Honey, lemon & something for the pain

I’m tired, hungry, and irritable. But mostly tired. No, mostly hungry - No tired. See, I can’t even make up my mind which one is worse; the hunger or the exhaustion!

I’m at the waiting room of a hospital’s pediatric casualty unit. As I wait for the doctor to see my daughter Hailey, I have decided to torture myself with thoughts of food, a hot shower and a warm bed; three things that I need now more than anything, but can’t have.

Instead, I’m seated waiting impatiently to hear them call out Hailey’s name to signal our turn to see the doctor. All I have are; this phone, which am using to type this post, a hard bench to seat on and the sound of crying sick babies. One of those ‘sick babies’ is my own. Great! Just GREAT!

Hailey is all – “Muuuum, (she tends to pull her words when she is unwell), I want water, I’m thirsty, I want to sleep, I want you to carry me” My poooor baaaby, I let her rest her head on my laps as I type away to take my mind off the other cravings. I find myself stroking her hair with the other hand. I know that she will pull through this (whatever this is) like the champ she is, if only that doctor could speed things up!

I already know what the doctor’s diagnosis will be; throat and ear infection - We seem to frequent the hospital consistently courtesy of these two culprits. First, Mr. Doc will examine Hailey. He will ask her to say “aaaah” - open her mouth wide, and with that wooden thingy that looks like an ice-cream-scooping spoon, he will hold down her tongue as he inspects her mouth (throat) with a ‘torch?’ then remove it at the nick of time; just when Hailey is about to puke on his well-polished shoes. I always anticipate this but it never happens. How I would love to witness it! I still harbor hope that one day I will be granted that privilege.

After examining her throat, he will wear a concerned look on his face. Very concerned; wrinkled eyebrows and all. Next he will take the thingamajig that is used to look inside the ears. Face still wrinkled with concern, he might mutter something to the effect that what he sees is not good. “mmmh…not good at all”. He will listen to her chest using a stethoscope (psheee! He might as well use it seeing as doctors carry it everywhere), her chest will be declared fine. Her breathing too. Then the verdict will be made; ear and/or throat infection!

Then I will ask the same question I always ask, why can’t we deal with this once and for all instead of us frequenting the hospital as if we are subscribed to a bi-monthly visit? To which I will get the same answers – It can’t be helped, it’s the environmental hazards; the dust, the highly contagious school environment, working against her tender age while her immune system is still ‘work in progress’ etc etc…

HAILEY I. CHERUTO! Finally! Hailey’s eyes almost pop out as she hears her name booming over the microphone, and she looks up at me. I take her hand and lead her to the nurse’s centre, where a male doctor is waiting. Strike one; I got the sex of the doctor right! I ‘save as draft’ the post so far, keep my phone away and we follow the doctor to his office.

Doctor closed the door behind us, showed us to two seats while engaging Hailey in playful conversation in the usual playful way that doctors interact with children (or are trained to, I don’t know). A whole minute later, he ‘remembered’ that I was also in the room and switching his attention from Hailey asked me what the problem was. Fever, coughs, fever - high fever, persistent fever. We were here barely three weeks ago. She was ok until yesterday. Why isn’t her cough going away? She keeps falling sick. Blablabla, I lamented on and on while he patiently listened. He then took the ‘ice-cream spoon’ and asked Hailey to say “aaah”. I smiled to myself. Strike two; the ‘ice-cream’ spoon! When Hailey was just about to throw up, he quickly withdrew the ‘spoon’ from her throat, and once again, I was denied a show! He had no concerned look on his face though. He then reached for the ear thingy, peeped inside her ears but still no wrinkled look of concern. The Stethoscope was next; he listened to her breathing. Still, no worried looks, no ‘mmmhs’ nor ‘aaahs’, and therefore no touchdown. I gave up!

Then he closely examined Hailey’s face (his hands on both her cheeks) and he turned to me. “Well…?” I asked. He then strayed miles away from the script in my head. He said Hailey’s chest was fine, her throat too. He then asked me if I had noticed anything peculiar about her cheeks. Now, us ‘Murreys’ have one very outstanding feature passed down to us by our ancestors from my father’s side; chubby cheeks – I definitely wouldn’t call that ‘peculiar’! I indulged him anyway and took a good look at Hailey. A-ha! Her right cheek was slightly swollen; just below the ear, along the jaw line. It was slight, almost negligible to the blind eye, and definitely invisible to the eyes of a tired hungry mother who had been working for the last 9 hours!

