The Visit.... A chat with 'Jane'..

Sometime back, you remember the Mama Mercy call, right? For those who don’t, here you go ""When we have Angels flying low..." Well, I recently decided to pay the debt, on a certain Saturday, so I rang my other bro Sorghum.

“Boss, how about dinner with the little chaps…” I jumped in. (We recently decided that saying hallo is a plot by telephone companies to swindle our hard earned cash, so we usually skip the crap and just jump into the real stuff).

"Which Chaps..?" He asked.

"Good Samaritan...." I jumped in.

“You said Food…? Am in!” He replied and hang up.

Wait, this might get lengthy, and we will decide later on whether to do a two-part post or just one.

The Saturday was lazy, I have finally managed to completely leave my bed slightly after mid-day, dragged my body for a cold shower and watched a few boring episodes of two and a half men (boring being the new rib-cracking). Minutes to four o’clock I left the hacienda, met up with the tall fella at his place and we have set off for Mama Mercy’s. (At this point I remember there are a zillion people I had promised to drag with me the next time I visited the Childrens home, but I can and will explain..)

 By the time we get to the slum, darkness is just scattered, not sure whether to fill up or just remain in its sleep and let daytime do a double-shift. We make our way through the masses, people selling Mihogo’s and chicken parts boiling in blackish soup and eager buyers salivating and following the stirring stick religiously, skimpily dressed girls leaving for evening devotions in town, drunkards leaving and returning to Chang’aa dens, it’s a bee hive, people everywhere, like they have just been released from a political rally to come make our walk terrible. Ooh and the occassional naked child running from their parents who are determined to scrub off the dirt collected by the kids during the day.

A ‘mkokoteni’ pusher weaves through the crowds, probably trying to hurry before the brew gets watered, his load of waste bags looks useless to us, but must be gold to him by the way he is protecting it. We jump out of his way to avoid broken bones, then these three healthy looking dirty dogs follow him closely behind, protecting what their master carries. ‘Dogs and faithfulness…!’ I sigh.

“Wooow, I’ts been long man..” I point out, as we stand in front of the big blue gate.

The gate looks newly painted, and the words “Good Samaritan Children’s Home and Rehabilitation Center ” Have been redone in more confident white, and by a more motivated painter, a gmail account and a phone number (+254-722323678) too…  It all looks glorious.

Some of the chaps are playing by the gate, so we head over, rough the head of one of them  “…Is mama around.?” I ask.  The little fella looks at us quite disappointed and nods pointing to the office.

“Why the long face..?” I ask, and he just looks back, blank, like we are not even there, then it hits me that we were too careless to not even buy some sweets for buying a few smiles.

We walk in, darkness is now getting serious, and get into the tiny office where we find (let’s call her Jane because I’ve never been keen enough to know her name). Jane assists Mama Mercy, she does like everything around, manages finances, manages what the children will eat, when they will eat, which child has not yet taken their ARV’s, which child is coughing and needs a few injections, she is like a piece of magic. She sees us and lights up immediately ‘so we are not completely forgotten’ I give myself a hi-5.

Surprising enough, she is the only one in the poorly lit office.

‘Wait, now that I didn’t carry my sweets is the reason I get mis directions… next time I will carry them’ I promise myself as we settle down on a blue plastic chair, and Sorghum has to look for a taller seat, since he is the tall one.

“You people… It’s been years!” She complains. I do a quick mental sum and it adds up to three to four months.  

“We are good, you know, work work..” I stop myself from adding another work, figuring in my head that my friend Sorghum might start figuring Rihanna in his head. My stomach groans. Hell, I curse the reason I never had a biting at Sorghum’s place.

 “How are you guys doing, with all the maize problems.. what are you really feeding the kids on?” I ask, to distract my groaning tummy.

She looks into her palms, like trying to get a convincing answer, “We have had to improvise” she says looking into our eyes, “Well, mostly we now eat rice, make it with some beans, other times we cook chapatis for them….. - …… - … but we are managing..”

“Atleast I know the milk is in plenty, the last time we visited a few cows were ‘heavy’..” I jump in. The cow debate always brings thrill in a conversation at the orphanage, I have come to learn. “At least you know the small kids can get a good diet..”

“It depends.” She simply says, and gets distracted by some boys playing outside the office. They are skipping ropes, and I silently lament, knowing in the slopes that game is set aside for the girl child, and any boy seen involving themselves in it were momentarily kicked out of the football team.

I can read Sorghum’s head, he is wondering like I am, ‘it depends on what…? Might there be some terrible news that she is about to tell us? That maybe the ministry for health announced that children under a certain age should not take cow milk? Or maybe we have lived a lie that cow milk is good safe for human consumption..?’ We swing around trying to get answers, until she smiles and decides to kick us out of our self-made self- mental jails.

“The milk is good, but as I said it depends, we now have months and even weeks and days old toddlers, those ones you can’t feed on milk you know.. “ She adds.

I at this point remember a day Mama Mercy had told us something about her struggle getting money to buy infant powder milk for the toddlers, and how a bottle of the same never lasted a week for a single kid.. how we had wondered why the government never gave the milk to her for free to feed the toddlers..

