Wearing the Pharisee's Shoes

Listening to the parable of the Good Samaritan, I've always imagined myself in the role of the victim, waiting injured by the roadside or of the Samaritan, who stopped to help. Never that of the Pharisee who walked on by. But Kenya can put one in uneasy, unpalatable situations.

We spent Saturday night in an idyllic lodge on Mount Kenya's slopes.  Big skies, forests in which one might see elephants, dramatic waterfalls, a swing you could lie back on and look up at the clouds. Just what the doctor ordered. 

And then came the Sunday afternoon drive back to Nairobi. Generally good roads, your usual idiots who overtake on blind bends, but nothing to raise the blood pressure 18 months into life in Kenya. Until round a corner, we screech to a halt, stopped by a major road accident, clearly just happened.  Two matatus, windows smashed out. Bloodied bodies lying on the road. Shopping everywhere. Children searching for bodies down the hillside. Passenger vehicles with smashed out windscreens. One overwhelmed policewoman. Woman with blood steaming from her arm. Women screaming. Hundreds of people milling around, impotently.  Men pulling passengers from the matatu. Four men, holding a woman by each limb, lying her on the road between the matatu ahead of us, and our car, as if to say, 'She's not alive, doesn't matter where we put her.'  Other drivers doing that Kenyan driver thing, sneak around the obstacle by going off road on the other side, causing total gridlock.

No ambulances here, or none upcountry.  A kindly man, desperately asking cars to take some people to hospital. And yes, of course, we should help. Do as you would be done by. But our security regulations say not to. And, in a way, in a cover-your-back corporate way, its not that they are wrong, for their perspective. The crowd was understandably distressed. We had only just arrived, and had no damage on the car, so you'd hope people could see we hadn't helped cause the crash. But, Sunday afternoon or not, it felt that it could turn ugly, children in the back or no.  In a threatening crowd situation, keep the doors and windows locked and get out of there, fast, say the regulations.   I'm really sorry, I said to the man, we aren't allowed to take people to hospital. And you could see what a weak answer he thought that was.  And then I got out of the car to direct it between the bodies.  Out of my comfort zone, way, way out of it.

So what did the Pharisee think, as she drove on by? She thought of her security, and that of her children, and the cost of securing it. She thought of HIV and of the importance of buying rubber gloves for the first aid kit for another time.  She wondered where the nearest hospital was, and also wondered if it was true that you got stuck with the bill, as she'd heard from friends, if you deliver passengers there.  And she thought of the Good Samaritan, also a foreigner on a road in insecure parts, but who followed his first instinct and got involved.