and the Wise Men came bearing Gifts

Selecting The Right Present is never easy. Boy have we gone off-piste at times, - sponsoring renovation of a choice book at the British Library for a bookworm father-in-law or saving a selection of choice rare organic seeds at Henry Doubleday's research gardens for a keen gardener without green fingers.  But in a new culture, and where the different communities have very different value systems, it all gets more complex.

In UK I would think buying a Jacqueline Wilson paperback or two a perfectly acceptable present for a nine year old girl's birthday.  Here I scan the back of the book again, recall the child's parents and their backgrounds, - might it include talk of boyfriends, swearing, alcohol, failure to believe in God, divorce, Harry Potter [=witchcraft]? Or indeed, if its Jacqueline Wilson, the full monty of them all?  Put that high-risk book back and opt for a board game. 'Boring!'

In UK a Tesco Finest bottle of wine brings a smile of good will to the harrassed class teacher at the end of term. In Kenya I decide wine is fine for the mzungu teacher, but no, SecondBorn's teacher is an evangelical Christian Kenyan, almost certainly teetotal, chocolates for her.

And what of our guards? Thinnish men, managing on the Kenyan minimum wage, already getting an additional food allowance from us. What would bring them and their families a happier Christmas?  We opted for a food hamper, but which one?  One of the families at school advertised their company's hamper to the parent body. Contains palm oil (for cooking), a slab of lard, a tub of blueband margarine and a bag of soap powder. 'They'll love it!' enthused MoreExperiencedFriend, but I couldn't bring myself to buy what, to my eyes, was TheWorstPresent ever.

Tom always laughs at my choice of Christmas books for him. Some very clearly are bought with solely him in mind, 'Wildlife Photography for Experts' for example. Others, however, he identifies as the Crossover Presents, on which he assesses I will be checking his progress at weekly intervals during the year to come. 'How did you get on with that detective novel? Can I read it now? Pur-lee-eesee.'  And, as the year wears on, 'Oh do get a move on. I didn't buy it just for you you know.'  So yes, part of my criteria in the family present-giving and beyond, is to select a present you hope will really give pleasure to the recipient, but wouldn't mind getting yourself. Tub of margarine, stricken from the list.

So back to the guards. I opted in the end for a high-class Kenyan food hamper. No chocolates nor pickles and wines in this. But a bag of dried beans, two bags of flour, a bag of sugar, a box of teabags, a tube of minty toothpaste, cooking oil, candles and so on, all put together in a practical (but vile-looking) 1970s plastic basket. Very basic rations to a Western mind. But costing, I realised, a third of a monthly wage for our guards.  I was anxious giving them, but did think, well at least they could sell them on if they don't hit the spot.  But everyone's delight seemed unforced, and today, a week on, E came and said 'The Christmas box, it so made our Christmas.' Which in itself is so chastening. Last year's homemade choice of goods - phonecard, cash, torch, biscuits, chocolates - were the first time his children had ever tasted chocolate.

This year I'd managed the expat Christmas food experience far better than last year. I'd got sourcing key bits in September (mince meat), had bought the troublesome red cabbage in early December, and had put in requests to friends visiting Nairobi for business (chocolate coins, more mince pies, Christmas cake). We and our guests had eaten well.  So I was downcast beyond to hear that, when we returned from our two day safari, two children had been found sorting through our rubbish bags outside the gate.  Sifting through the nappies of our toddler guests, the rotten food from two weeks ago, the wrapping paper and accoutrements of a Western Christmas, to find tins and plastic which they could sell on (which anyway our handyman had taken), and cast-off food which they and their family could eat. They'd gone by the time I heard. But Kenya is a land of poverty. Christmas inclusion can't just mean giving to those within our electric fence.

Let Evening Come

This Christmas time friends in UK have been living through chemotherapy and through bereavement. They, and beloved family, have felt far far away.  Other Christmas cards have trickled in, with messages of loneliness bravely born, of sadnesses brushed off in a one line ps.  So, in the way of the dedication at a gig, this poem is for you, in celebration of your courage and of sunrises to come. You know who you are.  I wish I were there with you now.  With my warmest love.

Let Evening Come

Let the light of late afternoon
shine through chinks in the barn, moving
up the bales as the sun moves down.

Let the cricket take up chafing
as a woman takes up her needles
and her yarn. Let evening come.

Let dew collect on the hoe abandoned
in long grass. Let the stars appear
and the moon disclose her silver horn.

Let the fox go back to its sandy den.
Let the wind die down. Let the shed
go black inside. Let evening come.

To the bottle in the ditch, to the scoop
in the oats, to air in the lung
let evening come.

Let it come, as it will, and don't
be afraid. God does not leave us
comfortless, so let evening come.