“So you still buy the bottle powdered milk for the toddlers…?” Sorghum asks in a surprisingly serious tone, the kind of surprising tone a man possesses while discussing dowry with in laws.

“They are now four toddlers, we really can’t afford that from the supermarket with the maize floor shortage and all…” She answers him.

“So, what do you do? Feed them with cow milk…?” I ask, quite ubsent minded.

By now its quiet everywhere, even the kids who were playing outside have been swallowed into the darkness, I check my watch and it’s minutes past 7 O’clock.

“The kids seem to have vanished…” I ask Jane.

She laughs “They are watching TV, waiting for a Tele novena movie they all follow, even the tiny ones are always there to pick the front seats.”

We all laugh.

I look around and there is so much artwork around, done by kids, you can tell the estimate age of the artist by the number of spelling mistakes and the hand writing. One catches my eyes ‘QUATE OF THE DAY: WE HAVE A BIG GOD. DON TELL HOW BIG YOUR STORM IS. TELL THE STORM HOW BIG YOUR GOD IS.’ It moves me, I admire the spirit of the writer, and ignore the grammatical misdeeds, who even cares about the misdeeds anyway? Next is another photo collage, this one obviously done by a bigger kid, it has numerous photos of well-wishers playing with the kids, mixed races, from locals to non-locals, it’s signed off ‘We love you all’ … I can hear my heart shoulting ‘Right back at ya..!’, even if I don’t see my face in there.  

“The last time we were here there was this guy,… what was his name..? mmmh.. Kamaa, How is he doing?” Sorghum decides to break the silence, and I spin back from the momentary tour of the eyes, and roll my mind back to the kamaa guy.  

The last time we visited Kamaa had walked into the office terribly drunk, looking for Mama Mercy, with a bottle full of some clear liquid which he strongly suggested was pure water. He had just been released from Industrial area remand prison, where he had done some lengthy time.

Kamaa, was in his early twenties then, but  looked somewhere in the sunset of thirties. He looked a damaged case, but one with a deep urge for change, swearing to Mama Mercy that he had started buying cheap clothes from Gikomba and selling them in town, and would soon be leading a normal life. He had surprised both of us when he announced that he had given up his gun, and we had both dug our phones deeper in the pockets.

“Kamaaa.. I don’t really remember him..” Jane replies.

We give her a brief about Kamaa, and she just smiles at us, well, a sad smile (they do exist).

“That one was most probably killed…” She replied, in a very unconcerned tone, “By the way the kids are here for mid term, if you noticed the increase in number.” She goes on, completely brushing off the kamaa incidence, like it’s a case of a termite being crushed between a shoe and a rock.

“wait.. wait.. what do you mean he was most probably killed? By who?” I was quite surprised at how easily someone who stays with children would be so cold about death, how easily she would change the topic from death to excitement without flinching an eye.

Sorghum was not left behind, he looked confused too, and we were both stuck at the ‘most probably killed’ part.

“You know these boys, there is not so much you can do for them once they believe they are old enough. He left some days later for mukuru where they make some illicit brew, and they most probably leave there in body bags.” She said quite serious. “It hurts us a lot, but you can’t tie them with a rope, you just try your best and advise them, the ones you turn out good you give thanks, the others, well, you just accept and move on.”

That left a loud silence in the tiny office. A deafening silence, the kind that screams for a change of topic.

I looked around and saw tiny boxes with names on the long side, and asked, “Those are the Arv’s boxes right?” to which Jane nodded in approval.

“How many  kids are on ARV’s now..?” Sorghum asks

She thinks for a while, seems to be doing some mental calculations.. Her mental mathematics take me back to primary school, a certain teacher, mr. Mbuthia who really hated my weak mathematical knowledge and he used to shoot mental sum questions to the class in a bid to see me confused, I guess it was just for his own laughs. He was an awesome teacher though, thanks to him I managed some very strong C in mathematics, it would have been worse.

“We have around 15 kids now.. There are a few kids who have come in lately who have since been put on them.” She says. “You got in quite late, you would have helped me administer the drugs, it takes two of us now.”

I look at sorghum, then we both look at her in eyes likely to suggest a clear ‘no thank you’, remembering the kind of emotion stirred the last time we watched the kids take their medication.. Not ready to imagine how it would be if we were the ones helping administer the same. As we chew on the developments in the home and the academic performance of various kids, Jane’s phone buzzes.

“Haloo…” She answers, then listens to the other end, her face turns serious, and for once I wish to have the power to listen into the conversation so that I can tell you people..

“Let me call you back…” She says, hangs up, takes a deep breath and turns to us. “Well, I have to make this call, mama is up there, she already knows you are here, so just jump in there and have a little catching up.”

“We will catch up a little more before we leave..” I tell her as we leave the office. 

Today i sign off here, am yawning wider than a hippo, and none of us want me swallowing my pen or notepad. Be good, be Humble.

Next week we get back to the slopes with the weekly “TME”, then the following Thursday we wind up on the Mama Mercy Visit, and drill on the chat with the Boss Lady..! Be blessed, and don’t forget, where you are is not your doing, it may look like it, but everything looks like it, Be thankful.