Three of the reasons why I don’t trust the police in London (or elsewhere)…

I once had a long chat with the head of a prestige City of London solicitors who acted as the private solicitors for the then British Prime Minister. This guy told me he would never put a serving Metropolitan Police officer on the stand to give evidence in court without someone else who could give corroborating evidence – because he could not be certain the police officer would be telling truth.

I also once knew and chatted with a guy who ran a very high profile UK private detective agency based in London. He employed people from various sources including ex-SAS men but he told me he did not and would not employ ex-policemen because they were not necessarily honest or trustworthy.

A successful South London criminal once told me that dealing with the police is like going to a restaurant – you always have to pay The Bill.

What it takes to bribe a police officer

British hospitality (Photo by Morgan Sessions via UnSplash)

A police officer came round to my home for a chat yesterday. These things happen.

A very nice young man, bright-eyed and amiable.

At a random point, I asked him if he wanted a cup of tea, but then I suddenly thought and said: 

“Oh! I suppose maybe you can’t. That would count as attempting to bribe a police officer…”

He said no, he didn’t want a cup of tea but… “No, offering a cup of tea would not really be bribery…

There was a slight pause.

“…but offering me a bar of chocolate might be.”

“Really?” I replied, surprised. “Why?”

Potential police bribery (Photo by Marqquin via UnSplash)

“Well,” the nice young police officer said, “I think that would count as a gift, but a cup of tea would be just…” 

He paused, not quite sure what the next words should be.

“…being British?” I suggested.

He smiled and shrugged.

Thinking about it afterwards, maybe I should have suggested: “…taking a drink.”

Rather than smiling, he might have laughed.

As I said in yesterday’s blog, English can sometimes – sometimes – be a subtle language.

“If you are a woman who has been assaulted by a serving police officer…”

Sarah Everard (Photograph via Wikipedia)

Last week, the UK news was full of the shocking case of Sarah Everard’s killing. A serving Metropolitan Police officer has been arrested and charged with her abduction and murder. The abduction is thought to have happened on Clapham Common in London.

Below is a piece written by Sally Homer about a separate case and posted on her Facebook page.

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This week, a police officer will be sentenced for an ‘assault by beating’. 

The assault happened in July 2020 as my niece (let’s call her Gemma) walked home in the dark at 1am. The officer (let’s call him PC Danfell) pleaded guilty at Leamington Magistrates Court in January 2021 and his sentencing hearing will take place in Leicester Magistrates’ Court this week.

So that is the news.  

Except it probably won’t be the news because – for PC Danfell’s convenience – the hearing will take place in the East Midlands, outside local media scrutiny of where he lives and was charged (Warwickshire) and where he works (West Midlands).

Since the assault – an unprovoked, verbal, and brutal physical attack by a stranger (who turned out to be an off duty-policeman) – Gemma has experienced many instances where the criminal justice system is stacked in favour of the police rather than the victim.

The details of the assault and the subsequent effect on her life are not mine to share. That is Gemma’s story. But I can share the circumstances that have taught me this: if you are a woman who has been assaulted by a serving police officer, then be prepared to battle extremely hard to get justice.

I am a theatre/comedy publicist, so I have had plenty of time due to the pandemic to navigate complicated complaint procedures, to liaise with two police forces and the Crown Prosecution Service. I spent hours researching divergent police procedures when a suspect is a serving police officer. I have been a passionate advocate for Gemma. By focusing on the admin, I was able to better handle the sense of shock at the injustice of it all.   

I used a brilliant service provided by the Rights of Women organisation whereby I was able to talk to a criminal barrister for free for an hour.  

Such an odd situation: the victim requiring sophisticated legal advice.  

But, without their guidance, I don’t believe we would have secured a conviction.

The attack happened at 1am and Gemma reported it 7 hours later, at 8am. 

Without ever explicitly referring to this as her ‘mistake’ the investigating police force have implied that their poor response was in part because Gemma did not report the attack immediately.

Under covid restrictions, minimal face-to-face contact was the narrative from the police… Still, it took over 30 hours for an officer to take Gemma’s statement over the phone; it took a week until she was given a name of an officer who would be in charge of the investigation; and it took nine days for an officer to come and see her to sign her statement – despite several attempts by Gemma, myself, and her brother to get a proportionate response to the report of a serious crime.

Gemma supplied the police with two witnesses and, within a week of the assault, with the name, address and photograph of her assailant. 

The police had been independently sent 90 seconds of CCTV from a witness who reported the assault without any knowledge that the victim and the assailant were her near neighbours.

Police reassured Gemma that, because the suspect was a serving police officer employed by another force, the investigation would be carried out with extra care and vigilance. 

In practice, the opposite was true. 

They failed to secure crucial evidence and, even though the assault happened 10 metres from her front door and her assailant lives less than 30 metres away, it took a further 8 weeks for officers to conduct thorough house-to-house enquiries and interview PC Danfell.

When interviewed and allowed to watch the CCTV evidence, PC Danfell (6ft 2in) did not dispute the incident took place but created a back-story about how he was defending himself, as Gemma (5ft 2in and 8 stone) had, he said, assaulted him just before the CCTV caught the incident.   

A sergeant came to see us and explained that, since it was Gemma’s word against his, then PC Danfell would be ‘served with a caution’.   

We were incredulous. There was no scrutiny of his story and anyway, the CCTV clearly showed excessive force.

Emboldened by reading the Centre for Women’s Justice ‘super complaint’ about how police officers are allowed to abuse women with impunity, we insisted that they take the case to the Crown Prosecution Service and offered-up Gemma’s medical records as evidence. Gemma had sustained no cuts or broken bones but the effect on her mental well-being was severe.

