Everything we do in life is meant to be in pursuit of happiness, right? We work hard to earn more money so it could buy us the stuff we want, we go to those exotic holidays, not to look for the dark spot in life, but to be happy, we have terms like retail therapy which, apparently, makes a sad heart giddy with happiness. All the above is well and good, but methinks, the human heart is also designed to look for ways to feel sad once in a while - probably to tip the scales. How else would you explain the fact that, some people, like me, constantly make myself sad everyday just by the fact that I am involved in a charity that gives me more heartache than satisfaction?
For those who do not know, here is a little back ground on Hope for Cancer Kids. It was started in 2008 by family and friends of children admitted at Kenyatta National Hospital with Cancer. The aim was to have a support group, and to raise funds from friends to help pay for NHIF cover and atrocious and mammoth hospital bills. To date, HCK helps over 50 families in KNH, and there are future plans to spread to other government hospitals.
Charity should make me happy, shouldn't it? It should, except the fact that 80% of the children, due to a combination of several facts, die. True story. This is how bad it is - in the developed world, cancer survival rates amongst children is 80%. In Kenya, survival rates is 10%, meaning, every ten children who are admitted into the wards, nine of them die. How terrible is that?
I have stopped crying for those children we loose, I realized my crying does not help, but actually, I deceive myself. I might not cry physically, but my insides tear into tiny shreds every time I am informed that we have lost another one. A couple of weeks ago, we lost a little girl called Margaret. Margaret and Lucy are sisters, a year apart (9 and 10). They both had leukemia, and were both admitted at KNH. Margeret lost her battle, Lucy is doing very badly as we speak.To highlight the plight of childhood cancer in Kenya, I had done a feature for Nation's Living magazine that featured the two angels - the response was good, but we humans have a way of forgetting things pretty quickly - nobody asks about them anymore. Sometimes I wonder what the point is....
A couple of days ago, another boy I had done a feature on Passion Magazine passed on. His name is (I cannot bring myself to write was) Sammy Isenjia. Sammy is a special case, and part of the reason I am awake at 3am updating a blog I haven't touched in months. Give me a few minutes as I enlighten you on why Sammy hurts me more than other deaths;
Below is some excerpts on the feature I did for Passion Magazine. Please read on, make sure you have a hankie handy.
"Sammy Isenjia is only seven years old. He should be full of energy, running around chasing footballs and playing hide and seek in his back yard or at the estate like other kids his age, but Sammy is not like other children his age. He loves to play football, but he quickly runs out of energy and needs regular breaks. Also, Sammy is holed up at Kenyatta National Hospital Ward 3A; he has leukemia, cancer of the blood that affects 25% of children diagnosed with cancer the world over. During the interview, his mother, 27 year old Selina Mutile watches him helplessly as she narrates their story; there is little she can do to lessen her son’s suffering.
Selina noticed abnormalities in her son’s body in January 2011. “The lymph nodes on his neck were swollen, so was his stomach.” She recalls. “As soon as I could, I took him to Shika Adabu dispensary in Likoni where they diagnosed and treated him for tuberculosis.” The only problem was that there was no improvement to her son’s condition even after taking the strong TB drugs. In fact, Sammy’s woes seemed to increase as he started complaining of ear ache. “Soon, he lost his hearing, so I took him back to the dispensary.”
Selina might be unhappy about her son being misdiagnosed the first time, but she is one of the lucky ones because, when she took him back to the dispensary, they referred her son to Coast General Hospital. “The doctor on duty gave my son one look and admitted us immediately. The following day, they ran some tests, including x-rays that revealed nothing, but after a week, of which we were still admitted at the hospital, the bone marrow test came back positive for acute lymphocytic leukemia.” Why Selina is one of the luckier ones is because most children cancers are diagnosed when it is too late, but the fact that they caught it when it was still in incubation, as it were, gives her son a chance of quick recovery.