But it was there, the doctor wasn’t seeing things, her right cheek was indeed swollen. Still straying further away from the script, the doctor suggested that Hailey could be suffering from the MUMPS! I looked at him puzzled…wasn’t that disease ancient or something? Sorta like polio? Hehe, he smiled. And from that point on, he kept smiling. Who knew that ignorance could be such an ice-breaker! He prescribed meds for the persistent fever and pain, and nothing else since mumps is viral.

When I asked for something for her cough, he engaged me in a long conversation on how kids like Hailey who are prone to allergies resulting in coughs and flu need just a good stock of Honey and lemon in the home, some anti-allergenic once in a while, something for the fever and pain, and nothing else. He intimated that this hospital NEVER (yeah, I could hear the CAPS in his tone) prescribed cough syrups. “Other countries dump these medicines here, yet they are banned in their own country!” he said with some annoyance. He went ahead to say that people who gave their children the cough syrups are naïve to think that they work. “The body’s immune system fights viruses on its own. It makes no sense when people go like ‘I gave her the syrup and she got better after a few days’ (he mimicked a lady’s voice at this point), yet the child was going to get better anyway, with or without YOUR cough syrup” I swear that doctor was hilarious, I couldn’t help laughing. Very nice doctor too. All the time I was pretending not to be one of ‘those mothers’, hehe. Yeah, I am the ‘honey and lemon’ kind of mum. Word!

We thanked the good doctor before leaving. He told Hailey to say hi to her teacher when she felt well enough to go to school (‘No school for Hailey until she gets well– Mumps is contagious!’ he had said) Then I remembered how Hailey had told me a few days ago about her classmate, Roy, whose face was swollen “…na teacher akamwambia atapona”. I wished that Roy’s mother would have followed doc’s advice and let Roy stay at home instead of coming to school and infecting others. I wondered who else in their class, besides Hailey, had been ‘adorned’ the chubby face.

It was past 11pm in the night when we got home. Hailey was asleep and so I woke her up briefly to give her the pain medicine then I put her to bed. Only then, when both my girls were in slumber land, was I able to eat (boy was I hungry!), then I took a quick shower and heaved my tired aching body on the bed. Whoa! I too needed something for the pain…

PS: I’m happy to report that Hailey has since recovered fully

December 29th, 2007

I am stifling a yawn every now and then, in vain. No, I am not hungry. I am not bored either, its 9am for crying out loud. I did not get enough sleep – that is the culprit. I have never been a morning person, for which I make up for by being a night owl. I can stay up to 3am and this bad habit has me shuffling through some days in a daze (did you see that?!)

The reason I stayed up late last night was in order to watch the documentary “Kenya’s Darkest Hour” which was showing on one of our local channels. This was a documentation of the events surrounding the post election violence worst political crisis in Kenya between December 2007 to February 2008. I had to watch it because of the hullabaloo surrounding the now infamous “Ocampo 4” who are proceeding to trial for crimes against humanity committed during that period.

The documentary was splendidly done. It brought back the ugliness of a nation that was hitherto a peaceful people. The contrast between the voting and the unrest that came afterwards was incredible astounding!

December 29th, 2007 is when the madness began. This date was pasted on the TV screen as the documentary went on, to show the unrest that ensued when the election results had not been announced 24 hours after voting. December 29th, 2007; Kenya’s darkest moments began on this day.

Seeing this date plastered up there on the screen made my stomach churn a notch and it was hard not to feel sad, offended and shortchanged all at once. I was taken 4years back when I lay in bed, sore, after eight hours of labor to bring forth our beautiful first born daughter. On this day December 29th, 2007- her birthday, she was born at 1035hrs, just when things were getting ugly in the streets of Nairobi, and all over the country. Great timing, huh?

With the onset of post-election violence, the perpetrators rained on my parade. It’s a baby girl! But did anyone care about that or their safety? We welcomed our baby to a world of violence, hatred and discrimination. I said, “Welcome to the world beautiful! This is Kenya, your home, your motherland” Some motherland indeed! I followed the news as people turned off their humanity and slashed each other to death. I read about the killings, the looting and gender based violence of rape and sexual assault as her father tried to find the safest way in and out of the hospital.

Hailey slept peacefully (She was a sight to behold!) oblivious of the chaos that tore the nation apart. She was oblivious of the men and women who were hacked to death by their neighbors because they belonged to the wrong tribe, not that they changed tribes just the other day but because someone influential conceited said so!

As she smiled in her sleep, she wasn’t aware of that woman who was gang raped and left for dead as the perpetrators used her body as a battlefield to celebrate conquest of the ‘enemy’. She did not even know that there were scores of women being used to humiliate their community and their husbands as they were sexually assaulted in public and their kin forced to watch. She was oblivious of that man who was too overcome by weakness and powerlessness to protect his wife and children.

