Father of Three, Daddy of Two

I became a father,four days after I turned 25. I was both excited and worried. Excited because my daughter, Michelle, was the most beautiful new born baby I had ever set my eyes on. Worried because I was jobless and had no idea how I was going to raise my young family.

Labour of Love

Michelle had attempted to arrive two weeks earlier in what the doctors referred to as ‘False Labour’. It is an interesting concept in that it is exactly like normal labour but for one difference. There is no baby at the end.

Besides what I had seen in movies, I had never experienced such passionate screaming prior to that visit to Pumwani Maternity Hospital in the wee hours of the morning. As my brother and I waited on a bench in the gloomy corridor, we at first thought that it was some kind of crusade. Only later did we realise that it was women in labour. It was an unnerving experience that greatly raised my respect for mothers.

Hawking doughnuts with my wife when she was heavy with child had enabled us to pay the bill at Pumwani. It had also afforded us napkins (disposable diapers were out of the question), and a few other clothes and items for our new baby. We almost named our baby “Reform”, which was the nickname of the doughnuts we were selling at the time (owing to the calls for constitutional reforms then).

‘Cord Prolapse!’

“Cord prolapse! Cord prolapse!” Those are the words a nurse came out shouting when my wife went in to a small nursing home near the area we lived in then during the birth of our second born. We didn’t know what she was talking about but it sounded serious, especially judging by the worried look on her face. We later came to learn that it is a situation that arises during child birth when the umbilical cord attempts to come out before the baby.

It was a serious situation that called for an emergency caesarean section failure to which we could have lost the mother, the baby, or both. I don’t know what the moralists would say on this but at that time if I had had to make a choice; I would have opted to save the mother. Anyhow, that was not the worst of the problem. The nursing home did not have theatre facilities and so my wife had to be moved urgently to another hospital.

By that time I had secured a job as a taxi driver and my boss was gracious enough to allow me to use my cab to transfer my wife. I remember us arriving at the small but well equipped hospital and the surgeon coming out to examine my wife. He started to raise her skirt then he noticed me and asked me to excuse him. I left the room and it was ironical that I was willing to leave the room as another man looked under my wife’s skirt.

After four hours of anxious waiting, my wife and our new daughter, Hellen, were wheeled out of the operating theatre. They were both okay and my heart was filled with so much delight. My daughter was sleeping peacefully, oblivious of how closely she almost missed joining us. Looking at her then, I thought to myself, “She was worth every single drop of tears and sweat that she had induced in us”.

The One We Never Met

My wife and I had always planned to have two children from the time we married. However, we were not completely opposed to one more. She conceived and we were happy about it. This pregnancy however, was not going to be like the other two. From very early on, it was riddled with problems. A few weeks after its confirmation, my wife started to bleed and went to hospital. On examination, she was told she had lost the pregnancy. She was treated and cleaned out. We decided then that we were not going to have any more children. We would appreciate, love, and take care of the two we already had. We have not regretted that decision because I believe ours are the most wonderful girls in the whole wide world.

P.S. A miscarriage is something that parents never get over. There will always be questions of  how the baby would have turned out and those 'what ifs' require a lot of support especially for the mother, but also for the father.

Discovering the Link between Alaska and Lake Nakuru

One of the unique advantages I had as a cab driver was meeting diverse people from all corners of the globe. It was a forum which afforded me ‘one on one’ discussions with the most unbelievable characters. These ranged from international celebrities traveling incognito, to ordinary people with extra-ordinary stories. Like I have mentioned before, every morning was exciting because I couldn’t tell who I would be meeting.

One morning, I was dispatched by control to go and pick a client at a charitable organization known as Samaritan’s Purse. They used to have an office in the Kileleshwa estate. When I drove into the compound, I didn’t expect much to come out of this assignment because most jobs to the place involved taking someone on some short errands around town. I was however still happy because they had some kind and interesting people. The client that I picked up that morning was not even a staff member of the organization. She was a university student from Alaska on a learning tour. She was accompanied by a friend who was also a student from Uganda.

