And here we go again. Have left you on a tantalising cliffhanger halfway through Friday. Pics will be coming as soon as I can sort out the camera. Exciting news for MAma Biasharaphiles is that we will also be going video on this trip. Africa speaks ! Hopefully. Anyway, Diary one goes very much like this ... Monday 3rd I am in meltdown. The day in the Mama Biashara Emporium has been hectic, I am convinced I have forgotton many important things, we dont have a home in Nairobi so I am relying on the kindness of strangers (well, a lovely friend of Felistas) and by the time I return to the shop having walked Katherine (a lovely lady who has two prosthetic legs, kidney problems and a morbid fear of walking home in the dark – a trip that takes about an hour with her) home I am on the brink of running away to an Italian hilltop never to be seen again except by gnarled locals and goats. I am saved by the sight f my sister Amanda, resplendent in burnt orange and flowing Titian locks. She is not a thick woman and I fear I might have snapped something, so ferocious was my hug. She is like a tall thin, well dressed lifeboat in the storm of my day. We retire to the shop where she listens to me blub and applies Archers Peach Schnapps. As I list my woes and hear them actually spoken out loud I am overcome with the urge to smack myself. I man up and she helps me pack everything into a cab. Tuesday 4th The wonderful Helen Cox, onetime customer, now regular saviour of Mama Biashara arrives at 7am and drives me to the airport. This is a glorious thing to have. I am amazed to clear security even with the overpowering whiff of Stilton and Camenbert emanating from my carry-on. Alan and Lynita at the lovely Wildebeest Eco Camp (book your holidays now) suffer from cheese withdrawal and I am their occasional dealer.The Nairobi flight is obviously going down in BAs priorities as we now leave from a basement gate and are bussed to the aircraft. Where I am seated beside two american blokes of the type normally seen pulling articulated trucks with their eyelashes. There is much hoo ha on arrival – V cameras and singing. Not for me. Some bloke in a ministers frock who had travelled First Class. As Amanda would say … grrrrrrr Wednesday 5th I matatu my way to the bank in Kawangware and meet Doris. Doris is in crisis. There is a huge family problem and their house and little bit of land are about to be repossessed. On Friday. Doris is so stressed she is starting to have what sounds like transient eschaemic attacks. IN many ways Kenyan banks (well, Equity) are marvellous. They will only lend you what you earn. You earn 30,000 then they will lend you 30,000.If you pay that back (over ONE YEAR) then when you next apply for loan they will lend you more.VERY long story short, we sort things out for Doris, final paperwork to be done the next day. Doris is in fronds. We go to Java House and get her a vat of soothing fresh ginger lemon and honey. We get down to a Mama Biashara catch up. I bring out the jotters to make it an Official Meeting. The waterproof nappies (picture coming when I discover why the new flash card I have just put in the camera is telling me it is write protected) have been a massive success in Mathare and Dandora (two of the absolutely worst slum areas). Probably close to a hundred women are now in the nappy business and it is increasing all the time. Or it was. The last time Doris was in Mathare doing a training day she was threatened by men with knives who informed her Mama B was not welcome in the area and that the women did not require training as these men had jobs for them. Turns out the jobs the men have for the women is as . dealers of Mathare/Dandoras new route to happiness … crystal meth. If it wasnt so horrific it would be funny – an ex university professor of chemistry started the business and the drug is being pushed across the most troubled areas. Breaking Bad Nairobi. The men use the women to sell it – having got them dependant on it first, of course. The big gangs are using it as a moneymaker. There is nothing we can do in the fac of something like that. Except offer women way out. So we have left information with some of the key women in the areas that if any woman wants to leave, Mama Biashara will help her start a business wherever she goes. We agree Doris will go to hospital in the morning to get checked out as soon as we clear the bank paperwork. She has taken medical insurance and has a card that allows her £400 worth of outpatient treatment in one year. SO she is going to what should be a proper hospital. Thursday 6th David picks Doris up first thing and then collects me. Driving though Kileleshwa (where my host Jane stays) we are stopped by the police and interrogated as to why a car like this is in Kileleshwa … what are we doing ...this is a car for the slums, not a car for Kileleshwa. I know from my last run in with a cop who didnt like the car that this is not a time for me to get stroppy so I shut up except to say I am living here and David is my friend. We go. I fume. I call Margaret, owner of the Small Slum Palace in Dagoretti Corner. She says I can move back. I am SO happy. The bank goes as well as can be expected and I leave Doris to finish the paperwork with the lawyer (kerrching). I go to the market to start buying gorgeousness for the Big Christmas Push in the Mama B Emporium. Shopping by Skype will be on offer. Meanwhile, now at the hospital, Doriss day is not getting better. Having told of her symptoms - -fatigue, one episode of dysphagia, constant headaches – the hospital says she needs a thyroid test, a liver test and a CT scan because they think she has epilepsy. And she needs to be taken in private ambulance for the scan – despite the fact she walked in. Doris calls me. I explode. Doris leaves. The hospital is very angry. I think they had worked out that her insurance would just cover her for a penis reconstruction and a month of chemotherapy. Meanwhile I have arranged a medical clinic and some Mama Bs Patent Raincatcher delivery with the maasai on Monday. David is hungry and so we go to Prestige so he can eat. FRIDAY 7th David arrives and we pack the car with my stuff. I am sure Jane will be glad her spare room will stop smelling of Stilton and Camembert. We go to Prestige where I get a couple of £2.50 blankets (really nice, quite soft) and then I go to the little mitumba market in Kibera where I get a couple of sheets, a big bath towel and two small towels for £8 from a very sweet girl with a baby dribbling down her neck. I move back to my small slum palace. Amazingly (and touchingly) the cat hears my voice nd comes belting into the big house where I am sitting with my landladies to sit on my knee. We head to town as we have a meeting with Doris at one of Mama Bs Big Success Stories.
Posted on: Sun, 09 Nov 2014 10:39:50 +0000