Everyday life goes brutally on in Kenya

British comedy critic and African diarist Kate Copstick is currently in Kenya, working for her Mama Biashara charity.

Mama Biashara (which translates as ’Business Mother’) tries to give a helping hand, small amounts of money and lots of advice to people who have nothing so they can start self-sustaining small businesses.

Its ability to fund relies solely on donations and Copstick receives no money of any kind for her work. She herself covers the cost of her own flights and her own accommodation/living expenses while in Kenya.

Her accommodation tends to be in the slums of Nairobi, which has its side effects…

Here are two edited extracts from her diary during the last week.

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WEDNESDAY

SO here’s a thing. The laxative properties of aloe vera MUST NOT be underestimated. The litre or so that I drank yesterday has had the same effect on my innards as Barnes Wallis had on a Nazi dam.

Around three in the morning, all hell is unleashed. By noon I am emitting clear liquid. But I am a plucky old bint and with the aid of a soda (sugar) loperamide and 1000mg of paracetamol (pounding headache and turbo-charged bowels) plus more soda, David and I head off to Kangeme, one of Nairobi’s stinkier areas, to do a funding. 

There are 70 women in the group. All have the same problem. Husbands who beat them and/or rape them. These women have run away, mainly from the same area.

First a couple go, try to get work, maybe get a place to stay and then others come. Before you know it you have a community of beaten and abused women trying to make a new life.

However, they have no money, no wherewithal to start anything up. Generally, they will bring their youngest children with them and leave the others. But all they plan is to go back and get them. When they have a safe life to bring them to. A Mama Biashara lady has given some of them a room with some bunk beds in it. At least this is somewhere safe to sleep.

Currently, these women are on the street – because the set-up costs for prostitution are, let’s face it, low. 

But street prostitution in a slum area is precarious, going-on dangerous – and that’s on a good day. All the women have been assaulted by ‘clients’. 

As far as I can make out, around ten have been stabbed, one had her arm broken in three places with a metal bar and, currently, three are in hospital. Doris has been helping them for a few months, getting the younger ones little jobs as “dummies” for a hair and make-up college. I think “models” is the preferred term. They get 2.50, a day relaxing, getting something to eat and a lovely new hairdo. Others, Doris has found casual jobs when she can. One, in fact, has to leave the meeting as she has to go and cook chapati for a posh lady with a meeting. 

They are lovely women. And their business plans are pretty good. Sweet potato and arrowroot, fruit and carrier bags, eggs and sausages… all solid businesses. Each group is ten women – seven groups, so 70 women in all – with an average of 26 children in each group of ten, so 182. The bill is about 600 pounds. In the charity VFM stakes, that is pretty impressive. Even though I say so myself. Groups are deffo the way.

There is security, self-policing, mutual support and buying power there.

THURSDAY

Doris is off organising the buying with the ladies we funded yesterday. Some will leave for their new lives today and some tomorrow. Doris is very impressed with their knowledge and attitude with the buying. This is an important point in the process – Doris (or Vicky or Purity) watch the women to see how they are in a business situation – product knowledge, ability to strike a bargain and hold their own in a negotiation – because that will tell us a lot about any weaknesses the business might have. 

Felista sends me a slew of pictures of walls and piles of bricks. And a list of building materials which seems to feature mainly doors. And a photo of a bill for 120 quid with Not Paid written across the top. 

Mary from the Mary Faith Home calls to say their electricity has been cut off. The bill has not been paid. And the girls have still not been for their ultrasound. 

Maybe the CEO of Save the Children could hand over just a little of her £245,000 salary (plus perks) and help save these children.

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Mama Biashara accepts donations HERE and runs a charity shop in Shepherds Bush, London, staffed by volunteers and (when she is in the UK) Copstick. 100% of the money earned in the shop goes directly to Mama Biashara’s work in Kenya, without any deductions.

Kate Copstick’s small charity gives poor people a helping hand up not hand-out

Kate Copstick… as seen by Joanne Fagan

Following up on the last blog, here is an extract from last Friday’s diary kept by journalist/comedy critic Kate Copstick, working for her Mama Biashara charity in Kenya.

Mama Biashara helps people out of abject poverty by giving them small grants to start their own small, self-sustaining businesses.

Copstick receives no salary and no money to cover her own personal costs. She pays for her own overheads, flights and accommodation. 100% of all monies donated are spent on the charity’s work, which is run by volunteers.

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FRIDAY

Off back to Kajiado, pausing only to squeeze the very last out of the money Mama Biashara has to spend. The exchange rate has not improved.

We are checking on more businesses and then doing a funding. I am majorly stressed that the money will not last. And I have more than a week to go!

I have to send DECIP their monthly budget of about £180 (depending on exchange rate).

Vicky puts her people into bigger groups and points them at properly good businesses. So really these groups out here – the ones fleeing sexual abuse and tribal violence – are the best ‘Value For Money’ that Mama Biashara spends.

I do realise that terrified women fleeing unspeakable sexual violence to them and their children should not really be seen in terms of Value For Money but that, as they say, is how one rolls in a charity like Mama Biashara.

Our first stop is a construction site where one of our groups of young guys is building an entire compound. A big house and several smaller houses in a square. It is VERY smart. But the woman who has hired them is there and she does not want her place photographed unless we pay something. Also this group is one started by our fumigation men and most of the members are guys who have ‘been inside’. They are terrified that, if the police see that they are making money, then they will come and extort as much as they can. And they would. So no pictures. You will have to take my word for the quality of the work. It is excellent.

Next is a detergent business. These twelve ladies started in July with a grant of about £80 to sell soap powder and bar soap. Now the group (which has grown from 12 to 20) wholesales all manner of cleaning liquids which they mix themselves. They have big regular orders and also sell retail… some do deliveries, some do the mixing, one minds the store and some go looking for plastic bottles to pack the detergents and bleaches in. Their tiny hole in the wall might not look much but it is the heart of a big business now.

Mama B funds allows people to help themselves out of poverty

We visit to one of Mama Biashara’s greengrocers – a small collection of stalls selling tomatoes and greens, mangoes, butternut squash, fresh peas and a load more. This group is 15 strong and the ladies who are not here on the stall today are either chasing orders or out looking at farms with a view to new suppliers.

I also get a text from Jayne to say that the egg group we started with the quarry workers in Rongo (on Tuesday) with four trays of eggs to boil and sell, are now on ten trays. In three days. Not bad, as business expansion goes.

Now to the funding.

Four women and one man are in our little ‘safe’ house owned by a Mama Biashara businesswoman set up long ago. They all look half dead. I cluck exasperatedly and we get the bloke to go and buy sodas, bread and bananas. “I cannot discuss business with people who are sleeping,” I tetch.

Vicky leans over to me: “They are rape victims; be kind,” she murmurs. To be fair they have travelled – as tends to be the way with these groups – for miles to get here.

