I Built No Schools in Kenya

by Kirsten Drysdale

  Everything seems ugly. I get righteous at all kinds of things. Like people spending twenty-five dollars on hot breakfasts and complaining about the cost of living, while reading newspapers full of paeans to strong border control. Border control! Here, on this island at the bottom of the Earth, one of the richest countries in the world, where we panic because a few thousand people have shown up uninvited and completely miss the irony given how things went down in 1788. Although I’m equally irritated by the naive progressives who tell me that Australia is a ‘racist country’, and act as though desiring any form of a system to decide who gets a humanitarian spot makes you a bigot who hates people of colour. ‘There is no queue!’ these people insist. But there are heaps of queues. There’s a refugee camp in northern Kenya – Dadaab, the world’s largest – where people have been queuing for twenty years. I read about it every day in the papers there. Dadaab is so established that it functions like its own city, with its own economy and a population including adult residents who were born there and have their own children. By size, it would be Kenya’s third-largest city (indeed, many Kenyans think the fences should be torn down and the place made official), but its residents are imprisoned in limbo, homeless and hopeless. And they just aren’t close enough, or rich enough, to reach Australia by sea.

  Then, at just the right moment, Alex – the journo I’d met at Sarah and Jack’s – emails me to ask if I’d be interested in doing some short journalism workshops for FilmAid, in Dadaab. The idea is to get different kinds of media practitioners in to teach residents how to produce their own content. I could run a few classes on video production – they have some recording equipment and keen students; he’s already helped them set up their own newspaper.

  I really want to do this. But the workshops only run for a couple of weeks at a time and are unpaid, so I need something to sustain me financially.

  You won’t believe it. Or maybe you will.

  I go back to the Smyths. Six months after I left, I go back to the asylum for more.

  12

  TOUCHDOWN TAKE 2

  Over the six months I was away, the old man in Kenya’s rotation of carers included my friend Alice, my sister Bridget, an aspiring actress from London, Walt’s own granddaughter, and then, finally, one of my friends from uni: theatre graduate, trainee clown and professional circus performer, Ruby.

  By the time I returned to Nairobi, only Ruby remained. Alice was over it – not long after I left she’d gone to Norway to train husky puppies how to pull sleds through the snow. (Of course she had.) Walt’s granddaughter had gone back to England for uni, the actress had gone back for an audition, and Bridget had gone back to Mackay saying she would ‘never trust any of my recommendations ever again’.

  Ruby, however, was loving it. I knew she would. When Alice got in touch to say she was leaving and needed to find a replacement, Ruby was the first person I thought of: she’d visited Kenya before, she was in between jobs, and – being slightly mad herself – she was up for anything out of the ordinary.

  When I touch down in Jomo Kenyatta International Airport for the second time, she and Peter are both there waiting for me, grinning and waving madly from the back of the arrivals floor.

  ‘You are back! You are back!’ Peter says, hugging me and smiling and insisting, like he did the first time, on carrying my bags for me as we battle through the crowd. I’ve missed him, I’ve missed all of this.

  ‘Yeah, I’m back!’ I say, the reality of it hitting me as I find myself immersed in the sounds and smells of Africa all over again. There’s a moment of dizzying ecstasy – the feeling that everything is exactly as it’s meant to be, that this is precisely where I should be right now – followed by a slap of sickening doubt as I remember the madness of the Smyths’ house. Fuck, is this really a good idea?

  I pull myself together. Yes, of course it is. You’re going to make the most of being here this time. They’ve surely sorted everything out now. They’re just a means to an end.

  ‘We have missed you very-very much,’ Peter says, grinning, with his head tilted to the side in that funny way of his. ‘All of us! Even the bwana!’ Well, I know that part’s a lie, but it’s sweet of him to say so.

  ‘Piiiiiiig!’ says Ruby. ‘So good to see you!’ It must have been a year since we were last face to face. ‘I have so much to fill you in on – this place is fucking bananas!’

  Ruby has been here a few months and is fully acquainted with all the bizarre details of this very particular world: the ins and outs of Walt’s care, the power dynamics within the family and their lawyers, the quirks of daily life in Nairobi, the strange time capsule of the Club, and the loveliness of the Kenyan staff. Where Alice was uninterested in the Smyth family’s internecine personal dramas, Ruby can see – and takes great delight in – the many small peculiarities of people and places, including our own. We’re much more on the same page in that regard.

