In Africa, people wait. I know, I know, in America we wait too. You stand in line at a restaurant or the post office for fifteen minutes and you feel you're wasting your time. But in Africa people sit or stand waiting for hours. Women settle onto the ground by the road with their baskets of avocados, or charcoal, or oranges, or bananas, or bottles of water, or whatever else they've gathered for sale, and wait all day hoping to sell three or four so they can afford to feed their family. Men on motorcycles gather at the corner waiting for hours hoping someone will give them 50 cents for a ride across town. Young men and women sit by the road under a tree all day just staring ... for they have nothing else to do.
At Keumbu Hospital the people coming to talk to the doctor start filing in after sunrise, say sevenish, and continue accumulating on the benches in front of our out-patient clinic until we finally start seeing them after morning rounds, so usually about noon. Those who are admitted sit in bed all day for a few minutes of our exam and almost no explanation of what we're doing to them or how long they'll be here. Well ... I suppose it's not that different from America after all.
I asked my friend, Pastor, how was the Kenyan economy? He said "In the ICU. Unemployment is sky high, inflation is worse, and the future is bleak." When I arrived my dollar bought 84 Kenyan Shillings, (Ksh). Today, ten days later, it's getting 88.3. There are banks everywhere, but lines of credit are extremely difficult, a point I bring out because of my building problems.
I brought $5000 cash with me. $2000 of that was for the project and the rest for travel expenses. I had planned on spending $5000 on the project, $2500 I raised as donations, and $2500 of my own money, but I didn't feel comfortable carrying $8000 in cash around -- I was nervous even with the $5000, but I've had no problems. In any case, Zachery, the water engineer here in Keumbu, priced out the project for me. The first $1000 went to the necessities; cleaning the storage tank, equipment for the pump and basic plumbing, and labor (which is incredibly cheap). The next $3000 was going to replacing the existing leaky and rusty gutter system which is to be our source of water into the cistern (rain water coming off the roofs of the hospital). Before went to the supply house, I asked Zachery if I'd be able to use my credit card and he assured me I could. When I arrived at the plumbing supply store I asked if I could use my credit card and he also said I could. So we spent about two hours developing our order and everything fell into place, falling within the budget at $3500. I handed him my Mastercard and he wrote up the order and handed it to me, telling me he was worried about the dollar/shilling conversion and requested I take it to his bank and they'd make it a direct deposit. So off Zachery and I went to the bank. The bank couldn't take it. I called my Mastercard people and they assured me it would be no problem for the merchant to run the card, so back we went to the hardware store. I had the Mastercard people on the phone, long distance from Kenya to America, and handed him the phone, and they assured him it would be no problem, all he had to do was run the card and he'd get his 311,000 shillings. But no. It turned out he had never run a credit card purchase in his life, and never could and never would. By the end of the afternoon there were three other banks involved and still no money. I converted all the cash I could spare into shillings and paid off what I could. We'll have the water project finished, but it won't be as extensive as planned. Few new gutters. But, still, we WILL have running water into the hospital for the first time in its twelve year existence, and that will be an accomplishment.
Next blog: Nakuru Lake, the flamingo capital of the world!
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