The guy’s group is selling miraa and that means great profit and rapid expansion (usually). All the groups are Phoenix groups (which means they are being targetted with sexual violence. Mostly this happens because they are the wrong tribe in the wrong place. Think Catholics and Protestants in Ireland during the Troubles. But no bombs. Just rape and battering.

In this particular group, 5 children, 7 women and 1 man have already been raped).

The next group want to move from Birika to Makueni and sell fish (both fresh and fried). 6 women have already been raped and 4 children – aged 2,4,6 and 7 years. Getting them the hell out of Birika would seem to be of the essence.

The next group are selling maize and beans (6 women and 5 young children have already been raped so hanging around is not a great option), then there is another bean group and one who want to sell butternut squash and who top the horror league at 8 children and 8 women having been raped already.

“80 adults and 207 children will be getting a safe, secure life.”

So, all in all, 80 adults and 207 children will be getting a new, safe, secure life, as of tomorrow.

Even before the last funding is done, Vicky is on the phone to the lorry drivers who help us (for money, of course) to move these groups away from a nightmare and into safety. All the necessary stuff to start the businesses will be bought tomorrow or brought by lorry.

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Mama Biashara survives solely on money donated to it and money from its volunteer-manned charity shop in Shepherds Bush, London. 100% of all monies received are spent on the charity’s work.

You can donate to Mama Biashara via wonderful.org – CLICK HERE

Kate Copstick and the sexually-abused girl being held in a Nairobi hospital

British journalist and occasional TV producer Kate Copstick is currently in Kenya, working with her Mama Biashara charity. 

In the last couple of extracts from her diaries (HERE and HERE) mention was made of a penniless 14-year-old girl called Faith who was raped by her father, recently gave birth to his child and was being held in an overcrowded ward (2 to a bed) at Kenyatta National Hospital in Nairobi.

This is in clear contravention of last year’s Kenyan High Court ruling on detention of patients which states that it is illegal for a Kenyan hospital to detain a patient for non-payment of fees.

Now read on in these extracts from Copstick’s diaries this week…

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MONDAY

Kenyatta National Hospital.

I am there the entire day. I am not one of life’s gifted ‘waiters’.

This is a place Kafka himself would struggle to create.

It is a big monster full of little monsters.

I go from little social worker to Head of Department, to Bill Management to Finance to Administration, back to Finance then back to Social Work. 

We are in “just following orders” territory here. 

But, in Kenyatta National Hospital, we get: “We are waiting for feedback”. 

The buck is thrown around like a rugby ball in a grudge match and it is blindingly obvious that none of these people gives even the tiniest, the most transient, the least fuckity of fucks about a 14-year-old girl, raped and impregnated by her father who has now been held like a prisoner for over one month. 

They see a bit of paper. And they see their nice quiet office. Some see nothing because they are simply too incompetent. Some worry because they see a mistake that they have made. All rush to point fingers in the direction of anyone else. None is bothered by the law of Kenya.

I am there six hours. Everyone is going home. I give up. Even David, who has been waiting outside, is practically catatonic with boredom and no one does nothing better than David.

I go and meet Mary of the Mary Faith Home. We have been in touch during the day. 

She has just had a 12-year-old girl left with her who is so badly infected and damaged she cannot sit down. So far, they think, she has both syphilis and gonorrhea. Makes sense as she was being abused by both father and uncle over several years. Since she was five. 

Mary leans forward and says, “She told me her uncle said to her: I know here at the front is for your father. But here at the back, this is mine.”

THURSDAY

Latest update on 14-year-old Faith, currently going into her fifth week of incarceration at Kenyatta National Hospital. I have spent days in the place trying to get anywhere near an answer, let alone an explanation, much less a result. But today the CEO has sent a minion down from on high to take her file. 

The excellent Standard newspaper printed a full page piece on illegal detention of patients in Kenya and hospitals yesterday.

Coincidence ?? 

Hopefully the continuing abuse of this poor girl will be ended sooner rather than later. I have never experienced anything like the working – and non-workings – of this place.

TODAY – FRIDAY

Faith is still detained illegally in Kenyatta National Hospital.

Now, apparently, it is because the Director of Corporate Services has failed to sign a bit of paper.

Apparently he is in a meeting.

… CONTINUED HERE …

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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 relies solely on donations and from sales of goods in its shop at Shepherds Bush, London. The website is HERE.

What it is like for Kate Copstick living, working and running a charity in Kenya

Journalist Kate Copstick’s work with her Mama Biashara charity in Kenya has been covered in this blog over the last few years. 

Mama Biashara helps poor people (especially women) set up their own small self-supporting businesses which may give them a lift to a better life – a hand up, not a hand out. It also gets involved in educational and health care projects.

In the last blog here, rather than cover the charity’s work directly, I posted extracts from Copstick’s diary which give an impression of the things she encounters more generally in Kenya.

Here are some more brief, edited extracts starting more than a week ago. Fuller versions appear on the Mama Biashara Facebook page…

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THURSDAY

Faith (14-year-old, raped and impregnated by her father; mentioned in the last blog) is STILL being held by Kenyatta Hospital in Nairobi. The psychological and emotional toll of being imprisoned like this is unimaginable. I suspect the monsters of Kenyatta Hospital are responsible for destroying this girl’s ability to trust another human being forever.

FRIDAY

Arriving in Mombasa is like walking in front of an industrial hairdryer and it is fabulous. The Shiloh (our accommodation of choice) is full of Somalis who are here to unload cars at the docks, so we have to go upstairs where there are four more rooms. However they cost 7.50 a night instead of 4.00. And mine has no water. But there is no choice. 

Mombasa has got rid of the massive rubbish dump at the bridge that used to make the trip into town such a nightmare. The acres of mountains of rotting shit and unrotting plastic have gone. So has the smell. They have even put down some top soil and there are small palms and sunflowers growing. The water on the other side has lost its slick of disgustingness. It is a transformation. One has to wonder quite where it has all gone… but the ride to town no longer requires a facemask and a strong stomach.

I bloody love Mombasa.

“We end up having our little funding workshop on the beach…”

TUESDAY

Vicky is trying to find a safe place to meet the first groups who want funding.

Since the bombings came back, especially here on the coast, every meeting of people is suspected of being Al-Shabaab planning something nasty.

And stick a white woman in the mix and it is imagined nothing good could possibly be happening. The last time we were here we were arrested, if you remember, and spent six hours in Ukunda Police Station. Vicky was seriously traumatised by that and she is terrified of it happening again. 

Which is how we end up having our little funding workshop on the beach. 

We are on the beach till the sun goes down and then go to our usual place for pilau. Chef must be having an off day as mine tastes like grit and Doris ends up puking violently at the side of the road.

And while she is puking I find myself in the middle of a to-do. 

As Vicky and I are sitting, a scrawny boy comes up to the table and extends a hopeful hand. As he does so, an elderly man stomps past and absolutely whacks him with a rolled up newspaper. 