The CPS’s response was not to charge due to lack of evidence. We got savvier. And appealed.

The CPS were finally committed to do some investigative work. 

Danfell’s narrative fell apart and he was finally charged at the end of last year, JUST within the 6-month statue for this offence.

We have faced barriers that are common to thousands of cases throughout the UK, most commonly associated with domestic abuse by police officers against their partners. 

Namely: difficulties in initial reporting, failures in investigation, improper responses to complaints/concerns, manipulation of police processes, accused using their police knowledge, status and powers and improper decisions on criminal charges.

If you are a victim, you are fighting on two fronts – the actual IN YA FACE violent misogyny of the assault itself and the systemic, drudging, hidden misogyny of the police and the criminal justice system.

I began writing this blog before Sarah Everard’s murder. I was going to wind it up with a neat quip about looking forward to the new series of the BBC TV series Line of Duty. 

But last night I watched the news hoping it wasn’t real, that Kate Fleming from Line of Duty would walk into shot on Clapham Common and we’d know justice would be done.  

Sadly, it isn’t like it is on television …

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THERE IS A FOLLOW-UP BLOG HERE.

AND A CHANNEL 4 TELEVISION REPORT HERE.

Sally Homer adds: I am not connected with the Rights of Women organisation professionally or privately at all – But they provided a great service, so give them money if you have any to spare!

How illegal detentions of the poor are continuing in Kenyan hospitals…

Last week’s meeting of the monthly Grouchy Club in London

British journalist Kate Copstick’s charity Mama Biashara was set up to give small start-up grants to disadvantaged people in Kenya to fund small self-sustaining businesses.

But it also gets involved in other social problems it encounters.

During her most recent visit to Kenya, I posted extracts from Copstick’s diary.

When last posted, there was an unresolved story about a penniless 14-year-old girl called Faith who had been raped by her father, recently given birth to his child and was being illegally held in an overcrowded ward (2 to a bed) at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi.

Copstick has now returned to the UK.

During last week’s meeting of Copstick’s Grouchy Club, held at Mama Biashara’s charity shop in London, I asked what had happened to Faith…

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The administration block of Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi

COPSTICK: I spent many days in Kenyatta trying to organise her release. It’s horrific. Kafka could never write anything to compare.

A couple of days before I was leaving Kenya I thought we had done it and then we just lost grip. I had been about to go to the press…

JOHN: I thought you had already gone to the press.

COPSTICK: Well, the Standard ran an article. But I think that was just because they picked up on all the stuff I’d been venting and then what they had were stories of the same thing happening in other hospitals.

But Faith is out of Kenyatta now and so is the baby. We got the Children’s Services involved and they went to court and they got a court order for Faith to be released… Imagine having to get a court order to get a little girl out of hospital…!

I left Kenya on the Sunday. She was released with the court order on the Tuesday.

She’s out but, unfortunately, because she had been detained illegally in the hospital for so long, by the time she was released her newborn baby had got an infection. So the baby is not well and now Faith has developed an infection and they are too terrified to let her go back to Kenyatta in case it all starts again. 

JOHN: Do they know what the infection is?

COPSTICK: Well, just one of those ghastly I’ve been kicking around in a hospital for too long infections.

JOHN: At least Mama Biashara got her out, though.

COPSTICK: She is out but now we… There is a new problem with a girl who was gang raped by three men. Everyone is too terrified to take her to Kenyatta Hospital, because it will just all be a nightmare. So she has gone to Nairobi Women’s Hospital. She is going to have to have a full hysterectomy because… well, when you are 11 years old and you are gang raped by three men double-teaming you, your insides end up pretty much mush. 

That was about four weeks ago. And because there’s been no money, she’s just been there. She has to sleep on her front because there is too much pain and there is basically vast amounts of pus. There is no morphine; there is no anything. You might get paracetamol if you are lucky.

So she is now at Nairobi Women’s Hospital where they will do a full hysterectomy they’ve said… That will cost – by the time she has had the operation – probably £1,500.

JOHN: Presumably there is no equivalent to Britain’s National Health Service.

COPSTICK: There is no health service as such. There is a government hospital. But all they are really interested in is getting any money that they possibly can off of anyone. And nobody is prepared to take responsibility for anything at all ever.

What happens all the time in Kenya is that you go in, you have your operation or whatever you want and then they don’t let you out because you can’t pay your bill. And every day that you are kept in they charge you. So your bill goes up and up and up and up. 

What happens is that you get people living rough in the grounds of the big hospitals. So when you go there, people are being kept within the hospital grounds. They live rough within the hospital grounds sometimes with their children. In places like Kenyatta, there is actually a small like a kindergarten school which has grown up because there are children who spend so much of their young lives there that they go to school there forever.

JOHN: And because they are living in the grounds, they have to pay more…?

COPSTICK:  They are charged for everything and they are detaining people because they can’t pay their bill, so the bill just keeps rising. It’s pretty-much standard. Private hospitals, government hospitals, everything hospitals.

Last year, a guy brought a case against Nairobi Women’s Hospital because his father had gone in, had an operation, couldn’t pay the bill and they were detaining him and the bill just escalated and escalated and it was a like a million shillings which is about £10,000. And the guy took the hospital to court saying that it was an infringement of his father’s rights. In the Kenyan constitution as well as some of the U.N. rulings, you have the right to ‘freedom of person’ – freedom of movement. 

