And another diary … From Western Kenya again
Sunday 20 Nov
The Godbotherers have incredible stamina. They are still marching around, dressed in white chanting and drumming as I drink my tea at 8.30.
Mama B also restarts Ernest ( my landlord) in his bakery business. He is obviously skilled. And he cannot just spend the rest of his life sitting contemplating his wife’s grave. So he gets a grant for the ingredients to start again.
Today we are scooping up the medical overspill from yesterday and funding fifty ladies in a mass business. Following the guidance of Mama B about numbers creating buying power, fifty will together buy sacks of sweet potato and arrowroot and then sell separately in groups of ten. Groups a great because they self- police. They watch each other like hawks for signs of slacking. Everyone’s income is, after all, at stake.
There seems to be just as many bent, pained bodies at Julius’ place as there were yesterday. I set to with a will. We stall when we reach a woman with a snotty child. She has a problem. OK. What kind of problem ? A problem of bleeding. Bleeding where ? Silence. Nose ? No. Wounds ? No. We sit and gaze at each other. Then my penny drops. Ah ! Bleeding ! “Bleeding ?” I say, and smack myself enthusiastically between the legs. The whole place erupts with laughter. I momentarily reconsider my retirement from performing comedy … perhaps a stand up career in the Kenyan slums beckons. They love my impressions of ladies with indigestion and sore backs. And my utterances on childbearing are the talk of the neighbourhood … even my political stuff goes down a storm, confined, even as it is to recounting the criminal acts of their major politicians and asking why they are not in prison. Two stars at a pinch in Edinburgh ( probably one from me) but fucking hilarious here in the land of drought, hunger, sickness, poverty and no hope. My hookline will be ‘funnier than famine’.
The lady, it transpires after a session of questioning that would get me a job in MI5, has been toying with birth control. Her child is like the Krakatoa of mucus.
There is a fat woman with raging cellullitis – pikipiki sent off to town for drugs – but mainly more of the same. Life is sore when you are this poor. It just is.
Not counting yesterday’s haul, today I dispense twenty tubes of diclofenac gel and ten of Nauma ( which is like Ralgex), twent two lots of antacids and advice not to eat a wheelbarrowload of ugali before bed, fifteen tubes of various creams for lumps and bumps and itches, thirteen bags of iron and multivits, twelve of garlic, a ton of glucosamine and calcium and a heap of ibuprofen tabs. I send a piki piki for fresh supplies and, after my roaring success with the lady who claimed to have had pains in her stomach (pointing at her bowel) for three years (castor oil seemed to fix in in one go), I do a short speech on the Power of the green veg. To be fair, most of them eat plenty of that when it grows. There are also fifteen nasty sounding chests which get expectorant and cod liver oil. Cod liver oil can do anything here, I have found.
What I want to do next time is a big massage day. That will work miracles for almost all the people with the sore bodies. At is really all they need … a little unknotting. Except for the old man with sciatica. Any massage therapists fancy coming with ?
Now we fund the big business group, taking them step by step through the costs and considerations. They take the news that they will not be getting ten sacks each to start off with, incurring a cost, as that would, of over quarter of a million shillings, rather well. They get one for each group and will have to pull themselves up from there. They seem keen to do this.
Now Julius wants me to go and see their football team in action. Those of you who know me know my reaction the that. But I go. It is local old guys versus local young guys. I have no idea what is happening. Just the usual running around and pointing and shouting. Julius joins in with a will. That was what he was going to be before life happened. He is the main team coach.
I am required to address the team at the close of play. The local chairman’s wife approaches me with a plan for a woman’s football team. We discuss aerobics. I may take to lycra on my next visit.
Supper is the most fabulous sort of beany soupy stuff called mutuya. Rose cocoa beans are left to roast in the sun for two days then the skins blown off and the beans boiled for two hours. It is absolutely delicious. I go all Greg Wallace.
Early start tomorrow and I sort out what meds are being left and what are coming back with me.
I will be genuinely sorry to leave.
