Wednesday 13 May 2026
Thanks to a couple of sachets of Movicol, things improve in the early hours of the morning. But not much. I am hydrating like an absolute bastard. However I am also sweating like two.
I am meeting Vicky at Lights before seeing a couple of businesses and kicking off the funding.
I consider a tuktuk but the best price I can get it 800 bob and the matatu is 100, so I opt for that. There is the usual dogfight over any approaching passenger and I bark at them not to make a war out of it. Immediately they turn smarmy and irritating “oh Mama, here no war … Kenya hakuna matata”. I tell them that Kenya has more matata that it can cope with. How we laugh.
This is possibly the scariest matatu ride I have had. We are hurtling along, weaving in and out of traffic and the overtaking gene is strong in this driver. He just does not seem to understand the concept of a vehicle he does not immediately intend to get in front of, by fair means or foul..
But we reach Lights and I go where Vicky has said to meet. Turns out the blue hut selling tooth dissolvingly sweet tea at the end of the line of stalls she pointed out is not where she meant. She meant the place directly opposite where I ate a slice of watermelon. Which would have been a good landmark. 45 minutes ago. But never mind. I was early anyway. And I get to sip my tea (well, a third of it – I can feel a hyper-glycaemic coma coming on) in a swirl of wood smoke and smells of grilling chicken necks. I love it. Vicky arrives carrying a large sack – full of reflective jackets, it transpires. Local government blokes, keen to find any reason for extracting money from people, have started implementing a rule about hawkers wearing a reflective jacket thingie. So we are equipping our ladies so that they are not ripped off by kanjo. A little added extra expenditure but necessary.
We get a tuktuk and head off into the depths of the surrounding villages – this time Casandani to see a couple of businesses and then Utange to start more.
Again, one of our previous business group leaders has offered her home as a safe house.
Here there are tales of violence against the women and girls, and rape. Rather a lot of rape, even for our groups. FGM and early marriage are really a given here, sad to say. Businesses are solid : Carrier bags, school bags, fresh peas and maize, arrowroot and sweet potato (raw and boiled) and a watermelon business which has its prices tweaked but will be fine.
As a wee treat (and because it is only about 4.30, we go to Pirates Beach and hire two seats (50p) to sit and watch the water. I have (in the interests of hydration) two of the largest coconuts I have ever seen. More than a litre of coconut water, I reckon. That should sort me out.
We do finances at Baraka and I get a pikipiki back through what has become PITCH black streets, lit only (and blindingly) by everybody’s headlights on full fucking beam. Kenyan drivers seem to know no other way. It is quite scary. However we continue through the dark, only to find that there is a serious power cut affecting the area. Inside the place I am staying is utterly dark – cannot see your hand in front of your face dark. I slither across the courtyard and feel my way up the stairs. My tiny room is pitch black and the ceiling fan is, of course, non operational. My phone is fast losing power and there is nothing to do but lie there and sweat disgustingly. Goodbye coconut water.