I can barely believe what I see but, as soon as I realise what has happened, I chase the man into the restaurant. He has disappeared.

As I come out, I see the same boy being manhandled by an extremely disagreeable type dressed in raggedy brown and looking like he is not entirely sober. I stomp across, get between him and the boy and demand that he leave him alone. He grabs, I grab and push the boy behind me. We then have what is best described as a stare-and-twitch-off. He has obviously never been confronted by a crazy old Scottish lady at full throttle and is at least 50% weirded-out. 

I give him the Copstickian Death Stare. He is not that impressed; he stays where he is and just glares back at me. Then he twitches as if to come forward and I twitch sideways, keeping the boy behind me. I shout at him to go away (sorry, not very Kill Bill but the best I could do at the time). He growls back. 

Then a bloke from the restaurant arrives. The dodgy raggedy bloke leaves and I release the boy who runs off in the opposite direction. The restaurant man says the boy is a thief. Raggedy bloke is there as a look out. He comes almost every night. 

I suggest that:

(a) getting some foul layabout from a nearby gutter to beat him up is not going to help the boy and

(b) if this is the case, then he is obviously being run by someone of whom he is more afraid than he is of getting beaten at the restaurant. Restaurant man shrugs and says: “He is just chokora” (a street child).

What with the gritty pilau, the food poisoning and the on-street fighting, I have enjoyed myself more.

WEDNESDAY

Sadly, no beach today. Vicky’s groups are coming from the other end of Mombasa. Two groups have become four but, again, I know how hard it is to triage people’s misery and need.

We meet in a little space at the end of the row of upstairs rooms at our place. It is really quiet and safe. As I sort out chairs, I am joined – no more than four feet away – by an incredibly handsome monkey. Grey fur and a black face.

I have nothing for him, but we sort of chat and tilt heads at each other. 

He then, as he crouches, opens his legs and I see he has: 

(a) the most beautiful cobalt blue testicles and

(b) a full-on monkey erection, which is sweetie pink.

Relatively speaking, this boy is most impressive. Every so often, he passes a little money paw over his tiny pink policeman’s helmet. The only people I have ever seen do this are male porn stars on set – just to ‘keep the engine running’. 

I am thrilled with my new friend. However, sensing no food in the offing, he goes and we start work. 

We see a group who are being abused and frequently drugged then gang-raped – a group whom Vicky describes as “funky Moslems” (non-strict Moslems living in a very conservative area). Again, like yesterday, the wives of the strict Moslem men hire thugs to sexually abuse the children to force the mothers out. Plus women from the Kokoto mines where sexual abuse is constant. And a group of reformed female prisoners who are being seriously abused in their community. A good variety of businesses, and everyone is relocated to somewhere safe. 48 adults and 176 children.

SUNDAY

Back in Nairobi.

Tonight we have electricity.

Today, I looked in a mirror for the first time in ten days because my cheeks felt sort-of scaley. Bloody forgot about my lupus not liking the sun and I have now got two crusty red cheeks. Slathering on the cortisone and hoping it will go away.

For some reason my right hip is giving me the most appalling gyp. Slathering on the diclofenac.

I took my methotrexate this morning and just met Felista but had to cut and run to the nearest space and puke and retch for ten minutes.

… CONTINUED HERE …

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The view from Copstick’s far from luxurious home window… She used to live in a metal container…

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 relies solely on donations and from sales of goods in its shop at Shepherds Bush, London. The website is HERE.

Copstick and the abused Kenyan girls

Kate Copstick is Mama Biashara

The UK’s most influential comedy critic, Kate Copstick, is currently working with Mama Biashara, the charity she started in Kenya.

This is the (edited) second series of extracts from her diary. The first was posted a couple of days ago.

The full version is on the Mama Biashara Facebook page.

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SATURDAY

The government has closed the forests and so there is pretty much no (legal) charcoal or firewood.unless it comes in from Tanzania at exorbitant cost. Fine for the rich but very unfine for the poor who cannot afford gas, much less electricity to cook with. 

We have had huge success with recycled fuel briquettes using a variety of biowaste according to region. Unfortunately our success drew the attention of the charcoal cartels (oh yes there are such things) and our groups were either physically attacked or threatened into submission. So our groups have split up into smaller, less threatening-looking chunks and spread out. We are teaching people how to make the briquettes so they can use them themselves and save money.

Two of the Mama Biashara Mary Faith children (posed so as to obscure their identities)

SUNDAY

I go to see Mary Faith.

New girls have been rescued and five of the older girls have been turned away from school because there is no money for school fees.

Firstly Lucy, who is paralysed and a little bit intellectually challenged. Ideal, then, for the men around her to have some fun with.

She was brought to Mary Faith pregnant and she refused to have a termination because she says she wants someone to love her and she thinks the baby will be that someone. Because of the paralysis she needs a Caesarean Section. Two hundred quid.

Then there is Diana, who is four years old and an absolute joy. She stares at me and asks me what I am. I tell her I am a shosho (an old lady). She grabs my arm and scratches gently. She looks at me and asks if my legs are the same as my arms. I roll up my leggings and she shrieks with laughter. She makes me pull them up further. We further inspect my tummy, my back and my bottom, all to hoots of amusement and amazement. Then she inspects my hair – to see if it is real. 

Mary Faith and I tell her that there are lots of people like me. She is wide eyed. She is a little odd and has a stammer, but then she saw her mother beaten and running for her life and then she herself was raped and then abandoned, outside their locked house, by her father. 

So that would tend to make you a bit stammery. At four. But we do counting and singing and she thinks my name is funny, so she is doing really well. 

And then there are the girls who have been sent away from school because there is no money for fees. The fees are about one hundred pounds per girl per term. They are all working really hard at their studies 

Jane is 16 and has a three year old son. She was abused by a family friend and abandoned.

Teresia is 17 and has a daughter aged 3. She was married off at age 14 in order to use the dowry to pay a debt that her grandfather had managed to incur.

Doris is also 17 and was also married off at age 14 by her uncle after both her parents died. The uncle sent Doris’s three siblings with her from West Pokot to her new marital home in Nairobi so she could look after them. Obviously, he wanted nothing to do with them once he had her dowry. She got pregnant, miscarried and was bleeding heavily for six months after her husband abandoned her because she was obviously no good at having children. All four of the family are with Mary Faith. Doris still has appalling gynaecological issues.

Rafina is 16 and is the mother of a two and a half year old boy. She was raped by her paternal uncle in the family home and then, when the pregnancy was apparent, taken to the centre of Nairobi and abandoned. She was sleeping rough when some of the street boys who knew about Mary Faith brought her to the home.

Margaret is 16 and was abused by neighbours when her parents died and she was left alone looking after her siblings. All are now with Mary Faith.

