Early this year I volunteered to work with a Government
Hospital- Mbagathi District hospital here in Nairobi Kenya.
For guys who do not know, Mbagathi District hospital
commonly known as MDH is one of the low-end hospitals in Nairobi located at the
edge of Kibera- Africa’s biggest slum; it caters for the ‘wanainchi’- that is the
commoners.
They offer integrated health services for nearly 10,000 HIV
patients, support the supply of critical life-saving HIV treatment and other
infectious diseases including tuberculosis and malaria. Also, they offer nutrition
education and commodities and family planning services for mothers and young
adults.
The services are mainly free or cost recovery and sponsors
include global health, DFID, USAID and WHO all in partnership with the national
government.
To this day I feel it is one of the best if not the best
decisions I have made so far. I enjoyed every bit of the experience- I got an
opportunity to interact with people who are not of the same socio-economic
class as I am. People, who could hardly afford a square meal, people who saw
education as privilege. They shared their ideas, told their stories, we
discussed politics, the economy, the weather and I was amazed at the wealth of
knowledge some of these people have.
One thing that really touched me was one day when I was all
alone in the main pharmacy on night duty at about 11 P.M and this fine gentleman walked in and said to me; ‘sema
daktari nataka kukupatia mandazi na PK’. He looked at the expression on my face
and noticed that I was lost and continued saying pole pole unaongea kiingereza
pekee?? Take these mandazis and chewing gum.
Mandazis are very popular here in Kenya; they are made with
whole meal flour and fried in cooking oil, somewhat like our popular dough-nut.
Very easy to snack on!!
This one was very greasy made with probably very high
cholesterol content oil and low quality Unga (flour) - But that was what he had
to offer, this was his way of showing appreciation for what I was doing for
their community. I was humbled!!
I wanted to refuse the offer. I find it very difficult to
accept things from people let alone this man whose situation I know of so well.
I felt like I was exploiting him.
My first response was however fear, and then surprise and
finally gratitude. I was broken, broken kabisa(completely) this was because
this gentle man had practically nothing compared to me- he owned this small
duka (kiosk) made from an old container and traded in sweets, chewing gum,
mandazis, miambri, nini(things like that). His entire kiosk was not worth up to
possibly what I would get as an allowance per month as a student. But he did
not look into all of that; that I am a ‘daktari’ and live way better than him.
He in his little corner noticed that I was doing a good deed and he had to show
that he appreciated me. This reminded me of the story of the widows mite in
Mark 12:41-44 when Jesus and his disciples sat near the temple and saw an
impoverished widow put in two coins that in and of themselves are not worth
much, but presumably represent a significant portion of the woman’s resources,
the story presents us with a comment from Jesus that expressed how appreciative
he was for the woman’s contribution even though from our human perspective we
do not see it as much.
Before I start going on about a sermon on giving let me get
back to the point. I am West African and unapologetic about that; growing up in
West Africa as young men, we are taught to give-be ‘free-an’. This is evident in
how excited we were as kid when we hear of an uncle who would be coming to
visit because we know that before leaving he will definitely leave some money
for all of the kids except the mean uncles of course for whom we had a list and
knew we should not be hopeful when they visit. For these ‘free-an’ uncles, when
I hear that they will visit I already have a rough estimate of how much I
should be expecting and made plans in my
head of how the money would be spent.
This is how we were brought up- This is the way I know. It
started manifesting in me as early as my days in undergrad when I had to starve
myself for three months or more to my girlfriend’s birthday in order for me to
be able to save enough money to throw her a surprise party.
So I was very surprised when a female friend of mine here in
Nairobi told me one day of the story of herself and this dude who had been
after her for so long to go on a date and she had been playing hard to get.
When she finally agreed to go on a date with the guy, they had coffee at Kaldis
Coffee house in central business district (CBD) of Nairobi. They had the meal
and when the waiter came with the bill, the dude was expecting the chick to
foot the entire bill and not even split. His excuse was that the girl was
better off than him; like what the hell does that even mean??? Can low
self-esteem get worse than that?
Obviously I was shocked when she shared this with me, because
being the male chauvinist that I can be at times, I find it very difficult to
take a lady out on date and not foot the bill. It demoralizes me. Even going
home from school in the matatu I constantly feel the urge to pay for my female
classmates. Not as a gesture to hit on them but it is because that is what I
know as the right thing to do.
So one day when I went on date with this really beautiful
girl that I was hitting on at this really fancy restaurant for dinner and the
bill was almost ten thousand Kenyan shillings, that is like almost 150USD or
100POUNDS STERLING which is way above the minimum wage in Kenya and definitely
way, way above the minimum wage in Sierra Leone and she offered that we split
the bill, I refused. Not because as ‘WAKONZY’ would say I have so much money or
P-SQUARE would say I wanted her to ‘chop my money’ or because I wanted to
impress the girl—( I DON’T BELIEVE IT WORKS THAT WAY) but because I believe
that as a man if I ask a woman out I should have been prepared to take the
bill. Call me unorthodox or old fashioned or any of these things but I still
strongly believe that a man should be able to take care of his woman.
This is a battle for
me every day but recently I have come to realize that humans with a good heart;
GOOD PEOPLE, would always come through, would always find a way of showing
appreciation or would want to reach out and there is nothing we can do about
that. It may not be in the obvious ways we would be expecting but they will.
Maybe it would be just a smile on their face, maybe it would
be babe who wants to share the bill, maybe hubby wants to help with the dishes,
or the neighbor’s kid wants to help with the grocery bag, or your kid wants to
pay the bills this month, or the young man at the Duka wants to share Mandazis -
MAKE THEM FEEL GOOD ABOUT IT!
I mean it’s the weekend and Shonda is back- MAKE SOMEONE
FEEL GOOD ABOUT SOMETHING. Until I am back keep Sierra Leone in your prayers!!
Hugs,
VAL.