And he argued quite cleverly that detaining his father in the hospital was an infringement of his right to freedom of movement and freedom of person. And the judge agreed and this is massive –  humongous. It was all over the newspapers. 

But it doesn’t make that much difference because, in Kenya, nobody tells the little people about any of these things so they didn’t get to know about any of that which is why the leaflets that Mama Biashara sends out – showing what their rights are – are so important. We give everybody the knowledge. 

When I was in Kenyatta I said to one of the heads of one of the departments who don’t give a shit: “You know there is a High Court ruling…”

Kenya has a common law system because it’s based on the English legal system and that means that the last highest decision in a court is the law. 

I said: “So in this case, this is the decision and this is now the law.” 

And the woman turned around and said to me: “Not here.” 

Inside some place like Kenyatta Hospital, they are just a law unto themselves.

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Copstick takes no money of any kind for herself from the Mama Biashara charity and covers none of her own costs in running the charity nor for travelling to and from and living in Kenya.

Mama Biashara itself gets no official funding of any kind and relies solely on donations and from sales of goods in its shop at Shepherds Bush, London. The website is HERE.

What Kate Copstick and her charity has to deal with on a daily basis in Kenya

Feared comedy critic,  outspoken journalist and former on-screen sidekick of the Chuckle Brothers, Kate Copstick has been in Kenya for the last two-and-a-half weeks. It is where her Mama Biashara charity works.  

She keeps a diary while she is there. Here are a few recent, brief, very, very highly edited excerpts which give a slight hint at some of what she has to face on a daily basis.

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Sunday 27th January

I sleep in. I took my methotrexate injection yesterday evening and am beset by mild nausea and dizzy headachiness.

Tuesday 29th January

It promises to be a packed day. I have to go back to Kenyatta Hospital, this time to help the Mary Faith Home get a girl – Faith – who is being detained there (ILLEGALLY) because her bill has not been paid. She is 14 years old. 

She was raped by her father. She gave birth two weeks ago, since when she has been held there – in a ward where expectant or postpartum mothers sleep two to a single bed (or on the floor) with their newborns. A victim of incestuous rape, she is now sharing a bed with a stranger. 

I meet the matron of the maternity ward. 

The matron (if, indeed, this stone-faced, acrylic-haired person IS the matron) is completely disinterested in the fact that what they are doing is illegal. The girl, she intones, should have got medical insurance. 

The first thought, of course, of any 14 year old raped by her father, would be: Note To Self, get medical insurance just in case I am pregnant by my rapist father.

I can feel an unhelpful outburst bubbling and I stomp out. 

We go and see another lady who is Kenyatta’s One Good Person. She is not happy. She phones around. She speaks to the right people. And NHIF (Kenya’s fairly new National Insurance scheme) will pay the bill. And she will ‘have a word’ with the supposed matron of the maternity ward.

“I am very much like you,” she says to me. “Perhaps we are sisters.”

I am very flattered.

We go and deliver a pair of crutches (thank you Age UK (Hammersmith & Fulham)) to Kibe, who is delighted to be home from Kenyatta.

We hear more horror stories from inside Kenyatta. The number of people who go there and simply rot away is terrifying. And, once they have you in your 1,500 Kenyan Shillings per day bed, they will put every obstacle in the way of a transfer out. 

“It is hell,” says Kibe. “Hell”. 

I get back to Corner and get a call. The girl Faith is still in “hell”. 

I did not get the details but, when push came to shove, the hospital refused to let her go.

Grrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr.

Thursday 31 January

We had another bomb in Nairobi earlier in the week. But it was hardly in the news at all. I think a couple of people were killed and about twenty injured. 

However, it was in quite a skanky part of town: Odeon Roundabout. The people around there are mainly hawkers and other people who are: 

1. not rich 
2. not involved in international politics 
3. not white.

And so the rather big explosion was not reported. 

It worries me much more than the big internationally covered bomb at Westlands.

I spend quite a bit of time near the Odeon Roundabout and loads of people I know/have funded have workshops there. No idea what might be in it for Al-Shabaab to attack.

I have been feeling a bit odd – utterly exhausted (for no reason) to the point of not being able to get up stairs and bad headaches – and this morning is not a great morning.

We make for Jamibora. It is the weirdest of places. A sort of gated community of stone houses which was apparently funded by a white bloke so people from the slums could get a better life and a new home. 

People started saving with Jamibora Bank, very little by very little, to buy their new home. And then the houses were sold over their heads to people with ready cash. 

It took, says my friend Mwangi, years for them to get any money back. Oddly, most of the houses are empty but one is owned by another Mama Biashara lady who made the most of her grant and is yet another of our network of ‘safe houses’. 

Today’s groups looking for funding from Mama Biashara have come from Loitoktok and elsewhere in Kajiado County. Far away, basically. They did not feel safe meeting in Kitenhela or Sultan Hamud (our original plan) so we are out here in a safe house. 

The people’s problems are the same. These are all groups of other tribes living in Maasai communities. Now the Maasai want them out. They are physically and sexually assaulted. I get a list of attacks with spears, knives, rungus (big heavy stick with a knuckle on the end) and pangas (machetes). 

It is very hard for them to use the word rape. They will say “They hold the children” or “They take the children” or describe it as “bad behaviour” or “unsuitable behaviour” and I have to push and push to find out what any of this means. It means rape. 

I apologise to them and explain that it is important to know. And to use the words that tell the truth. I tell them (last resort) that Jesus said, “The truth will set you free”. They are very impressed and mutter “Amen”. I feel slightly dirty. However we do get some more details. 

