whatever. Bit of a bloody result in terms for VFM. We will be
keeping a close eye on the project. Oh, and anyone who fancies
helping out with strips (preferably red but they will take anything
that is going) or boots would be their friend for life.
The
Coach goes and Doris and I watch more coverage of bootfaced Kenyan
police stopping cameramen shooting for news coverage. We get our
separate matatus and go our separate ways.
Now it is raining and
as I get off at Corner I am cankle deep in goo. I have no real idea
what its constituent parts are. But I have an idea.
Sunday 22 September 2013
The
death toll is rising and Al Shabbab have claimed responsibility. The
Kenyan government has issued a statement saying they have the
situation “under control”. I am sure that will be of immense
solace to the 30 people still held hostage in the mall. Apparently
Kenyatta’s son, sister, nephew and soon to be neice were all at
Westgate yesterday. Which is pretty tempting to an organisation bent
on revenge for Kenyan troops being sent into Somalia a year ago
yesterday.
To the thwunking sound of stable doors being closed
after the horse has not just bolted but been shot and turned into
dogmeat and glue many big supermarkets and most big malls across
Nairobi are closed or surrounded by severe security.
Life in
Kawangware and Congo (where I am headed for the next workshop) goes
on much as usual. Congo is, in fact, seething when I arrive. It is
not the most salubrious of places and a lone mzungu is a thing of
fascination for the locals and extreme hilarity for the children. I
repair to a local supermarket to buy some bits and bobs and find
myself in a game of hide and seek with a tiny child who follows me
around alternating coming up to touch my hand with shrieking with
laughter. She insists on calling out to me as she comes looking
“shosho !”. “Granny !”
The workshop is a short
matatu ride from the main drag. A group of commercial sex workers
are our wannabe businesswoman. We start businesses selling green
peppers, more rice, more bananas (but with rather a good deal on
transport which we might take advantage of for the football team
group) and lessos. The women are – generally – teriffic. They
really want out of the lives they are in and this is their big
chance. Usually they don’t actually believe I will give them the
money till I hand it over. They all understand the mathematics of
their chosen businesses and what they need to do to grow the
business from this start. There is one group who want to sell soft
drinks at an almost non existant profit (having been sold the idea
by a wholesaler for a big soft drink manufacturer …). They are
going to come back next week with a different busines plan. And then
there is a deaf girl (also a commercial sex worker). Very beautiful
and ridiculously pregnant. She and a friend (also non hearing) want
to start a business selling tea and hard boiled eggs at a matatu
stage. Good business. They already have some of the necessary kit.
We communicate with signs and mime and a bit of writing. She is
delighted with the grant. I am going to meet her again and take her
an illustrated sign language alphabet. And any other sign language
stuff I can find. I hope there is a Swahili sign language – if not
English (which she doesn’t speak) will have to do and I can
translate a few useful signs for her to use a) with her friend and
b) in business. Kenya is not well equipped for anyone with any sort
of disability. And not at all equipped if that person happens to be
poor.
Over coffee and cabbage and chapati Doris and I get down to
more catch ups on previous businesses set ups and stuff. Here are
some more highlights
1. Not only have Vicky’s cleaners expanded
into three full teams (and still expanding) but they took time out
and came to train some young girls in house-keeping – ironing,
cleaning and bed-making etc. These young girls have now all got jobs
in small local hotels. Which is bloody marvellous.
2. Our lovely
team of chicken-shit boys (for those of you who are new to the
diaries, last year we financed a group of around 18 young men in a
business collecting chicken shit, mixing it with fish flour and
various vitamins in powder form, and selling it as dairy cow feed.
This is hugely popular in Kenya and will double the milk yield of a
dairy cow. Oh yes.) have been doing incredibly well. Recently they
too took time out to train a whole new project’s worth of boys in
the chicken shit business, supplying them with a starter pack of
fish flour and vitamin powder.
3. The last time I was here we
were (well Doris was, and she tackled me) approached by four young
girls (all around sixteen). They were from rural areas. And poorest
of poor families. In order to be able to pay their school fees (in
the hope that an education would get them out of where they were),
they sold the only thing they had. Sex. In the case of one girl, she
was turned away from school because her skirt was too tattered and
patched to be acceptable to the teacher. So she had sex with an old
man who said he would buy her a skirt. She never got her skirt. But
she did get pregnant and get syphillis. As did the other three
girls.
They came to Doris begging her to help them have
terminations. They had found a doctor and a clinic who would help.
Abortion is not illegal in Kenya so it was a nice clinic. And a nice
doctor. And so Doris asked me if we could help. In the time it took
me to make up my mind, a fifth girl had killed herself rather than
face life as a mother at 16 and lose all hope of getting out and
getting on. So Mama Biashara paid for the girls first to be treated
for chronic syphillis and then to have the terminations they so
wanted. They all have now gone on the pill. And know all about the
dangers of unprotected sex. One of the girls has gone back to school
and the other three came to Nairobi and Doris and some Mama Biashara
hairdressers have trained them in basic weaves, braiding and
straightening techniques, Mama Biashara has bought them some basic
hairdressing bits and bobs and the wonderful Doris has got them
placed with hairdressing salons in Mathare. They make a decent wage.
And have a whole new start to their lives. They won’t have to have
(hopefully) sex that they do not want ever again.
I realise that
this doesn’t exactly fall under the heading of ‘giving out a
business grant’, but I think we did A Good Thing.
Lots to
do tomorrow – a big medical workshop in a particularly ghastly
slum. Wellies the order of the day, I think.
13
Monday 23
September 2013
Something of a challenging day. While there is a
huge amount to recommend it, the main drawback of having David as a
driver is that he is just another bloke in a slum and very much at
the beck and whim of the bloke who actually owns the deathtraps he
drives. And now this bloke is not playing nice. So no Davidmobile.
Last night I called Felista’s son (now another semiprofessional
driver of deathtraps) but got no response. So this morning I face the
day alone. I cancel my trip to Westlands to buy water purification
tablets – the Westgate Mall is still a war zone, hostages are still
being held, there is much gunfire and now there is a vast plume of
smoke coming from the roof. But it is ok because Mr Kenyatta says
that the government’s forces have everything under control. I head
out on foot and change some money (I had (appallingly) harboured a
hope that the ghastliness at Westfield might have had some effect on
the exchange rate, but no) and then go to the pharmacy to pick up the
order of dewormers, cough syrup and the rest. Surprsingly heavy,
dewormers. I drag the massive bag back to the small slum palace and
start packing up for the medical clinic we are doing today in a place
called Mountain View. Sounds lovely. It isn’t.
I have decided to
try and cut down my dosage of steroids – possibly this was not
really the day to choose but what the hell.
I pack up my small,
broken wheelie case with medicine and fill another two big carrier
bags.
The walk to the matatu stage is a nightmare. My
wheelie doesn’t really wheel. It just drags. The bags cut into my
hands and bang against my fat knees. There is much ill concealed
sniggering and staring as I schlep through Dagoretti Corner. At one
point I am so pissed off that I stop and take time out of my journey
to kick my wheelie. It is at this point that I get a text from Doris
saying “mainly children. Deworming syrup”. As the pharmacist had
not actually got my order of syrup I had been forced to take mainly
tablets. Kenyan kids are rubbish at taking tablets. And smirking
“sweetie” as you ram one into the tiny mouth does no good at
all.
As Kenya is in crisis situation, when I get on the
matatu, crushed in a corner under all my own medication with my knees
pressed on a worryingly hot transmission shaft bump, the
entertainment is mainly news of more and more poor people lining up
to give blood and send money to rich injured people who, were the
tables turned (as they so often are), would not spit on them if they
were on fire. Which, if you remember, they were, in Lunga Lunga a
couple of years ago. Then we get music – the robust baritone of
Roger Whittaker, no less, booming about his home being forever Kenya,
and the dulcet tones of Eric Wainaina also reminding us in song that
he is “Daima” (forever) Kenyan.
We are all flung off the
matatu in Kawangware and board another one. At least my knees can
return to their normal temperature on this one. Another change at
Uthiru and I make it to the Mountain View stop. Doris is waiting and
we bag two piki pikis. The look on the faces of the other piki piki
boys when Doris settled her awesome bottom on the Yamaha was
hilarious. I grabbed my non wheelie wheelie and got on a Triumph.
Mountain View Estate proper is a gated, manicured, expensive,
collection of large houses. One travels through this and out the
other side into Mountain View Slum. The familiar scent of poo and
poverty greets you as you slide down the dirt road.
