‘I lost the will to live. I used my last few shillings to buy rat poison, laid down on the bare ground with my baby at my breast and let the events of my short life run through my mind. I was freezing too: it gets very cold at night in these tin huts. I just couldn’t see why it had all gone so wrong, when so many of my schoolfriends had done well. Why didn’t I finish school? Why had I had so much bad luck? Why did life punish me so much? Why was everything so unfair? As I thought through it all, I started praying and continued praying half the night. And gradually the idea of taking my own life faded. Apart from anything else I remembered that to do so would be a sin in the eyes of God. Instead I decided I would let God decide when my time had come. It didn’t seem like it would be that far away anyhow. For the next few days I just sat here in the hut waiting to see what would happen. Eventually somebody knocked on the door. I was hardly able to get to my feet to open the door. There was a woman outside asking if she could do anything to help. She said she was from the Church. I could hardly believe it. She promised straight away to bring me a bed and something to eat. At least my baby and I would no longer have to sleep on the ground. I hadn’t seen the older girl, who was two by now, for ages. I simply hadn’t had the energy to go and pick her up from the kindergarten.
‘I was convinced that God had answered my prayers and from that day on my faith was stronger than ever. At night I would lie on my bed and pray, “Dear God, show me what I must do with my life. Give me the strength that my children and I might survive.” But all the time I was still getting thinner because I had so little to eat but still had to breastfeed the baby. Eventually the day came when I could no longer go on, but then a miracle happened: Pastor Elly came to me.’
At this point Pastor Elly himself joins in. ‘When I first came across Irene with her newborn child, I thought this woman is dying, she was so thin. She was little more than skin and bones. I came to see her several times, brought her food and told her about Solidarité and how they organised growing your own food in sacks.’
An aircraft drones overhead, drowning out even the noise of the metal beating outside. The little girl wants her mummy. Irene picks her up, sits her on her lap and continues:
‘Yes, when Pastor Elly came to me it was the second time God had reached out his hand to me. God had heard my prayers and once again he had sent someone. I was so grateful I listened to every word Pastor Elly said. He told me about these Solidarité people and their sack gardens. He told me that if I signed up he would help me to plant the first bag, because he could see that I was still too weak to fill a hundred-kilogram sack with stones and earth on my own. The Solidarité people even waived the purchase price of the sack because I was so poor and weak. Normally you have to buy the sack and find the soil to fill it. You have to show you are willing to make an effort, then they give you the seedlings and instructions on how to grow them. Pastor Elly promised me that I would soon be able to grow my own vegetables so I said I would work at it as hard as I was able. I also found a place in the church community, got to know more people and for the first time I was able to talk about my illness and no longer felt so isolated.’
I ask Irene how much her life has changed. Her face immediately brightens and she gives a laugh. ‘Hey, my life has changed totally. I have a garden. I make two to three hundred shillings a week and have more than enough vegetables to eat. I even managed to save a bit and started up the mandazi business. Every morning I get up at five to bake the mandazi, then I sell them, and afterwards work on my sack garden.
I ask how much rent she pays and am amazed to hear she pays a thousand shillings, nearly €10. Irene is surprised in turn that I am so shocked and says: ‘Corinne, when I was so thin and ill, my child nearly died. It was so cold in here we shivered all night. The doctors at the clinic said that unless I could keep my child a bit warmer she wouldn’t survive. My landlord took pity on me and installed electricity free. Now I have a light bulb and that provides just a little bit of heat too. But that’s why I have to pay nearly double the normal rent.’
I find it hard to believe that a single light bulb can provide any heat, but then Pastor Elly tells me it’s a special bulb, used to help chicken eggs hatch, and gives out more warmth than normal.
To me, Irene still looks so frail that I can hardly believe she manages to tend all her veggie sacks on her own. But she says she’s recovered so well over the past nine months that she manages it quite easily. Her will to live astonishes me.