Finally there is Berine, another new girl, aged 16. She was sent by family (after her parents died) to Dandora as a house girl. Sold, basically. There she was abused and impregnated by her employer. As soon as this Prince Charming saw she was pregnant, he threw her out. She found occasional shelter with street sex workers but when she gave birth they also threw her out. 

She was living rough for weeks when the street boys rescued her and brought her to Mary Faith.

So there you have it. I am really hoping Mama Biashara People can come up with the school fees. Even the money for the Caesarean Section. I do not know how you choose who to help. (Donations can be made HERE.)

In other, other news, inspired by Janey Godley, I am working with a group of young guys here who do art and ceramics and all sorts of stuff to see if we can come up with a Mama Biashara T-shirt design and they will handpaint them. Watch this space.

… CONTINUED HERE…

Mama Biashara’s expanding charity work in Kenya – with Kate Copstick

Kate Copstick – at the Mama Biashara shop in London before one of her regular trips to Kenya

In two days’ time, Kate Copstick returns from Kenya, where she has been working for her Mama Biashara charity, which was started to give advice and small amounts of money to poor people (mostly women) so they can support themselves by starting small self-sustaining businesses.

The charity’s work has widened to try to lessen other social problems, as shown in previous blogs and, here, in edited extracts from her diary, we catch up with a little of what she was doing last week, continuing from a previous blog… 

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Vicky, holding the latest in cheap de-worming tablets.

WEDNESDAY

I get a call to say that the Meru groups are all moving today to Garissa under the watchful eye of Vicky. For those who did not read the Meru diary, these are twenty women who are escaping their rapist, paedophile husbands who have been sexually abusing their own children. So the twenty women and about ninety children are simply disappearing from their appalling life today and starting another life in another place. The women will form a little community and everyone is part of one of the group businesses. There is a hospital waiting to look at physical damage and a counsellor to address the psychological trauma. Vicky is working on a school for the kids.

Doris calls from Limuru, where the bravest five of the girls who have been being kept as sort of house/sex slaves are leaving for their new lives. Some have children born of the abuse they have suffered. Most of them were brought to Nairobi aged about eight or nine. The sexual abuse started at the latest, six months later and has continued unabated ever since. They have rarely been allowed out of the house to mix with other people. So this rescue has been tricky.

But now they are going.

They all have someone waiting for them – a Mama Biashara person – and a place to stay, well paid, nice work and three days training each week in skills like hairdressing and sewing. These young women have been so abused for so long that we could not have given them their own businesses. They have no confidence, no skills and almost need looking after like children until they can heal a bit and find themselves again. Which they will. Doris has excelled herself here.

The rest of the girls in this group are too terrified to come along. And they have difficulty (which often happens) in believing that someone actually wants to help them. But we are staying in touch.

Helper Felista works hard for Mama Biashara all over Kenya

THURSDAY

We have had great difficulty in keeping in contact with the Maasai girls in Shompole. I do some research and find it is not “there, above Meru” but over, again, towards the Tanzanian border between Lake Magadi and Lake Nacron. Not, in the grand, Kenya scheme of things, far.

I resolve to go on Saturday and come back Sunday or Monday. It turns out Shompole is quite the tourist trap. It is hotching with safari operators, camps, ‘wilderness experiences’, ‘cultural exchanges’ and the rest. I see pictures of jolly Maasai ladies engaging with eager tourists. I am assuming that the old ‘cultural exchanges’ do not include female tourists being held screaming while they are cored like a pineapple and then sewn up with parcel twine (which is what happens in the local version of female genital mutilation).

I get a call from Felista who is sounding not at all well. I was supposed to meet her to give her some money for some lengths of pipe for the sewage system at the home. She had explained earlier: “The pipe which is here is very small and the poo-poos are now very big and they are blocking, blocking and returning into the cho”.

I find her slumped on a bench in a pharmacy.

She has a pain in her chest which sounds like heartburn. But she seems very weak (unusual). The pharmacist has given her Omeprazole.

“It works like a charm,” he says.

“IT is a PPI (a proton-pump inhibitor),” I hoot. “These are serious drugs and you cannot hand them out like sweeties”.

“But it works,” he smiles. “In one hour she will be fine.”

“What do you give for a headache?” I mutter. “Morphine?”

He chuckles.

In an hour, Felista is not fine. And the pain has shifted to her back.

I ask the PPI King if he has a blood pressure meter. He has. Felista’s blood pressure is high: 177/104. But no shortness of breath, no clamminess, no racing or thready pulse.

I chat to the PPI King about likely antibiotics for the girls in Shompole. He does not seem that bothered by my description of the problem.

“That is the Maasai. That is what they do,” he nods.

I get Augmentin in high doses, iodine, hydrogen peroxide (for when it is time for the maggots to go) and take Felista next door to drink tea. She is not perking up that much, so I put her in a taxi. Sadly the cost of a wee ECG here is ridiculous. But I might see if we have any pullable strings.

High tech under the dashboard of the Mama Biashara car

FRIDAY

David and I eat peas and rice in the little place downstairs and go to the car. Which has apparently died. Completely. Not a flicker. The usual rearranging of cardboard bits on the battery and banging the contacts with a spanner do not work. A mechanic is called. An hour and a half later, the car comes back to life.

“It is a fuse,” pronounces David.

The car dies again.

We do a lot of pushing her around the dusty compound while David attempts to start her up.

We apply jump leads.

Another half hour and she is going again.

“Doris is again working her magic…”

SATURDAY

More sexually abused girls from the forest community outside Limuru have come forward. Seven of them; four with babies.

In a slight twist to the usual story, one of them was brought to Nairobi aged twelve, by her older sister. It is her sister’s husband who has been raping her ever since and it is his baby she has.

Doris is again working her magic within the Mama Biashara community and has found the seven girls places with our Glam customers. Accommodation, food and very well paid house work plus, in all cases, the all-important training. In one case the Glam lady has four shops and is looking to train our refugee girls for all of them.

The feedback about the girls who left last week for their new homes is very positive. The host ladies are delighted and the girls are thrilled. We may have discovered a whole new way of dealing with sexually abused teens. FYI all of the groups will be getting counselling: that is part of the package we set up.

It occurred to me that some of you might see the whole child rape/sexual abuse/FGM thing as being Mama Biashara ‘spreading herself too thin’.

Let me explain how and why this is working.

At the moment, about 75% of Mama Biashara’s income comes from the London shop. Currently the shop is breaking me. And I have no real idea for how much longer it is viable. The problems are both personal and personnel.

I have to find a way to make Mama Biashara more attractive to funding bodies/fundraisers/donors. This means being (I have been advised) much more specific. Very few people are wonderful enough to give money to give away to people to change their lives through setting up a small business. Apparently that is too ‘vague’.

Serendipitously, the whole child rape project reared its ugly head. The day we put our feelers out on the ground to see what was lurking there, it turned into the Hydra. The women whose husbands were raping their children but who could not leave… the sex slave girls… and even Maasai women who were prepared to run from their clan to save their daughters from FGM are now Mama’s constituency. They are all being saved the Mama Biashara way – by being made strong and independent by having their own, sustainable businesses.