That she was lucky in some people’s books did not make it easy for her to accept her son’s fate. “I did not even know the details of the disease; it is just the fact that they mentioned ‘cancer’. I went into denial – why? Why me? Why my son at such a tender age, what had he done to deserve this?” The doctors at Coast General wanted her to immediately go to Kenyatta National Hospital for treatment, but for two days, she would not listen or even discuss her son’s diagnosis. Finally, they convinced her about the urgency of her son’s condition – the sooner she went to KNH, the better chance her son had of recovery. She did not know anybody in Nairobi, but she took the bus and asked for directions to Kenyatta National Hospital.
Sammy, who has undergone six chemotherapy sessions, was doing fine until two weeks ago when he started having serious headaches. They had to stop the chemo as they investigated the headaches and are still running tests, but the doctors have had to drain some water from his backbone to ease pressure from the brain, which gives him some relief. Unfortunately too, the chemotherapy did not seem to have worked because he still has cancer cells in his blood. He has to go through the same routine of chemotherapy.
Sammy is shielded from the enormity of the situation by his innocence, as long as he can play for twenty minutes, he is a happy boy, but the same could not be said for his mother. She is a single mother of two; her daughter is nine years old. When Sammy was baby, she separated with her husband who left her and her two young children in Ujamaa, Likoni and went back to Kakamega where he was born. They never kept in touch, and she survived by washing clothes for people to keep food on the table; she is lucky too as she gets assistance from her elder sister and younger brother. “If it weren’t for them, I do not know what would have happened to me and my children.” Laments the standard four drop out.
When her son was diagnosed with cancer, she got in touch with him and informed him. “His sister came to KNH several times to see us, but she started insisting that Sammy did not have cancer, that it was witchcraft. The family wanted us to discharge ourselves from the hospital and consult witchdoctors of their choice – I refused, especially because I could see the big positive changes in my son’s condition.” Her refusal earned her further ostracizing – she was told not to contact them under any circumstances, and that was the last she saw of anyone from that family.
Some well wishers, through Hope for Cancer Kids, an organization that works with KNH to provide National Hospital Insurance Fund (NHIF) cover for families such as Selinas, were willing to pay for her cover, but that is looking impossible by the minute. “I have never held a national identity card which I need to process my son’s birth certificate, which is mandatory before you get an NHIF cover. When I tried to get one last month, they asked me for my parents’ identity cards, but my parents are both dead, and in 1997, our house burned down with every document including their identity cards and burial permits. I have nothing. The people in id offices told me I could use my husband’s card, but I am no longer married to him and he is not cooperative. What am I supposed to do?”................END OF EXCERPTS
- In the feature, I had indicated that Selina and Sammy are lucky, clearly, not anymore because Sammy is no more. This leaves Selina with a bill of Ksh4,000,000 - yes, four million Kenya Shillings, to settle to KNH. It gets worse; it means they cannot release the body to Selina because she has not identity to proove she is the mother - don't ask, I know they admitted her but I guess red tape sets in when you are in the hospital, not before you are admitted. This also means, in three months, Sammy, along with other unclaimed bodies, will be burried in Langata is some unmarked graves, mass graves. I am terribly sad, and I am just hoping that out there, there is someone with Ksh 4,000,000 to spare....is it too much to dream?
Tuesday, December 6, 2011
Saturday, April 9, 2011
The O-six, or is it the O-fourtysomething?
I have tried, without success, to ignore the Hague/Ocampo six or whatever you choose to call them, and the brouhaha that is the grotesque debauchery on our silver screens and newspapers, by the six and their loyal supporters. In a bid to ignore the saga, I have even taken to learning Luo, beautiful language by all means, ero kamano, but this ‘pregnant’ feeling just will not go away. So I have decided to do what I usually do when something is bugging the bejesus out of me, WRITE! Writing, to me, is a sense of relief – I express myself better through writing (some people choose to differ, accusing me of being the worst writer in history, others accuse me of talking more than I write but, I digress). Before putting something down into words, I always have a pregnant feeling, like I need to push and push, and the minute I write it down, the relief, to say the least, is out of this world, so bear with me as I push!
