'My Son, the Rockstar'

Preparations are afoot for the first gig of SecondBorn & mates' band.  Tomorrow.  Four highly excited nine year old boys, bouncing, leaping, colliding off each othe like popcorn in a pan.

We're not talking Hammersmith Apollo or Brixton Academy here. The setting is the more sedate, more pressganged conscript audience of the Year Five teatime concert for parents.  And amidst the measured, blazer-wearing, rehearsed grade four piano pieces of those kids whose parents manage to oversee daily reacquaintaince with the pieces, one off-the-leash rebellious mini-boyband, - electric guitar, piano, drums, rock cello, - with unbrushed hair.

The signs are not that auspicious I'd say.
'How's it going with your singers?' (Two girls from his year, recruited after auditions of 19 wannabees.)
'Oh they left. They said they wanted their break times instead of rehearsals. (Plaintively) But we HAD asked them that in the interviews, and they said it would be fine.'
Ah well SecondBorn, another of Life's Hard Lessons learnt early. What people say in interview isn't necessarily what they want to be held to.

'How are the rehearsals going?'
[Grumpily] 'We aren't allowed to rehearse this week because of the exams in the school hall. We SAID we'd do it quietly. We still can't get all the timings together.'

It's hard to assess their prowess from the breakfast-time croonings of one quarter of the instrumentalists.  It brings back memories of FirstBorn & friends' Plays, aged around four, when the accompanying mums at a playdate would have to break off their cosy gossip-fuelled conversations to sit through interminable plays, with forgotten lines and tender performers departing to giggle behind the sofa.  Pleasant memories for fond mothers, but as I thought then too,
'Not really a performance.  Pass the rich tea biscuits would you.'

But alongside SecondBorn's naked excitement and enjoyment whatever his level, I have a glow of maternal pride too, however it turns out. In 1970s South Wales the cocks of the roost, the kings of the valleys, were the rugby players and the surfers.  My joy was unconfined when, last summer, SecondBorn stood on a surfboard in Swansea Leisure Centre and rode his first wave.
'Are you out there, my teenage peers.  I may have been a geek, but LOOK at my son!'
As he put on a rugby shirt, made it to the B team. Just.  A maternal wound of not-having-been-good-enough, - then, in the 1970s, having been the wrong gender to be acceptable anyhow - part healing.

And gratitude too that, unlike his mother then, SecondBorn doesn't really care how good his band is.  Just enjoys busking with his mates.  Seems happily uncoupled from the fact that his peers are performing well toned pieces, and that that might set a standard for the band too. Is just happily in the moment, entirely appropriately for a nine year old boy.

So here's an apology in advance to my fellow parental conscripts at tomorrow's concert. I get they might not be performance ready yet. I get your time is tight. As the music teacher said yesterday:
'By the time you're in Year Seven, you'll be a pretty good band.'
But they're currently in Year Five.

Kibera and Life in the Slums

Twelve year old FirstBorn has lived in Kenya for two and a half years, but we're kind of aware that she hasn't really been exposed to the life led by the majority of Kenyans her age. Yes, lots of her friends are Kenyan. And Rwandan, Senegalese, Burundian, Ghananian and the like. But in her British curriculum school she's mixing with a tiny minority of the more prosperous - of all nationalities - in this country.

And yes, her Dad and I tell stories of the less privileged friends and clients we work with. My student, one of 27 children of a polygamous father. My student who at Firstborn's age had been orphaned and was setting up home on his own, or rather, as on your own as you can be when you're responsible for three younger siblings in a land without social security. The children at the remand home who've been abandonned by desperate parents.  But 'Yadadayada' its not the same hearing these things at second hand from a parent.  So FirstBorn and I bunked off school today for some mother daughter bonding cum exposure to another side of Kenya in Kibera, possibly Africa's largest slum.

We started off with a websearch about HIV. FirstBorn knows all about the Black Death, scourge of medieval Britain. She knows about the Spanish flu pandemic in 1919. But no one - not her Dad and I - not the school had explained about HIV, which 1.5 million Kenyans are living with today. Many without access to retrovirals.  1.2 million Kenyan children have been orphaned by HIV we read. I hadn't known that. In fact, kept mis-quoting the statistic through the day - 120,000 children - No Mum, 1.2 million children. That's a city the size of Birmingham of orphaned children, in this country, less populous than the UK. 6% of the population living with HIV. And this shouldn't be a far distant issue. The school's handbook is clear: Children will be welcomed to school irrespective of their HIV status. Quite right. So at 6% of the population, a number of her peers at the school will be HIV positive. Some of our staff have disclosed their status to me. She knows about diabetes and asthma. And yet none of us had taken time to tell FirstBorn about HIV.