Later, when she’s showing us her garden, Irene says she’s going to have to replace some of the sacks as the heat outdoors means they don’t last much more than a year or so. She doesn’t keep it as tidy as Anne. There are bits of paper and other debris lying between some of the white sacks. But she stands there proudly, showing off the green veg growing out of them.
Before we take our leave I ask Irene if she’s content with her lot. ‘Oh yes,’ she says with a much stronger voice than she used when she was starting out on her story, ‘I’m very happy. I’ve forgiven the man who infected me. I’m dreaming of going back to school and getting an education. Maybe I’ll manage to find some evening classes and learn how to do something that makes more money.’
Yet again, I find myself amazed at the hand fate deals out to some people. This young woman is still striving to better herself, despite the relatively meagre existence she leads. She’s not even dreaming of a nicer house, a television or some other material goods: she’s dreaming of an education.
Doreen’s indomitable survival instinct
By now it’s become really hot and our tummies are rumbling. The woman from Solidarité knows a place here in the Kibera slum where we can get something to eat before we go on to our final visit. It’s a simple but clean little snack room that serves only traditional African food. I’m delighted. At last a proper African meal eaten the proper African way: with our fingers. We’re the only white people present and draw a lot of attention. I trust the food and it tastes delicious. When I leave Nairobi, I will look back on it as the best meal I had, served in the country’s biggest slum!
Fed and watered, we set off on our way to the last interviewee, who lives in yet another part of the slum, called Gatwekera. Our feet are sweating in our wellington boots as we plod along the alleyways amid crowds of children smiling and waving at us, none of them in school uniform. Some of them are just sitting and playing on the bare ground. Lots of them seem to have colds and their noses are either dripping or bunged up. There are far more of them running around everywhere than there were earlier so I guess school must be over for the day.
We pass a man sitting on a cardboard box under an umbrella repairing other brollies and shoes. His legs are stretched out in front of him, his feet in socks full of holes. But he seems happy enough. Everywhere you look it’s the same picture: everybody doing whatever they can to earn a few shillings. Here there’s somebody mending something, over there is somebody sharpening knives, and there’s somebody selling stuff. It’s hardly right to say everybody here just sits around and does nothing.
We get back to the train tracks and this time walk in the opposite direction. Here too there are lots more people than there were earlier. After walking for about twenty minutes we climb up over the embankment and leave the tracks behind us. I can see the white sacks already in the distance, all laid out in orderly rows, veg hanging out of them. And there isn’t a heap of junk to be seen nearby. There’s nobody working on them at present, as it’s still lunchtime, and in any case it’s far too hot.
I have to be careful not to fall into several ditches filled with filthy water on the way. We take a left turn, then a right and all of a sudden I’m not sure where we are any more. All I can see is an endless vista of tin huts, a heap of garbage with a brown chicken on top of it, laying an egg as we pass. Every step we take is watched by dozens of children, and there are washing lines everywhere with colourful children’s clothing hanging on them.
We come across a narrow little path flanked by m
ud huts behind a drainage ditch full of dirty water. The pastor stops at an open door and shouts inside. Then a large, stocky woman with two children in her arms appears and asks us inside. She introduces herself as Doreen. The room is bigger than either Anne’s or Irene’s and has got colourful flowery carpets on the ground and clothing hanging from wires running round the walls. There’s a crocheted tablecloth on the table and in the middle of it a mobile phone, albeit a very basic one. How crazy is that? I ask myself when people here have barely enough to live on. But here we even have proper wooden armchairs to sit on. One of the kids looks at me, this big white woman, and suddenly bursts into tears. It’s the first time in hours that I’ve actually heard a child here cry. It something I remember from before: in Africa there are kids everywhere but you rarely hear them crying. A neighbour comes in and takes the crying child out.