We deworm
until we had no more dewormers. I see a seemingly endless queue of
women who fall into one of two groups.
1. Not ill at all and
complaining of the trinity of Kenyan Complaints – “ulcers”,
“presha” and “joints”. Ie heartburn, headaches and aches and
pains. The women here seem ridiculously well, generally. Even the
kids are ok.
2. complaining of things like type 1 diabetes
and wondering if I can supply insulin.
There are some scabby,
snotty, chesty, ringworm ridden kids and they get what they need. And
some women with very high ‘presha’ indeed. But this is not exactly a
life saving expedition this afternoon.
After three hours we head
off on the piki pikis and get a matatu. Yet again we are turfed out
in mid journey because the matatu is turning back the way it came.
The young guy in charge was trying to force us all out of the mat
into the oncoming traffic but Kenyan Womanhood stood her ground and,
what with Doris, a young mother from the third row and a granny just
behind us screaming and yelling abuse at him, the matatu made a safer
stop to allow us to get off.
At Dagoretti Corner we met up
again with the Timothy the football coach who is saving young men and
women from the streets. He has indeed found a good deal on transport.
An excellent deal. Not only that he will share it with the girls from
yesterday who are also bringing bananas from Meru. Plus his boys will
provide free labour for them (getting the bananas from the field).
And so the Hope Football Project and its 40 members get their grant
and will start business this week. This makes today worthwhile.
As
Doris and I eat cabbage and chapatis we hear that Westgate Mall is
now on fire.
Felista calls to ask me to come and visit an old lady
who has ‘a problem of her private parts’. They have heat coming out
them and then are paralysed, she tells me. Well, at least it is not
indigestion. I promise to come on Thursday.
It is getting
cold so I take my cargo of medications and trudge off home through
the dark. I have grown to like walking in the pitch dark. Just as
well, really.
5
Tuesday 24 September 2013
And I had
such high hopes for today. Bringing hope and help to the IDPs
outside Maai Mahiu. Etc.
Instead this:
9.15am I get a text
from Felista’s son Kuria that he is ready with the car. I am
delighted that he is on time and tell him I will be out in ten
minutes
9.35am I am still waiting with a large pile of medication
in various containers (including the non wheelie wheelie) outside
the carwash.
9.40am Kuria arrives. Explaining that when I told
him 10 minutes, he went to a car wash.
I cannot help but notice
the appalling paint job on the car. And that it is making an odd
noise.
Kuria : It is a goooood car. It is a sport ! (HE POINTS TO
THE BUMP ON THE BONNET) That is why it makes a good noise.
We
crawl though Dagoretti Corner with the car revving wildly with every
stone it was asked to drive over. We get to the chemist.
The
dewormers have not arrived. Neither have the condoms. I mutter
darkly and tell the gitls that I am going to Kijabe St and will
collect them on my way back. “at 12” they say. Not at 12. I have
to be in Maai Mahiu by one, I say. Looking back, I could weep at my
girlish naivety and optimism.
We head to Kijabe St. I point out
a) the smell of burning rubber b) the kangaroo-like motion of the
car 3) the screaming revs (think Land Rover roped to a small
bungalow trying to pull it back over the edge of the cliff where it
has fallen) every time he changes gear 4) the alarming drop in speed
to a shuddering crawl any time the gradient is more than 1 in 10. 5)
the whining sound of the fan belt slipping.
Kuria : No problem
!
We stall on a mild incline on the slip road to Waiyaki
Way
Kuria : The good thing with the manual is that you can jump
start.
By rolling backwards, we jump start. Kuria smiles.
Getting
back up the incline to the main road was like that bit in Ice Cold
In Alex where they are pushing the old ambulance up the sand
dune.
We reach Kijabe Street eventually and I call Doris
and Catherine to say we will almost certainly not be coming to Maai
Mahiu.
I slide off into the mudbath that is the market after
rain. I do my buying, my ordering, my chatting and I meet a lovely
new Maasai lady from Ngong. I also meet up with a lovely old guy I
thought I had lost. Oooo the sweet tiny Christmas trees he makes …
line up people.
With everything in the car, it refuses to
start. So no surprise there. I mention the slipping fan belt. Kuria
mentions that in the two hours I have been doing business he has
been listening to the radio.
Four random blokes help us jump
start. And it dies again. They jump it again and we make it halfway
up the muddy hill that leads from the market to the road before it
dies, screaming, again. We slide back down the hill. I shall draw a
veil over the next ten minutes. But think noise, juddering,
slipping, screaming tyres, and that continuing smell of burning
rubber. We make it to the road.
Kuria : the car has some small
problem with power, I think.
We make it round the roundabout and
onto University Avenue where, sadly, the lights are against us and,
as we slow, the engine dies again. More random helpers later, we
restart and with all the momentum of pulled toffee, we make it
across the junction. To my alarm, Kuria heads towards a route which
would take us up through State House Road and over roads that run up
and down some not inconsequential hills.
We get up to about 30mph
in the fast lane.
Kuria :: you see ! Now it is OK. It is an
adaptation.
I don’t even breathe. He wiggles the gearstick.
Kuria
: it was an automatic and they adapted it to manual.
We get to
State House Road. President Kenyatta’s road. As we slow at the end
of it I say “please please do not let this car break down here.
They will shoot us” Kuria laughs gaily.
Kuria : it will
not stop here.
Actually it is about another mile before it stops
again. On a junction.
Kuria: (frowning) This car has a
problem.
We jump start again, pogo-ing along the road till the
engine coughs into what passes for life.
And then it all seems to
be going quite well, until I realise the route he is taking. And I
see the hill in front of us. And we get about half way up it and
come to a screaming, revving, rubber burning halt. It is a steep
hill. And a main road. Kuria tries his patented ‘reverse jump
start’. Three times. We slide into a gateway and immediately are
surrounded by armed guards. Quite friendly armed guards who look
pityingly at the car and wrinkle their noses at the smell. The
push/turn us around and we go back down the hill to a shallower hill
with a right turn back to where the sensible people driving wrecks
would go. We get to Ngong Road. Lovely, flat, flat, flat Ngong Road.
Traffic is moving slowly but surely
Kuria : you see ! This is
what I was trying to avoid !
Me : what ? The car moving
?
Kuria : the jam
Me: this is not a jam. IT is a road of cars
moving forward slowly. That is the best this car can do. This is
almost the top speed of this car. This car is what we call in the UK
a crock of shit !
Kuria : the car has a problem of power.
He
pauses
Kuria : the car is powerless.
We make it to Dagoretti
Corner and I suggest that, given there are two hills between us and
the Kawangware Posho Mill, that the car will not make it
Kuria :
it will !
Me : I don’t believe so !
Kuria : It will
At
times like these the average Kenyan simply turns into Mrs Thingy
from Father Ted “it will, it will, it will!!”
I then suggest
that Kuria might like to bet his day’s pay on that. He agrees. And
in the face of such faith, I feel I can do nothing but let him prove
his point.
How can I have been so STUPID ?!
We get to the
posho mill slowly, and unsurely, mounting every speed bump like it
was The Mountain at Cadwell. Heads turn as we pass. Largely because,
in order to keep up any forward momentum we are making the kind of
noise that gets action groups together to ban the fourth runway at
Heathrow. I have stood on Redgate Corner at Donington on the first
lap of the Moto GP and heard less engine sound.
And did I mention
the smell of burning rubber ?
We get to the posho mill. I pay off
quite a large bill run up by Mama B in my absence. Doling out the
mixed uji is second only to Cod Liver Oil in the life saving stakes
here. So every pennt spent is woth it’s weight in live people. I
also buy 30kg to take to Awendo on Friday. Felista arrives, for some
reason best known to herself. I accuse her of trying to kill me. She
roars with laughter. I promise myself that if she says “it is a
good car” I will hurt her badly. But even Felista admits this is
“sheet”.
We pile in in the vain hope of getting back to
Dagoretti Corner. The car refuses to start. Wwe get a push start.
And make it a couple of hundred yards to the junction to the ‘road’
to the main road before dying pathetically again. And blocking the
whole of Kawangware Market. On Market Day. Not all hell, but little
bits of hell break loose. Kuria attempts yet another jump start and
fails. The bloke with the cart waiting in the mud loses latience and
attempts to wedge the large handcart between us and the old ladies
selling maize. He scrapes a line along the drivers side of the
paintwork (like that matters !) and then smashes the nearside tail
light with the handle of the cart. I point this out to Kuria who has
been on the phone. As he goes to look out of the window, another
cart goes past and takes his wing mirror off. The look on his face
as he tries to reattatch the mangled, shattered mirror was too much.