So yeah, the Ocampo six. Hard to ignore, seeing as, the same media I work for is pretty much obsessed, and one would think there is nothing else going on in Kenya, or the world for that matter. The starving Kenyans have been put in ‘pending tray’, so have the IDPs, so has the inflation which has been predicted to hit 15% in December – meaning, it is bad enough that bread, which cost Ksh30 only three months ago, now costs fourtysomething bob, depending on where you do your shopping. Imagine how much it is going to cost in December. Kenol/Kobil might be doing their bit in reducing their fuel prices, but even they will not help us much in December!
My final need to ‘push’, so to speak, was triggered by reading that my MP Peter Mwathi (Limuru), who is clearly the resident big mouth –is in part of the group that has travelled to Hague to give moral support to the O-six. No kidding! He actually thinks he was being funny when he said that he would have walked to the Hague were it not for the water expanse that separates Africa and Europe. Sir, are you high on something? I remember reading somewhere that, each person travelling to the Hague will use no less than Ksh500,000 to stay there, that is, if they do budge travel, and I highly doubt any of them will agree to such kind of travel. Now, I do not know how much money the IDPs need to be resettled, but if you multiply 500,000 x 40 (at least), you get 20,000,000, that’s a whooping 20 million shillings, on the lower side. Already, it is being whispered that one of the O-six used Ksh5million…okay, this math is giving me a headache, let us stick to Ksh20million. How much, dare I ask, would be done for the IDPs using this kind of money? Clearly, something happens to our MPs heads when they get to parliament – for starters, priorities are turned upside down, their common sense tumbles like a house of cards, not to mention, the humane side of their brains gets terribly distorted. Perhaps, we should not blame them; it must be the air in parliament! How else do you explain their behavior?
The Ksh20million (at least) is not all. Plans are in high gear to organize a homecoming party for the O-six! No prizes for guesses on how much is going down at this ‘bash’. What irks me more here is, one of my best friend’s father is actually in this committee – sir, if you read this, shame on you! The respect I had for you is quickly being corroded by your luck of sensitivity to those who lost their lives during the post election violence, their relatives, those who are still languishing in camps in Kenya and Uganda, those who lost their livelihoods, children who still have not gone back to school and just for effect, the Mau Narok! I will never look at you the same way again because, clearly, you have lost the plot big time. If there was a disease called ‘decadence’, you would be suffering from it big time!
True, the six are innocent until proven guilty, but does that mean we should ignore that they might actually be guilty of what they are being accused of? Why should six people, six rich boys I might add, hold the country at ransom? Guilty or not, this is a matter that does not call for any sort of celebration or public display. If you are innocent, shut up and let the evidence (or thereof lack of) speak for you. If you are guilty, praying and exchanging words will not make you innocent – it just makes us rather suspicious of your intentions. Next time you hold prayers, pray for the IDPs, they need the prayers more than you do, believe you me. Next time you hold a public rally, do not play the victim, surprise us and talk about the CDF projects – you are all so predictable I could make your speeches word for word without looking at the teleprompter (do you use those?)
The media circus that is the Hague is embarrassing to sane Kenyans. For lack of family friendly word, you look like idiots, wearing those flag dresses and including a Masai or two for (bad) effects. You are not doing tourism any favors by your displays and if I were the minister of tourism, I would be loudly protesting – oh, wait, it might actually do some ‘good’ for the tourism sector – how about a package that reads something like ‘have you ever wondered what a country led by morons looks like?....’
And while we are at it, somebody put a duct tape on one Esther Murugi – woman, you are embarrassing!
Note: I feel less pregnant, but I sort of feel that I was pregnant with twins, and there is one more on the way……PUUUUUSH!