Doreen is very different to either Anne or Irene. An attractive woman, she seems very self-confident and bursting with strength. She is forty-two years old, HIV-positive and a widow. She has given birth to seven children. She has striking high cheekbones and her eyes sparkle as she tells me her story. Her hair is cut short and is already grey at the temples. She has a sensual mouth and knows the impression she makes. She doesn’t look at all sick, which is obviously because she is taking anti-AIDS drugs. She comes from Bondo, near Lake Victoria. She got married young and had her first child, a girl, at the age of seventeen. She has a strong, clear voice and when she gets angry you’d think she was spoiling for a fight.
She arrived in Nairobi’s Kibera slum back in 2004. She tells me how it happened. ‘After my husband died in February of 2004 I didn’t know what to do, where to go. We had lived in his village since we got married and I’d had six children by him. Then suddenly, when our youngest was just two years old, he took ill. He continued to deteriorate and I took him to hospital. That was when I found out he had AIDS. They tested me too and diagnosed that I was also HIV-positive. A few months later he died and I had to bring his body back home to be buried. That cost a lot of money and I was left with next to nothing.
‘His family refused to help me or the children. This was partly because of my infection but partly just because with my husband dead my link to their clan was gone. I couldn’t go back to my own family because both my parents were dead and all my sisters were married into other families. I had nobody to belong to. That was when I realised my old life was simply over, gone, and I had to start a new life. The family gave me three months to sort myself out.’
As long as I’ve been in Kenya, I keep hearing the same story from different women. Even back in the days when I lived among the Samburu it was the custom that as soon as a girl got married she belonged to her husband’s clan. Sometimes she wasn’t even allowed to see her own family again. I was shocked at first and put it down to an old Samburu nomadic tradition. And then there was the fact that they lived in the wilderness with no means of communication or transport. But I’ve since come to realise that it’s the same everywhere you go in Kenya. I can’t help thinking that without the women, the whole country would go to pot, yet time and time again it’s the women who lose out.
Doreen continues her story. ‘At the end of the three months I set off for Nairobi because I had heard I could get a job here washing and cleaning. I ended up in Kibera and met my second husband in a pub. He lived here in this house. I told him I was HIV before I brought all my children here with me. But he didn’t believe it and said he loved me anyway and wanted me to come and live with him. I looked fit and well so there was no way I could be sick and anyway he didn’t really believe the AIDS virus existed. He simply didn’t want to know. So that’s how I ended up here in this house. Before long I was pregnant again, but I lost the baby.
‘Obviously we were all a bit cramped living here in one room. As time went on I would see less and less of my husband. Meanwhile I kept hearing that one or another of his old girlfriends had died. I mentioned it to him and asked him to get tested for AIDS so he could get medicine. But he refused even to talk about it. Shortly after he took ill himself. But even then he wouldn’t go to hospital or take any medicine. Only two years after burying my first husband, the second one died too, in February 2006. Now it was hard for me to get enough to feed us all and pay the two thousand shillings a month rent. My eldest daughter got married and moved out. She’s twenty-five now. I couldn’t make enough money doing washing for other people so I started making changa, the local beer.’
That took me straight back to Barsaloi, where my mother-in-law also used to brew this beer. It was a foul-tasting brown liquid, but it was strong and cheap. She would always get drunk easily and become rather merry. I have to smile at this part of Doreen’s story.
‘So I would sell beer and make good money out of it. I would hide the bottles under the bed because it’s illegal. It’s against the law to make this sort of beer in Kenya and even more so to sell it. But I had no choice. We needed food and money for the older children so they could go to school. My customers would come here to drink. That could be dangerous. One day I realised that my children were becoming too acquainted with alcohol. Even when I wasn’t here customers would come and my ten-year-old daughter would sell them beer. I worried that maybe the police would come and arrest the children. My instinct as a mother told me I had to give it up.
‘During this time, however, I got to know another man. He moved in, did a bit of work from time to time and would support me. I told him I had AIDS but he didn’t believe me either because I looked so healthy. Obviously I was pleased to have a man supporting me not least because a woman on her own in the slum is likely to be robbed.’