Kibera is home to anywhere between 200,000 (census figures) and 800,000 of the poorest Kenyans. It's hilly so has no sewage pipes. Open drains, which overflow in the rainy season, carrying rubbish and worse through many homes. Houses are made of tin or mud. They don't have running water - you go to the nearest standpipe and carry your bucket, uphill, home.  NGOs have built some toilets and showers, but they are few and far between. Not as close as a UK corner shop. One block of five toilets was shared between around a thousand families. And you pay for their use - around 5KSh a visit for the cheapest ones or 30 KSh for a family per day. But some of the poorest families live on 75 KSh - around a dollar - for the whole family for a day. So you can't afford to spend too much on that child with the dodgy tummy.

Infact the toilet block we visited was shut for renovations. The smell and the discarded plastic bags all around showed even the slowest learner what people used when the toilets were shut, or when they couldn't afford them. Flying toilets - do your business in a plastic bag - also safer at night when its too dangerous to venture outside to a toilet - and then discard your business on the road next day. Smelly, unhygenic, unpalatable, as small children with no shoes crowded round us, noses running, hands mucky with what they'd been touching.

We visited a preschool - 30 children under 6, 7 of them HIV positive, one inspirational teacher in one room around 10 foot by 10 foot, no running water and filled potties around in the yard, waiting for someone to take them to the latrine opposite.  A small business networking group for HIV positive mothers. They had also run poultry keeping from their business premises (again 10x10 room) but had recently decided that the loose chickens underfoot was too much to cope with.  A youth employment project making sophisticated jewellry from raw bones. But the smell and the bonedust filling the air, the naked blades from the machinery, not for the fainthearted.  Toi market.  And a final soda in our tourguide's Mum's house. Again a single room, 10x10.
'And how many of you lived here when you were growing up?'
'Nine of us. Four siblings. Mum. Dad. Uncle. And two cousins who came to live with us.'
Nine in a single room.

I went to a presentation by a US NGO recently, where they spoke on the results of a survey of young girls they'd conducted in Kibera. Almost 50% of 16 year old girls in their study had swapped sex for food. The youngest child whom they'd supported to access justice had been six, and had been being raped by a neighbour, with impunity until the NGO's advocates had stepped in.  Another NGO survey says that 60% of Kibera's residents are HIV positive. I don't know. I don't have the means to assess or to judge. But in the daytime, accompanied by enthusiastic residents, visiting thriving social projects, well this felt a lively, purposeful community. I didn't feel unsafe. I didn't feel ill at ease.  But I don't live there.
But I'd spent time in Kibera before. What did Firstborn think? 
'Gosh it was crowded and hot in that preschool. But the children were really sweet.'
'I realised how lucky we are. We have three toilets in our house. And there were five for thousands of people in Kibera.  And its really not nice when there aren't enough toilets.  I have my own room and it has windows. It was so hot in that house, and there were only five of us in it. Imagine at night with nine in that one room.'

But most tellingly,
'Do you know Mum, that's the first time I've walked around on the street in Nairobi. In two and a half years.'
And its true. Outside Nairobi, in Naivasha, Nanyuki, Mombasa, we wander around. But in Nairobi when we go on errands together we go in the car, park in a mall. On my own, dropping off cheques, paying national insurance, yes I wander round on foot. But with the kids in tow, no.  So that's a resolution for me for the future. Breaking out of the malls with the kids. Loafing. Looking at things in markets. Waiting in long endless queues. Spotting a bargain at the mitumba. All as much of the Kenyan experience as Kibera.

We visited Kibera with Kibera Tours. I recommend them.  http://www.kiberatours.com/

No Man is an Island

Today I got an urgent facebook alert. One of Tom's colleagues' children has a long term debilitating illness. She's needed a range of blood transfusions, and now she's got severe malaria, so she needs blood platelets, urgently.  But for her to get the blood, her dad needs to rustle up the donors, to give earmarked donations in her name. And you can only give blood every three months, and lots of the likely suspects - friends, colleagues, relations - gave during the last crisis, less than three months ago.

Her dad was coordinating the blood donors from her bedside in intensive care. You don't want too many people on day one, and then no one in reserve for day four. Maybe blood platelets need to be fresh? Or maybe there just aren't the storage facilities at that hospital? 

