Tonight I’m tucked into Room 312 of the Embassy Hotel, City Center, Nairobi. It’s the hotel where the Simba Mbili restaurant sits on the second floor. Hotels here are very strict, checking passports, sometimes reserving them until check out, etc., but the Embassy doesn’t trouble itself…or you, with these details. It’s that kind of place. The rooms are cheaper than the petrol bill back and forth to Lukenya, where I live, and driving the forty kilometers out there after dark, well, it’s just not safe enough. So from time to time if business runs late or if it begins again in Nairobi early, I find myself here.

I have taken the opportunity, given their genteel laxness on identification matters to pad their list of celebrity guests. An audit of this year would find that Hunter S. Thompson, T.S.Eliot, Evel Kneivel (I may have misspelled my own name on this one), Thomas Merton, Howard Hughes, Richard Nixon, and tonight, you tell me why, because I have no real idea, Brian Boitano, have all taken shelter under the sky blue mosquito nets here.

People often say, when explaining the inexplicable, ”You never know.” But sometimes you really don’t. I’m here tonight because Peter (Ha-neld), whom you know, hurt his back a little while working on the dam. He went to a clinic in Kinani, got an injection, felt better for a day, and then, “the pain went down” as Peter tells it, “to where he passes the stools.” He had the cause and effect part wrong, but Peter’s pain had indeed headed south and come into full bloom, as Dr. Hussein confirmed, as prolapsed, thrombosed hemorrhoids. This is homey but still polite company, so I’ll spare the more lively details and just note that in this, a country that does not coddle its sick, Peter needed immediate surgery.

We drove a long way to Nairobi West Hospital to find Dr Alkama. I’ll bet you already know he wasn’t in his office.

This is the courtyard outside Dr Alkama’s second story office.

Peter waiting in reception room

We headed slowly downstairs to try to find something to eat, and on the way, a man I somehow immediately recognized as Dr. Alkama was coming our way. We walked, Peter hobbled, back upstairs and the doc had a look-see.

I found Dr. A’s sign while waiting.

Different doctor, same conclusion. He couldn’t perform an outpatient procedure; it was a little more serious than that. Peter needed to be admitted and have the surgery today.

“How much will it cost,” I asked.

“About 40,000 Kenya shillings.”

Peter looked like someone who had just dropped his winning lottery ticket into a whirring Cuisinart. It might as well have been 40 million shillings.

You can’t exactly put a figure against ‘roid-free living, but $606.00 US is a lot of money for all of us here. I liked Dr Alkama very much, and asked if there were any reasonable alternatives. He suggested St. Mary’s Hospital down Langata Road on the outskirts of Kibera, near the women’s prison. Probably about 10,000 ks there. Still far out of Peter’s range, but much closer to ours. Dr. A wrote a note referring us to a surgeon he knew there and explained the need for expedition in Peter’s case. I pinned all my hopes on this paper.

We wound our way there. Peter was stoical in his discomfort, if increasingly noisome. He was brave in the way a young boy is brave — observable courage.

St. Mary’s is a cash and carry place. To keep costs down, no insurance billing, no big admin staff. There were people everywhere, lining every hallway, some very sick, most just waiting as all people who are sick wait, quietly, individually. We got Peter registered and were sent to the door marked PUSH. There were hundreds of people around, none unaware of us as we passed and que-ed up.

Once his vitals were recorded,
Peter with a thermometer in his armpit.

Peter was sent to see the surgeon. Another long hallway lined entirely with people. This hallway ended in a breezeway and I found my way outside and sat on a small patch of grass next to two Masai guys. The Masai are country, not city, and so mostly seem out of place. They are untamed, heavily armed, and, in the minds of many other Kenyans, unpredictable. The older guy I sat next to had his red plaid wraps covering an ancient suit coat, I imagine his “going to town coat,” his bare legs a little incongruous beneath. The Masai have their own system of medicine, so you don’t see many of them at hospital.

I motioned Peter over to translate. The man touched his throat with a slicing motion when Peter asked what was wrong. Said his throat hurt like it was being slit open. So we had that in common. Peter kept his own medical sorrows to himself. Then the conversation turned to the beautiful, to me, herding stick he carried. Thin, incredibly strong, straighter than most of the pool cues at the Avenue Inn, cured in a manure pile for three weeks to render the dark color and strength. I have had two of these selfsame staffs, but in keeping with my tenuous hold on most material things, they have gone off to herd someone else’s cattle. He was interested and bargained well. He met his hospital fees and some, and I got my third herding stick.

I wanted to take his picture, but there was no convincing him.

Finally Peter’s name was called. The surgeon with one wandering eye examined him and the -ectomy was confirmed and scheduled. I got Peter settled and headed back down the series of rooms and corridors. On my way in, people simply grew quiet and stared openly. Now, the herding stick, which every single sighted person there recognized as a Masai weapon, added an incongruity which created a small festival atmosphere, as though I were wearing a coon-skin cap and carrying a Kentucky long rifle. I just put on my shades and kept walking, plowing through the attention-dense air.

I washed off Peter’s side of the seat a little and drove the winding road back down the hill and passed these two signs. The gap between what is intended and what is written on some signs is a constant source of delight to me, and so, I probably incorrectly assume, to you. Here’s the latest, at the gate of the women’s prison.

I’ll leave the possible explanations to those with more courage.

And the second is for you, Monte. Finally something really useful from the internet. No need to come all the way to Kenya to satisfy those occasional cravings for bar-b-qued goat meat or a Tusker.

You can now, evidently, order them online. And that, my much missed friend, is real progress.

Peter is fine, if a bit lighter than the 56 kilograms he weighed in at.

So long for now. Stay in touch.

David

Posted on November 13th, 2007 by david
Filed under: David's Journal