I Built No Schools in Kenya

by Kirsten Drysdale

  ‘Yep!’ I say.

  ‘Very good,’ she says. ‘There is much more of Kenya for you to see still.’ Esther sets another place for Magda and she pours herself a cup of coffee. ‘Oh, asante sana. Well, we have no power again. Since last night. The whole street. Can I shower here? I have brought my things.’

  ‘Oh no, is the power out?’ Walt says, looking up at the light in the ceiling.

  ‘No, Dad, ours is fine,’ Fiona says, seemingly annoyed by the disruption. Magda is oblivious.

  ‘No, Walt, it is only my street,’ she says, through a mouthful of marmalade toast. ‘They were all day putting the new lines in, as it were, for the new fast internet. Kenya Power and Telkom. In the trench, you know, by the side of the road? And in the night the thieves came and dug it all up. For the copper. Yes.’

  ‘The copper?’ Ruby asks.

  ‘They sell it on the black market,’ Fiona explains. ‘To people who export it to China, apparently.’

  ‘Yes,’ Magda says. ‘It’s become a big problem. The government is talking about banning the trade.’

  ‘Have we had something stolen?’ Walt asks, getting more and more confused.

  ‘No, Dad, you’ve nothing to worry about.’ Fiona makes a point of changing the subject. ‘I think we should talk about getting you another dog!’

  ‘A dog?’ Marguerite says. A new family pet is evidently news to her.

  ‘A proper dog. A labrador or something.’

  ‘Labradors are lovely dogs. We’ve got two lovely labradors, don’t we, darling?’ says Walt, putting his hand on Marguerite’s wrist.

  ‘Yes, back in the UK we do, darling, but none here in Keen-ya,’ says Marguerite.

  ‘What do you mean “none here”? You silly old fool. They’re here, I can hear them barking!’ Walt looks at me and rolls his eyes at his batty wife. The neighbour’s dogs are yapping from over the fence. ‘I’ll go and call them in after breakfast.’

  ‘See? This is why we need a dog,’ Fiona says in a low voice to me and Ruby. ‘Every time he hears a bark, he wants to get up to find it. Or to find his guns to “shut the bloody thing up!” Then there’s hours of trying to bring him back around.’

  I have to admit, she’s right – things would be much simpler if there was an actual dog we could produce in these moments. Fiona has also read that pets can help reduce stress and anxiety in dementia patients, especially in those with a fondness for animals.

  That much was certainly true for my own grandmother. My mother swears that the miniature dachshund we gave her and convinced the nursing home to make a special allowance for, bought her at least an extra five years of life and happiness.

  ‘Oh! The KSPCA?’ says Magda, hitting the table for emphasis. ‘Yes, yes! The KSPCA. You should go to them. You know where they are? In Karen. On Langata Road. Just past the hospital.’

  ‘Who’s in hospital?’ says Walt.

  ‘No one, darling,’ says Marguerite. ‘Magda is telling us where to find a nice rescue dog.’

  ‘Yes, they are wonderful there. And they make sure the animals are all, you know, clean and have had their needles and all the rest of it.’

  ‘We’ll go down to the KSPCA today and see what they’ve got,’ says Fiona.

  ‘Well, I can’t go today – I’ve got bridge with Dolly!’ says Marguerite.

  I detect a hint of irritation. Ruby glances at me – she’s noticed it too.

  ‘Who’s Dolly?’ says Walt.

  ‘Dolly! You remember Dolly. My friend Dolly Sutton. Your friend George’s wife.’

  ‘Oh, George!’

  ‘Yes, but he’s long dead.’

  ‘Oh dear. Dead? Poor George. When!?’

  ‘Twenty years ago!’

  Fiona steps in. ‘That’s fine, Marguerite. You go to bridge and I’ll organise the dog. Kirsten and Ruby can come with me – we’ll take Dad.’

  ‘Well now, hold on, I shouldn’t mind a say given we’ll be the ones living with it.’ There’s an edge to Marguerite’s voice now, a faint threat that she’s going to assert her authority – or challenge Fiona’s, depending on how you look at it.

  ‘But I think it will be a good arrangement for you, Marguerite,’ says Magda. ‘The KSPCA will give you a two-week trial. You can see if you and Walt like the dog before you are taking it for good.’

  Walt’s still muttering to himself about poor old George. ‘How did he die?’ he asks.