I nearly herniated trying not to laugh. The car is given another
push start and, as it cannot get over the small bump to turn left we
go straight ahead and come out on the main road much further up. We
come to a halt in a petrol station and I tell him he has to get
another car to take me home.
Felista : this is not a good
car.
From Felista, this is an amazing statement.
While waiting
for another car, Felista and I go off to a pharmacy in the hope of
finding someone who can translate the kikkuyu symptoms of the old
lady with the ‘problem in her private parts’. The words we have been
unable to translate turn out to be “numb”, “burning” and
“wave”.
A new car arrives. We transfer the stuff, go to
Corner, get a mountain of dewormers from the pharmacy and take me
home to fume.
I am mostly angry with myself for having
taken another Kibe car on trust.
I eat cabbage and chapati with
the old shosho and watch more coverage of the Westgate siege (now
over). Then I have a couple of beers with Joe and John Kibe in Joe’s
little pub. We watch the President address the nation with ten
minutes of platitudes, empty promises and blatant bollocks about how
wonderfully everything was brought under control by Kenyan forces.
To date Kenyans have donated 40 million shillings to a fund to help
the injured. Although given that they are all well insured rich
people I am not quite sure where the money will actually go.
7
Wednesday 25 September 2013
David
arrives around at the house first thing. When people come to call on
me unannounced it is never, ever a good thing. There is, of course,
still no car on the David front. I fill him in on the whole ghastly
(almost literally) car crash that was yesterday. I learn a couple of
interesting things. 1. Kuria has only ever driven automatics 2.
Kuria does not have a real driving license.
Mother and baby are
doing well, David tells me. At least, as well as they can be when
they have been evicted from their house and the landlord has locked
all their worldly goods inside because there are rent arrears. Of
around £50. Wife and baby are currently in the road outside the
house. I enquire after the last £50 I lent him – to pay the
hospital fees so that mother and baby would not have to live rough
in the grounds of Kenny
Gilbertsonyatta,
kept there until payment was made. President Kenyatta had made a big
hooha of announcing that giving birth in government hospitals would
be free. Apparently they are still charging at Kenyatta Hospital.
This happens a lot. Doctors charging for stuff that should be free.
“First do not harm” translates into Swahili as “First get as
much money out of your patient as you can”.
I give David
another £50.
I go down to Uchumi and book my bus to Awendo for
Friday, coming back Tuesday. After three entire days and four nights
out there I may well be a complete basket case by Wednesday, but
there is much to do out there. I buy loads of turmeric (for its
anti-inflammatory properties), black pepper (ditto) and find a
couple of ladies selling skirts and dresses and make their day by
buying a load of each.
Forex gives me the money Zetta has sent
from my brother Geoff.
Mama Biashara is becoming quite the
Copstick Family Thing. Sister Amanda is coming up for a large
Chocolate Watch for long service (four years now !) in the Mama
Biashara Emporium, serving through thick (me) and thin (her).
Brother Geoff has been out here and seen the work and is our Animal
Husbandry Expert. He has now just been squeezed by Doris for school
fees for a terrific young orphan boy he met while he was here.
Cousin Angus (while not hurtling up and down mountains) has not only
funded a load of stuff himself but is now Head of Fundraising
Applications. Other cousin Irene has recently joined in the party
with a sizeable donation and even Daddy Copstick is spreading the
word, showcasing a wide selection of Mama B products in his lovely
home and has just sent over a gift of some beautiful carving chisels
and knives as well as an electric cutter for a young soapstone
artist. I have to say it feels quite wonderful !
The afternoon is
for funding groups of young men who have either been in prison or
are being targetted by the police. BY which I don’t mean we are
simply handing out dosh to criminals and miscreants. For example,
four of the lads in one group were in prison for six months because
they had done some work for an employer who then refused to pay
them. They created a bit of a scene. The employer called the police.
The employer paid the police ‘kitu kidogo’ and the police arrested
the boys. With no one to help them or pay the police ‘ kitu kidogo’
more, the boys simply disappeared into the system.
Doris has yet
again come up trumps with a hidden location for the workshop. The
lads are in groups of five and eight. They seem genuinely decent
young men and super-keen to get going with a business that will mean
they are not at the mercy of people who pay them less than £2 a day
for hard labour and frequently don’t pay anything. One group are
planning to make and sell tables and TV units – one of the group
having done this before. They already have orders and have got a
free place to make and display their goods. Another want to sell
fresh peas – again, they have customers lined up. We are
discussing onions with the third group when a bit of a hooha starts
outside.
Doris doesn’t let me go because, as she explains later,
I would have gone BALLISTIC. She is absolutely right. She went out
to find the other two groups who were waiting patiently for their
turn on their knees in front of an armed policeman. The foul old
witch who was the landlady for the compound we were in had looked at
the lads, decided they were not the sort of people she wanted (she
used the words “thieves” and “whores” quite freely) in her
compound. Despite the fact that the tenant of the house we were in
was paying her rent and was quite happy to have his house full of
thieves and whores. Doris explains what we are doing and utters the
magic word “mzungu”. The boys scarper and the policeman
goes.
The onions were much much more complicated than I ever
imagined onions could be but eventually we get them in a row and
sort out the grant. Many schools and hotels will be relieved.
Then
we leave. I stop to flash what I intend to be the Copstick Death
Stare at the rancid old crone of a landlady. Rather impressively,
she simply Death Stares back. I walk towards her. I hear Doris tut
anxiously. I come here to help people, I bark (in Swahili, of
course). ALL people. She sneers. I point. You, I say (in English as
my anger at this foul person is getting in the way of instantaneous
translation)), are not a good woman. You have a bad, bad heart.
She
laughs.
We go.
I ask Doris to find the groups again and we can
continue with the last couple in another place. She says the boys
think they were set up – coming face to face with yet another
armed police drone was not a happy experience. But eventually they
agree to come and meet us a Dagoretti Corner.
We stop to have a
coffee and bump into Felista who has come into the caff to use the
loo. The KDF (Kenyan Defence Forces) of whom the government is so so
proud, she tells us, are now “combing” the Westgate Mall for
explosive devices and so no civilians are allowed inside. However
CCTV footage on youtube of said KDF tells a different story. They
can clearly be seen simply looting stores and banks. Raking piles of
money and jewellery. Safes and cash registers were, of course all
just left in people rush to flee the building. And now the KDF are
taking advantage of that. And making sure that civilians do not, of
course.
Doris and I go to Corner and wait for the boys. It
is late before they come as all of them have been working as
labourers and the employer is, true to form, simply keeping them
waiting (after a 12 hour day) for their £2
Eventually
representatives of both groups arrive and the businesses are
terrific. Well thought through, well researched and with a really
good profit margin. Chickens from Migori and what in Kenya are
called ‘camera’ trousers. Camera trousers are the pick of the vast
bundles of second hand clothing that arrive here daily – so called
because they are chosen “”in camera” when the bundles are
first opened.
Doris and I repair to Joes’s Pub and have a
nightcap during which we come up with a marvellous plan to help the
women right at the bottom of the heap. They are a worrying lot –
so beaten down, so hopeles, so helpless and with so many immediate
problems that they are not really up to taking a grant and starting
a business. They need to be taken step by step, they need their
hands held, and they need psychological – dare I say, emotional –
support. Doris has been providing this with a little group she has
set up selling bleach made from the tablets I bring each trip (God
Bless PoundWorld). She has really been functioning as their
salesperson, getting them orders that they fill until they get up
and running themselves.
I want to go to Kefagare (the hellhole we
went to with a medical clinic on the last trip) with some business
funding but Doris has pointed out that most of the women there fall
into this hopeless/helpless category. And so this is my plan –
which Doris approves.
We will set them up in a group business
(initially) selling household cleaning products – initially liquid
detergent and disinfectant as well as the bleach which is so
popular. The hideous carbuncle of the Kefagare slum sits skanky jowl
by beautifully kept, exfoliated and moisturised cheek with a gated
community of expensive residences. Who all have servants. Many of
whom come from the slum. I am going to go back to my roots as a
salesperson. If I can stand in my Dad’s shop and sell Dutch tomatoes
as Scottish then I can sell liquid soap to rich Kenyans. I will go
door to door and give them the spiel about Mama Biashara, lay on
thick layers of how much good they will be doing for Kenya (in this
time of crisis when all Kenyans must pull together) and, hopefully,
get an order. I will be offering samples. And I will be the only
white door to door salesperson in Nairobi. The women then take it
from there. This is Plan A. Doris and I like Plan A very much.
