Thursday
We get a call from the lady in Dagoretti Market who is supposed to be organising the deworming. She is hysterical. The elders of the village want to burn her, she says. They have said she is bringing the Devil (me) to poison the children. In an interesting twist, they also claim I am Illuminati.
Always batting for both teams, me. So there will be no medical. Not today. But we will meet the woman and try to arrange for it to happen somewhere away from the village. This is becoming quite a pattern. Doris and David think it might be because we are heading toward election time and anyone in politics – however lowly – wants to claim anything good that happens as the work of their party. Meanwhile they are up to their overactive testicles in sick kids and worn out women.
I pack up everything to send to Awendo – clothes, dewormers, basic meds, tea tree oil (death to ringworm), bleach tablets and the printer for the youth group. The box is quite heavy. We load it in the car and, en route to Junction for me and Easycoach for david, we stop to buy 160 litres worth of soap chemicals. Sixteen old ladies down on the Coast ( one of Vicky’s groups) will get ten litres each to kick off their business. They tend to sell in tiny bottles in the villages where everything is bought on more or less a day by day basis, so this is a lot more business than it sounds. And the profit margin is massive.
I whip round the market, collecting stuff I have ordered and trying to avoid being trapped by desperate people wanting me to buy something so they will have enough for a bus fare home. Business in all areas of tourism is down. You know the government, the police, the medical profession, the city council operatives and six out of ten teachers are all just criminals of one level or another, but yer basic wainanchi is a great human being. And, while I do not give a flying fuck about the owners of the big white walled resorts and the cutesy ‘ooo look, it’s a zebra’ safari lodges, their cleaners and cooks and drivers are the ones who really suffer when tourists don’t come.
Moving on …
David has something else to fix on the Davidmobile and is a Corner. Somewhat alarmingly, he says he will be leaving fixing the handbrake till tomorrow …
I get a frantic call from Felista who says that the torrential rain is flooding the dorms at Decip and she needs a ton of sand, a ton of ballast, waterproofing, cement, wire mesh and a load of other stuff. I harrumph. But David and I go out to Decip and wade around in the mud and the generalised gloop. Indeed, somthing needs to be done. Luckily my school friend Rachel has just sent one of her lifesaving moneygrams from Austria. And so Felista gets the budget for repairs and the kids will sleep dry tonight. Sometime soon (yeah, right) they have been promised connection to some sort of drainage and sewer system. So this, in theory, should not happen then.
We go off through the deluge to meet Doris at the Pork Place By The Road. We drink coffee and I talk to Timothy, the HR Man for the Bar Owners’ Training Seminar, on the phone. He is a wanker. I pepper my end of the conversation with as much irritating, pointless, basically meaningless HR jargon as I can. He is calling tomorrow with a confirmation (grrrrrrrr) and says it will be an honour working with me. Yeah. Right.
We take Doris to Bryan and Joe’s. Where we are greeted like long lost friends. A bloke who turns out to be really quite well connected – and whom I know from the previous night – falls in love with Doris. He has a big farm and several projects in the area in which he lives, just out the back of Congo / 56. He seems to be able to get funding from the World Bank. But he is something in local government.
I leave the stuff in the car when I am dropped off as I don’t want to disturb the peeps at home with schlepping stuff through.
Oh, BTW, it turns out that my lovely, lovely landlord is not called Roje … Or even French Roger. That is simply how the truly marvellous and impressively, pillowy breasted Sarah Chew says it. His name is Aroji. David will be pleased. He has been deeply suspicious of the name. “That is not a Kenyan name ! Is he a gay ?”
Friday
DAvid is off getting the handbrake fixed. I wondered why he never seemed to use it … Turns out it doesn’t really work. I get a matatu to Junction for the wifi and am embroiled in the craziest jam ever. On a road which is basically one lane in each direction, those heading from Dagoretti COrner towards Kawangware have created FIVE lanes of traffic all going in one direction. And no one gives way to anyone, ever, here. It is a masculine pride thing, I think. any time there is a tiny gap it is filled with part of a motorbike. The one which oozes next to my window is carrying an electric lawnmower.
I do the online thing and then start looking for Ingrams Aloe Vera Camphor Cream. IT works wonders on our ladies at the coast who are trying to live with the damage they have inflicted on their skin by scrubbing it twice a day with household bleach. The customer is always right and here the customer demands the right to a paler lady. They now live in agony. But this cream works well for them. So does E45 but I cannot afford it. There is none at Junction so I matatu it to Prestige. None. As I start to walk to Yaya, the heavens open. To see Kenyans in the rain you might think that the sky was pouring sulphuric acid. I get to Chandaria, soaked and chittering and, praise be, as our Thora would say, they have it. They also have a very reasonably priced golf umbrella.
Meanwhile, Doris is out in the back of beyond trying to set up a medical day. She has been soaked and is now freezing in a hut waiting for the rain to go off so she can walk to where she can get a motorbike. I resolve to have a chat with Doris. About haring off into the back of beyond chasing wild geese. She is not well enough for it. And it gets us nowhere.
I find another matatu and start the long complicated journey home. The van is crammed full of steaming commuter and there is a sort of yeasty, ganjaish smell. Not unpleasant. The driver takes whatever road he must to get out of the jams. We end up taking a massive detour but I am warm and fairly comfy and I do not really care as I assume he will rejoin the main road at the Chief’s Office and my stop is a bit after that.