In one group the main problem is that the Maasai men want to marry the daughters of the group. And this means enforcing female genital mutilation. They are becoming quite insistent and the mothers are terrified.

A call to the Mary Faith Home confirms that Faith is still being illegally detained by Kenyatta Hospital. With her newborn child. Mary herself was so stressed today that she had a bit of a moment and fainted. Her blood pressure is, she says, worryingly high. Mine is generally low but if anything could turn me hypertensive, the goings on in Kenyatta Hospital can.

Friday 1st February

I go to Milimani Law Courts. This is where Lady Justice Wilfreda Okwany sits. She is the judge who made the game changing ruling in October last year. That ruling states that it is illegal for a Kenyan hospital to detain a patient for non-payment of fees. Illegal. But the law of Kenya “does not apply here” according to the staff at Kenyatta. 

I am thinking the good Lady Justice might be able to help me help them see the error of their ways. A tailored jacket and an authoritative manner go a long way. As does a document file under the arm and a grasp of legalese. But people are very helpful and very quickly I get to meet her clerk. The Lady Justice is on holiday (confirmed by a couple of people and a quick look at the register) but I have her clerk’s email and I am putting together a document which I hope she might read. Fingers crossed, anyway.

On the way back, Facebook tells me the British comedian Jeremy Hardy is dead. This is just another example of the world being too unfair to be the project of any kind of thinking deity. Jeremy was a wholly, honestly, hilariously brilliant political comedian. And a totally decent human being. 

Just in case he is listening from The Place Where The Good Guys Go, he might be amused by the conversation I had with David as we reach Corner. 

“You are very silent,” says David. 

“I am sad,” I say. “A very good man has died.” 

There is a pause. 

“Cancer,” I say. 

David nods. 

“Which cancer was it ?” he asks. “Was it the prostitute cancer?”

I smile all the way the Mary Faith home to drop off the beads for more Happy Bags. 

Faith is still not out of Kenyatta Hospital. Still illegally detained. But now she has locked herself in a toilet because the court (The hearing was today but she could not go to identify her father as the man who raped her because Kenyatta will not release her) told her father she was in Kenyatta Hospital and he sent one of his goons (who have already tried to get rid of her once) round to the hospital. Luckily, Faith saw him before he saw her and locked herself in the loo. A 14 year old rape victim. 

I am going to try and find someone in the media who will help. And talk (if I can get a contact) to the BBC who have a MASSIVE place here. 

The monsters are among us. 

I think it is time we got among the monsters.

I can feel my old documentary making roots tingling.

… CONTINUED HERE …

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Mama Biashara exists totally on donations and from sales of goods in its shop at Shepherds Bush, London. The website is HERE.

The U.K. legal system, where you are presumed guilty until proven innocent

Yesterday’s Sunday Herald on Luke Mitchell

I was reading a piece in Scotland’s Sunday Herald newspaper yesterday. I have absolutely no idea about the true facts or the guilt or innocence in this case, but there is an undeniable truth when the imprisoned guy says:

“The court system and the police, they’re not separate bodies, they’re all part of the state. The justice system isn’t there to protect you, it’s to get the conviction.”

The UK court system is inherently corrupt. It is not designed to uncover innocence or guilt. The police investigate a case and find the person they believe or claim they believe is guilty. That person is then presumed guilty unless he or she can (via an expensive paid advocate) prove themselves innocent or apparently innocent. The court prosecutes the person on the presumption of guilt and a judge or jury decides which of two paid advocates has constructed a better case.

It is a contest and career-building exercise between two highly-paid, trained debaters. The accused person is presumed guilty until and unless proven innocent. It is illegal for any jury member to attempt to check any evidence other than what is presented in court.

The Stefan Kisko case – the clearest miscarriage of justice

The only evidence which can be considered is the evidence of two trainee debaters paid to hide anything which might throw doubt on their own version of events.

Hiding facts is as important as presenting them. Points are effectively awarded for presentation, style, skill and content. The verdict is about which advocate has been a better performer. It is a bit like competitive ice skating with people’s lives, often on thin ice. Or like politics.

Kate Copstick in Kenya on news you tend not to see reported on BBC TV

Kate Copstick, as seen by Joanne Fagan

Comedy critic and journalist Kate Copstick flew to Nairobi last Wednesday to work with her Kenya-based charity Mama Biashara.

These are her first diary entries from there. I have edited them. Full versions on her Facebook page.

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THURSDAY

The market is not busy and my chums there are variously exercised by 

1. the new fuel tax – 16% – which is having catastrophic effects for them 
2. the ghastly goings on in Kisumu (see below) 
3. the riots/killings/house burnings in various areas across the country – all tribal related 
4. the Chinese and the fact that Kenya is now up to and past its nipples in debt to them. Hence the 16% fuel tax to help Uhuru pay off the 122 billion Kenya shillings that he owes them (payable by 2021) 

The telly is on and the news is covering the hideous rape and murder of a seven months pregnant student in Kisumu. Who just happened to be having an affair with the Governor of Kisumu. After having an affair with his son. She got pregnant and eventually, for various reasons, she forwarded all their texts to his wife and was going to go public with all the gossip when she was kidnapped in a car belonging to said Governor, raped and stabbed multiple times by three goons. 

Now this is bad enough. But as we watch, Mama Bishara helper David voices the opinion of (as helper Felista confirms) “Kenyan men”. 

“She made her cross,” he says forcefully. “How can a woman have sex with a man and then another man and then go to another man? She has brought this on herself. This is what happens.” 