6
Thursday
26th September 2013
I hurtle around picking up stuff from
suppliers in the morning. I say hurtle – there is still no David
and no car, so ‘hurtle’ is a bit of an exaggeration. The siege is
officially over although numbers of dead/missing/wounded/guilty are
still vaguer than a dumb blonde. What we do know from youtube is that
the KDF who are in the mall “sweeping the area” are in fact
looting the place. So no surprise there.
My father has sent over a
beautiful set of carving chisels and an electric saw thingy for me to
give to Evans, the soapstone guy who made his last year’s Christmas
pressie – a fabulous huge, curving, textured leaf. I hand over the
gift. Evans almost bursts into tears. He is so thrilled he cannot
speak. He says he is going to write a letter to Daddy Copstick. I
should have had a camera. Having said this it doesn’t get me a
discount on the plates I buy.
I am
slightly worried that, as we have no David, I am going to be in
something of a pickle when I go with Felista to Kamikunji on a
mammoth bedcovers and hardware shop this afternoon.
We meet at
Corner. She waves from a matatu and I leap in. She is in good form.
The teachers are very happy with their regular pay (thanks to Gus’s
way with a grant application and the Rozelle Trust) and the school
is going great guns. She is particularly happy because the teachers
are believers in practical skills – cooking and ironing, cleaning
and tidying. Every day, for example, one class clears all the
rubbish from the compound. “Eh!” grins Felista (a Felista grin
is a thing to see … a huge smiley mouth in a happy round face, she
looks a little like a Bourneville Pacman) “it is gooooood. If I
get the children to do this in the home it is Child Labour. When the
teachers get them to do it in the school, it is learning a skill!”
Down in Kamikunji we slither through the muddy slimey streets. It is
a bit like a scene from Slumdog Millionnaire. Here is where huge
numbers of Kenya’s Indian population have their wholesale
businesses. Streets are packed with handcarts and trolleys, every
dark doorway is the entrance to a cavern packed with household
hardware. First we head to Amrit Enterprises where we bargain our
way to 60 maasai shukas at a very reasonable price. These are for
the beds in the home. Felista is getting a lot of ‘visitors’ –
people from various organisations who come to see if the kids are
cute enough to sponsor. And they like to see the place looking nice.
I eye the mountain of Tanzanian wool/polyester mix and voice doubts
that we will be going home in a matatu. Then we go a few doors down
to buy cooking pots (like small aluminium swimming pools), mugs and
plates and spoons and basins and buckets and a set of six drinking
glasses for Felista to have for ‘good’. Oh and a couple of dustbins.
And a baby bath for her daughter who is big with bastard child. I
make Felista pay for the baby bath. I don’t want to encourage random
childbearing. The pile of stuff is enormous. Even Felista agrees.
She calls a friend. An hour or so later there he is still some way
away. We get a porter and strap everything onto a rickety cart with
strips of inner tube and set off through the crowds and the exhaust
fumes and the rotting… everything.
We make it up past the
hawkers’ market and past the row of AgroVet wholesalers (you never
KNOW what noxious chemicals come out of those … Kenya is not
really sold on the whole organic thing when it comes to
agriculture). We make it to the Railway Station which is really just
a ghastly seething mass of rickety matatus and howling humanity.
Here we wait for the friend. In a miasma of black exhaust fumes. For
an hour. I am not happy.
When we eventually get to Dagoretti
Corner I get out.
I have packing to do. Tomorrow I go to Awendo.
Friday
27th August 2013
I have had to get a real taxi to take me and my
Big Blue Box of medication and my 35kgs of health giving uji to the
bus. He is a nice man tho’, who gives me a very good deal. Of course
when they said the bus leaves at 8.30am they meant 9.45, but at
least it leaves. And, thanks to the strategic positioning of ancient
but vast, slowmoving trucks across the length of our route, we get
there some 7 hours later. In the usual torrential downpour that
heralds my arrival in Awendo.
En route, Doris phones to say
that eight of our boys and four of our women have the chance of a
month’s work at Westgate – clearing up the debris for the men and
catering for the workers for the women. Good rates are being offered
and the women especially could make a mint. Mama Biashara just has
to kit them out with wellies and overalls and get the ingredients
for the women to cook. All the tools that will be needed, Mama
Biashara already has.
I head to a cashpoint to get money to send
to Doris without putting a dent in the money I have brought with me
for Awendo. I then Mpesa her the dosh. Bloody marvellous system. I
go to a kiosk and put the cash into my Mpesa account (kiosks
EVERYWHERE). I then have it in my phone and can do what I want. Five
minutes later, Doris has the money.
Jayne has a list of some of
the more arcane health problems that await me here. Apparently my
fame as a curer of all ills has spread. And the legend of the Bearer
of the Oil of the Cod is alive in the hills of South Nyanza. There
are the usual cluster of early-comers who hope to get in in front of
the crowd. As there is no light in the room I try to look at a
couple of dubious swellings using the torch on my phone before
giving up and telling them to come back on Sunday. One bloke wants
me to come and see his father who is ancient and riddled with
arthritis. I try to explain that arthritis cannot be cured. He says
that he thinks that if I could just come to see his father he would
get better. Hmmmmm. Flattery gets him everywhere and he gets a bag
of cod liver oil, some diclofenac gel and some ibuprofen bombs.
Daddy will sleep tonight.
I go off to my usual little room and
make a space for my stuff on the floor. The rain on the roof is
(take note Stephen Sondheim) not going pit, pitty pat but making a
deafening racket. Somehow it doesn’t matter.
6
Saturday 28
September 2013
As I stumble through the mud and soaking grass to
the toilet I am watched by the crowd of hopeful business people. This
is the only known time in Kenya when anyone turns up early for
anything. When Mama B is open for business. The long drop toilet
requires an accuracy of aim that eludes me this morning, somewhat
embarassingly. I am glad I am in black as I walk past the line of
women. Damp patches don’t show on black.
The ladies of Awendo are
not natural business people. They are fans of the ‘ballpark figure’
method of profit calculation. Behind door number one we have Edna,
mother of 4 who buys a sack of pineapples containing either 80 or 90
pineapples of either four or five different sizes and pays either 150
or 300 bob transport. Edna seems quite happy with this business plan.
I feel the need for an early morning Tramadol. Then we have Julianna
– a wonderful little girl who came to the medical workshop last
time covered in appalling urticaria and radiating heat like a scabby
bar heater. I managed to persuade the doctors to stop her ARVs and
she was fine. Then they started her on them again (because “that is
the system here”) and she is once again doing a fair example of a
small, smiley, hot alligator. Her skin is like a whole body scab. I
cover her in cream, give her some mango juice and multivits and agree
to go and see her doctor on Monday for a talk. Grannie meanwhile,
wants a business to boost the lamp oil business we started with her
the last time. She wants to sell bar soap. According to her own
calculations, she wants to sell it at a loss …
Next is a
lovely guy, a widower, HIV + who has two small kids to look after. He
has planned a business selling porridge and githeri (a bean and maize
mix snack) and seems to have done the sums properly. Unlike the omena
group who plop themselves on Jaynes couch and mutter about selling by
the trough and buying in Awendo. A little like saying you will be
setting up a snack bar in Harlesden and buying all your food supplies
in M&S. Not that Awendo is posh, Just expensive and devoid of
anyone who knows the meaning of the word wholesale. The women here
have a habit of, having been told no, just sitting and staring. I
tell them they do not have a business plan and Mama B does not have
money to lose. They sit and look. I give them a five minute stare and
then tell them I am very old and if we wait any longer I could die.
They go. And we see an old widow (positive) with four kids (two
positive) who is going to sell fried fish, a rice group, a banana
group, a maize group and groups selling jaggery, eggs, milk, peanuts
and diesel (which is sold by the 500ml bottle and smaller).