When I got to the Blood Donor Unit, four of the security company guards from Tom's work were there too. Young, freshfaced, burly lads. We winced together as the needles went in.  Fellow feeling. Chatted and sipped the sugary sodas together afterwards. Ascertained that we were all there to give blood for the same little girl.  And looked on proudly, as her dad came to take away the seven pints of blood that had been collected in her name.

Kenya is a stratified society. We live behind electric fences and razor wire. My guard friends don't. Yes, of course I chat beyond the fence, work with and alongside Kenyans, - but since leaving BigCorporate its rare for me to be the sole mzungu in the room. Certainly rare for us all to be chatting on equal terms, contributing to a joint endeavour, a common purpose, something important which needed the input from each one of us.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main;
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as
well as a manor of thy friends or of thine
own were; any man's death diminishes me,
because I am involved in mankind.
And therefore never send to know for whom
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

John Donne

More blogs on this topic
http://www.onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/03/bare-necessities.html

End of a Long Month

John, our weekend 'relief' guard has been losing weight. Markedly. Not in a good way. I asked him if he was ok.
'Yes, yes, I'm fine.'
But Tom reminded me its the end of January, - a long month after Christmas and forking out for presents and maybe a trip up-country.
'He's probably not eating very much.'

Even in East African high summer and bright sunshine, away from UK grey skys and biting frosts, January is a hard month for many. That Christmas trip up-country and sodas bought for wayward cousins eating into January's options. Start of the school year, uniform, books and school fees for the kids.

But we give money for food for lunch for the staff, so he should be getting a good lunch at least.
'Oh but I don't get lunch at the weekend, they lock the food in the kitchen.'
'But you mainly work at the weekend. The money is for you too. For you to eat whenever you are here.'

I was furious. I didn't mince my words with Philip, our gardener cum handyman cum cook for the staff, who takes monthly receipt of the cash for the lunches.
'This is not your money. This is money for all the people who work here. Whenever they work.  Not just money to buy food when you are here, so they go hungry at the weekends.  You need to apologise to John. And to find a solution to put it right for him and for the future.'

What gets me so outraged is that they are friends. Chat together. Eat lunch together on a Monday, when John also works.  Philip knows that the guards don't earn well. Earn far less than him, and don't receive the extra benefits he gets from us. Must have seen John getting thinner too, and been quicker on the uptake as to why.  But has pocketed the money for the last three years. Or to put a better gloss on it, has diverted the money to better meals Monday to Friday.  Stealing food from friends who are hungry when you yourself aren't in dire need is for me a heinous crime.

I think Philip thinks we're fools that we use our money to support his kids to go to school. He is happy to pocket the money, to count it out infront of me, to attempt - once only - to bargain me up, when he felt I could contribute some more. That made me see red, and I gave him full measure next day.

'If we were from your village and were helping send your children to school, would you come and say we should give more? I don't think so. This is our charitable contribution not part of your wages. I know that there are many children in the orphanage who would love a chance to go to high school, and who don't have parents in work - or parents at all - to pay for them.   Your children's education is your responsibility not mine, so please don't ever try to bargain up my charitable contribution again, or you run the risk that it goes to children in greater need than yours.'

He didn't get why I got mad, but did - in that global way of some men when faced with an irate woman - shake his head and back off. And its about my hang-ups.  His attitudes and behaviour aren't off the spectrum here, though mine aren't either. It matters to me that people who work for us get a good meal while at work. It matters that we try to share our good fortune on things which matter to us and to them, wages, food, school fees.  Within limits.  I believe it builds community, models what we believe to be important, makes a difference, gives back, supports people who are almost part of our family.  But I hate that Philip takes, fails to thank, and further, grabs what isn't his.  Messes up the whole idealistic thing. Makes me feel shamed and a fool.  It's not a sacking offence, though I wish it were. It could have been a failure to think of the needs of others, though I know it isn't.

And John, when I asked him later how he thought it could be put right, was gracious beyond.
'The money for the meals in the past, is gone. I think we should forget that.  And my money for the future, I think we should put it with the money for the night guards, because they always leave their food where I can get it.'

And the lesson for me from this?  I don't see Philip in the same way anymore. I forgave him nicking the avocados from our tree. Almost. But diverting food from friends?  I won't forgive that.  But without inflating our tiny efforts for people inside our tent here, there are benefit cheats in the UK  too, but people don't let that undermine the welfare state.  And I really wouldn't want to live with myself, with enough food and more in our fridge, if a guard were losing weight at our gate and we were turning an official blind eye.

Other blogs on this theme:
http://www.onthethresholdafrica.blogspot.com/2011/01/blind-ignorance.html