So yeah, the Ocampo six. Hard to ignore, seeing as, the same media I work for is pretty much obsessed, and one would think there is nothing else going on in Kenya, or the world for that matter. The starving Kenyans have been put in ‘pending tray’, so have the IDPs, so has the inflation which has been predicted to hit 15% in December – meaning, it is bad enough that bread, which cost Ksh30 only three months ago, now costs fourtysomething bob, depending on where you do your shopping. Imagine how much it is going to cost in December. Kenol/Kobil might be doing their bit in reducing their fuel prices, but even they will not help us much in December!
My final need to ‘push’, so to speak, was triggered by reading that my MP Peter Mwathi (Limuru), who is clearly the resident big mouth –is in part of the group that has travelled to Hague to give moral support to the O-six. No kidding! He actually thinks he was being funny when he said that he would have walked to the Hague were it not for the water expanse that separates Africa and Europe. Sir, are you high on something? I remember reading somewhere that, each person travelling to the Hague will use no less than Ksh500,000 to stay there, that is, if they do budge travel, and I highly doubt any of them will agree to such kind of travel. Now, I do not know how much money the IDPs need to be resettled, but if you multiply 500,000 x 40 (at least), you get 20,000,000, that’s a whooping 20 million shillings, on the lower side. Already, it is being whispered that one of the O-six used Ksh5million…okay, this math is giving me a headache, let us stick to Ksh20million. How much, dare I ask, would be done for the IDPs using this kind of money? Clearly, something happens to our MPs heads when they get to parliament – for starters, priorities are turned upside down, their common sense tumbles like a house of cards, not to mention, the humane side of their brains gets terribly distorted. Perhaps, we should not blame them; it must be the air in parliament! How else do you explain their behavior?
The Ksh20million (at least) is not all. Plans are in high gear to organize a homecoming party for the O-six! No prizes for guesses on how much is going down at this ‘bash’. What irks me more here is, one of my best friend’s father is actually in this committee – sir, if you read this, shame on you! The respect I had for you is quickly being corroded by your luck of sensitivity to those who lost their lives during the post election violence, their relatives, those who are still languishing in camps in Kenya and Uganda, those who lost their livelihoods, children who still have not gone back to school and just for effect, the Mau Narok! I will never look at you the same way again because, clearly, you have lost the plot big time. If there was a disease called ‘decadence’, you would be suffering from it big time!
True, the six are innocent until proven guilty, but does that mean we should ignore that they might actually be guilty of what they are being accused of? Why should six people, six rich boys I might add, hold the country at ransom? Guilty or not, this is a matter that does not call for any sort of celebration or public display. If you are innocent, shut up and let the evidence (or thereof lack of) speak for you. If you are guilty, praying and exchanging words will not make you innocent – it just makes us rather suspicious of your intentions. Next time you hold prayers, pray for the IDPs, they need the prayers more than you do, believe you me. Next time you hold a public rally, do not play the victim, surprise us and talk about the CDF projects – you are all so predictable I could make your speeches word for word without looking at the teleprompter (do you use those?)
The media circus that is the Hague is embarrassing to sane Kenyans. For lack of family friendly word, you look like idiots, wearing those flag dresses and including a Masai or two for (bad) effects. You are not doing tourism any favors by your displays and if I were the minister of tourism, I would be loudly protesting – oh, wait, it might actually do some ‘good’ for the tourism sector – how about a package that reads something like ‘have you ever wondered what a country led by morons looks like?....’
And while we are at it, somebody put a duct tape on one Esther Murugi – woman, you are embarrassing!
Note: I feel less pregnant, but I sort of feel that I was pregnant with twins, and there is one more on the way……PUUUUUSH!
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Slummy Bummy!
A foreign journalist contacted me, asking whether I could be his ‘local fixer’ as he wanted to do a few human interest stories in Kenya. I agreed. As is usual with foreign journalists, they always want to do something about the slums; I am usually undecided on what to think about the ‘romance’ attached to poverty, and I spoke to him about my misgivings. He assured me that he would have a different angle. I took his word, and as soon as we found a fixer in Mathare, we were off.