Halfway
through I have to go to Awendo to get more money. A Dude on a piki
piki rocks up and it is al very Easy Rider till he runs out of fuel
halfway there. We get off. He lays the bike on its side and shekes
it, gets it up, blows into the petrol tank and we make it another
mile or so before stopping again. Luckily there is, within walking
distance, a boy with a whisky quarter bottle full of fuel. And we are
off. As we approach Awendo it starts to rain. Tennisball sized lumps
of water fall from on high. What were giant potholes in the road now
look like mud filled paddling pools. We slalom though them. I get the
money and we sploosh off back up the mud track. I have seen the back
ends of motorbikes in a wet motocross race at Knockhill sliding from
side to side – now I know how it feels. Luckily I can see nothing
because my glasses are covered in rain and steaming up on the inside.
We pause to pick up another youth – obviously a friend of the Dude.
He settles himself behind me, crotch jammed into the top of the cleft
between the Copstickian buttocks. We slide off up the track. Like a
cold, damp human Oreo on wheels. By the time we get back up the road
the rain stops. I take off my boots and it looks like I am wearing a
pair of pristine black socks over claggy brown trousers. I assume the
mud will dry and flake off. I have to. I have no more clothes.
To
continue – Lolita the samosa maker gives us her calculations, by
which she should be incredibly rich. Or a liar. She goes of to
consider which. Then there is the sitty-starey-giggly potato group
with an on paper desire to sell at a loss. As they leave they make
the clucking noise that in Kenya means displeasure. It is a little
like the noise you make with your tonge and back teeth to encourage a
horse to walk on. I like it. I cluck back, raise my eyebrows and
spread my hands with the thumbs pointing downwards and outwards and
the pinkies pointing up. This is Kenyan for WTF?! It is about 7pm and
the mitumba (second hand clothing) gives us all a laugh with their
Fairy Tale in a Second Hand Clothing Shop. I know that most people
here, when meeting me for the first time assume I know nothing about
anything other than sipping cocktails in the sun, shouting at my
servants and buying expensive things. But I have been here often
enough for these women to know otherwise. So I laugh. A lot. And then
I speak firmly and frankly to them explaining my reaction to a) liars
and b) people who treat me as if I am stupid. They quickly reasses
their calculations but I tell them it is too late. Now I know they
are cheats and I do not to business with cheats ( not entirely
accurate but I was on a roll).
By 8 the last wannabe is in the
chair. His name is Elvis and he wants to run a hotel (for which read
very basic cafe). He is the son of Pamela – one of the women who
helps out with workshops and home visits. She is a sweet woman – ex
prozzie and HIV+ = who does loads of support work with positive
people. I am her Acyclovir dealer. Elvis came last time to ask for
funding and made such a hopeless pitch he got nothing. Since then he
has been working a ten hour day for a woman, making chapati and
mandazi, for 50 pence a day. We spend quite a while managing his
expectations. We instill the basics of portion control. And
arithmetic. He has a load of orders with which to get started and
Jayne offers to oversee the business end of things. I insist he takes
on another young man to do deliveries etc and to learn the business
and now girls across Awendo will be able to sing “There’s A Guy
Works Down The Chapati Shop Thinks He’s Elvis” and he will, indeed
be Elvis.
Medical clinic
tomorrow.
ZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
Sunday 29 September 2013
Medical
day ! I gulp down coffee and drugs and announce The Doctor is In (of
course no one here reads Peanuts cartoons so my wit goes
unnoticed).
Second up is Alseba, the old lady I saw on my very
first visit here. She has leprosy. No fingers, only half her feet
and great raw wounds from ankle to mid calf. I sent her to hospital
the last time (how stupid was I ???) where she was sent away as she
could not pay for the drugs. Which are FREE. I had a full and frank
conversation with the doctor at said hospital and he then said they
didn’t have the drugs. Alseba went to another hospital where they
did do some work on the raw open portions of her legs but then
discharged her, demanding 1500 shillings and giving still no
medication. She is here having tried to look after her legs herself.
From mid calf is open flesh, pus, scab and crusty stuff. It is
covered with tufts of cotton wool with which she has tried to keep
the open flesh clean. But it has dried on and is now stuck hard,
entwined with the scab. We cover the couch with plastic sheeting, I
glove up and spend the next twenty minutes or so swooshing sterile
saline about the place and soaking the cotton wool clumps out of the
scabs. Probably lucky that the legs are numb. I do rather a good
job, tho I say so myself. I dry the legs, apply antibacterial powder
and bandage them up with torn up cotton (an old pillowcase) and
gauze bandaging. She is such a lovely old lady. She gets cod liver
oil and multivits. I arrange for one of Jayne’s helpers to clean the
legs and change the bandages every second day. I will buy her socks
and shoes, send crutches and try again to find a doctor who will
give her the drugs she needs. It really is quite a day. Between the
usual “joints”, “Ulsas” (acid indigestion) and headaches
there is a woman who is throwing up blood, an old man who has been
crippled since an RTA three years ago, a woman with fibroids, a
woman whose hands turn black in the morning (the palms, of course
the backs are always black), 3 kids with measles, a woman who claims
she sneezes herself into miscarriage, a case of pleurisy, some
cellulitis, a load of sickly babies, gallons of mucus, quite a lot
of pus, yards of scabbing and the usual collection of rashes. I show
our helpers how to massage and the pains and life threatening
problems of at least ten patients are cured by camphorated oil and
powerful thumb action. The hills of Awendo verily vibrate with the
scent of muscle rub and menthol. There is a broad spectrum of
problem here. Some are imaginary and some are run of the mill. A
girl comes with small child (I year) who will not eat. “No
appetite” she says. I take the small child, offer a multivitamin
jelly which is scoffed, and then a bit of chapati, which is
virtually inhaled. In fact the child eats the entire chapati in
record time. “You are a shit cook” I diagnose, looking at the
mother. Jayne will look after this case. Then there is a woman who
says her heart races when she gets a fright. A woman who gets pains
when she gets her period. And a woman is diabetic and hypertensive
who gets a sore stomach when she eats githeri. ME: then don’t eat
githeri. SHE: (aghast) but I like githeri !
And then there are
the awful cases. A beautiful young woman with monstrous genital
herpes and a veritable river of pus. She is in so much pain. God
bless Acyclovir. And the rest. Saddest is, I think, a lovely, gentle
woman who has had a urogenital fistula since 1983. To put it
bluntly, since a botched C section (I repeat, in 1983) she has had
wee pouring out of her vagina. She wants me to see. We go into
Jayne’s bedroom (it has a window so there is light.) The lady pulls
down her undergarments and, kneeling in front of her, I am hit by
something that has gone far beyond being a smell. It is like a
physical, corrosive smack in the face. It catches in my throat and
my eyes just explode with water. She uses anything she can find to
fashion pads to soak up the flow. And she has to work in the sugar
cane fields every day so she cannot change very often. It is a
disaster area down there. Covered in sores. I have brought
incontinence pads for her and we discuss cleaning and drying and I
give her antibacterial powder (to the sound of the stable door
trying to shut when the horse has gone and the hinges have broken)
and sanitary pads too. I say I will find a doctor who can help.
1983. I hug her and say I will stay in touch about the doctor. She
smiles. HOW can she smile ?
Jayne’s sister in law is another
woman with an horrific tale to tell. Since 2003 she has had
gonorrhea. Infected by her husband. He husband works away a lot.
When he comes back, he infects her. He goes away, she goes to
hospital and gets treated. Then he comes back and it all starts
again. He is coming back next week She is terrified. She is ill. She
wants me to look. I look. She IS ill. She has, of course, a UTI and
almost certainly a load of other STDs. She will come for tests when
we find The Good Doctor. I give her ciprofloxacin and, of course Cod
Liver Oil. Of course the real problem is the husband. I suggest a
radical orchidectomy without benefit of anaesthetic. She likes the
idea. I tell her about bromide. She begs me to get some. I say I
don’t think I can. She is sad. She says he refuses to go to hospital
and refuses to believe that he is ill. BUT, she says, he will take
dawa from me because I helped his stomach problem. So we agree I
will get the meds for gonorrhea and give them to him. It is the best
we can do. And don’t even THINK condom. It just won’t happen.
We
must find a decent clinic. I tell Jayne. We make a list of
referrals. She is taking me house to house to see the bedridden
tomorrow. And to a couple of rural clinics to meet with the doctors
there to see what they can offer.
Quite a day. Shame the
neo-feminists and soi-disant Sisterhood who have the wherewithal to
do something about these women who are genuinely suffering are too
busy bonding over outrage about pretty pens and wicked words to want
to make an actual difference where it is needed.
