Fire!

Fire for me, in UK, has been something safe, contained, warm and fluffy in nature.  Some of my happiest memories of childhood are of building bonfires with friends on winter beaches, of toasting sausages and waiting till the tide came in and put out the dying embers.  Reading Firefighter Sam in authentic Welsh accent to toddler age children. Followed by years of bedtime stories spent devising our own setpiece Firefighter Firstborn and Firefigher Secondborn tales, in which today's choice of villain was vanquished by the junior firefighter and their crew, and left languishing up a tree or stuck up a pipe, while the victors relished a fictional party with cakes donated by the grateful crowds.

Yes, I've known that isn't the sole reality. 9/11. Money for Madagascar, the charity started by Mum and Allan, which sent, alongside cash for smallscale development projects, two decommissioned Swansea fire engines to serve as the sole engines in Madagascar's second town and major oil refinery.  Imagining the horror of a fire in an oil refinery without even one fire-engine to lend support. A German boyfriend who served as volunteer firefighter in his rural village, but who spoke bleakly of the reality of the motorway pileups to which he was also drafted.  But my experience, till now, had been of fires at arms-length and containable.

Yesterday, B, our part-time cook, phoned to say he needed to go home urgently. His house in Kangemi, one of our nearby slums, was on fire.  He'd been told it had burned down with everything he owned in it. 

Today he was back at work, though I'd said he should take as much time as he needed. His house, and those of eight neighbours, had been burnt to the ground. Someone had left a kerosene stove lit while they'd gone to the communal standpipe to get some water. A curtain had blown on to it, and by the time they returned the whole house was on fire.  Twenty houses to a plot in Kangemi, cheek by jowl. 

This isn't a rare occurrence. Another guard looked bleary eyed a few weeks ago, after a night spent passing buckets to try to save a neighbour's house, also in Kangemi. There two toddlers had been left unsupervised while their parents sought work. They'd played with the stove, which exploded. The children were both killed.

I've only seen two fire engines in 18 months in Nairobi. One seems permanently stationed in the United Nations carpark, some 30 minutes drive from Kangemi; the other spotted once in Karen, again at least 45 minutes away. And they don't just mobilise for any old fire I guess.  Here, as B explained, to put out your fire, you and your neighbours fill your buckets, pour your own water, save your own roof. And B had been at our house, making pasta and meatballs.

'There was nothing at all left,' B said sadly. 'Nothing at all.'
'You'd think there should had been melted appliances, bits of things in there, but there weren't.'
'Sometimes,' he said with pain, 'neighbours come and pretend to help, but they actually steal things from the burning house if no one is there.  I stopped them from telling me who did that. I don't want to know. It makes me too angry. I know that God sees everything, I have to place my trust there.'

'Nothing at all left' means something different here in Kenya. B has no bank account. No insurance. No facebook account with copies of photos. Thankfully his family are all safe in Western Kenya, but all his possessions were in Nairobi, where he spent the vast majority of his time.  He has only the clothes he wore to work yesterday.

'The worst bit was telling our 14 year old daughter on the phone. She so howled when she heard,' he said wearily. Two days before, he'd been telling me with pride how well she had done in her primary school leaving exam. Well enough to qualify for (feepaying, boarding) high school. I understand that her distress is not just fellow-feeling with her Dad. It's also realistic fear that with such a loss to the family, there is no money left to pay a major cost - already a stretch - for now three children at high school.

We'll do what we can. We've found a duvet, saucepan, crockery and cutlery, towel and t-shirts. Friends have promised trousers and shoes. We'll do our sums and have a whipround and see.  'Resilience' is the development speak word for it, - the amount of give in the system, savings and ability to bounce back from major tragedy.  And in financial terms everything is cut so close to the bone for so many here.

But I'm thinking of B's wisdom. Of his sorrow that others, friends, stole from him in distress. And of his choice not to seek to know who did this, not to give that precise bitterness room in his heart. Gerard Manley Hopkin puts it so well:

'call off thoughts awhile

Elsewhere; leave comfort root-room'

That to me, is such grace in dire adversity. That is wise courage and steadfastness. That is true resilience in the things which matter.  In this land where fortunes change in hours, in this land without safety nets, Leave comfort root-room. And those of us who can, let us see what more we can do.