  ‘Heart attack,’ Marguerite says. Then, in an instant, the tension vanishes as she lights up with gossipy glee, leaning forward on the table and stage whispering for us all, ‘In bed with Dolly! Ha! Don’t you remember? She always did send men’s hearts racing. Hoo! What a way to go, really.’

  ‘Okay now, Dad, let’s have you take your pills,’ Fiona says, trying to bring the morning’s focus back to Walt. But he’s not interested in pills. He’s still laughing with Marguerite. Fiona pours the half-dozen tablets resting on the little soapstone dish back into the weekly pill dispenser on the sideboard. ‘I’ll try again once he’s brushed his teeth.’

  I see some things haven’t changed much at all.

  The Kenya Society for the Protection & Care of Animals is a small complex on Langata Road in Karen, on the south-western side of the city. It was started around 1910 by three women who took pity on the overworked oxen that delivered goods from surrounding districts to the fledgling city of Nairobi. One hundred years later, the shelter is home to dozens of abandoned cats, dogs, goats and donkeys, with a small team of staff employed to run sterilisation and vaccination campaigns, and to respond to reports of animal cruelty.

  We pull into a gravel driveway just past the edge of a fir forest. In a pen near the entrance is a donkey bearing the faint but distinct black-and-white markings of a zebra. A softly spoken guy with short, spiky dreadlocks named Dominic emerges from the small office building to greet us. He tells us the donkey was painted by a restaurant owner looking to attract the attention of passing motorists. Apparently, ‘being painted’ (usually with business logos or political slogans) is one of the most common – albeit inadvertent – forms of donkey abuse the group deals with. The paint is corrosive to the animal’s skin and, if not removed carefully, can cause chemical burns and lesions.

  ‘That is why we are always trying to educate people. We tell them, “Please, do not paint the donkey. He is an animal, not a sign!”’ Dominic says, before leading us to the kennels where a cacophony of howls fills the air and hopeful pink tongues poke through the fence.

  Chiku stands out as the pick of the bunch immediately. She’s not a labrador – not even close. It’s hard to tell what she is: a solid little thing, with short tan hair and chocolate-brown eyes. ‘Possibly part-beagle?’ says Fiona.

  But her pedigree doesn’t matter. She’s by far the sweetest dog there, and Walt – bending down to scratch her behind the ears – is already smitten.

  ‘She was rescued from a construction site,’ Dominic says. ‘Someone called us to say the Chinese workers were slaughtering the street dogs for food, but we have not found any evidence of that. I think they are just bad rumours.’ Some stereotypes go global, I guess.

  Chiku recently had a litter but is now spayed and vaccinated and ready to be taken to a new home. She wags her tail, bores her muzzle into our laps, licks our knees, sits on command. A few times, she is so unable to contain her excitement she jumps in the air like a spring lamb, then runs in fast, tight circles around us before rolling over to expose her tummy for a scratch.

  ‘Oh, hellooooooo there you cheeky little curr,’ coos Walt, rubbing her with the sole of his foot, as Ruby helps him keep his balance. ‘And who are you?’ He scratches Chiku under her chin, roughs up the fur on her flank. ‘You’re a lovely little mutt, aren’t you? Ohhhh, you like that, don’t you! Now, who do you belong to?’ He looks at Dominic. ‘Is she yours, is she?’ he asks.

  ‘She’s yours, Dad,’ Fiona says.

  ‘Mine!?’ Walt says, shocked, delighted, like a kid being given a pres
ent he’d never dreamed of asking for. He looks at Ruby, then at me, in joyous disbelief. ‘This isn’t my dog, is it?’

  ‘Yes, Dad, she’s all yours. Her name’s Chiku.’ Fiona turns to Dominic. ‘We’ll take her.’

  ‘Yes?’ says Dominic, seemingly surprised by our keenness. ‘Right now?’

  ‘If we can?’

  ‘Yes, yes, no problem. There will just be some forms to fill out and an adoption fee but ah, yes – of course, she is yours!’

  If the look on Walt’s face is anything to go by, Chiku – the mutt of mysterious origin – is going to be the most powerful tool we’ve got.

  The following afternoon, Patrick swings open the gates to the Smyths’ house and salutes Walt’s eighth new carer in a year. Annette – Fiona’s friend from the UK – has agreed to stay for two months.