And so to bed.
7
Monday 30
September 2013
There are still people waiting outside for
attention. Some have come for the medication they were told yesterday
that I would get for them. I am entirely unsure as to where they
thought I might have got it between last night at 8.30 when the last
patient left and 8 this morning as they gaze hopefully at me as I
slip and slide through the mud to the loo. My aim is getting no
better as I seem to have developed a spraying rather than a streaming
delivery of urine.
The sound of children bellowing “Good
Morning Teacher” from the tiny school (that Mama Biashara built) at
the bottom of the garden reminds me it is Monday. A half dozen tiny
students are waiting me when I return from washing hands and face.
They are ill, says the teacher. Not in obvious way they are not. They
have a fever, insists the teacher. I clap a hand to perfectly normal
foreheads and refute her claim in what I hope is a firm but
reassuring manner. Only one – a girl from yesterday – is ill. She
has been told to come to the clinic with us. She is positive and has
had TB. Her chest sounds very dubious and her heart sounds like
someone playing castanets.
Jayne and I set off on a piki piki to
visit two clinics and a load of patients. Clinic one is where little
Julianna goes. She is waiting with her grandmother. The queue of
patients jostles for place to see the mzungu. The doctor seems very
nice. I explain I have come to plead Julianna’s cause. He nods. He
must have seen how much better she was when she was off the ARVs ??
He nods. But apparently the clinic’s ‘partners’ (donors and health
organisations) have a ‘system’ which says that she must be given the
ARVs. But they are making her ill, I point out, gesturing towards the
poor scabby, drooping child. He nods. So you are happy to give a
child drugs which you know are making her suffer, I ask. He shrugs.
What can he do, he says. Stop giving her the drugs, I suggest. He
shrugs again. He agrees to have a meeting with ‘the partners’ and
plead Julianna’s case. He says he will let us know what happens.
We
piki piki off to clinic number two. Actually quite close to Jayne’s
house. Well, Kenyan close. Here the doctor is young, helpful and
interested in helping. We have brought Lillian (woman with a massive
cyst on her face) and the young positive girl with castanets for a
heart. He is, it turns out, an opthalmologist. But is doing
everything here, including minor surgeries. I talk about the lady
with the urogenital fistula, our man with the hernia and Lillian’s
massive cyst. He nods and makes notes. It all seems quite promising.
Then we talk about the little girl. She is, I have just discovered on
scanning her file, on ARVs – including AZT. Her CD4 count is 1111.
Probably higher than mine. But apparently the Kenyan medical “system”
decrees that a) all children born to a positive mother are given
Neverapine from birth and b) they get the full ARV array no matter
what their CD4 count. And no matter what the negative effects. I am
gobsmacked. The young doctor laughs merrily. What happened to ‘first
do no harm’ I want to know. He laughs merrily. His assistant also
laughs merrily.
He wonders if I can bring him an opthalmoscope.
His entire battery of instruments seems to be a stethoscope and a pen
torch. I say I’ll see what I can do. He agrees to look at all the
patients I want to refer and, if necessary refer them on to somewhere
where the doctors are not entirely criminals or idiots. He is even
going to see poor old Alseba and, give her, at last, her
drugs.
Everything at this clinic is free. Which is wonderful. But
people don’t come, apparently because they don’t want other people to
know that they are ill in any way. I momentarily consider taking Mama
Biashara to help somewhere that people aren’t such TWATS.
Jayne
and I head off to Awendo on the pikipiki. Jayne gets to sit on the
seat, I consider moodily as we bounce and swerve over rocks and
around potholes, while I am on the luggage rack. My quasi-Kenyan ass
has diminished quite a bit since I reduced the steroid dose by half.
Which is marvellous until it hits a pikipiki luggage rack. And hits.
And hits. We go and hit the wholesalers in an effort to get proper
prices for some of the stuff relevant to the business grants. I
should have known better. This is Awendo – a town as yet untouched
by the concept of the wholesale price. Just as we are about to leave
‘wholesaler no 1’, a thunderstorm hits. Those footballs of water
descend, lightning really blinds and thunder absolutely deafens. I
have never heard anything like it. Twenty minutes later it has passed
over and we head down to the chemist where I get as much as I can in
terms of what was needed for the people from the Medical day.
Nothing, sadly, that might put a serious dent in Husband of the
Year’s gonorrhea unforch. That will have to come from Nairobi. We
slither back up the miles to Jayne’s house, spraying mud as we
go.
Just as I think about settling my bruised bum on a chair and
having a coffee, Jayne announces we are going house to house. So we
do.
House number one reveals a young man huddled under a blanket
shivering and sweating. He has had diaorrhea for ( as far as I can
make out) more than a year. And the fevers. And pains. He is also HIV
positive. He is what is technically known as Not A Happy Bunny. I
hold his hand and tell him everything will be ok. He goes back to
shiver by the tiny fire. House number two holds a fourteen year old
boy. Some months ago he cut his leg working in the field. Four days
later he had a pain in his hip. Couple of days after that he couldn’t
use his right leg. Not long after that his other leg became too weak
to walk on. He was taken to hospital. There he was diagnosed and
given 20mg of prednisolone per day and Tramadol. He lost the use of
his arms and had to have a catheter fitted. The hospital ran out of
ideas and sent him home after three weeks without giving anyone any
idea of what might be wrong. Now, one month later he can barely lift
his arms, cannot use his legs and still has the catheter. Thre is a
big angry red and hot swelling over his right hip. He is in agony. I
am beginning to long for a woman with an achey back and indigestion
when she eats githeri.
By the time we leave here it is pitch black
PITCH black. No lights no stars no nothing. I have never walked in
such darkness. It is rather a lovely experience, given that I vaguely
remember the path and it is pretty solid. Still, every step is a
little adventure. Jayne decides that as the other houses are ‘far’
(and that is a Kenyan speaking – they are probably in Tanzania) we
will just go home.
We spend an hour or so sorting and labelling
the medication that was bought with the appropriate names and
dosages. The brother of the first house call comes to collect his
dawa and gets Uji, cod oil, ibuprofen, and an antibiotic combo
together with an amoebicide and instructions to call in the morning
and let me know what change there is. The boy can only get uji and
cod oil plus some ibuprofen for the pain together with massage oil
for his mum to use on his rapidly wasting limbs until I can find out
what is wrong with him. Poor kid.
Early rise tomorrow for the bus
back to Nairobi
5
Tuesday 1
October 2013
Even before the piki piki comes to take me to the
matatu stage, I am doing one more house call. Jayne’s father in law.
He seems to be about a hundred an fifty years old and made entirely
from Twiglets. We are hoping cod oil, turmeric tea and diclofenac gel
will help. The piki piki ride is as lovely as usual (when not
raining). We slalom along. At the matatu stage I am a couple of
dubious types get shirty because I am not going with Transline
instead of Easycoach. “Because when I die it will not be on the
Escarpment because the coach is a piece of shit and the driver isn’t
paying attention”. They seem convinced. The matatu ride to Rongo is
ridiculous. As always. The ‘conductor’ spends ten minutes at each
stop running around trying to force people into the already full
vehicle and then, to make up time, insists the driver floor it to the
next stage.
Easycoach, although frequently late, and taking at
least six hours from Nairobi to Awendo, does have (albeit ancient)
seats that recline almost all the way back. For £7.50 a trip it is
virtually what you get in First Class on BA. I sleep, woken only by
Jayne telling me that the shivering, feverish positive man with the
six month runs from last night is now up and outside and taking
porridge for breakfast. And firming up a treat in the poo department.
Excellent !
We are late back into Nairobi and the mat I get from
the bus station back to Dagoretti Corner is a nightmare. I hassle the
driver into getting back to SOME semblance of their official route so
I can get home. I do a bit of a shop, feed the poor cat (whose dish
seems currently to contain what looks like already chewed sugarcane
!) and sleeeeeeeeeeep
Wednesday
2 October 2013
I buy as much camphorated oil as the chemist has,
along with gonorrhea medication and a load of other stuff for
Awendo. The camphorated oil worked a treat on aches and pains and
has also done well on a couple of chest coughs. I consider bringing
flannel the next time. Seems my mum and gran were absolutely right
all along.