We drove to Mlango Kubwa, the access point to Mathare Valley, and waited in the car for the ‘Mathare Valley fixer’, who arrived within five minutes accompanied by four young men who would be our security in the slum. The more the merrier, I thought as I shook their hands and introduced myself. Although this was told to me off record, you can only get into the slum in the company of a slum veteran. Being born and growing up in the slums does not necessarily make you a ‘veteran’, but you would have to be a feared ‘slummer’ with clout and reputation of sorts. I could guess what ‘feared’ meant, but courage to ask them what they did for a living failed me.
And so we were off, sandwiched between our ‘security personnel’, going down the valley. Predictably, we attracted a lot of attention. The foreign journalist was a White man; little children, the youth, old people, all shouted ‘hawayu’ to him. At first, he did not realize ‘hawayu’ was our version of ‘how are you’, but he proved a fast learner. A few unprintable words were directed at me, but I was in no position to protest.
As soon as we started descending into the valley, I knew I should have asked about the dress code. The open sewers welcomed my poor sandals-clad feet. It was too late to turn back and get some sensible shoes, so I soldiered on; stepping on liquid concoction I did not want to imagine the recipe stopped bothering me after a hundred meters. The deeper into the valley we walked, the more aware I became about my dress-code. You see, when I was leaving the house, I was dressed for a hot day ahead. My black top was see through but covered all my essentials, my skinny jeans were visibly new, my Erica Badu head-gear was meant to prevent direct heat from the scorching sun (and my locks need a hair doctor asap), and my stunners are rather expensive. I looked at the people around me, many of them barefooted, more with dirty feet and faces, even more with tattered clothes. WHAT WAS I THINKING, WEARING LIKE THIS???
But, as soon as I asked myself that question, I realized really, apart from wearing sensible shoes, there was no other way I could have dressed, that would have been pretentious. I am not Bruce Parry of the Tribe, I am under no obligation to live like they do, but it didn’t make me feel better about myself.
My wardrobe malfunctions (for lack of better word) were forgotten as soon as we delved into the slum epicenter. The stench! OMG! At first, I thought someone must have let off a really bad stinker, but then it went on for too long. One ‘body guard’ must have noticed my folded face; he casually told me to get used to it. That is what slums smell like! Not an easy thing to do, but I soldiered on. Soon after we entered the house of our target family which, if that were possible, smelled worse – my eyes started watering; it could have been from the tragedy in my face, or from the smell. It was like somebody had done a poop and didn’t bother to remove it, but I soon found out it was because the house was next to the ‘public’ toilet. The toilet was a tiny room with a hole and a drum dug into the middle of the ground. A pipe has been fixed to transport the poop and all its glory into the river – the same river those without Ksh5 for the bathroom use as a communal bath. To use the toilet, you pay five shillings; for tissue, there are some old newspapers for that. Next to the toilet is the guy who sells water – yes, water for drinking. I couldn’t help thinking how dirty their water containers were on the outside, what were the chances that they were cleaner inside? For a 20ltr container, you needed five shillings. Next to the water ‘depot’ was the bathroom – five shillings to use that, thank you very much. The people who run these businesses could potentially make a lot of money, but the oxymoron of the situation, if I may, was that the bathroom landlord was the dirtiest of them all.
Back to our ‘target family’. A woman who could have been anywhere between 18 and 50 years old. I guessed she was in her early twenties, but poverty had obviously ravaged her youth. She had two children; a five year old who should have been in school, and a nine month old who whined and cried constantly. We later learned that the little one was unwell; apparently, she gets ill every three weeks if she is lucky. Usually, every week she had a sort of disease – if it is not diarrhea, it is a cold, or vomiting, or something else. On this particular day, she had a bad throat infection and nothing stayed in the tummy – this, after a healthy period of 3 days that followed a bad diarrhea period! As soon as we were through interviewing her, she told us, she would be heading to a hospital, and she did not even have money which she needed to buy medicine bottles. Kudos to our government for free health-care for children under five, but the same children miss out on medicine because they do not have Ksh10 for a medicine bottle. I made a note to give her Shs200 after the interview.