Jane Kenyon

In Search of the Grail

18 months ago, on arrival in Kenya, I bought a new, bog standard hoover. LG make, for those interested.  A year later its hoover bags ran out.  The last one inadvertently got thrown away. And so I embarked on my quest for new ones.

You wouldn't think it would be difficult. Not an item of great rarity.  Why not start with the major two floor 24 hour supermarket chain where you bought the hoover? It stocks at least three models of LG hoovers, including ours. You'd think they'd have the bags. But no. Not in any of the three stores I tried. Not if you do the Kenyan thing and make a special plea. Not anywhere. Not either in the smaller supermakets. Nor in small bespoke hardware stores.

So the hoover was mothballed for six months. I kept trying sporadically.  D went back to the UK with the make of the hoover tattooed on his hand, but returned emptyhanded. John Lewis don't stock LG bags either. 

Today I thought I'd get my Life In Order. But start with something small. Hoover Bags it is. So I retraced my steps.  Back to Nakumatt, supermarket emporium, stockist of all the expat could possihly need, 6 person tents, chicken wire and barbed wire, Italian made saucepans, paddling pools, marmite, But nothing so infra dig, so below stairs darling, as hoover bags. 

'LG has been taken over by Hotpoint,' said the FT-reading electrical department manager. 'They'll have them in the Hotpoint store.' Off I traipse.  Another mall.

Hotpoint store is full of LG hoovers. Never a hoover bag in sight. 

'Ah yes, hoover bags.  In the LG service centre.  Out the door, past the boiler room. Down into the entrails of the earth. Through the service entrance. Out into the tenants' carpark.  There they are.'

So I found them. The sole stockist of Hotpoint & LG hoover bags in Kenya.  Truly in the entrails of the earth.  Billowing steam from the boiler room.  You wait at customer service.  A kind man disappears into the vast stock room, returning with 4 sizes of bags. We judge it by eye. Back he returns for another 9, now I've worked out, spot them, buy them.

Stroppy customer that I am, I have a word with the manager of the Hotpoint service centre. 

'Don't you think it might be an idea to stock the bags more widely?  Everyone needs them. What about if you live up-country, how do they track you down?  Its taken me 6 months, and I only live 5 miles away?' 

A blank look back. 

'They are electrical spare parts.  We can't have them just anywhere.  For spare parts you come to the service centre.'

One of those bits of ineffable Kenyan logic with which it does little good to argue.  My words about 'Elsewhere, in the rest of the world, where you buy them off the shelf' dried on the tip of my tongue. 'But not here,' her stony glare suggested.  'No need to spell it out.'

So I pay. 1770 Ksh (£17) for ten hoover bags. Get my details entered in the logbook by the security guard before I may leave, for indeed, buying a hoover bag in Kenya is a high end endeavour. 

And tromp off, vowing never to buy another Hotpoint/LG purchase. But flushed, secure in the knowledge that today, I have scored a minor success in the Living in Kenya stakes. Till the next one.

 

Self Importance Squared

If there's one experience in Kenya that brings me from calm to furious in ten minutes flat, its that of being ignored.  That does make me sound high maintenance. I don't mean expectations of cloaks into puddles for me to walk on, or of waiters holding back chairs.  I mean walking into an office, standing patiently by the sign marked 'enquiries', 'appointments' or 'payments', and watching the four people on the other side of the desk do absolutely nothing.  Minute after minute ticks away.

I am a former Humanities student. I understand they may well not be doing nothing. They might well be composing poetry; musing on their shopping list for the way home; grappling with Fermatt's Theorum.  But they have no outward sign of action, no pen in hand, finger on keyboard - or possibly, only an open newspaper or magazine which they are actively perusing.  But nothing related to actioning the task for which one might assume they have been employed.  No flick of the hair to suggest, I have seen you but am otherwise engaged.  Just a moonlike vacant preoccupation, Being Important, elsewhere.

A few weeks ago I went to pay a bill for a holiday at Christmas. Two families, 8 people in total, at peak season.  A sizeable amount in anyone's money.  I'd phoned the office to check where they were and that they were open and turned up ten minutes later. Entered a four desk front office, with one woman 'Marketing' gainfully employed updating her facebook status, 'Accounts' reading the paper, 'Enquiries' on the phone, and 'HR' gazing vacantly. When approached, HR waved me in a general area of the seating.  'I've come to pay for our holiday,' I said firmly, thinking of the global appeal of hard cash into the bank.  And so I waited.  After half an hour I enquired firmly again. I only needed to drop off a cheque, but given the amount involved, and the possibility of slippage here, wanted to be clear that it had gone to the right person, for the right booking.  'Just wait.'  After 45 minutes I had a firm and strident tantrum.  After an hour and fifteen minutes, still with no explanation, nor arrival of any relevant person, I was ready to cancel the booking and explain, cap in hand to our visitors, why Nairobi is better at Christmas.  Eventually after an hour and a half the accountant sauntered up. No explanation or communication on the delay.  I still had to wait a further 30 minutes for him to laboriously write out the receipt. Two hours, plus 30 minutes travel time, to pay something, in person, in full, 6 weeks in advance, which in most countries of the world would be settled on departure from the hotel.  Atua Enkop and assorted sub-camps, don't go there.