Doris has been a blur of activity since I left. She
operates a sort of unnofficial Job Finder Agency for guys out of
prison, commercial sex workers, women on what I call ‘the edge of
the abyss’ and Doris terms ‘the down of the down’, and the rest of
the people Mama Biashara works with. While I was away she got a load
of guys work clearing up the mess in Westgate and a team of women a
job cooking for the workmen. I sent off the start up grant by mpesa
from Awendo. The women have come out really well in profit and will
go on to run their own little businesses and the men all have a few
more weeks (well paid) work.The system also works as a sort of
filter for people wanting grants. Doris, for example, will take a
group of guys and – if they say they are desperate for a business
to feed their families and start a new life, she gets them work with
a construction company – casual labour – for a few weeks. The
ones who don’t go are immediately off the list. Then she gets
reports from the owner of the construction company on the guys who
do work. If they are doing well and working hard then they come and
pitch their business at me for a grant. The system is working and
the ex-cons (I say con, if the police don’t like your face here you
will be inside before you can say “human rights”) and commercial
sex workers are some of the most successful business people we have.
Doris is also helping a group of guys (ex cons) and women who want
to start a bakery. The guys were taught baking in prison. There are
fifteen in the group and they have 27 children between them. The
owner of the building where they have been doing casual labour has
offered them a free space in which to do it. As long as they act as
unpaid caretakers for the building. Doris has also got them in touch
with a woman who runs a big catering company (an ex commercial sex
worker) who will take their cakes and brand them herself. They have
really done their sums, know exactly what and how much of what they
need. They have already taken samples around and have orders, they
are paying for their own medial certificates out of their labouring
money and they are offering to train other people on Mama B’s list,
starting with a group of young commercial sex workers whose own idea
for a business was dismal. They are starting their training
immediately – as long as the group gets its grant. Which it
absolutely does. This is a fantastic opportunity for lots of people
to get a new start. We have opted to run the funding workshop at the
little Mali Cafe with the smiley shosho who doesn’t mind if we bring
slightly dodgy looking people in for tea and long long intense
negotiations. She is lovely to everyone and gets to sell more
mandazi and chai. The riginal plan had been for me to go to Uthiru
but the police are, Doris calls to tell me, having a bit of a
‘sweep’ in the area. To show they are doing something, they simply
go to a slum area, arrest people randomly (REALLY randomly) and beat
them up. On the pretext of being Al Shabbab. Given that the
perpatrators of the Westgate seige were rich enough and smart enough
to rent and run a shop IN WESTGATE for six months, blending in and
making friends, the likelihood of their having run off back to
somewhere like Uthiru in the wake of the carnage is, to put it
mildly, minimal. So we relocate to Dagoretti Corner. The next group
are commercial sex workers who want to sell tea (leaves as opposed
to liquid) and then there is a hugely well informed group who want
to sell scrap metal (legitimately), which is what the group leader
did before it all went Pete Tong. Did you know scrap brass only gets
about 30p per kilo here ? Next up is a small group (5) who are going
to sell quail. Yes, quail. To posh hotels in Nairobi. They have an
initial order for 60 per week. Around this time Doris starts to get
rather a lot of phone calls. I dart her “tsk tsk” looks. Quail
man goes and is followed in by quail egg man, a solo operator who
has a huge order per week from a doctor who claims they cure
everything from cancer to AIDS and infertility, plus some from a
posh restaurant. Doris is now on the phone none stop. Quail egg man
finishes. Doris informs me that she has been getting calls from the
people who have been funded to warn her that there is a group of
five guys lurking outside in various spots who are ‘ Definitely Up
To No Good’ and who are presumably waiting for us to come out so
they can do the nasty and (they hope) make off with a wedge. Quail
egg man goes. I ask who is next. Doris is calling a taxi to take us
somewhere safer. I get a text from my father and am replying when
Doris shakes her head and asks me what I am doing. “Texting my Dad
to tell him I’m fine” I say. Doris does something with her lips
(and there is a lot of lip) that suggests now is not the time. We
get into a taxi which has drawn up right outside the door and take
off. Quail Man is in the front seat. He has got the cab and brought
it to the door for us. I take Doris to Java House to calm down, have
a ludicrously overpriced coffee ( escaping one lot of robbers to end
up paying another) and plan future workshops given that our options
are becoming limited. Hmmmmmmmmmm
Taxi home.
3
Thursday 4
October
I go to Junction to pick up what I remember to be ‘a few
bits and bobs’. A couple of hours later I am staggering round the
carpark pushing a trolley over which I cannot see, so high is it
piled with stuff for the Mama Biashara Emporium. Bernard the
Soapstone has got in a bit of a fankle with his order and called in
some help. Resulting in 15 carves angels which have all the celestial
splendour of pepperpots. I refuse to take them. Bernard is a lovely
man – widower and devoted single father, he only comes to Nairobi
for two days a week to sell stuff and make money to feed and educate
his kids. Mama B’s last order saved them from getting flung out of
school for non payment of fees. Kenyan schools are big on sending
kids home – for wrong colour of shoes, no uniform, no fees and even
(I discovered via Doris) no PENCILS. And these are kids whose primary
worry is no food and no home. The system is about as appallingly
screwed up as a system gets. Well done the Brits for instilling into
a people the importance of a smart uniform in education.
As I am
in Junction, I go to look for a book on sign language to give to the
deaf prozzie (now ex-prozzie) we gave a grant to last week. Hopefully
she is not in business and I said to her (well wrote and mimed) that
I would show her sign language. I go to the educational bookshop
where I stumble across a classic in the long list of “you couldn’t
make it up”. There is one book that they have in stock in another
branch. It is called Sign Language for Dummies. I kid you
not.
Thence to town. Having run out of places to hold
workshops safely we have opted for town – and a greasy spoon where
Doris got the trots from a dodgy kebab last time out. But their tea
and coffee is fine, and they don’t get stroppy about herds of
downtrodden people coming in to huddle round our table. Although it
has been mentioned to me that a white female, meeting with
disenfranchised looking Kenyan youth could be construed as The White
Widow (Dada Mzungu – White Sister as she is called here) on a
recruitment drive. The first group in want to get into rabbits – as
it were. First buying and selling and then breeding. We drink tea and
crunch numbers. The rabbits are expensive and are being bought from a
farmer who will deliver them dead and skinned. I suggest that if the
group themselves go out to Kikkuyu and do some of the dirty work, the
price would come down. Doris gets on the phone to the farmer and ten
minutes later we have a deal. The whole group (20 male and female)
will work a Saturday for the farmer for free. In return a) the price
of the rabbits falls to a very doable amount allowing a good profit
b) the farmer will allow them to keep the pelts and will even sell
them for them (you need a license to sell fur here which he has and
they don’t). He will also train them in rabbit breeding and farming.
Absobloodymarvellous.
Next up we have some street girls more or
less fresh from the cells. The police (again, in hot pursuit of
looking like they are doing something) are simply rounding up the
street girls in town on the pretext of ‘suspicion of harbouring Al
Shabab’. So the choice the girls have is 1. go out and get arrested
or 2. stay in and starve with their kids. These girls have an amazing
chance. A ‘client’ of one of them is keen to help get her and her
friends off the street. He is in the fashoin trade and has a floor in
a big building in town. He is offering a group of girls the chance to
do the catering for the whole building (4 floors). IT is a
gobsmackingly good chance. The kind that massive backhanders would
normally be exchanged for. If they can get kitted out and get the
food organised they will start by making breakfast and if that goes
well they will get the go ahead to do lunch as well. 300 covers. The
lovely lady who helped with the bakery comes up trumps again and
gives us 150 smart plates. She also comes and does some training on
presentation skills with the girls. Mama Biashara pays for the rest
of the hardware (the building has its own cooker and kitchen) and the
ingredients for 300 breakfasts. First service is tomorrow morning.
Ten women and 23 children who will not be getting hassled by the
police again. And the idea is that as the group do lunches and
snacks, they take on and train more girls from the streets. Almost
every group of ex cons and prozzies we have funded has been
scrupulous about reaching out to others in the same situation. They
become almost self-running little Mini Mama Bs. Vicky’s Cleaners, I
forgot to say, have just got another big contract and are starting
another team. And so about five guys and six women from Mama B’s
‘ready and willing for work’ pool are taken out of the pool and into
the business of cleaning. Meaning they have a good livelihood and
five more guys and six more women can come off the streets and into
the training pool / waiting room. Thanks to Doris and our successful
groups we have a marvellous system going here.