The man at the next table is nodding. 

FRIDAY

I fail miserably to get up early and do lots of sorting out. But I do some and then head off to town to meet Doris and a load of lady hawkers with problems. No one chooses to be a hawker. But 60% of the Nairobi population – SIXTY PER CENT – live in what the government choose to call ‘the informal sector’. Slums. Some worse than others. They cannot afford a shop, or a stall so they hawk.

Now that used to be difficult enough but the new Governor of Nairobi, Mike Sonko, elected very much on a “man of the people” ticket, has turned out to be a man of very different people from the huddled masses he claimed to represent. 

Mike is a man of Big Business People.

So it frequently goes like this … 

I have a tiny stall at a roadside in my area. Two things can happen: the government demolishes it to make space for widening a road or making another highway and adding to the Chinese debt OR Mike’s men demolish it because we are not liking the look of the small businesses cluttering the roadsides with their thoughtless attempts at fending off starvation and keeping a roof over their family’s heads.

So, because I cannot trade up and get a formal stall or shop, I trade down and hawk… walking around with my wares (and my young children) or putting my stuff (and my young children) on a sack on a pavement. 

The best prices and highest demand are in the City Centre. Where Mike has just banned hawking. Cue the City Council goons scenting blood and prisons full of old ladies who have been selling carrots or tea at the roadside. 

We are meeting fifteen lady hawkers in town. We start to assemble at the top of Tom Mboya Street in a tiny area which has been deemed safe for hawkers as long as they pay an ‘informal fee’ to the City Council collectors. 

However, it seems that today is a ‘swoop’ day and shrieks from around the corner and a rush of running hawkers tells us the City Council have decided that the informal fee does not work right now and are arresting, confiscating and beating at will. So we run and reassemble across the road. 

I say run. The old lady on crutches goes as fast as she can, the two carrying toddlers waddle and the heavily pregnant girl trots. But, outside, the women are still frightened. So we go to a little cafe. We are safe inside.

… CONTINUED HERE …

Copstick in Kenya: rain catching, money problems, Elvis’ son, a soldier’s question

Here are the latest (shortened) excerpts from comedy critic Kate Copstick’s diary in Kenya, where she is working for her Mama Biashara charity. It starts in Western Kenya. Full versions are on her Facebook page.

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SUNDAY

My phone has gone for charging at the one house in the location with electricity. I head to the town pharmacy. Elvis tells me his son is being overtaken by a fungus. The pharmacy has no castor oil. Or anything else to ease a passage. The constipated will have to hold on. No problem for them under the circumstances.

But I do get pediatric cough syrup and reinforcements for the antihistamine and antiseptic creams. There are already loads of people waiting when we get back to Julius’ place and so I get out the boxes and start again. I have already given out 50 tubes of diclofenac gel and we are more than halfway through the de-wormers.

A small boy called Musa is brought along. He is thin, limp and obviously has congenital problems I can’t fix. Most worryingly, he is filthy and dressed in rags while his two siblings who come with him and his Granny are shiny and well and clean and nicely dressed.

I ask the shosho why the mother is not looking after Musa and there is much embarrassed silence. I clean him up a bit and give him vitamins and a drink and lots of cuddles. I tell the shosho I want to see him again. I ask Julius to keep an eye on him.

When they have gone, Julius says he knows the family and the mother “does not care for Musa because he is not a good child”.

Local ladies making the Mama Biashara designed raincatcher

I break off from medical stuff to teach the locals how to make a raincatcher. Of course it is only the women who turn up to learn.

Julius has bought the wrong chicken wire so we first have to sew two strips of the stuff together to make a two metre wide base. Then we cut the plastic sheeting to size and place it on top. The wire is curled round the edge and, again, sort of sewn into place. It is baking hot. I worry about the plastic melting. But it doesn’t. We make ropes out of plaited string and take the whole thing off down to Julius’ banana patch and hang it up over the 1,000 litre water tank.

Then I go back to coughs and sore backs. I am getting slightly droopy as there seems to be no end in sight. A local lady has made mutuya for me and it is in the house to be taken to my resting place for me to eat tonight. But I need something now. It is five o’clock and I have been out here since ten. I feel a break might be in order. I get the mutuya (beans baked in the sun and then cooked till they are a kind of porridge) and discover it to have a salt content comparable to that of the Dead Sea.

So I have some water.

I go inside to talk to four women Julius has mentioned as being particularly ‘down’. They have about 23 children between them. Julius has very kindly said I can give them his underwear consignment (some bought from Eastleigh and some donated by the beautiful and generously-bosomed Friends of Mama Biashara) to start up a business. I will send more for Julius when I get back.

Julius has a traditional mud house. So no electricity and it is pretty much pitch black except where the sun comes through the open door. Which is where I sit.

I show the ladies the bras… some soft, some sports, some underwired but simple and some like nothing that has ever been seen in Western Kenya.

Mama Biashara’s bra ladies – like pilgrims at the Turin Shroud

They fondle and wonder. And when I tell them some of these bras can cost 5,000 shillings they gaze at them much in the manner of a pilgrim at the Turin Shroud.

They will sell them from a space in the market on the two market days and go around hawking the rest of the week.

I cannot explain how much joy and hope three bags of bras and a large bag of knickers (various) can bring to needy women.

MONDAY

I ask Doris to put some cream on my neck and shoulders.

She shrieks: “What is it?”

“What’s what?”

“Here! It looks like you have been boiled!”

“Ah… Sunburn.”

“It is HORRIBLE!”