Today I took SecondBorn to the doctor.  The paediatrician himself was A Delight. A location with ample parking, toys in the waiting room, communicative upbeat reception staff, payment possible by card, and himself a kindly, knowledgable, supportive doctor. So I was off my guard.  But when he got out his prescription pad and started writing details of different tests needed, I started to whimper. 

Medical tests are Kenyan Living (Advanced level).  Cash payment needed, up front. There won't be cash points on site, at best 10 minutes drive away. But no insight into how much they will cost.  2000 KSh (£20), for a urine test, well ok, I had that.  Wait 40 minutes to pay (steaming urine sample in hand) because the sole printer wasn't working and it wasn't possible to write a receipt instead of printing it. 'What, you need change as well? Just sit over there. No I'm staying here, at the head of the queue.'  But then off, for the ultra sound, 20 minutes drive, to BigTeachingHospital.  Which is heaving, has a complicated system with parking tokens which have to be handed back in as you fail to find a parking spot in carpark 1 but are reissued by the time you progress to carpark 3. Which is also full.  Full by Kenyan standards means more than every marked parking slot occupied.  Cars with chauffeurs double parked in the road. Cars without chauffeurs doubleparked everywhere. Next time we'll walk.

NHS medical receptionists aren't hired for their charming natures and warm and fuzzy people skills either. Or if they are, they soon get burnt out of them.  But they do explain the system, clearly, if wearily, they do see communication as part of their role, if only to better manage expectations for a potentially volatile crowd.  Not so in BigTeachingHospital's Radiology Department.  A waiting room, brimful of resigned people.  An 'appointments/enquiries' sign, beneath which sits a woman with no queue before her, and no intention of doing anything to create one.  I ask what to do to book a slot, I wait for response.  No response. No reply. On the third asking I get an airy wave to the man under 'cashier' sign, who has a queue three deep round him.  At the head of the queue it takes 7 questions, and the intervention of the kindly man behind me, before I understand the logic.  This queue, 25 minutes wait, is to put our papers in a wire rack infront of the cashier, to wait a second turn to come (40+ people waiting) and be allocated an appointment for another day.  They need the payment, cash, 7500 KSh (£75 - or half a good Kenyan monthly wage) before you may make the appointment. No cheques no cards.  'But why can't we book the appointment now?'  'Because there are only two of us,' comes the ineffable logic. 

Its like the old joke, how do you get from A to B? Well I wouldn't start from here. 

Of course, having let three queues of 40 people build up, two people might find it difficult to book appointments for all of them. However if you had an appointments diary, pencil & rubber, and you allocated a slot to each person as they came in with the cash, well... how might that be to get on with? 

We gave up for the day.

In my cooler moments, I've pondered about this.  Working in an office is a high status job in Kenya.  The status is bestowed, I think, by the contact with a rare computer, the wearing of a suit, the wielding of the receipt book, the fact of holding a job. But this status has brought with it the arrogance of the more cutting hospital consultants or the top catwalk model. Concepts of customer service are twenty years from reaching Kenyan offices.  Customer is King?  This is a land untouched by 360' feedback, by student satisfaction questionnaires, mystery shoppers and stakeholder feedback.  Sadly, I fear, untouched for many by any sense that you are there to get the job done, unpleasant though it may be. 

It doesn't just happen with face to face contact. Don't email your reservation for a night away to the Kenyan lodge or hotel.  On three occasions, until I learnt better, I've emailed reservations to the address given on the lodge website, and waited up to a week and a half for a response before cracking, and phoning. In one case the hotel was even going to be closed for the whole month in which I'd requested a night's stay. Not a difficult email to write, no consultation of diaries required, but nothing. 
'Why, why don't they reply. How will they ever get any bookings or clients?'
I moaned to WorldlyWise, my British friend who's been here for 17 years and whose family now run a shopping empire.
'Well Catrin, you have to remember, the people who aren't answering the emails aren't the ones who get the income or who set up the website...'

'I am a terribly terribly important person.  You are an insufferable bother, and rather inadequate for needing to plague me in the first place. You will be shown your lowly position in society. But not now, later.'