  Once her bags have been brought through and she’s been introduced to all the staff, we all – Walt, Marguerite, Fiona, Ruby and I – sit together on the patio with tea and scones and get to know each other. Annette seems kind, and honest. I suspect she’ll be very good with Walt – and that she’s way too sweet for the other demands of this job.

  When Chiku alerts Walt to the monkeys invading the garden on their afternoon raid, he marches off to sort them out. Fiona goes after him, and Marguerite takes a phone call inside, leaving Annette with me and Ruby for a moment.

  ‘Is Fiona always this bossy with Marguerite?’ she asks us, incredulous. It seems this is a side of her friend she hasn’t seen before.

  I have to think about it for a moment; I suppose I’ve become used to seeing Fiona nitpicking Marguerite over how she pours Walt’s tea, or where she’s put his chair, or that she shouldn’t have given him that particular scone with that much jam on it because the sugar will rot his teeth and give him diabetes.

  ‘Oh, yeah,’ says Ruby. ‘That’s pretty standard.’

  ‘And Marguerite just puts up with it?’ Annette seems shocked, and I realise that’s something else I’ve stopped being surprised by. That Marguerite rarely objects to being told what to do in her own home.

  We watch Patrick run down to the back fence with his slingshot out, while Walt tells him which monkey to line up and Fiona tries to hold Chiku back from jumping too close to him.

  ‘Yeah, pretty much,’ I say. ‘Every now and then she pushes back. But I think she’s realised that for the most part, it’s just easier to do what Fiona says.’

  Patrick ducks as a barrage of berries is thrown back down from the canopy in return fire.

  ‘You bastards!’ Walt yells, shaking his fists impotently at his simian tormentors.

  ‘And she said something about keeping notes on who Marguerite talks to on the phone and where she goes every day?’ Annette says, in a tone suggesting she hopes she simply misheard.

  ‘Yeah, she wants us to “keep tabs” on her,’ Ruby says.

  So, Fiona hasn’t entirely given up on her subterfuge – she just knows not to try it on with me.

  ‘I strongly advise you stay as far out of that as possible,’ I say. ‘Just stick to looking after Walt, and we’ll be fine.’

  ‘Yes … I mean, I thought I was just here to be a babysitter, really!’

  Poor Annette. Her friend hasn’t given her the full story either.

  I sneak away to visit the staff while Fiona takes Annette through Walt’s pre-dinner routine. They’re all still just getting on with life, doing their thing, oblivious or indifferent to the goings-on of the mzungu madhouse.

  James proudly updates me on Rebecca’s progress. She’s at a teachers’ college now, in their hometown of Machakos, and uses a computer every day. Little William has grown another foot, and is always wanting to visit from the village. It must be terribly difficult for families to be divided like this – to have to leave them behind in order to earn money in the city.

  David has lost a lot of weight – he’s been very unwell but is apparently on the mend. Marguerite took him to see a doctor, and Fiona has brought over some creams from England to treat a strange skin condition he’s developed. He seems very grateful that they’ve helped him get better.

  Patrick doesn’t have much to say, other than to smile and declare ‘Yes, yes, madam! Mzuri sana, mzuri sana,’ when I ask him if he’s well. I’ve brought him back some magazines from Australia. He can’t read, but loves to browse the pictures.

  Esther still doesn’t share much about her home life. Her two sons are doing well, and her husband has a good job. I wish I could get to know her better, but feel it would be rude to press her much further.

  I head back inside near dinner time. There’s Khamisi, in his apron and hat, presiding over the stove.

  ‘Jambo, Khamisi!’ I say, ‘What’s cooking?’

  ‘Mmm,’ he murmurs gently, smiling as he checks on a pot of simmering stew, ‘tonight you will enjoy “beef stroganoff”, with vegetables and rice.’ I swear the guy meditates while he stirs.

  Annette gets another taste of the underlying family tension the next morning. I take her through Walt’s morning routine – the precise turning of the taps, the careful placement of the razor, the laying of his clothes on the bed in reverse order. While we’re in there, Fiona tells Marguerite she should really use the main bathroom to get ready, so as not to get in Walt’s way in their ensuite. And that she shouldn’t turn her clock radio on in the morning, because the news updates are a distraction.

  Then, while we’re all sitting down to breakfast, Marguerite’s mobile phone rings.