On that day, I drove the two girls around town in the usual style of the organization. They were however quite lively company and they asked a lot of questions about Kenya. I was pleased to share all I knew about our beautiful country. This also gave me the courage to ask about their respective countries. While the weather and landscape of Uganda does not vary much with Kenya, the culture and traditions do and I listened to the Ugandan with a lot of interest. The Alaskan was happy to learn so much about Africa that having been her first on the continent. The Ugandan and I also demanded that she tell us about Alaska and her descriptions made us realize how different the place was from anything we have ever known in Africa.

The girl’s father operated a transport business in Alaska. She explained to us that Alaska is one place where transport of the kind we are used to cannot be run quite so easily. This is because there is a poor road network. It is not that Alaska is a poor country (It is one of the states of America). It is because the vast majority of the land area is perpetually covered by ice – either above or below the ground. This ice is constantly cracking up and shifting and any road built upon it soon disintegrates. It is for this reason therefore that this girl’s dad operated a fleet of small commuter airplanes to help move Alaskans from one frozen town to another.

After the errands of the first day, the girls wanted to see something interesting outside Nairobi. They settled for Lake Nakuru National park, and they wanted me to take them – in Romeo One! I couldn’t believe what good luck my big mouth had got me. I was excited to be going out of town again but I wished it didn’t have to be in Romeo One. It was then that one of those fortunes (or misfortunes depending on whose point of view you are taking) happened. Someone was fired and I was in line for a promotion to become a class one driver. I was not due for it so soon but I had a good bargaining chip – I had just closed the Lake Nakuru trip deal and I needed a more presentable car.

The car in question was code-named Lima-Lima and it was a dream car for me under my circumstances then. It was a saloon this time and it was fully loaded. I couldn’t get enough of the electric windows, power steering, and air conditioning. I was as excited as a small boy getting his first toy car. I got the car on the day before we were due to depart for Nakuru and I couldn’t wait to show it off to my new clients.

On the appointed day, the car did not disappoint, and neither did the girls. We chatted the whole way and Nakuru appeared to be unbelievably close. We arrived at around 2 p.m. and checked into the Lake Nakuru Lodge. I had been concerned about what I would do about accommodation since this was a tourist class hotel and I knew couldn’t afford it with the small allowance I had been given. However, I needed not to have worried. There were rooms for drivers being offered for only three hundred shillings inclusive of meals served at the main dining room. I checked into my small room and I was quite happy that having been my first time ever to sleep in a hotel (and experience the comforts of an en-suite room, albeit a modest one!)

Late afternoon on the first day, we went for a game drive and it was remarkable to see such a large number of different animals crammed in a park the size of Lake Nakuru. We got to see rhinos, zebras, water bucks, buffaloes, Thompson’s gazelles, and of course, the famous flamingos and pelicans. We even saw lions – on a tree! The Alaskan pointed out that there is no single place in Alaska where you can find so many animals. The most common, she said, were reindeer (I had always thought that they were fairy tale creatures in Santa Claus stories). We had a really good time which culminated in a grand full course dinner (It was my first time to use fork and knife and I had to copy what I saw others doing) and by the time we were through, I was almost blacking out from sleep.

The following day we went for an early morning game drive. We then went back to the hotel, picked up our lunch packs, and headed back to Nairobi. It had been one of the best trips I had ever taken and one which involved many firsts for me. One similarity between Lake Nakuru and Alaska that I came to learn about was the fact that they both contain a lot of water. The main difference is that one has permanently frozen water with almost no life while the other has life giving water in liquid form. One is arctic while the other one is equatorial. One is owned by a rich country while the other belongs to a (slowly) developing country.

P.S. I am currently reading the book “Alaska” by James Michener and was surprised to learn that Alaska was initially controlled by Russia who sold it to America for 7.2 million dollars in 1865. I wonder if it was worth it!