Monday 9th February 2026
30 degrees. Which is actually quite a nice temperature when you are on a motorbike. Otherwise, just a bit sweaty. TBH, I am getting quite tired of all this tropical stuff. But we are meeting at 10am so things have not heated up fully.
Funding today is at a place Vicky describes as “far”. Fuck me, she is not joking. In a crappy old matatu in this heat, with less surviving upholstry than Celine Dion, even a trip to the end of the road seems “far”, and we have a three part journey of almost three hours. Two matatus and
40 minutes on pikipikis, which final stretch encounters a slight delay when Vicky breaks hers. True. Otherwise that part is absolutely delightful. As usual my ride by is greeted with wild enthusiasm by the locals.
We visit a couple of Mama B businesses en route – a little hairdressers and a greengrocer which also does deliveries.
We have five groups today, all mothers running to save their daughters from FGM and early marriage.
All the mothers were, themselves, married off by the time they were 12 and have, now in their twenties, an average of four children each. That, of course, tells nothing of the litany of misery which is the stillbirths and untreated fistulas which are an expectable result of a mutilated thirteen year old attempting to give birth.
72 young women. 256 children.
Luckily a maize farm, a catering contract, a kick ass business selling sweet potatoes and yams, a croc shop and a group of itinerant carrier bag sellers will give them all a chance at new lives in new places.
Back on the motorbikes to town and then two packed matatus to Mtwapa. The whole concept of finite space is an anathema to the Kenyan makanga (conductor) but, I suppose, every body squeezed in is a fare.
We dine at Baraka, I buy water at Naivas and get yet another pikipiki back to the digs.
