Kate left for the US Wednesday night and everyone, mums, girls, dogs had to come out to hug her and wish her farewell and safe travels. You’d have thought she was leaving permanently, not for just 5 weeks! She was sad to be going without at least a brief visit with all the boarding school girls, most of whom weren’t back yet. But five of them had already made it home before she left. So I, the five boarding school girls who were back and both puppies accompanied Kate to the airport for a fond send-off.
Thursday for the first time I was “in charge”. My first official act was to take two of the boarding school girls to the doctor at Nairobi Women’s Hospital in Rongai, down the road from Kiserian. Mr. Kinyua drove us there on his way to a meeting at one of the schools. His meeting was supposed to be at 9 am, but the girls didn’t even make it out to the car until about 9:50. On our way to the hospital, we dropped one of the mums off at a shop in Kiserian where they make sofas. Kate wanted 4 extra sofas for the houses because, with all the boarding school girls here, there’s not enough seating in any of them. She later reported that two or three of the sofas will be ready by Saturday, and that for about $100 each.
Kinyua dropped the three of us off at the hospital and the girls signed in as new patients, having never been there before. The registration form they had to complete was interesting because these girls are orphans. They had to list a “next of kin” and ended up listing me, relationship, their “mum”. That was a bit of a strange feeling for me! Anyhow, it wasn’t long before they each saw the doctor. Then, before any lab tests could be done or prescriptions doled out, I first had to pay. One of the girls has digestive issues and got a prescription for Nexium. To get the prescription, we turned in the sliip at the pharmacy where they wrote the price down. Then it was back to the cashier to pay before they would fill the prescription. The other girl needed lab tests to finalize the doctor’s diagnosis. So we waited while the specimens were collected and while the lab work was done. Finally she went back with test results in hand to see the doctor again. Finally several prescriptions were issued. Total cash paid for doctors, lab tests and prescriptions, about $60.
We were done by noon with the doctors, so I called Mr. Kinyua to learn that, although he was more than an hour late for his meeting at the school, it had just barely started. It’s known here as “Africa time”. So he suggested we take a matatu back to Kiserian where he would call and have someone from Hekima Place drive down and pick us up.
A matatu is sort of an 14 person van that runs like a bus along a certain route and into which typically 17-20 people are squeezed. My prior observations of them is that the drivers are crazy aggressive driving heavily loaded on these really bad roads. And this was my first experience actually riding in a matatu. The first one we saw looked to be full and drove off without us. The second appeared to be equally full, but stopped and we were waved inside. There were two people operating this matatu, a driver and a guy who directed passengers on and off and took the fares. He directed the girls to squeeze into the back. I was waved into the already occupied passenger seat in the front where the man who was sitting there holding a child accommodatingly moved toward the middle so I could share his seat. He got out before very long, but others got in, so I shared the seat the entire way to Kiserian. When folks wanted to get off, they banged on the roof of the van - and people were constantly getting on and off. After a couple of stops, we picked up three traditionally dressed Maasai men who were duly crammed into the back. Not long afterwards, the van stopped for apparent mechanical issues and we had to vacate the front seat. The seat as folded up and the guts of the van exposed, whereupon the driver and fare-taker guy proceeded to pull pieces of something that looked like a fan belt out of the engine area and toss them on the side of the road. While I was standing by the side of the road waiting for this operation to be completed, the three Maasai stared holes in me in a not particularly friendly fashion - I guess old Mazingu (white) ladies don’t often ride matatus with them. I would have loved to whip my camera out and take a photo of them, but was afraid I wouldn’t survive the experience! When the guys running the matatu were satisfied that they had all the belt pieces, they folded the seat back down, we got back in, and off we went. Apparently that belt was nothing essential! Before we arrived in Kiserian, the fare guy tapped me on the shoulder to pay for the ride - about $1.10 for the three of us.
We got into Kiserian and then walked from where the matatu let us off to the KCB (whatever that is) where we found the Hekima van and Mum Elizabeth. She then drove us back to Hekima Place since there aren’t regular matatus routes along the road to Hekima. Thank goodness the girls were with me. I had no idea how to get to KCB from where we got out of the van. Not to mention having no idea of how to negotiate travel by matatu!
Exciting news! Maggie, the girl we sponsor at Hekima Place, returned yesterday afternoon from boarding school and she and I had a nice reunion. She is at Excell School located on the other side of Nairobi from us. It is great to have the chance to catch up on all her activities and aspirations. Excell is near the airport and has one of the few programs in the country in aviation. Maggie thinks she wants ultimately to go into aviation management.
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