  ‘Oooooh it’s my friend Deborah!’ she says, looking at the caller ID and giving us all a knowing nod. I don’t remember any friend called ‘Deborah’ from my first stint, and there’s no look of recognition on Ruby’s or Fiona’s face either. ‘Jambooooooo Deborah!’ Marguerite stands up from the table, chatting as she walks around the room. ‘Yes, shall we!? At the little café next to the Italian place. Yes. Well, you say when.’

  Walt watches her anxiously, as Fiona tries to redirect his attention to the slices of pawpaw and mango on his plate. ‘Who’s she talking to?’ he mutters.

  ‘Never mind, Dad. Just one of her many ladies-in-waiting,’ Fiona says, with a roll of her eyes that Walt mirrors back. ‘Marguerite – must you take phone calls while we’re eating?’

  Marguerite puts a hand over the end of her Nokia. ‘Well I can’t know when someone might be wanting to speak with me!’ She pulls her hand away, returns to her call. ‘Ten o’clock then. Very good. Yes. See you then. Kwaheri!’ Marguerite puts her phone back into her pocket and sits down again.

  ‘Who was that then, darling?’ Walt says.

  ‘That was Deborah,’ says Marguerite, piling stewed prunes onto her cereal. ‘That marvellous lady who runs the sewing shop down by the MiniMart.’ None of us know who she’s talking about. Walt’s got no hope, but he pretends to know who she means.

  ‘Oh I see,’ he says. ‘Is she well?’

  ‘Yes. Well, I hope so. I’ll soon find out, won’t I? We’re having tea at ten. She’s very clever, you know. A seamstress and an ont-ra-pra-newer! She’s making me a lovely pair of pink trousers.’ Then, Marguerite leans across the table, apparently to tell Ruby and me especially, ‘She’s my African friend.’

  I didn’t know she had any.

  Deborah’s phone call is the last straw for Fiona. She installs a signal jammer in the dining room.

  ‘If Marguerite won’t stop disrupting meals with phone calls, we’ll just have to stop her phone from working in there at all,’ she says. She plugs the contraption into the wall socket behind the sideboard, where it’s hidden from view. ‘It only blocks the signal for a few metres. Outside this room you should still get reception. And you’ll need to pull the cord out of the landline too. Just remember to put it back in again once meal times are over.’

  Annette is not entirely down with this, but Ruby and I can see the logic. The phone calls and texting at the table are a distraction for Walt, and Marguerite can’t seem to help herself. We decide we’ll let this lit
tle deception stand.

  Then, Fiona flies back to England and we’re left to it. For a time, everything goes smoothly.

  Ruby, Annette and I work out a roster that’s split into three eight-hour shifts a day: each carer rotates between duties, being ‘on’ for one shift, doing ‘household errands’ for another, and fully ‘off’ for the third. It means Marguerite is able to maintain her social engagements, while the three of us can arrange some of our own – Annette visits friends across town in Karen, Ruby starts taking dance classes at a studio in Westlands, and I’m able to catch up with my cousins and Sarah and Jack.

  A few weeks into my second stint with the Smyths, I even manage to get to a music festival.

  Sarah and Jack have invited me. We set out early in the morning for Lake Naivasha, up the escarpment out of Nairobi and past that astonishing view you can never, ever tire of. We buy chapatis from the side of the road, listen to some Kenyan pop to get into the mood, and watch the blur of verdant green go by as we pass the tea and coffee plantations of Limuru and Kiambu.

  The Rift Valley Music Festival – a ‘musical experience in the cradle of mankind’, as the bill puts it – is at Fisherman’s Camp on the edge of the lake, beside a shaded area of tent sites and fire pits and toilet blocks. A honking, bass-thumping procession of cars and matatus snakes down the dirt road through the yellow fever trees, all the way back to the main highway. The vehicles are full of families and young people in high spirits, bright clothes and silly hats. The vibe is like at any festival back home – only here there are baboons and monkeys and zebras and giraffes walking around the place, and bad-tempered hippos snorting at the edge of the water, just their flaring nostrils and twitchy ears breaking the surface.

  We have a beer while we set up our tent and then wander over to the main festival site, where tall Masai men wrapped in red shukas patrol the crowd, the event’s official security team. Hipsters hand out street press and promo cards. Cliques of hot girls and buff guys circle each other coyly and cluster together to take pouting selfies. The members of a Kenyan graffiti artist collective – Spray Uzi – are working on a bank of easels by the bar.