The last three
girls want to sell eggs and have got themselves a good roster of
orders. The greasy spoon is closing. We only just manage to squeeze
Doris out through the iron shutters. We decide to celebrate by having
a drink, which we do on a balcony overlooking the not entirely scenic
Moi Avenue.
Heading home I go for a City Hopper and Doris heads to
get a matatu. As I am getting on there is the sound of gunfire.
Kenyans have a low panic threshold and there is instantly a lot of
headless chicken acting and squealing. From the sound of the gunfire
it is the police. They are the ones who just fire and keep firing in
a sort of ‘my gun is bigger than your gun’ sort of a way. They also
do not care at all – AT ALL – who they hit. The ‘oops, I’ve
killed/maimed/hurt a civilian’ effect is quite terrifying. I am now
in the bus and the gunfire heads off down towards River Road (not
nearly as scenic as it sounds). I check with Doris. She is now in a
herd of Kenyans running randomly in a direction that they hope is
away from the guns. By the time I am halfway home she is also on a
bus and unscathed.
Friday
5th October 2013
Having had several hideous experiences at check
in with BA systems failing to see payments I have already made and
the dragon on the desk insisting on a further payment etc etc I
decide to start packing early. I may slightly have overdone it on
the buying front. I am reduced to sitting helplessly on the bed
hoping someone will call and offer to pay my excess baggage bill.
I
try to reduce the overall weight by packing stuff in plastic laundry
bags. I buy clingfilm in the hope I can shrink wrap my own bags
instead of paying a fortune at the airport but it doesn’t work.
I
am meeting a load of different people at Shalom (almost next door,
good security and nice lawn with guinea fowl wandering around) –
Jayne from Awendo, Sylvestar (one of the boys I met at the very
first feeding day with Felista eight years ago, and Langat, marathon
runner and now PE coach to Felista’s kids at DECIP. Plus Doris, of
course.
It all works pout quite well, although Jayne is three
hours late. Sylvestar, who attended a documentary film making
workshop I ran under the auspices of Critical Mass theatre company
(and the impressive grant-getting, contact-making,
production-running Sarah Chew) and is now ‘ a professional
cameraman’. The second of the boys who attended the workshop that I
know of. The collective he is with do weddings, funerals (big in
Kenya) etc etc etc. He and Langat exchange numbers with a view to
getting Langat’s next marathon run on video. Well at least some of
it, unless Sylvestar gets a motorbike.
I give Doris a bag of the
most beautiful baby clothes you can imagine. Pristine and perfect.
Not that baby clothes are my thing. Donated by Zetta, our tireless
Vice Chair. Lord knows where they came from because babies are not
her thing either. But Doris is very excited about selling them. She
practices a little sales patter. She is good. From the moment she
smiles and says “Hello, my name is Doris …” you just know you
are going to buy SOMETHING from her.
We part on Ngong Road.
5
Saturday 6
October 2013
We are planning a big medical at the mosque in
Kawangware. We did one last time and did a load of work. The clerics
in charge were very happy and are in principle happy to have us back.
I need to burka up again which is no problem. And they are just a
little worried about security given that our old friends the Kenya
Police have been at it again on the coast near Mombasa. They have
(for some reason best known to someone) shot a Moslem cleric. All
hell has broken loose, four people are dead and a church has been set
on fire. So we are waiting to see how the atmosphere is before we go.
Meanwhile I head to the City Centre to pick up the last of Mama B’s
purchases. Some dolls and some bags … as far as I remember. Another
little Kilimanjaro of loveliness but bulkiness mounts up. I feel my
heart sink at the prospect of packing this and getting it to the
airport – to say nothing of paying BA punitive excess charges. Oh
Richard … Richard … PLEASE bring Virgin Atlantic back to Nairobi.
Mama Biashara needs you.
I get it all back to the tiny slum palace
(which is seeming tinier with every bulk delivery of goods I make)
and talk to Doris. The clerics are still worried about security. And
the women who had been going to bring their children along for
deworming and vitamins and whatever else they might need have been
reporting receiving threatening texts warning them that if they take
their children to the mzungu daktari for treatment “there will be
consequences”. So the waiting room would be pretty much empty
anyway. The Iman is very apologetic. We will try again next time I am
back.
I am pretty tired and fall asleep to be woken by a phonecall
from Doris wondering where we are meeting. We have some funding to do
and some plans to make. Plus I want updates on the catering girls.
Doris is not keen on meeting at our usual little Mali Cafe because of
the hoo ha with the stake out the last time. SO she asks if we can
meet at Junction. I sense a Java House Bill loming but Doris has a
point. And so I leave the house. It is dark and the place is mobbed.
The Nairobi Show is on and it is closing time. On Ngong Road that
makes it like the 02 and Wembly combined just emptying themselves
onto the street. I get a text from Doris warning me that “the boys
coming from the Showground are thieves”. That is a LOT of thieves.
I try to stay close to other honest looking types and opt to walk on
the road rather up in the dark. Still there is so much jostling and
pushing and boys coming up saying “hi Mama !” in a way that you
know means “My name is Gerald, I will be your mugger for today”.
I clutch my stout satchel (thank you sister Amanda) and plough on,
wearing my “don’t fuck with me” face. Traffic is jammed at a
standstill except for the daredevil piki pikis whizzing around. And
even they are, at this point 50% motorbike taxi and 50% robbers on
wheels. It is, as Felista puts it later “a hell !”
SOME TEXT
HAS BEEN DELETED HERE TO AVOID ALARMING MY DAD. DETAILS ON
REQUEST.
Never has a Java House coffee been so welcome.
Turns
out Doris was robbed on the way home last by one of the muggers on
wheels. So now Zetta’s beautiful baby clothes are in some thieving
scum’s house or abandoned in a ditch because they don’t contain money
or an iphone.
All went very well with the girls doing the
catering. The marvellous woman who has given the girls plates and the
cake boys their big order has come in to town to do some training
with the girls on presentation and they will know in one week if they
will get to do lunches as well as breakfasts and mid afternoon
snacks.
Another big group of Mama B hopefuls is asking for a grant
to set up a butchery business. I know ANOTHER butchery business. But
butchery is a good business if you can get the set up right. These
people have been through Doris’s Boot Camp (ie shown willingness to
work, aptitude for hard work, honesty, dependibility and ability to
work as a team). Now they have a business plan and a big order to
kick things off. The order will be regular and twice a week. Their
plan asks for quite a large amount of cash and includes money for a
freezer. I point out that as their first few week’s orders are just
through sales, they don’t need a freezer at the start and within two
weeks their profit will easily be able to buy one. They agree. And
get the dosh to start business tomorrow. 19 families (all are
married) and 42 children should have something approaching a decent
life.
We get a taxi to drop me and take Doris to the matatu stage.
It is £2.40. And is better than getting mugged.
Sunday
7October 2013
As the Mosque is a no go and, having no vehicle,
going anywhere remotely dodgy is to much of a risk, we opt to go to
Mathare and do some deworming and basic medication. I pack the
little pink wheelie and another carrier and head to meet Doris in
town.
I clamber aboard a bus and crush onto a seat. It is then I
realise that the irritating man standing in the way of everything is
a preacher. And boy, does he preach. All the way from Dagoretti
Corner to town. As we approach the stage, he points out that if we
wish, we can ‘bless him’ for his preaching. I don’t wish. He asks if
I do not want to hear the word of Our Lord Jesus Christ. I say I am
not a Christian. He throws back his head and roars with laughter.
PreacherMan: so who is Jesus ? Me : a man in a story PreacherMan
doubles up laughing. The rest of the bus start to join in. The man
in front of me stands up to get a better look. Over the next ten
minutes as the bus crawls through traffic we establish – to much
hilarity and hooting with laughter – that I am Darwinian rather than
Creationist. PreacherMan: Ah science can go so far. But God is
everywhere ! We end with a prayer and I am instructed to say amen.
Which I do. It gets a round of applause. One of my best gigs ever,
going on audience reaction, to be fair.
Now, it may or may not be
a sign from God, but as I leave the bus and plough through the
seething masses around the Kenya National Archives, the wheels
finally fall off my pink … well … draggie.
Mathare is filthy
as ever, although the children are impressively clean. It is Sunday,
of course. We deworm and deworm until the box of 100 syrups and the
bag of 50 tablets is done. We hand out cold liver oil to the truly
weak and ill looking and to a mum who comes up with a boy with
CP.
Then we head back to Ngong Road, eat pilau at Prestige (Doris
is still keen to avoid Dagoretti Corner) and go home.
8