The five year old girl appeared rather healthy, but the mother told us that sometimes they go for days without food; how could she look so healthy? All this while, her husband was seated on the bed, the only bed in the room (okay, so who sleeps where?). He was quiet, his head between his hands and I caught him nodding a couple of times. Who could blame him? He had a bad hang-over, a result of a kill-me-quick brews available at any time of the day in the slums. Mututho, over to you sir! I dare you to go into Mathare Valley and arrest the brewers and the drinkers for breaking every law in your set of laws. AS IF! The husband, who finally shook himself to talk to us, fetches water for the richer slum dwellers for which he gets paid five shillings for every 20ltr container. The only problem is, he first takes care of his thirsty throat before either feeding himself, and his family. They are lucky if he has ten shillings left on him at the end of the day. He, of course, expects to eat and sleep – rent is Ksh300. The wife, so to say, is the sole bread winner, but she is unable to wash clothes for Eastleigh residents for Ksh300 everyday as sometimes there is no one to leave her two little ones with!
They do not have a stove or any utensils. How do they cook, I hear you ask? Well, they don’t, they use the services of the local ‘hotelier’. The food is about Ksh30 per plate – on a good day, she will get two plates but usually, a plate is enough for everybody in the family – and that’s all they get for 24hours. A cup of porridge is Ksh10 – that is what her kids have for breakfast while she has nothing.
Soon as the wife was off to the hospital with the little one on the back and the bigger on in tow, shoe-less, the husband took us to his local ‘pub’. The pub is own by an elderly lady, and it doubles as her resident. The bar owner’s English would have made my English teacher very proud. Her house on the outside is like any other slum house, but on the inside, one needed to ‘acclimatize’. It was clean and well lit, with a good set of sofas accessorized with table clothes, at the corner was a good bed with clean bed clothes, she had a colour TV, a coffee table, a Meco gas cooker etc etc. She was obviously doing well, no surprise there as she told us in a day, she sells about four drums of muratina wine. Each glass is Ksh10, I went dizzy trying to do the math, but at the end of the day, she has more or less Ksh3,000 profit. Do the math. Off the record, she told me she has properties and other businesses outside the slum; she also told me that there was no way she would like the slum life to be done with – now there is a surprise, NOT! How many Kenyans make Ksh3,000 on a daily basis? May I remind you that it is tax free?
For the visual story, you would need to keep tuned here, the documentary was commissioned by an international news media, I will let you know when it airs in a few months. But did I learn anything in the slums? Certainly. That I need to appreciate more what I have and stop whining at the little things in life. That there are some people who will never let slums ‘die’, it is their BIG daily bread. That you could get killed for Ksh200 and your killer will not blink an eye. Did we, as journalists, think we did anything to help? Well, I gave her Ksh200, so at least she got her baby’s medicines that day, and they probably had two plates of food that day. My colleague gave them food items worth over Ksh2,000 – but someone told us not to be surprised if the husband sold it to get some drinking money. My colleague also paid school fees for the five year old, promising to always do so but directly to the school, but I could not help wondering whether, on hungry days, the child would be able to learn. I hope the documentary, when it is aired, would highlight the plight, but then, hundreds of other documentaries have been aired, I do not know whether they have made any difference. Some of the locals were obviously disgruntled as they kept telling us that, all we do is Film! Film! Film! But they never see any results of the filming. Maybe it is true, but my consolation is, because we went to film that day, that family did not sleep hungry, their daughter got her medication, they got food for a month (here is hoping), the other child would go to school. It is not the big donor money that makes the difference (cue Kibera and the NGOs that milk the cash cow that it is in the name of helping), it is the small things that matter, like targeting individual families. Like my friend Nduchu Ngugi told me recently, Kenya should not be on the Guinness Book of Records for harboring the biggest slum on this side of the continent!
Let us all try and do something, however small!
