Sunday 6 September 2026
Amazingly I have both water and electricity, so I utilise my £4 kettle and enjoy a cup of coffee. It does not burst into flames, which I take as a good sign.
I pack for the trip to Awendo, feed the cats ( oh yes they are back and it is wonderful) and try yet again, to get information out of Julius. All of a sudden he has started uncharacteristically demanding : first there was the ‘doctor’ who wants to set up a full clinic in his place and requires everything from beds, through microscopes to delivery and surgical kits. Then a suddenly announced 60 people wanting business funding for an undiscloseable project – four groups of 15, none of whom will tell me what their business is to be. And ten rain-catchers (remembering we are in a drought here) which is more than he has asked for before. It all gets a bit tetchy (OK I get a bit tetchy) when he will not tell me what the business grants are for and we pretty much cancel the trip to Western. I have rather had it with Kenyans and information. Perhaps Kenyan women are not actually marvellously endowed in the boobly area, they are just keeping so much information close to their chest that it looks that way.
David beings my laptop around after church.
Mummy cat is definitely preggers again – a true Kenyan. The many nips’ are out in preparation.
Later in the afternoon David and I go and check out the metal workers on Ngong Road – no elephants of a reasonable size. But there is time. We go back to the Law Courts market. The streets of central Nairobi are seething (and for once I do not remotely exaggerate) with young people. Herds of them. Thousands. Mainly doing nothing but taking selfies and hanging about. Every so often a big matatu with disco lights and vuvuzela accompaniment roars by with kids hanging out the windows and shouting. “This is what they do” says David. It is – although there is no visible violence – a little intimidating. The sheer scale of the ‘hanging out’. I get some more stuff at the market – I am not back before Christmas, so your lovely giftage is being bought now – and then
we treat ourselves to a wee trip to Nairobi West for a beer and something to eat. I like Nairobi West, it is all little stalls and tiny shops and bustle and ‘neighbourhood’. Then David takes me to Easycoach and my descent into hell begins. OK, I might have overstated that, but not by much.
If I have a superpower, other than swearing, it is most surely sleeping. Nothing stops me sleeping. Except, it transpires, a non reclining seat combined with ceaseless, relentless, bass dominated music played on a bus to Awendo. I can feel my seat vibrate – and not in a fun way. I doze as best I can.
Monday 7th September 2026
Limuru. A little chilly, but it is 5am. For the past hour or so the bus has been praising Jesus. Kenyan Jesus seems equally fond of heavy bass in his mix.
At Jayne’s place I sleep for five hours. Deeply. Just as well because now the horror begins. I drink tea. I say tea. This is what we Copsticks would call “Ralston Avenue tea” – where my Auntie Sadie famously made a brew so weak it was practically homeopathic.
Outside (and, to my horror, inside) they are already gathering – and I realise this is outrageous over reaction – like the street boys around Montgomery Clift in Suddenly Last Summer and I have not even had the benefit of sexual satiation. Or of Elizabeth Taylor to mourn me. But I digress.
Jayne presents me with an A4 book. Each page has a business group expecting funding. I feel panic rising like a tsunami off the coast of Japan. There are 31 groups.
But now we are off to Rongo – to see businesses Mama B has opened and to fund seven groups.
The road there (I say “road” …) is such as would make any rally driver opt for a safer sport. At some points the lean angle on the car tempts me to stick my elbow out of the window, touch dirt and pretend I am Jorge Martin.
The businesses seem to be closed, although the outsides and the shutters are very nice. Also there are 15 groups.
In what I have learned is typical Luo fashion, each group of four, while failing to outline the business in any way, other than to list what they want Mama B to pay for, has meticulously detailed the official position of each person. So each group of four has a Chairperson, Secretary, Treasurer and one member. And a shopping list. This is not good for my ulcerated oesophagus. I explain why I am not funding any of these groups. One slight complication is that we are all communicating in Swahili – a second language for everyone. Jayne does some much needed translation into Luo and everyone is sent back to the drawing board. A little shell shocked.
