Sunday
I am looking through the order from Evans The Soapstone. It is a load of crap. I start packing the rest of the stuff into boxes and then – as the box of soapstone is to heavy for me to carry on a matatu – I call David. I leave the stuff with Evans at the Sunday market. So I have £60 to spend in January …
We eat at The Pork Place and I am amused to notice, amongst the motorbikes parked outside in the mud, one with the moniker “Black Jew” on the mudflaps. I had no idea that was a ‘thing’ in Kenya. The one next to it has the words “Mother’s Love”. “What about father’s love?” Says David, moodily. “Why do they never write ‘Father’s Love’?
We discuss politics and why the Cord opposition party can never win the election. “The Luos cannot be in power” says David emphatically ” they would be shitting in the streets”. Coming away from a society choking on trigger warnings and memes announcing that opinions are no longer tolerated, it is a bit of a relief just to hear people being honest. To be fair, tho, I just do not mix with the self-obsessed middle classes and Social Media types here, just ‘watu chini’ (which means low people, and is itself quite insulting …). One of the ladies in Bryan and Joes the other night spent fifteen minutes plaiting my hair (which she described as “funny funny”) and encouraging the bar to hoot with laughter at the result. To be fair, it was quite hilarious. Julius spent an evening telling me what the Luhyas think of the Luos (their boys do not get circumcised and so they never become real men), and what the Kikkuyus say about the Luyhas (“they call us black monkeys from the forest”). I think probably when your entire life is a massive struggle just to get by, things like trigger warnings and whether someone has called you ‘darling’ at work do not excercise you quite so much.
Monday
D day. Or rather C Day. CArgo. David is on time, we load the boxes and head for the airport, stopping at an animal feed place in Dagoretti MArket to buy a couple of sacks to cover the laundry basket so it doesn’t get filthy. 100/- each, according to the woman in charge. I let rip with my ‘do not sell to the colour’ speech, the price comes down to 30/- and we part fast friends.
I have left my phone in my room and so communication is done via David. But we get everything measured, weighed and packed off. Around £650, thanks to the continuingly shit exchange rate. ANd if ANY airline is reading this SURELY you could make just a teeny space in your cargo hold for this exceedingly poor and tiny charity …
We are SO well on time that we pass by Kibera to see how the disabled daycare project is doing … Not at all, judging by this visit. I call Joan (head of said daycare project) and she says she is a Kilimani police Station with a twelve year old girl who has been ‘defiled’ and is there for her safety. Where is the daycare ? It is going on. Allegedly. No it is not, I point out, having just been there and seen nothing. But it is. Allegedly. Hmmm.
We head to Junction where I try and fail to get online (wasting £1.50 on a shit cup of tea for the privilege). I collect my phone and immediately call Cindy at The Hub to finalise a date and time for our meeting about getting their waste fruit and veg for DECIP. Cindy has obviously wiped me from her mind. I am polite but firm. Namechecking her superior just to remind her that failure to meet me is not an option. We agree ten am the next day. Now we go to meet Doris and the lady from Dagoretti Market to do the medical. Woman is not there so Doris takes us back to the house being built by sheer goodwill and the generosity of Mama Biashara business people. Where there was the hovel, now there is a big new mabati house, cement floor, watertight roof and a storage place full of furniture, bedding, clothes and food. All donated by Mama Biashara business people. “We wanted to raise someone up from hopelessness as we ourselves were raised by MAma B”, I am told. Sounds a little biblical, but very good. They worked through the weekend I was in Western. Through torrential rain. And with absolutely no help from the family’s neighbours, who even charged for water for tea. I have put the before and after pix below. SAdly the father of the seven children is still the complete waste of space he always was. And the woman – who was married to the man at age 12 and now has seven children by him – says she is ‘thinking’ about contraception. I suggest cutting her husbands testicles off with a rusty knife. David snorks with laughter.
We get back to Dagoretti and meet with the medical woman who says she will arrange something for tomorrow but we must do it behind the petrol station and the sick people will just come one by one. We shall see.