And now I am hoping that we are more eligible for grants.

I have admitted defeat on the ‘just do the right thing’ front.

I have to continue doing the right thing but be prepared to parcel it up the way the trusts/donors/fundraisers want to see it.

Yes, we will still do de-worming and ringworm days. Yes, we will still do all the civil rights information leaflets and health information. But that is easy peasy.

Now we have a bigger job adding on counselling, medical care and relocation expenses. Girls will get training (as the sex slave girls did) and Maasai girls will get the education they have been refused (there is a small school at the centre in Rombo). But it is still all the Mama Biashara Way.

We still have our groups in Awendo (hotbed of all things non-consensual and unnatural where sex is concerned, Western and the Coast. As well as the new communities growing in Dodoma (in Tanzania – we are literally an international charity!), Nanyuki, Garissa and the rest.

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Mama Biashara exists solely on donations and from sales at its London shop. Copstick takes no money for herself in any way. 100% of donations and of the shop’s earnings go to the charity’s work.

You can donate HERE.

Part of the Mama Biashara shop in London’s Shepherd’s Bush

Copstick in Kenya: Good news and bad

More edited ongoing extracts from the diary of Kate Copstick who is currently in Kenya working for her Mama Biashara charity which gives small grants to help poor people start their own self-sustaining businesses. It also gets involved in wider social issues. 

The full diary is posted on her Facebook page.

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Kate Copstick (left) working for Mama Biashara in Kenya

MONDAY

I am more than a little pissed off to learn that my 22kg of donated bras is not yet ready for collection. Something about being lost in Paris. Tomorrow, says Morris the Export Man.

I go to Corner to meet Doris. I am, to be honest, rather dreading this. Our last attempt at getting some actual paperwork done ended, if you remember, somewhat tumfily (Scottish word, a tumf is a bad mood). Since then, her texts have been entirely in Kiswahili (never a good sign) and quite formal.

But she is fine.

However, the news from the weekend is troublesome.

Since we accidentally opened this Kenya-sized can of worms and found a pit of snakes, the ghastliness has just kept on coming. All of it hidden away, all of it culturally approved (by men, mostly) and none of it ever, ever addressed.

While I was with Nais (see yesterday’s blog), Doris was around Limuru meeting a group of girls (14 in all but only 5 made it out to the meeting) who are living in a sort of forest area far outside the town. These girls (aged about 15-18) are in the same state that the Kangeme girls were.

Sent by their parents to relatives ‘in town’. The relatives say the girls will get an education or vocational training. But, when they arrive, they are house slaves for the women and sex slaves for the men. The girls are much the same in demeanour as the Kangeme girls – utterly cowed.

But they had got to hear about the Kangeme girls and got a borrowed phone and called Doris. She has absolutely no idea how they got the number. They have no skills, no ideas about business. And they are pretty much broken. We discuss what options we have. When these girls leave their community it has to be like the Kangeme girls and the women from the quarry we rescued – they all just have to disappear. Or any who are left will be beaten.

We explore creating temporary safe houses – mine here in Corner, for a start. Doris says leave it with her so I do.

We go to Chicken Master and continue to administrate over lunch. I get all the info on the Magadi and Namanga groups and then Doris tells me something terrible but which will be wonderful. The leader of the first group, Ntoto Sayoon, has been in touch from his new home.

The charcoal business is up and running and everyone is so happy. But he has a best friend. And another friend. Who are still in the old village. They are in the same position that Ntoto was. The Maasai men show their dislike of incoming men by raping their wives and children in front of them. Ntoto’s best friend did not come to Mama Biashara for funding because he did not believe it was for real. He did not believe anyone would help them, much less get them out and into a new life.

So now Ntoto wants to bring his friends into his charcoal group. He says they will share their houses with them till they get somewhere and they will share the business. Gulp.

The bad news is that, as a result of the repeated rapes, both his best friend’s wife and young daughter are pregnant. And his wife is now unwell after trying to abort by hitting herself in the stomach with a hammer.

In other news, we have also been contacted (no idea how this number is getting around…) by a group of Maasai girls from up north.

Up North in Kenya is not the joyous beer, whippets, flat caps and real tea experience that it is in England. It is quite killy. And women are quite a long way below goats in the respect stakes.

This group of around twelve girls – average age 12 – have all been ‘cut’ (female genital mutilation). All are in agony.

After the entire clitoral area is removed like taking the top off a boiled egg with a teaspoon, the girls are sewn shut with parcel twine. All these girls have massive infections. The girl who spoke to us mentioned pain, pus and maggots (which are currently probably saving their lives). She says the smell in the classroom is appalling and all the boys laugh at them. If they try to remove the stitches to clean the giant wound, they are beaten.

Not quite sure what else to say here… We are working on it.

Doris, one of Mama Bishara’s main workers

TUESDAY

I have been asked to find a Jewish Cemetery by the fragrant Sarah Chew back in London. She makes the oddest requests, but I feel I can make a fist of this one.

David has no idea what I am talking about. “What is Jewish?” he asks.

The cemetery is a tragic sight. Not a headstone left intact, totally overgrown, full of litter and homeless people enjoying an al fresco bottle of glue. This is not anything to do with anti-Semitism. This is just Kenya. If no-one is actually defending something or paying money for it, it just gets trashed.

I take pictures and we leave to spend an hour and a quarter travelling 200 yards and get beaten up (just poor Mary, not David or myself) by a real bastard of a matatu driver. Mary has a nasty scar down one side now. I am not quick enough to figure out the Swahili for “Your mother sucks cocks in hell” and had to settle for “Mchinga” (stupid) and a wanking gesture… as he drove off – not daft enough to do it while he was beside us). I feel I have let myself down badly on the sweary insult front.

Market is quiet and we get back to Corner relatively quickly. My arms look like scabby mince, my face resembles a pink bag of marbles and I cannot take another night of mosquito torture.

In the back streets of Corner we meet a great group of prozzies and pimps.

“I love your hair,” says one girl. “Can I touch it?”

So I go over and she runs her fingers through my hair, as does her friend.

“So natural,” she says. She offers me a feel of her braids. “Mine is from China.”

“You look nice,” one of the pimpy lads tells me. “Are you available for service?”

This is the closest I have come to being chatted-up in years. I smirk girlishly.

“Some other day,” I tell him.

We get a net and meet Doris. She has been back out to Limuru and played an absolute blinder. Five of the girls managed to get away from their ‘families’ and make it to town. Doris has persuaded some of the well-off customers of our Glam project (you say what you want and for how much money and we find it for you… sort of a personal shopping service) to take the girls in and give them a job as, more or less, au pairs.