We drove to Mlango Kubwa, the access point to Mathare Valley, and waited in the car for the ‘Mathare Valley fixer’, who arrived within five minutes accompanied by four young men who would be our security in the slum. The more the merrier, I thought as I shook their hands and introduced myself. Although this was told to me off record, you can only get into the slum in the company of a slum veteran. Being born and growing up in the slums does not necessarily make you a ‘veteran’, but you would have to be a feared ‘slummer’ with clout and reputation of sorts. I could guess what ‘feared’ meant, but courage to ask them what they did for a living failed me.
And so we were off, sandwiched between our ‘security personnel’, going down the valley. Predictably, we attracted a lot of attention. The foreign journalist was a White man; little children, the youth, old people, all shouted ‘hawayu’ to him. At first, he did not realize ‘hawayu’ was our version of ‘how are you’, but he proved a fast learner. A few unprintable words were directed at me, but I was in no position to protest.
As soon as we started descending into the valley, I knew I should have asked about the dress code. The open sewers welcomed my poor sandals-clad feet. It was too late to turn back and get some sensible shoes, so I soldiered on; stepping on liquid concoction I did not want to imagine the recipe stopped bothering me after a hundred meters. The deeper into the valley we walked, the more aware I became about my dress-code. You see, when I was leaving the house, I was dressed for a hot day ahead. My black top was see through but covered all my essentials, my skinny jeans were visibly new, my Erica Badu head-gear was meant to prevent direct heat from the scorching sun (and my locks need a hair doctor asap), and my stunners are rather expensive. I looked at the people around me, many of them barefooted, more with dirty feet and faces, even more with tattered clothes. WHAT WAS I THINKING, WEARING LIKE THIS???
But, as soon as I asked myself that question, I realized really, apart from wearing sensible shoes, there was no other way I could have dressed, that would have been pretentious. I am not Bruce Parry of the Tribe, I am under no obligation to live like they do, but it didn’t make me feel better about myself.
My wardrobe malfunctions (for lack of better word) were forgotten as soon as we delved into the slum epicenter. The stench! OMG! At first, I thought someone must have let off a really bad stinker, but then it went on for too long. One ‘body guard’ must have noticed my folded face; he casually told me to get used to it. That is what slums smell like! Not an easy thing to do, but I soldiered on. Soon after we entered the house of our target family which, if that were possible, smelled worse – my eyes started watering; it could have been from the tragedy in my face, or from the smell. It was like somebody had done a poop and didn’t bother to remove it, but I soon found out it was because the house was next to the ‘public’ toilet. The toilet was a tiny room with a hole and a drum dug into the middle of the ground. A pipe has been fixed to transport the poop and all its glory into the river – the same river those without Ksh5 for the bathroom use as a communal bath. To use the toilet, you pay five shillings; for tissue, there are some old newspapers for that. Next to the toilet is the guy who sells water – yes, water for drinking. I couldn’t help thinking how dirty their water containers were on the outside, what were the chances that they were cleaner inside? For a 20ltr container, you needed five shillings. Next to the water ‘depot’ was the bathroom – five shillings to use that, thank you very much. The people who run these businesses could potentially make a lot of money, but the oxymoron of the situation, if I may, was that the bathroom landlord was the dirtiest of them all.
Back to our ‘target family’. A woman who could have been anywhere between 18 and 50 years old. I guessed she was in her early twenties, but poverty had obviously ravaged her youth. She had two children; a five year old who should have been in school, and a nine month old who whined and cried constantly. We later learned that the little one was unwell; apparently, she gets ill every three weeks if she is lucky. Usually, every week she had a sort of disease – if it is not diarrhea, it is a cold, or vomiting, or something else. On this particular day, she had a bad throat infection and nothing stayed in the tummy – this, after a healthy period of 3 days that followed a bad diarrhea period! As soon as we were through interviewing her, she told us, she would be heading to a hospital, and she did not even have money which she needed to buy medicine bottles. Kudos to our government for free health-care for children under five, but the same children miss out on medicine because they do not have Ksh10 for a medicine bottle. I made a note to give her Shs200 after the interview.