“That is what happens when wazungu go in the sun.”

She pokes at my pink.

But still smears on the gunk and tells me the good news.

Doris, one of Mama Bishara’s main workers

We have had FANTASTIC feedback from the medical days we did at Gikamburi. Best of all, women have been telling Doris of the revelation of cooking with the stove outside. No smoke, no fumes, no congestion, no coughs, no snot, no sick children, no limp babies. They are telling Doris that even the men are commenting on how well they feel. FINALLY we have got through to people. And now, the word is spreading.

Doris has already been approached by women from two nearby villages, lured by tales of my ability to cure. Gikamburi ladies have been enthusiastic in their delight in life minus heartburn, constipation, aching backs, swollen ankles and all the nastiness that smokey houses brings. Tonsil lady still needs them removed but they have calmed down for now and all the rashes and lumps and bumps are responding really well to whatever goo I gave.

I feel quite Gregory House.

TUESDAY

Massive day.

We pick up 80 litres worth of detergent perfume for Julius (turns out that when he said the perfume had “gone off” he did not mean gone bad; he meant evaporated). We hit the pharmacy for antifungal eyedrops for the boy in Kahuho and antibiotics for Damaris in Western, plus a gallon of castor oil for the goat people.

Then I change what money I have left only to find the exchange rate has plummeted. WTF people!!!! Every penny counts to some of us !!

Kijabe Street, Nairobi – not somewhere to park a 4×4 vehicle

Thence to Kijabe Street where I am picking up a consignment of dresses from Monica. Her car has been clamped by one of the little shits around the parking area. I know why. It is a big flashy 4×4 and they obviously smell money.

I collect from everyone I can and desperately try to avoid spending any money. I have changed my last thousand but almost all of that will go on the cargo costs on Friday. I also hand out a load of our education leaflets in Swahili, Luo and Kikuyu. Market people are little people, generally, and need this information.

Now we go back to Eastleigh. Having given away Julius’ stock, I need to replace it. We cross our fingers that hell will not have been unleashed today.

Everything is pretty quiet. Although there is a truck of fully armed, flack jacketed and helmeted soldiers at the top of the street. They are doing a bit of stop and search.

We get in OK and Julius gets his knickers but, on the way out, we are stopped.

A ridiculously macho soldier in full combat gear indicates we should come over to the kerb.

“Where have you come from?”

“Er, in life or today?”

“Today.”

He is not amused.

“From buying bras and panties in Eastleigh to send to Western.”

“You have a business there??”

“No I am a charity. NO business.”

“Ah. So if you are a charity what do you have to give me?”

A pause.

I wonder if he is joshing.

Probably not. The ‘josh’ content in this kind of conversation does not tend to be high.

“I can give you some advice… Be nice to people, do not be unnecessarily violent and perhaps you could take some of your colleagues to Samburu and sort out the war that is happening there.”

He leaps back as if stung.

“I cannot go to Samburu! The people there are crazy! My colleagues cannot go.”

“Ah well. There we have it.”

We shake hands and drive on.

David is in hysterics:

“You have confused him so much!!”

The Mama Biashara raincatcher – finally erected

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No-one takes any salary from Mama Biashara and Kate Copstick covers 100% of her own expenses herself. She takes no money from the charity nor from any donations to the charity. 100% of all money donated is spent on the charity’s projects.

Donations to the charity can be made HERE.

Kate Copstick in Kenya – an autopsy, corruption, de-worming and digging

Last week, I posted a blog about comedy critic Kate Copstick, currently in Kenya, where her Mama Biashara charity works. 

Here are further edited extracts from her current diary:

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Kate Copstick working for her Mama Biashara charity in Kenya

TUESDAY

I have time to talk with Felista about some of the problems the Awendo (strictly speaking I think many of them come from Kisumu) are causing. Apart from the rapist teachers, the sex crazed teens who refuse to wear knickers and the hopelessly infested heads (ringworm) and guts (worms), there is a group of boys who used to keep escaping to go swimming with one of the teachers.

One young lad was excluded from the fun because he was not very well. So he got out on his own one night and dived in. And didn’t come out.

When the body was discovered and the parents informed, they were of course:

(a) distraught at the death of their son and

(b) delighted at the possibility of making some money out of it.

They declared the boy had been beaten at DECIP (the children’s home Felista created and runs) – beaten in the water, which is why he drowned. They got 20,000 from somewhere and demanded an autopsy. No payment, no autopsy here.

Felista had just got back from watching it.

The ‘accused’ and the ‘accusers’ WATCH the autopsy procedure.

“He had a saw and he Bzzzzzzzzz,’” says Felista, doing rather a good impression of taking the top of a head off. “Then…” – She mimes lifting the skull away – “he says This is the brain. Have you ever seen a brain? And then he says: Look! Look! Is there any injury? No”. And then he says…” – Felista mimes pulling the skin away from the skull – “Look! Look! These are the eyes! Can you see any injury? No!”

She mimes the entire post mortem with some enthusiasm. The Y-shaped incision… the cracking of the ribs… looking at the heart and liver… looking at the water in the lungs…

Quite a morning.

Busy Felista with Kate Copstick, working for Mama Biashara

WEDNESDAY

Felista is out somewhere but I pack what I have for her into some boxes and David and I head for DECIP. There is SO much work being done on the slum roads around this area. Nice tarmac roads for the nice people they hope will come and live in the massive apartment blocks that are being thrown up all over the place.