Very good money, nice accommodation and – best of all – these women are offering to sponsor the girls to be trained in either hairdressing, rug making or sewing. PLUS they are not even afraid that the ‘families’ will come after them.

“If they come we will expose what they have been doing,” say the ladies.

Amazing!!!

Doris is going back tomorrow to try and collect the rest. Mama Biashara will be providing fares to get them wherever they are going.

This is where the years and years of setting up small businesses all over really comes into its own. When the call goes out, Mama Biashara people will help. That is The Way of Mama Biashara.

Now back to Casa Copstick and we open the Big Box of Bras. I want to sort them out so we can make sure they go to the right women (the old ladies of Western are not that keen on underwiring).

As we sort them, I realise Mama Biashara knows some seriously well-stacked ladies in the UK. There are some gorgeous undies. Doris is working out where best for them to go and we will start distributing.

I manage to set up my mozzie net using a mop and a slight rearrangement of furniture.

Bliss. Bliss.

Bliss is a night undisturbed by mosquitoes.

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Copstick receives no money from the charity and covers all her own expenses, including flights and accommodation. The Mama Biashara charity survives solely on financial donations (you can donate HERE) and on sales in its London shop.

 

Kate Copstick’s charity Mama Biashara in Kenya and the need for donations

Copstick in Kenya with a chicken

Following on from yesterday’s blog, more highly-edited extracts from Kate Copstick’s diary in Kenya, where her Mama Biashara charity is based. The original, unedited diaries are on her Facebook page.

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MONDAY

Zaida tells me more about the plans for the girls’ refuge – education, personal development, outreach work. It will also provide a refuge for any girls who are raped, because here, neither the local chief (Maasai himself) nor the police will do anything about it. Slight problem is that they have chosen to call the refuge Gates Of Zion. Which worries me, although there is no overt church involvement. I tell her about Mama Biashara’s Phoenix Project … Zaida likes the name.

We go and see the compound they have been offered. It is great – a row of mabati houses, space for more, plenty of space to develop and all for 12,000 a month, which is just under £90. They are already using one house as a school for girls and anyone who wants to learn to read and write and do a bit of arithmetic. They have also already mobilised an outreach team and just need the wherewithal to make this place their own before they start rescuing girls.

Oh – and we need to dig new pit latrines because these ones are full.

We kick off our collaboration with two months’ rent and money to make a security fence. And I will be back in April.

So Mama Biashara’s Phoenix Project is rising in Rombo, under the shadow of Kilimanjaro. Apparently God lives there.

Two ladies at the new Phoenix Project compound in Rombo

TUESDAY

Back at Corner, Doris has loads of follow-up information on our Phoenix Project groups.

The first group – the Maasai people where the problem was the husbands raping their own children within the marriage and the man whose wife and kids were being raped by neighbours – have already gone. Mainly to one town in Tanzania.

We have a counsellor there and she is organising homes and a friendly doctor who will examine all the kids to see if medical treatment is required. The lady who had been raped and impregnated is no longer pregnant and is off to start her new life with her group. The girls from Kangeme are going to two centres: Malindi and Nanyuki. In both places, Doris has contacts. Malindi we know well and at Nanyuki the incomers are being put up in a hotel till they get started.

Doris has been a bit of a demon with the forms I made up for personal information on the women. We now have nuggets of info. She is getting calls in from all over Kenya on the Mama Biashara line. This is like squeezing what you think is a plook and finding it is cancer. OK, I know that is not how you diagnose cancer but you get my drift.

Tomorrow we are seeing another group of women from far away (they want to come here because we cannot meet where someone might recognise them). And the rent is paid, I hear, on the compound in Rombo. The Phoenix is rising, people. The Phoenix is rising.

Doris, one of Mama Biashara’s key helpers

WEDNESDAY

Now we have another meeting with groups from Magadi – another area of big intermarriage with the Maasai. Four groups.

This time, there are four men involved and their stories are as toe-curling as before.

If anything, the men who marry-in are treated worse than women (and that is saying something).

The Maasai men rape their wives and children in front of them. Just to show them who is boss.

And the women tell the same old story. When their children get to about five or six, their husbands start getting the inexplicable incestuous, paedophile horn. The women usually discover it has started when they “see blood coming down” from a child.

But now it is not going to happen any more for these groups. Sixteen families – which include 69 children – are moving to join the rest of our relocated people. There are places awaiting them, they have terrific self-sustaining businesses (porridge and sweet potato – separately) and Stella is waiting with counselling and medical help. Stella is turning out to be a humongous asset. Yet another friend of Doris.

Doris goes home early. She is absolutely knackered. Calls are coming in from all over almost non stop. And she has to triage the misery. I think we might have to get another phoneline and get someone to help with the first line approaches. Which is where donations will come in handy.

Mama Biashara’s Vicky: “They will just remove your head.”

THURSDAY

Vicky has come to enlist the help of The Phoenix Project for a group from Meru.

The women are in the usual hell of having a husband who rapes their kids but not having the wherewithal to get away and take the children to safety.

These groups want to go to Garissa. Which is on the border with Somalia. Your life has to be quite bad for Garissa to seem like the promised land.

“The thing with Meru men,” says Doris, “is they are mental.”

Vicky nods. “You cannot speak to them. They will just remove your head.”

This is something I have heard before, when we were helping groups of boys escape virtual slavery on the miraa farms in Meru.

There is a kind of shortcut between “Are you looking at me?” and violent death here.

It makes the East End of Glasgow look like Little Giggling in the Grasses.

Thoughtful Kate Copstick, as seen by Joanne Fagan

FRIDAY

Now the gates of hell open.

I try to get Doris to understand paperwork and follow up and form filling. It is a nightmare and we both end up tetchy.

The money for Mama Bashara has almost always come from our London shop or through donations I personally have got. We have never had to be answerable to anything except the sheer bitter slog of standing in the shop every day.

But that money is just not enough.

And we have no big money coming in from individual donors (with the exception of my friends Andrew and Paul who donate 5,000 and 1,000 most years). We also have a wonderful loyal donor in Flame Haired Janet and marvellous people who help out incredibly if there is a panic on.

But we need more if we are to run with the Phoenix Project.

And that means form filling and information stockpiling and question answering and not just doing the Kenyan thing which is to say “probably… this is what happened” and then go ahead as if your personal suppositions about someone you know nothing about are fact.

Pinning Doris down (metaphorically) on the information she has got from the people in the Phoenix Project Groups is like catching frogspawn with chopsticks. To be fair, getting any information of a personal – much less sexual – nature out of a poor Kenyan is a Sysiphian task.

But it seems that the rape starts as early as three years old. The abuse of the first children tends to go unnoticed. Given that these girls in the Namanga were all married off aged 11 or 12 and pregnant a few months later, they are so traumatised themselves that they do not know what to think.

In the Maasai villages, when the women (and they all tell exactly the same story) report their husbands to the elders, the elders summon the husband, the husband is told to buy meat for the elders, he spits on the ground and then everything is fine. Except the woman is generally beaten severely by the husband.