Finally we go to Kibera to see if we can find JAne and family. These are an orphan family of five kids I first met in 2010 when I spent a week caring for the two girls, living under their bed in a children’s ward at Mbagathi Hellhole, sorry, Hospital. It is a very long story but, since 2012 MAma Biashara (with the help of various specific donors) has been paying for their education. NOw Joseph is in secondary and Jane has just sat her final exams before moving up. The other three will remain at Ceders Progressive in Ruai, where the headmistress Dinah Njeru has been like a benefactress, Auntie and teacher all rolled into one. It is a great little school and run with much love by Dinah. Now it is the holidays and the kids will be with their ‘father’. FAther only really in that he contributed the necessary squidgy stuff to make them, biologically speaking.
We go to their last known home. It is derelict. And flooded, as I discover as my leg disappears into mush up to the ankle*. Their father’s phone is not taking calls so we admit defeat and go to The Pork Place and thence home just as the heavens open and, with nary a shout of ‘gardy loo’, God flings buckets of water over Kenya.
* you do not want to know
Tuesday
I am bang on time for my meeting with Cindy. I am alone as Felista is going to a funeral. To be fair it is the daughter of a lovely guy called John who works in Equity Bank and has been hugely supportive of both Felista and MAma Biashara. I get in quickly and namecheck her lovely superior again, to say nothing of the French legislation forbidding supermarkets from throwing away food waste. Plus suggesting that Carrefour Nairobi would be leading the way in Africa for thoughtful distribution of food waste. She says she has to check The Procedure (which I believe) and talk to her General Manager, but it all sounds like a lovely idea. She will email me with her progress although this week is a bit hectic. The meeting lasts ten minutes including the usual lengthy Kenyan greetings. We go to Kijabe Street where I pick up the very last of my haul, I devour boiled maize and Then the day falls apart. Doris has gone, for some reason, to KIvera and now is feeling unwell and needs to lie down. The Dagoretti MArket woman is now not taking calls, the last conversation being again about my being Illuminati.
Then David has a brainwave. The floodplain where Jane and family used to live is still inhabited. “The people look very chini” says DAvid, frowning. “We had better go there with deworming and medical”. So we do. We park up just south of a massive mudpit and they come. In their droves. We deworm over 100 kids and about 35 adults. We treat maybe 25 more for ringworm. Then there are some ‘rashes’, ‘wounds’ and a girl with the oddest vesicles on her face and clustered around her eye. There are a couple of orphans to whom I am introduced. They live with their Shosho and Grandfather. She is anything between 80 and 96, depending on who is telling you. He is blind. The mother has run away.
I say we will come back tomorrow with deworming for those that still need. Ditto ringworm and I will bring the meds for anyone that needed anything else. Also I promise to meet the grandparents.
Now Doris has revived and meets us back at The Pork Place. So what, I ask David, as we drive away from the medical, is the difference between here and Kwangoma and Kefagare and the other places where we have been threatened, chased and generally run out of town ?
“They are Kikkuyu” he says. And he is Kikkuyu. And he is, thinking about it, quite right. All the places where we have been told to go through ‘The Elders’, to pay money, or to do the medical on the platform of the local Jubilee party member, have been Kikkuyu. Here in KAbiria it is mixed …a little Luhya, a little Luo, a little Kikkuyu.
We are finalising the last business set up with Doris. MAma B has a wedding booking (see previous diaries). It will set 105 women (the team for the wedding headed by FAtuma in catering, Vixen with hair and make up and Doris overseeing) up in businesses as they will each get about 3000 (a general MAma B grant) from the profits. And, as we are in such dire straits financially (no one shopping at the emporium yet … Ahem …), I squeeze the last drop out of the grant by making the agreement that the set up capital comes back to Mama B while the 105 women split the generous profits. And with that capital we fund another six groups from as far away as Nyeri and Nakuru. So the capital is recycled and finances about another 80 women in businesses selling carrots, peas (shelled), food and beverages, charcoal and a couple of other things. There are also about 40 men in two groups. Commercial sex workers desperate to be ex-sex workers.
We go to a nearby pub, up a red lit stairway. It is comfy and really very relaxing until a Rastaman thinks the barmaid has insulted him. And it gets a bit lively. She has insulted him. And does nothing to help the situation. We watch from the other end of the bar. Better than TV.