Throwing up massive apartment blocks is the Kenyan politicians’ money-laundering method of choice. They just sweep the poor off the place like they are dust. Their houses demolished; their shops bulldozed. Almost the whole of a little slum village called Mutego has gone. The big stone built church remains. Natch.

I totally bottle-out of doing the sex talk for the randy Luo teens. I will bring Doris and she can do it. I am not sure I could keep a straight face while advising girls not to have sex. A bit like Oliver Reed lecturing on the evils of alcohol.

We go to a (literally) rust brown village beside the bypass near Kikkuyu, park up, open the boot and start. By the time it is beginning to get dark, we have dewormed 350. Oh yes. 350 people. We have given out cough syrups and cod liver oil (each child gets a fish oil capsule with the dewormers – Thank you HTC), gallons of diclofenac gel and mini mountains of pain killers, glucosamine and antifungal ointment. I wipe pus, poke at scabs, palpate lumps and distended abdomens and stem a tidal wave of acid stomach… Generally all good stuff.

The people for whom I do not have the meds are told to come back tomorrow – A lady with tonsils like red and white rugby balls, several urinary tract infections, some diarrhea and an equal amount of constipation. (“My pupu hard, like a goat”)

There is one recurring problem: women with pain around the waist area and numbness in the legs. I am no chiropracter, but a lot of the ladies carry massive bundles of firewood on their backs, anchored with a sash around their forehead. So squished vertebrae and squashed discs are not exactly surprising. They are all going to stretch and slap on the diclofenac gel and see if there is any improvement.

Copstick at a previous Mama Biashara project

THURSDAY

Julius arrives first and we go over the massage training… Most of Cheptulu and surrounding area suffers from whole body soreness and a massage really fixes them till the next load of firewood or water has to be carried.

He is also keen that I reconsider building the well. If the soil is loam all the way down, we could just about afford it.

But, if we hit rock, then the costs skyrocket. Plus we don’t have a water diviner. Snigger ye not.

I saw it work when we dug the well in Juja. I am considering asking if I can borrow the rods.

We arrange massage training for Friday as soon as I arrive and then medical Saturday (with massage) and, hopefully, Raincatcher-making on Sunday. Unless I get the rods…

Now, back to the Education Project. This is bigger than Mama Biashara has ever attempted and it is looking good.

Better still, it is possible because of a Mama Biashara business.

Around four years ago, Mama B met with a group of chokora (street boys) who wanted a grant for a printing business. There was something great about them, so they got it and the business started.

They got a great place in town, business was booming and, every month, these guys would take four boys from the streets and train them in graphic design, print and computer skills. Every one of these boys is employed. Most of them by the big print companies. But now the big companies are getting irritated by the amount of business our guys are getting and are starting to make life difficult for them.

So our guys have moved and work at night and underground (not literally).

Added to this, one of them is standing as a candidate for the local county elections – for the little people. It is SO exciting.

So now, back to the project again.

They are printing, at cost price, 2,000 posters and 20,000 flyers which will go across the whole of Kenya. I have written the content of the flyers and posters.

In 2013, the Basic Education Act was passed, making all basic education free in government schools. However, what is happening – because greed and corruption is a way of life here – is that head teachers and even class teachers create so-called Registration Fees, cooking fees, cleaning fees, standing-up fees, sitting-down fees etc. And, if the children fail to come up with the money, they are sent home from school.

So this leaflet explains (with quotes from the Act and the Constitution) that this is illegal. It is a crime. As is the levying of Examination Fees (as of last year).

People have gone crazy for these leaflets. They have already been translated into 20 tribal languages and are heading to all corners of Kenya. The people in Turkana want big posters to put on their camels and stuff has already gone to Narok for the Maasai. As I type, the nine languages spoken by the Mijikenda on the coast are being typed up. It is really rather exciting.

And our candidate – whose name is Timothy but who is known as NJuguna Wa Keja – is using this as part of his platform.

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The Mama Biashara charity gives sensible sums of money to help locals start sustainable small businesses in the poorer areas of Kenya.

Their slogan is “Giving a  hand up. Not a hand out.” 

No-one takes any salary from Mama Biashara and Kate Copstick covers 100% of her own expenses herself. She takes no money from the charity nor from any donations to the charity. 100% of all money donated is spent on the charity’s projects.

Donations to the charity can be made HERE.

The £2,500 theft and Copstick in Kenya

Mama Biashara’s Copstick on a previous Kenyan visit

Comedy critic Kate Copstick is currently in Kenya, where her Mama Biashara charity gives sensible sums of money to help locals start sustainable small businesses in the poorer areas of Kenya.

She flew there last Friday.

Last Wednesday, £2,500 destined for the charity’s work in Africa was stolen from the Mama Biashara shop in London. At the time of writing, a donations page for the charity remains open for another 24 days and monies from the first night of promoter Mike Leigh’s new Comedy Happening night in London on 16th March are also being donated to Mama Biashara.

Below is an edited version of Copstick’s latest diary from Kenya. No-one takes any salary from Mama Biashara and Copstick covers 100% of her expenses herself. She takes no money from the charity nor from any donations to the charity. 100% of all money donated is spent on the charity’s projects.

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SATURDAY

Mama Biashara helper Doris at the ferry in Mombassa, Kenya

I am sleep deprived and knackered when I land. But get painlessly through customs and immigration, which is wonderful.

Situation update in Kenya is: there is a serious drought and a State Of Emergency has been announced. However I, although my personal luck is currently waving goodbye as it disappears over the horizon beyond dreadful, have brought the rain with me. Last night and this morning there has been rain – even in Nanyuki (which is impressive). Everyone is happy.

