Nov 26,2008. Today we travelled to Nairobi again, this time for a lunch and meeting with the Advisory Ctte for Kenya for Bethany Kids. They were an interesting mix of individuals (MD, professor of law, criminal investigator (special interest in ocean piracy!), and an architect). Ivan presented a case for providing help for the children of Joytown and was received well. Next step is for this group to approach the appropriate government officials to try and persuade them to allow this to proceed. We’ll see!
We had lunch at the Java House, a franchise much like Starbucks. Food was excellent and I was able to enjoy more, fresh mango juice! I am continually amazed at the determination, genuine concern, and energy of Ivan for Bethany Kids.
In addition to this meeting, we visited a parent’s support group, newly established in September of this year by a parent of a child with spina bifida who had surgery in Kijabe several years ago. The child is now 14 years old and doing very well. She was the product of a teenage pregnancy which cost the mother the rest of her education at the time; she would return and complete her high school education some years later and went on to study social work, all paid for by doing bead work! As a result of her experience she felt the need to establish a support group; she had been misinformed by others that her child’s spina bifida was the result of the fact that hers was a single-mother pregnancy and she had considered termination at some point during her pregnancy and spina bifida was the punishment! It was understandable that when she was eventually correctly informed at Kijabe that this was nonsense and her child’s condition could have been prevented by prenatal folic acid that she would want to inform others, including married women and those with teen pregnancies like hers. So, with a $1000.00 gift from someone in the US she rented a place in the slum area of Nairobi where she lives, and sought out other parents. In the past few months they have provided information to these parents and started to think of ways to become self-sufficient, such as beadwork, dressmaking, internet café, etc. We bought a few items to encourage them on and spent 2hours chatting about achievements, ideas for self-sufficiency and their dreams for even better things for their children. Another hopeful moment in the unlikeliest of places!
To get there we drove through one of the big slum areas of Nairobi; wow, it is actually beyond my ability to describe, other than to say abject poverty takes on a whole new meaning for me! It is an area with drug-resistant HIV in the prostitution business prevalent in all slum areas. We were told to keep our windows closed, as anything in the car was considered fair game as we negotiated the heavy pedestrian traffic! I could not bring myself to snapping pictures as it seemed so superficial in that setting. Enough said. And, we were informed, this was not the worst slum in Nairobi; there is another which I did photograph from the air which is said to be not only the worst, but also the largest slum area in all of Africa! (?Kebir)
We got back at 415, just in time for Ivan to meet with local hospital officials to update them on the progress of this and other ongoing visions.
I will describe the ride to and from Nairobi as it is an experience in itself. The route is (eventually) a 4-lane highway which has at many places a 4-foot cement median. Traffic is very dense and I don’t mean just vehicles. There seems to be an almost continuous line of people walking to and from, who knows where. Also, there are many donkeys along the route, some just grazing, others pulling home-made car-tire-wheeled carts, usually loaded with some produce (bananas, corn, cabbage, potatoes, firewood, etc) for the many side-of-the highway markets. Most of these markets are not all really beside the road, they are actually often set up on the shoulder of the road, within a foot or two of the asphalt. Others are off the road a bit more and selling things like sheepskins, whole or as hats, etc. There are also furniture markets, trinket markets, souvenir markets, etc.; It is a bit dizzying to see it all. And the pedestrians are continuously negotiating the highway traffic in very risky fashion; they all made it safely in my experience, including the scramble over the median! The vehicle traffic is a bit of a distraction to all of this of course. There are 2 speed limits in force. One is for private vehicles and is 100km/hr, the other is for PSVs (public service vehicles); the mass-transit vehicles are privately owned and known locally as matatas; most are Toyota minivans, adapted to carry probably 18 people or more, as far as I can tell. Most vehicles in Kenya are reconditioned vehicles from the Arab states, specially adapted for conditions in Africa with heavier suspension and fool-proof locks like I have never seen before. The matata passengers are truly packed in like sardines There are predetermined areas where they are continuously pulling off onto the shoulder of the road and dumping or loading passengers and their cargo which is sometimes tied to the top or the back windshield wiper. They waste little time at these express stops and slip back into the fast-lane traffic very daringly; just this week one of them overturned near Thika killing 7/9 passengers onboard at the time. They are often painted in bright home-fashioned decorative colors and given names like “The Hearse”, etc. Used to be that not only could these matatas carry passengers on the inside but many would hang to the outside as well; however, apparently there were so many mishaps, commonly including death, that rules now forbid this practice. The highway is also busy with trucks of many shapes, sizes, and descriptions hauling all matter of cargo from the local corn to oil, bananas, cabbage, petrol, etc. They are all spewing black diesel smoke and lumbering along as the road to Kijabe from Nairobi is almost continuously uphill, going from a elevation of about 5000 feet to over 8000 feet just before Kijabe. There is a descent then into Kijabe which is at 7000 feet. So, there is a need to pass these dirty, stinky things, while at the same time trying to avoid the pedestrian, matata, and donkey traffic negotiating the shoulders of the fast lane. Of course, this need to pass vehicles because they are in front of us happens in the city streets as well in Nairobi and the daredevil tactics are a little mind-boggling at times. Now I understand why I was warned that my greatest risk here was not malaria, etc, but traffic – no kidding!
And then there are the police blockades along the route, attended by heavily-armed (automatic guns), and assisted by tire-busting middle-of-the-road barriers! The idea is to stop mainly commercial traffic and check for permits, cargo, etc. and should something be out of order, it usually requires payment (in cash) on the spot! Just another of the widely-accepted corruption rampant throughout Kenya.
So, tonight we are invited to the Poenaru’s for supper again at 630. I imagine Ivan will provide an update to Dan on today’s negotiations.
Tomorrow, it’s off to Nairobi again, for Ivan. I will likely stick around Kijabe as I need to prepare a talk for some pastoral care students on end-of-life care for tomorrow afternoon. On Friday, or Monday, Ivan and I will do some house-calls on palliative patients.