Back at Jayne’s place the crowds have gathered. I try to control my desire to run away – mainly by remembering that Jaynes place is miles from Awendo which is, in turn, miles from anywhere.
I go inside and open the Book of 31.
The overarching problem in this area is grinding, relentless poverty. If you can get any work in the mines or the sugar cane fields it will pay you about 80 pence a day. And in the case of the mines, poison you. Women here have an average of five children and older women are frequently left with their grandchildren if the mothers disappear. Similarly the area has more than its fair share of orphans (HIV is a biggie) and they (impressively, I think) tend to be taken in by friends and family. I do not get tales of violence as in Limuru. Maybe everyone is just too worn down to beat their wives. We plough through business proposals for omena and rice, bananas and cabbage, maize and eggs, second hand clothes and so many others. Worryingly (and, ok, infuriatingly) almost none of them needs any less than 20 minutes reworking and tweaking. I am, as anyone who knows me of old, the original girl who can’t say no, and so this is crazily stressful.
Sometime mid afternoon we head off for 30 minutes to see a load of Mama B businesses in a little market on the border of Awendo and Kisii counties. It is hoatching. And wonderful. And teeming with Mama B businesses. We buy fish for dinner and some other bits and bobs before descending again into hell.
We tweak and do and redo the maths on so many businesses and simply run out of steam at around ten at night with half a dozen groups still waiting.
I tell Jayne that, if we are going back to Rongo tomorrow and also finishing the groups here then there is no chance that I will be handing out diclofenac gel and antacids to women who have ‘pain everywhere’ and ‘ulsas’. I will talk her through what I have brought and she can hand it out. Her daughter is training to be a nurse so she can help. Everything in my large bag is OTC so there is no problem with that.
I sleep the sleep of the dead with nightmares in which I am bleeding in a long drop toilet.
Tuesday 8th September 2026
Up at 8.30 am for the second trip to Rongo. Of course we do not leave on time. I might have mumbled something to Jayne through gritted teeth about lateness not being acceptable ‘in my culture’ and she says that an hour isn’t late.
Back at the scene of yesterday’s debacle, the businesses have much improved. Groups are now of five people, decent business plans and only a moderate amount of tweaking of prices and management of expectations.
Also there is no praying and no Chairperson etc etc nonsense on the group info. Because some groups have been combined, there are only eight. . All good.
Now a whirlwind tour around the area to see Mama B businesses. Which is very up-bucking. Were it not for the fact that at least half of the businesswomn demand to know what I am going to do for them now. I contemplate a quick chorus of Never Enough from The Greatest Showman but decide against it.
And back to base to fund the remaining businesses.
Of course there is a hobble of old ladies muttering about their legs and their backs and their headaches and their ‘ulsas’. I genuinely feel that some form or verbal hate crime might be committed if I had to deal with them, so Jayne takes the ‘problems’ down while I deal with the remaining business applications.
The very last person is a girl who buys (with our help) a sack of adult oversize clothes – either tops or skirts – and cuts them up to make children’s clothes to sell at a really decent profit. She has skillz ! I say I will send some first camera (best quality) tops from Nairobi and if she makes her little two piece suits for boys from them (I pay for her skillz) I will take them to London and sell them.
That is a very cheering end to the business funding day (s).
I do now feel like a drained puddle of a woman and frankly, no matter what music is booming there, cannot wait to get on board the bus to Nairobi.
Before that there is the final hurdle.
“You should give me 4000” says Jaynes husband.
“I like your bag” says Jayne. Which translates as “give me your bag”.
Jayne then tells me I must change my dress before leaving in case people see me wearing the same dress for two days.
The bus is 50 minutes late arriving. The man sitting beside me is huge. He probably exerts his own gravitational pull. When he manspreads – which he does – I have very little room left. But my seat does recline and the music is not quite so bass heavy. He manages to fall asleep and always seems to end up on my shoulder. Oh dear.