Doris is resplendent in new braids in grey and black (a gift from a friend).

I run through part of my To Do List and Doris says she thinks we should concentrate on things other than business set-ups because business is appalling in Kenya at the moment. Some big companies are relocating, small companies are closing and tiny Mama Biashara type businesses are in a dire state. All food prices have gone up and water has become very expensive.

Also doctors in all government hospitals have been on strike for 77 days and counting. People are lining up outside non-functioning A&E departments to die. Apart from that, everything else is crap too.

SUNDAY

The highlight of my week so far is my new favourite word of all time. Coined by the marvellous Julius, it is ‘grumpling’. Close but subtly different from grumbling. And much friendlier.

We arrange more jiggers treatments (see previous diaries, but it is not pretty), more medical, more shoes and then Julius starts talking about “the well”…

I would love to dig a well. There are 600 people in the community around where Julius lives.

Pro the well: it would bring water to the community and save the women trekking 5 kilometers to get the stuff and, thanks to all the support we have had, if we locate water which is not to deep underground, it is financially doable for us.

Con the well: the cost could be big. If all goes well and the diggers do not hit rock, it would be quite cheap. But rock means big costs. In addition to that, my experience is that, as soon as there is a ‘thing’ here, the heavy mob (there is always a heavy mob in poor areas) appropriate it. My worry is that they would grab the well and start charging the locals. And, when Julius dies, his land goes to his son and his son’s wife who might not be a decent as Julius.

Thoughts, people? Especially those who donated to Mama Biashara.

Without you I would not even be able to consider this.

The alternative is to teach the locals about the Raincatchers I invented for the Maasai.

You create a sort of hammock that you hang from trees, with a hole in the middle which is directly over the opening of a 1,000 litre water tank. The rain is ‘caught’ and collected and pours into the tank AMAZINGLY quickly. Maybe a Raincatcher for every four or five houses would be enough. This can be done at about £50 per raincatcher.

Copstick with Mama Biashara worker Felista on previous visit

And now Felista arrives. Her ginormous breasts are in danger of pouring over the edge of the bra (Thank you Sara Mason) she wears and out of her blouse, which is missing a button.

Every time she takes a breath, it is like watching a tsunami of flesh gathering to swamp everything in front of it.

She shows me her skirt, which is similarly missing bits … like quite a lot of material.

“My clothes have all been eaten by a rat,” she announces with hoots of laughter.

As ever, with Felista, there is good news and there is bad news.

She also has been to Nanyuki, (as well as Doris), currently ravaged both by drought and by tribal warfare exacerbated by drought.

“Eh, they are dying like chickens there!” she cries, shaking her head. “Like chickens.”

Back at DECIP (the children’s home she created and runs on a wing, many prayers and a heart the size of a Trump ego), the bus which left in December to take 20 orphans back to their home area in Awendo in December has returned in February with the 20 as well as 49 others. No shoes, hardly any clothes. Forty nine. Because the women in Awendo know Felista will not turn away a child in need. And Awendo and surrounding area is rich in children in need.

So now Felista’s two rooms (bedroom and a sort of sitting room) as well as a store room and the dispensary, are dormitories for the tiny kids while the nursery dorms, as were, house the bigger kids.

Awendo also sent four male teachers, whom Felista has just had to tackle and expel for trying to rape girl pupils. Twelve year olds. When she stopped them and went crazy, they announced:

“But we are teachers. These girls are our meat. This is our culture.”

They have now gone.

The situation is further complicated by the older Luo girls (from Awendo) who are described by a grinning Felista as “crazy for sex”. And so I am going to be teacher for an afternoon at DECIP. Teaching sex education. Oh yes, I know. Dracula in charge of a blood bank and all that, but I will have my sensible hat on.

MONDAY

Some of the Kenyan children helped by Mama Biashara money

I am determined to get some heft behind our campaign to stop teachers and Head Teachers extorting money from the poorest of the poor at government schools by creating illegal charges and then excluding the children when the parents cannot pay them. This is a Big Thing here. And it is the main reason so many of the poorest kids don’t get an education.

Some fat drunk in charge of a school wants an extra wedge so he (or she) creates a ‘sitting on the chairs’ charge or a ‘learning on Mondays’ charge. The parent cannot pay up, so the kid gets sent home.

All these charges are illegal. Including the omnipresent ‘registration fee’.

We spread the word everywhere we can when we are in the slum areas and I have written a leaflet, quoting the relevant bits of the Act and screaming in bold letters: “No child can be sent away from a government school because of money.” 

But the message is not getting out there enough.

Yesterday a lady told me her kids’ school levies a ‘cleaning charge’ twice a week. 200 pupils each pay 50 bob. Twice a week. And the cleaner is paid 200 bob tops. Twice a week. The rest goes in the headmaster’s pocket. Illegal. But kids get sent home if they do not pay it.

So I go to the Education Officer’s office and have a chat. He listens. He nods. And then he says:

“Firstly I must tell you that everything you say is true”.

Marvellous.

Then he says: “…and I must congratulate you on being so bold. These people are volatile.”

“Thieves and those who spend their lives conning money out of orphaned children often are,” I say. He smiles.

They tend to smile a lot, these officer types. Not widely, but a lot.

The upshot was that either the official types are just scared to take on the bastards or the bastards are paying them off so that the larceny might continue.

Whatever, he did say he would support a poster campaign (and have posters all over the Chief’s offices), would encourage me to speak on radio and would help with lists of parents associations to which we could speak.

Probably not me as the whole white thing is not great when push comes to shove.