The women report bleeding and incontinence in the children. The older children usually tell their mum “people have been doing bad manners to me”. And then, of course, culture dictates that the raped child is kept secret.

So no doctors, no hospitals. Just local, herbal medicine.

And this is before the question of female genital mutilation rears its ugly head.

Filling in the information about each person on the laptop is taking forever.

I say I will go and print out the forms and we can fill in by hand. En route I meet Kibe. We get it downloaded and printed out in a sweet cyber where everything lurks under about an inch of masonry dust – there is work going on outside.

Back at Casa Copi, Doris wants to go.

“I will do the paperwork my way,” she says.

“No” I say. “Because your way is not to do it at all.”

Harsh, I know, but fair.

I am just too tired and frazzled to do any more.

Doris goes and Kibe and I go and eat griddled goat’s heart in the street.

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As well as the existing Mama Biashara donation page, Copstick has set up a specific Phoenix Projects donation page.

Copstick receives no money for her work and covers all her own travel and accommodation. 100% of all donations go to the Mama Biashara charity’s work.

EXTRACTS FROM COPSTICK’S DIARY CONTINUE HERE

Anyone who thinks they have witnessed the objectification of women needs to come here

Kate Copstick working for Mama Biashara in Kenya

My last two blogs have been edited extracts from Kate Copstick’s diary. She is currently in Kenya working with her charity Mama Biashara.

Copstick covers 100% of her own costs, including accommodation and flights and takes zero from the charity… 100% of all donations go to the charity’s work.

Here are the latest edited extracts from her diaries. The full versions are on her Facebook page.

Copstick writes:

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Doris, one of Mama Bishara’s main workers

Stand by to get very angry. Remember with all this stuff, nothing helps quite like having the money to do something about it.

So never forget Mama Biashara has a BTMyDonate page. Feel free (in fact feel obliged) to share this… If you can get someone else to donate then you don’t have to …

THURSDAY

In tonight’s news from Kenya… Opposition proscribed as a criminal organisation. Media blackout continues. Until government ‘investigation’ is done. Gulp.

I have slept like the proverbial log. Our first stop is the delightful oasis that is Wildebeest Camp to collect the farming tools I have left there. They are for the new Maasai group I am visiting.

I send a plangent plea to Vikram Dave for school fees for the Ruai children Mama Biashara has been supporting. Nowadays the school fees are crippling for us.

I am VERY late to meet Doris at ChickenMaster. She is asleep at the table when I arrive, having been up all night taking phone calls from desperate mothers of abused children who have nowhere to turn. The group we are meeting tomorrow seem quite emboldened now they have made the decision to meet us. As if they can see light at the end of the tunnel and are at least 99% sure it is not an oncoming train. They will be bringing actual business plans. They are ready to go.

FRIDAY

I have a meeting with Julius – Baba Biashara in Western Kenya.

Julius has been doing great stuff. We now have a functioning kibanda (a small single-room building) with walls and everything at the entrance to his plot. We just need to put in an electrical socket (we got the wire to bring electricity to the plot last time) and we can do everything there.

Julius has been making the most of the stuff Mama Biashara left him with – cod liver oil, glucosamine sulphate etc etc and he has a long list of quasi-medical complaints from his last get together with our groups. Generally of the “I get ulsas (acid indigestion) when I eat a big ugali” variety.

I am really hoping that Vikram Dave (if he gets back to me) will be able to help with shoes for these people. The jiggers that infest the soil, burrow into the feet, lay eggs, explode out and leave septic sores are kept at bay completely by shoes. We have a great jiggers project here with Julius and we can treat them. But with no shoes they just burrow back.

Our businesses are doing well and the area is gagging for more raincatchers. It is now dry here and a full raincatcher will keep a small community for about six weeks through the first part of the dry spell. When there is any rain at all, it is more or less all they need. And while they use raincatcher water there is absolutely no waterborn disease.

I ask Julius about the problem of child rape in Western (my Mama Biashara peeps are our eyes and ears on the ground across Kenya).

Not a biggie, I hear.

It is frowned upon in Luhya culture – as Julius says: “People will not like you because you have done a bad thing”.

However “Rape case is upon the family” he says. Meaning it has to get sorted out amongst the people themselves. Hmmmm. There is one case, he suddenly remembers, of a boy “with blood coming down” which was noticed by the mother. Julius says he will look into it. I think about shrieking: “You must contact the police!” But I realise this would do no good.

David arrives and we meet Doris and set off for Kitengela.

I do not like Kitengela. This is more or less Maasai country and every bar and restaurant is full with men eating meat (OK slight exaggeration but not much). Anyone who thinks they have witnessed the objectification of women anywhere in the west really needs to come here. Even I, hyper-insensitive as I am, can feel like I am being looked at like a cross between nothing at all and a breeding cow. I am almost overwhelmed with the urge to do something appalling or to face off with one of these arrogant, meaty-eyed, entitled (in their own way) patriarchs. But TBH, the thought of what my Dad would say stops me.

I do not fail to see the irony in that.

We find a space at the back of a bar and our group arrives. So as not to arouse suspicion, one representative from each mini-group comes. Four young women and, surprisingly, a man.

I am at a loss as to imagine how the man fits in… Is his wife getting jiggy with his son? Surely not.

Absolutely not.

Ntoto represents four men who met time and time again at the police station or at their local Chief’s office. They had all come to report the same thing. These men are Maasai from Tanzania who have married across the border into Kenya. The Kenyan Maasai do not like them and they display their Kenyan dislike by raping the wives and the children of the incomers. Repeatedly. With absolute impunity.

Ntoto and his friends went to their local Chief and to the police and none of them would do anything.

So he is here with a plan to move back into Tanzania with his wife and five children and his three friends and their wives and ten children and make a new life. They are going to manufacture charcoal. Ecologically dubious, but a good business. He almost cries when I hand over the money.

I almost cry when I hand over the money but there is no time because now we have Naserian, representing four women and sixteen children. With this little group, the husbands wait until the girl children are “big” – ie 11 years old – before raping them. The group have a good business plan, an escape route and have organised a place to stay in their new town. We have a counsellor in place there who will be there for sessions with both mothers and children as soon as they are safe and established.

Next, Mary – heading a group of four women with thirteen children and Jane, whose group of four women have sixteen children between them. With these women, the husband does not bother to wait until the girls are “big”. The rape starts, we hear, when the children are as young as five.

All the groups are going to the same town, which is great for moral support. And for the reason that they can all go to the same hospital to get checked and our counsellor can do group sessions. One of the ladies in the last group has something of an additional problem. She has five children with a child rapist. But was herself raped by another man in the community. And is now pregnant with his child.

It is brain-addling that, as I am here, my Facebook is hotching with horror at the abomination that is having ‘Brolly Dollies’ on the grid at bike races because it objectifies women. See above.

