Monday 25th May 2026
Last week in Kenya. And I am feeling it.
Off to Limuru today to a funding with Purity and to visit some of our business ladies around the place. The petrol strikers and general accompanying hoo-ha have slightly played havoc with delivery schedules, but the ladies somehow manage to sell on. And business is brisk. They take out a few bags of fruit and/or veg, sell them and go back to base for more. I buy some big white passion fruit, some banana passion and a couple of local avocados. We have a look at the big bus station recently bought by the local council with plans to turn it into an open air market and Purity is hoping to get a couple of stalls there.
The funding is in what can only be described as a ‘hostelry’. Cheery, relaxed, selling booze, food and equipped with a pool table which is being enthusiastically, if not expertly used by some afternoon guests.
There are another 11 groups here, all battered women with battered children and husbands – well, men – who inflict untold abuse, make it impossible for the women to find enough money to pay for food, for school, in many cases for shoes, and in a frightening number of cases, even to sleep indoors. The men get drunk and simply chase the wives and children out of the house. In some cases, wives and children are chased out of the house so that the husband can have sex with another woman. The businesses are all well thought through and well chosen. Most with a minimum of 300% profit and big orders lined up.
Even more impressively, Purity tells me – because I ask about previous groups we have funded who have big orders lined up and big profit margins – that these big money groups are the ones who subsidise the girls we met in the streets. Each ‘big’ group is committed to take on about a half dozen of their own ladies and support them. I am deeply impressed. They find the extra ladies, Purity vets then and they are good to go. This whole Mama B thing is better than I thought !
The ladies go and Purity, David and I dine on what looks like a large dead something and most of a large cabbage, boiled. Oh yes, and potatoes. And the soup it was all boiled in.
I hoover the cabbage which is, to be fair, bloody delicious. As is the soup.
We have one of those “is David just trying to get me to chew my own tongue out with frustration or does he actually believe this?” conversations, on the subject of how, according to David, it is absolutely impossible for women to live without men. We were discussing the Samburu village. Which cannot, says David, exist without local men because that is how things are.
He is convinced that because the local professional ladies (who have been experiencing a downturn in trade because of the riots etc) in Maile Tisa the other day, were keen to have his custom, this proves his point that all women must have men. I attempt to point out the difference between biological imperative and commerce … and get nowhere.
Tuesday 26th May 2026
I take a holiday from Mama B and go to Junction for posh hot drinks, wifi, and a wander in the world of the pointless (in the grand scheme of things) but more fun. It can never, it seems, be too early to start planning one’s wallow in the all consuming self absorption of the Edinburgh Fringe. I get as far as £29.50 (plus booking fee) to be one of 3059 people watching Daniel Sloss on either of the two nights he is prepared to spend in Edinburgh, hoovering up available punters. £30 (give or take – in this case take) is 5100 kenya shillings (give or take – in this case give). And Being Mama B (great name for a book, eh ?) really changes your perspective. Five of our ladies (and all of each of their children) could be saved from unbelieveable violence and get a whole new life, for the cost of seeing Daniel do jokes in The Playhouse for a couple of hours. Ah well.
One of the huge differences that is noticeable as soon as you go into ‘not exactly scratching to survive’ areas is that ALL the women have the most outrageous manicures. Inch long claws in lurid colours with all manner of tiny objects stuck on top. Going to the loo must be fraught with the danger of self inflicted injury. Just getting dressed must be a nightmare. The worst (on a selfish level) is the maiming effect they have on meaningful hand use. The words “do you have the app?” strike fear, whenever I am next in the queue with anyone who has the time devouring combination of “the app” and a Cynthia Evri lookylikey manicure. Were I a heterosexual man, it is one of the first things I would check when sizing up a mate. Nothing good can come (see what I did there?) of these monstrous creations.
Anyway, I get my wifi, no one is calling my name, no one is asking me for anything, no one is, in fact, remotely interested in me at all. It is lovely. Although guilt making. I drink Hibiscus Tea with Mint and read about Ebola. What has Congo done to deserve the mountains of shit that have been heaped upon it ? Almost never without some ghastly kind of war raging within, disease … when is happy time for Congo ? And yet they have the BEST music.
Wednesday 27th May 2026
Positively galloping through the week and off in the direction of Narok today with Vicky. OK, actually TO Narok. A not inconsiderable distance. We put 2000 kenya shillings worth of petrol into the car. “We will put more on the way back” points out David. Every pore in my body constricts with the effort of not just shrieking “OF COURSE WE WILL, I AM NOT AN IDIOT”. But I don’t. Get me with the self control.
As soon as we pick up Vicky, I have a feeling I should check with her that the “seeing businesses” she has mentioned as the reason for going to Narok IS just seeing businesses. Of course it is not. We have six groups to fund.
Narok is, indeed, “far”. Not as “far” as Maile Tisa, but “far”.
The journey down the Escarpment into the Great Rift Valley is as extraordinary as ever. I cannot even imagine how the makers of this road literally dug it out of the cliff face. It is, as usual, enlivened by hordes (I realise that is not the zoological term) of those Kim Kardashians of the simian world, baboons. Their inflated bottoms are everywhere in the air. All we need is a red carpet along the side of the road and the tabloids would be all over them.
A couple of hours later we are surrounded by cattle and about to visit one of Mama B’s farms. I spend some time with the most adorable bullock, giving him an ear scratch and telling him how handsome he is. The young lad with the big stick who is in charge, self evidently thinks I have lost my mind. I tell him to look after this one well because now he is my friend. The farm only started a year ago and has already had its first maize harvest. Now they are growing a comprehensive selection of everything green and edible, which will be sold in the farms own kiosk up on the main road (as well as fulfilling orders). There are two acres and everything is growing fast and healthily. We wander round and I have my own Raymond Reddington (what do you MEAN you didn’t watch The Blacklist?) moment with a large black bull.
The funding ladies look exhausted by life. All victims of FGM and early marriage themselves, they cannot bear for that to happen to their girls. With these groups the sale of the girls is (for some of them) an attempt to buy off enemy tribes, and for others, purely commercial – ie, one terrified, mutilated girl gets one cow. I ask the mothers what kind of men these are, who buy a girl with a cow. “Old men”, they say.
We have a a cleaning contract, a couple of carrier bag start ups, a potato farm, one selling boiled sweet potato and a group selling crocs. As mentioned, the transport costs have really increased – partly because Vicky’s groups are now 15 strong and partly because of the rise in fuel costs.
We have discovered a lovely place to eat in Narok – really excellent. So we have something before heading back to Nairobi.
The Escarpment at night, in the pitch black, is a bit of a worry, tbh. But I’d rather be going up than coming down.