I can’t get over the attitude of the men here and it’s starting to make me angry. But it seems to be the case that the men don’t worry about the dangers of infection and just live their lives as if there’s no such thing. But then, when I look at Doreen, I can’t believe she’s carrying this deadly virus either. And there’s something about her that fascinates me. She’s so jolly, so full of life, and it makes me feel good to be in her company. When she’s talking she waves her arms all over the place, quite the opposite of Irene, who just sat there with her hands in her lap.
Doreen is talking again. ‘I got pregnant by this man too.’ She points to the little girl sitting on her knee. ‘I saved up money for the clinic to try to make sure that my daughter didn’t catch the virus. But it didn’t work out. When I went into labour I set off with my neighbour on the long journey to the hospital. But we only got so far when my waters broke and I realised I was about to give birth. I had no choice but to bring my daughter into the world lying on the pavement. My neighbour helped me. Then I had to decide whether to take the newborn child on to the hospital or just to go home with her. Back home I had hungry children who could do with the money being spent on food for them. And in any case I had nothing to wrap the newborn up in. I felt dirty and weak, and in the end I just turned round and came home, with the result that my youngest daughter is infected too.’
For the first time Doreen’s voice goes quiet. It occurs to me too that the right thing to have done would have been to carry on to the hospital. On the other hand, I can’t imagine how a woman of over forty years of age who’s just given birth on the pavement could be expected to trudge several kilometres on foot to a hospital. Back in Switzerland she’d have been in a clean hospital bed, looked after and taken care of. Most women are exhausted after giving birth and need to rest for several days.
In Doreen’s case it was different. She came back home, and the children cooked dinner so she could have a bit of a rest. ‘When you’re really in trouble,’ she tells me, ‘heaven always sends somebody or something to help. In this case it was a good thing that the baby came on a Friday. It meant I could rest over the weekend. My children looked after me and my boyfriend cooked. By Monday I was ready again to take over my duties in the kitchen and the next week I was able to start taking in washing again. Obviously it’s hard on your back when you hav
e to bend over all day washing dirty clothes by hand, but I’m just grateful there are still jobs like this to be had because so few people in the city have washing machines.
‘Not long after I gave birth, however, chaos broke out and things started to go wrong again in my life. One day my boyfriend simply didn’t come back. I still have no idea where he might be or even if he’s still alive. All of a sudden there were no jobs any more and people were fighting and there was blood flowing. Nobody trusted anybody else any more. That was when I first heard about Solidarité. I heard that there was this charity organisation handing out food vouchers in another part of the slum. We had been starving for days, so I went along.
‘There was a huge queue of people waiting. When I finally got to the front the woman there told me I wasn’t entitled to a food ticket because I wasn’t local. I could hardly believe she could turn me and my hungry children down. We could have used the vouchers to go and buy six kilos of maize meal in the shops, as well as lard and other essentials. I came home realising there was nothing left for me to do but beg. But a few days later it was the turn of our part of the slum to get the vouchers, and this time they gave me some. I enjoyed the fact that the woman who handed them to me was the same woman who had turned me down a couple of days earlier.
‘Well, that was my first encounter with Solidarité. I still had no idea about these so-called “sack gardens”. It was only a couple of weeks later that a man came and told me about them. He invited me to come along to one of their weekly meetings to hear more. The whole project seemed great to me and I used the money I got the next time I took washing in to buy some empty sacks and began filling them up with rocks and soil. When I had done all that, they gave me the seedlings. Since then my life has been transformed. Before, when I had no work, I would just sit here at home, even though I wanted to work. There just weren’t enough jobs. Now, I still take in washing, but on top of that I have a guaranteed source of income. I have enough veg for the family and I can sell the rest for three hundred shillings a week. And because I’ve worked so hard at it, I’ve now been allowed to join the “chicken project”, which means we also have eggs and chicken to eat.’
Africa, My Passion Page 8