The five year old girl appeared rather healthy, but the mother told us that sometimes they go for days without food; how could she look so healthy? All this while, her husband was seated on the bed, the only bed in the room (okay, so who sleeps where?). He was quiet, his head between his hands and I caught him nodding a couple of times. Who could blame him? He had a bad hang-over, a result of a kill-me-quick brews available at any time of the day in the slums. Mututho, over to you sir! I dare you to go into Mathare Valley and arrest the brewers and the drinkers for breaking every law in your set of laws. AS IF! The husband, who finally shook himself to talk to us, fetches water for the richer slum dwellers for which he gets paid five shillings for every 20ltr container. The only problem is, he first takes care of his thirsty throat before either feeding himself, and his family. They are lucky if he has ten shillings left on him at the end of the day. He, of course, expects to eat and sleep – rent is Ksh300. The wife, so to say, is the sole bread winner, but she is unable to wash clothes for Eastleigh residents for Ksh300 everyday as sometimes there is no one to leave her two little ones with!
They do not have a stove or any utensils. How do they cook, I hear you ask? Well, they don’t, they use the services of the local ‘hotelier’. The food is about Ksh30 per plate – on a good day, she will get two plates but usually, a plate is enough for everybody in the family – and that’s all they get for 24hours. A cup of porridge is Ksh10 – that is what her kids have for breakfast while she has nothing.
Soon as the wife was off to the hospital with the little one on the back and the bigger on in tow, shoe-less, the husband took us to his local ‘pub’. The pub is own by an elderly lady, and it doubles as her resident. The bar owner’s English would have made my English teacher very proud. Her house on the outside is like any other slum house, but on the inside, one needed to ‘acclimatize’. It was clean and well lit, with a good set of sofas accessorized with table clothes, at the corner was a good bed with clean bed clothes, she had a colour TV, a coffee table, a Meco gas cooker etc etc. She was obviously doing well, no surprise there as she told us in a day, she sells about four drums of muratina wine. Each glass is Ksh10, I went dizzy trying to do the math, but at the end of the day, she has more or less Ksh3,000 profit. Do the math. Off the record, she told me she has properties and other businesses outside the slum; she also told me that there was no way she would like the slum life to be done with – now there is a surprise, NOT! How many Kenyans make Ksh3,000 on a daily basis? May I remind you that it is tax free?
For the visual story, you would need to keep tuned here, the documentary was commissioned by an international news media, I will let you know when it airs in a few months. But did I learn anything in the slums? Certainly. That I need to appreciate more what I have and stop whining at the little things in life. That there are some people who will never let slums ‘die’, it is their BIG daily bread. That you could get killed for Ksh200 and your killer will not blink an eye. Did we, as journalists, think we did anything to help? Well, I gave her Ksh200, so at least she got her baby’s medicines that day, and they probably had two plates of food that day. My colleague gave them food items worth over Ksh2,000 – but someone told us not to be surprised if the husband sold it to get some drinking money. My colleague also paid school fees for the five year old, promising to always do so but directly to the school, but I could not help wondering whether, on hungry days, the child would be able to learn. I hope the documentary, when it is aired, would highlight the plight, but then, hundreds of other documentaries have been aired, I do not know whether they have made any difference. Some of the locals were obviously disgruntled as they kept telling us that, all we do is Film! Film! Film! But they never see any results of the filming. Maybe it is true, but my consolation is, because we went to film that day, that family did not sleep hungry, their daughter got her medication, they got food for a month (here is hoping), the other child would go to school. It is not the big donor money that makes the difference (cue Kibera and the NGOs that milk the cash cow that it is in the name of helping), it is the small things that matter, like targeting individual families. Like my friend Nduchu Ngugi told me recently, Kenya should not be on the Guinness Book of Records for harboring the biggest slum on this side of the continent!
Let us all try and do something, however small!
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