20 October 2017

'Kenya is in Limbo' - Anne Soy, Kenyan BBC correspondant. 

Yesterday the opposition met with the chairman of the IEBC.  The President refused to meet.  He says the rerun of the election has to occur on the 26th.  The opposition advised the IEBC to postpone the elections to make adequate preparations.  Things are still quiet in Mombasa and elsewhere.

Today I went to the funeral of Charity.  She was only 50 and had worked as a cleaner at one of our dispensaries for 13 years.  At age 12 she was married off to an old man and had four children.  His family was Muslim so she became a Muslim.  He left her to fend for herself and in order to feed her children she prostituted herself.  That infected her with HIV.  I saw her for vaginal bleeding and she had already been to the government hospital.  They didn't do the procedures she needed and Charity wouldn't let me write in her book that she had HIV and was on treatment.  She wouldn't let anyone know she had HIV except me and the Sister who ran the dispensary.  I finally told her she needed to have her uterus out and after a lot of prodding she agreed.  While I was home on leave she started to bleed again.  She went to a nearby hospital because the government is still striking.  They found she had metastatic cancer and ran up a hospital bill of  $4000.  Then they referred her to a more expensive hospital that wanted to do chemotherapy.  When I got back the Sister asked my advice. She was in terrible pain and not even taking a simple pain killer.  I called the hospice, which is the only place we can get morphine.  I talked to the nurse and he agreed to give the morphine to the Sister because Charity was too sick to cross the ferry and come herself.  With morphine the last week of her life was pain free.

She told the Sister that she had officially divorced her husband so she shouldn't let her be buried in his home.  They wanted her body.  Her father couldn't bury her in his home unless he returned the money that they paid for her dowry when he sold her off  to them.  She had been baptized and was an active member of the parish.  The Christians and my mission account helped to pay the hospital bill and pay off the in-laws so she could be buried in her father's home.

Charity died of stigma and fear...not cancer.  And she was treated like property until the last days of her painful illness.  I took the time to cross the ferry to attend her funeral thinking no one would be there.  I found the church almost full of people who cared for her.  She is not in limbo but heaven for sure!