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Mama Biashara subsists solely on donations from the public and from sales at its London shop. Copstick covers 100% of her own costs, including flights and accommodation and takes zero.

100% of all donations go to the charity’s work.

You can donate HERE.

COPSTICK’S DIARY CONTINUES HERE

Kate Copstick and child rape in Kenya

Yesterday’s extracts from Kate Copstick’s diary saw her arrive in Kenya but with nowhere to stay except with an acquaintance’s aunt. Now read on…

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Kate Copstick, as seen by Joanne Fagan

TUESDAY

I bid a cordial farewell to Joan’s Auntie and pack my stuff into the car. Now, please, titter ye not, but I seem to have acquired a groin strain. I ‘felt something go’ when howking the heavier of my bags up the stairs yesterday. And howking it back down this morning hasn’t helped. But enough of my groin.

The Kenyan Government has blacked out all news media and as much online information as it can. Very long story short, Raila Odinga – Leader of the Opposition – lost the first (annulled) election and then refused to take part in the second election but has declared himself the People’s President and is being sworn in today in Uhuru Park. All quite odd and petulent.

As far as I can see on what is left of social media here, and on some morning pay to view channels, everyone looks really happy and there is no violence. The government has withdrawn all the police and security forces, thus pretty much ensuring a peaceful time. Maybe happy Luos are not what the government thinks people should be seeing. But a total media blackout?

The Raila In The Park thing has pretty much closed the town down and so we get to Corner in record time. Felista and The Chairman have found me a bedsitter in Corner. They have decided I should not go to High Rise (which was proposed last night) because the girl who owns the hostel on offer is ‘a drunkard’. Rich coming from The Chairman whose blood alcohol level generally makes him a fire risk wherever he goes.

We go and see several possibilities.

And find my new home.

A bedsit with a loo INSIDE perched above the main drag of Dagoretti Corner. Massive padlocked gate on the outside of the building, big locked gate inside leading to stairs and another gate before my well-locked door opens onto Casa Copi. So pretty secure. Although, if there is a fire, SOMEONE had better bring the bloody keys.

Doris arrives and a whole new universe opens up for the Rape Crisis Centre project. Last night we had put out feelers ‘on the ground’ regarding child rape and the viability of a rescue and refuge place. The Mama Biashara phone practically melted down.

We had phonecalls from everywhere. Including some people who work for child services in Kikkuyu and who say they are ‘overwhelmed’ with the number of cases they get. We have a meeting with them tomorrow – or at least Doris has.

But the huge can of worms we have opened is even more complicated and icky and damaging than mere child rape. Apparently there is a huge ‘unmentionable’ bottom to this criminally violent iceberg. This is the vast number of women whose husbands rape their children and who do not report it because they have maybe four children with the man and cannot afford to reveal the crime and involve the police. I had never even considered that.

The women stay because they do not have the wherewithal to go. Extra horror to go with your horror, ma’am?

A group of a dozen women have contacted us and we are trying to find a way to meet them without being seen. We will probably travel to somewhere much closer to them so they do not need to be out for long and arouse (not a great choice of words) the suspicions of their rapist husbands.

We continue to flesh out the new project… logistics, services, the fact that the Mama Biashara network can now offer a woman help and support in most areas of Kenya. And I have an idea. For a name. The Phoenix Project – it rose itself from the ashes of the first project and the women and the children we help will rise too!

Kate Copstick’s luxurious new living quarters in Nairobi

WEDNESDAY

I am become once more the Enola Gay of poo. Out of the blue, ejecting explosive loads with dire effect for the surrounding area.

It happens in UK too, so do not go blaming Kenya. Anyway, I go to Junction. And I go to the loo.

We go to Naivas (a supermarket) and I go to the loo.

As we are passing Prestige (another supermarket) I feel bomb doors opening. I leap out and go to the ground floor loos.

POLITE NOTICE: PLEASE USE THE WASHROOMS ON THE SECOND FLOOR says the door.

I clench and go upstairs.

POLITE NOTICE: PLEASE USE THE WASHROOMS ON THE THIRD FLOOR says the door.

I pause, concentrate, clench and go upstairs.

Bombs away and all that.

I see a Forex Bureau. I check, just in case something magical has happened to the exchange rate.

143.6ksh to the pound.

I go in. I talk to a lovely speccy boy and ask if I can get an bit extra for changing a lot of money. 143.8 he says – and, indeed, as he shows me his screen, the rate is actually falling. I suddenly feel like I am Gordon Gecko

“Sell! Sell!” I cry (Well I don’t but that is how I see it happening) and I thrust Mama Biashara’s precious collection of used notes at him. (NB: slight exaggeration for comic effect here.)

As he counts, I tell him about Mama Biashara… and ask if there is no way he could make it 144 “for the children” (killer line to use this). He asks his boss. His boss comes in. His boss is called Vikram Dave. I tell his boss about Mama Biashara.

“Do you ever need donations?” he says. “In my community we have many people who have things to give… clothes, food, books… they arrive in containers from UK and we must find people to donate them to. Also school fees.”

Now, excitement like this is a parlous thing for a woman in my condition. But we talk, I get his card, I am about to email him and he says if I give him a list of my people that his people could donate to then, if they can come to Nairobi, they can do a presentation and hand stuff over. Lots and lots of stuff. And school fees. All this and the best exchange rate I have had in years and years. And all because I had to rush to the toilet on the third floor. This could be seen as a religious experience.

Meanwhile, Doris has been presented with another horrible, open can of worms. And we have another kind of rapey horror to contend with. Well two really. One is the young girls who are raped by their fathers or brothers and conceive a child with them but are too terrified to tell their mothers. We are meeting with a group of them on Saturday. The girls in this group found each other because they live in the same area. Now they are 17 or 18 and heard about the new Mama Biashara project. They called the number. They want to get away from the area they are in with their rapist fathers. And we are going to provide the wherewithal.

Doris has also been told that the other women – the ones whose child has been raped by its father but who feel they cannot go because there are three or four other children and they are supported by the father – will meet us at a secret place on Friday. Twelve of them.

And – as Jimmy Cricket was wont to say – there’s more.

Mama Biashara has been contacted by a woman who works with Maasai girls who have been raped and who have no way to get help because in these communities it is all worked out between the rapist and the girl’s father. Usually the handing over of a goat will suffice to gloss over the nasties. And if the girls dared to report anything they would be outcasts forever.

We are waiting to hear when we can meet this woman. She is finding it almost impossible to get these girls to speak out. Understandably.

Maybe we need to start a woman’s village like the one they have down near the coast and another up in Samburu … it is a real thought.

CONTINUED HERE

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Mama Biashara subsists solely on donations from the public and from sales at its London shop. Copstick covers 100% of her own costs, including flights and accommodation and takes zero. 100% of all donations go to the charity’s work. You can donate HERE