She slept through it all, but I knew it would only be a matter of time before she became aware of her world. Soon, she would speak. She would learn and she would interact with the world. With the tribes. With the government. With Kenya. Is this the Kenya we want our children to be born to?

I pray for justice. I do not have time to smother the culprits responsible for this with political allegiance because they do not realize what is expected of them. Watching that documentary and witnessing a woman running for cover with her two children, one in each arm, was not a sight to behold. It was deplorable, unacceptable and it was not a joke! Lives were lost! It. Is. Criminal!

Four years on, I am still mad furious! I will therefore not take part in turning the “Ocampo4” to luminaries. All I want is for those responsible for the violence to be locked up and the keys thrown away. All I want; all I crave and cry for (believe me I do) is for justice to be done. For the sake of that child that was born on December 29th, 2007 who never got the ululation that she rightfully deserved, and for all the children of this motherland.

Dads, Daughters & Distance

“I am your number one fan, and yet I have never graced your blog”, my ‘dancer’ complained to me over the phone the other day. I was surprised because he is not the type who enjoys drawing attention to himself - and that was my main reason for not bringing him all here. “But I have given you a few mentions here and there….” I tried to wiggle out of it.

“Where? I haven’t seen them”

“My previous posts… A-Ha! So you say you are my biggest fan, and yet you are not such a keen reader eey?” I tried to turn it around.

“Baibe, all I read about is Hailey & Heidi….” Did I sense some jealousy?

I realized that he was feeling ‘left out’, which was not fair. It’s tricky though, being in the life of someone who likes to pen down their thoughts and life happenings because chances are, you might bump into ‘yourself’ while reading one of their articles. I am sure no one is ever comfortable reading about themselves unless you have something good to say about them, or you write for the media in which case, it won’t matter. So where do you draw the line. Where do I draw the line, dear dancer of mine?

Being a private person, writing has challenged me to come out of my comfort (read private) zone because you cannot write unless you have a story to tell; you can tell other people’s stories for so long. When that is exhausted and you increasingly come close to becoming bedfellows with writer’s block, writing about yourself is something you cannot put off for a long time.

Through with the ‘pouting’ (ha!) we went on to talk about other more important issues. He wanted to find out how the kids were doing. How is Hailey? Does she ask about me? I really miss you guys. Is Heidi walking yet? Is she talking? To which I proudly, and selfishly-now that I think about it, say “Yeah, she finally said ‘Mummy’ the other day” Then the pouting starts all over again…”Mummy? What about Daddy? She hasn’t said ‘Daddy’ yet?” I then remind him that Hailey’s first words were ‘Daddy’ - you win some, you lose some.

I hand the phone over to Hailey and for the next couple of minutes, I somewhat cease to exist in her world. I lose her for a while as she converses with her father with all her senses. Her mouth smiles, “I am so HAPPY to hear your voice”, her eyes say “I miss you Daddy” and with her words, she actually says “I love you too”

I can make out the whole conversation from her responses; how is school, to which she answers fine. What did teacher say? To which she answers, she said to do my homework. Ok…how is Heidi? Heidi is fine. Give Heidi a kiss for me. She goes to find Heidi, wherever she is, and forcefully plants a kiss on her cheek as she goes “Mmmmwwwaaa….!” Heidi screams. She always thinks that Hailey is out to get her! “Si daddy amesema nimfanyie Mwwwaaaa!” she tells me defensively. I tell her it’s ok.

Mission accomplished, she gets back on the phone. Her father is laughing on the other end. As I am trying to convince Heidi that her older sister meant well, Hailey is singing on the phone with her father. It’s always either ‘Baby Jesus’ or ‘Kamares’. Today the song of choice is Kamares which has her wriggling her waist as she goes “Na Hailey siku hizi, ana ringa ringa ringa….anatoa waist kamares….” Who comes up with these songs!?

She gets a high from these phone conversations with her father. Sometimes, she will hand the phone to Heidi saying “Ongea na daddy” I guess she wants her to experience the same feeling of closeness she gets after talking to him. When Heidi learns to talk, I think the fact that she is also tired of being ‘left out’ of those conversations will be a motivating factor.

When I get the phone back, he asks again; how is she doing really? Fine, I say. His voice is heavy with emotion, and I sense it. You can tell that working miles away kills him sometimes. He misses his girls - He misses them like crazy.

I envy him because with all that goes on around us, the girls will always love him. Unlike motherhood, Fatherhood is not complicated. You only have to be there and the love you get back, ENORMOUS! You just have to be there, distance notwithstanding.

Keep at it baibe. Keep doing what you do best. Mwwwwaaaaaa!