  The whole way to the house, she’s filling me in on the highlights of her time here so far. ‘The Royal Wedding! Prince William and Kate – it was the best! Marguerite insisted we go to the Club to watch it. They’d decked out the entire place with flowers. Like, massive bouquets of roses, fucking everywhere. So. Many. Flowers. And huge pictures of the Queen and all the rest of the royal family stuck up all over the place. And they set up this massive projector screen in the tearoom, blacked out all the windows and made it a formal event. Like – you had to buy tickets to go. Dinner and canapés and all that. So all these old biddies dressed up and went to watch, and all the waiters were wearing white gloves and everything, and Walt,’ she doubles over laughing, ‘poor old Walt thought we were at the cinema, watching a movie. ’Cos, you know, all the chairs were in rows for the live broadcast. And you know what that coverage is like – it just dragged on and on and on, it was soooooooo boring. Just empty shots of the front of the palace waiting for Kate to arrive. And then when she finally did, all that boring shit of them standing in the church. And Walt just kept sighing really dramatically and saying over and over, “What are we watching? It’s bloody slow going!” And Marguerite kept hushing him even though she was talking louder than everyone! About how Pippa had upstaged the bride. And how Camilla looks like a camel with those “big old chompers of hers”. And how Harry is “definitely that other chap’s son – the good-looking one Diana had an affair with”. And then some people in the front row turned around and hushed her and she was so mad. And then they all sang “God Save the Queen”, and she got drunk on champagne and started walking around holding a picture of the Queen over her face, with holes poked through for the eyes. The waiters were pissing themselves. Walt thought it was hilarious too. Honestly, the whole thing was just the best.’

  ‘Argggh, man, I can’t believe I missed that!’ I say.

  ‘I knowwwwww … you would have loved it!’ she moans.

  ‘So, who’s at the house now?’ I ask.

  ‘Fiona and Marguerite. Fiona’s got some nurse friend of hers coming from England to be the third carer – Annette. But it will just be you and me for the next couple of days.’

  ‘Righto. And how’s it been with her and Marguerite?’ Ruby is across all the goings-on of my first stint with the Smyths – I’d sent a small group of friends regular email updates as it all unfolded.

  ‘Actually, pretty good! Oh, also, she’s got this whole new thing about how to deal with Walt’s dementia now. She read some book about it. Anyway, she’ll fill you in.’

  ‘What do you think, Peter?’ I ask, as he swerves to avoid an overloaded motorbike straying into our lane. ‘Are the memsahib and Fiona getting on alright now?’

  ‘Oh yes,’ he says. ‘Yes, yes, they are much better. We don’t have so many problems as before.’

  ‘And Bwana Smyth?’

  ‘He is okay,’ says Peter, with a little more hesitation. ‘He is still forgetting all the time, but he is mostly good.’

  It sounds like this time around, things will be different. Good.

  Fion
a, Marguerite and Walt are all out when we get back to the house.

  ‘They’ve gone for lunch at the Club,’ Ruby explains. ‘Fiona thought it would be good if Walt wasn’t here when the car pulled up. He’s got a real thing about the cars.’

  ‘Oh yes. I know all about that.’ I’m glad they’re out – it means I can catch up properly with the staff.

  Patrick is there at the gates, still with his huge smile and slingshot in hand. James and Esther and David and Khamisi come running out to the driveway as we pull up. After a scrum of hugs and handshakes and ‘Karibu! Karibu! You are back! How is your sister Bridget?’ I realise there’s something missing. ‘Where are the dogs? Shujaa and Jua?’

  Everyone falls silent, feet shifting in the dirt.

  ‘Oh, they, ah …’ Ruby starts.

  ‘They died,’ James says sorrowfully.

  ‘Both of them!?’

  ‘Yes.’ Poor James – the dogs were always by his side in the garden.

  The sunroom – where Millicent used to sleep – is to be mine this time around. It’s small and narrow, with two entrances: one to the dining room, and one to the hallway that leads to the other bedrooms. I’m happy to have my own space, but I doubt it will come with much privacy, given the huge glass windows that look onto the washing line and staff quarters, and the fact that it’s often used as a thoroughfare to avoid disturbing Walt when he’s sitting in the living room.

  I’m in there unpacking when Walt, Fiona and Marguerite get back from lunch. I poke my head out to say hello as Fiona walks Walt down to his room. ‘Hi, Walt!’ I say. He’s thinner than when I left him, looks more vacant and tired.

  He stares at me, blank.

  ‘It’s Kirsten, Dad,’ Fiona prompts. ‘One of your young Or-stray-lyan girlfriends. She’s come back for a while.’

  ‘Oh, hello there,’ he says, smiling and nodding politely. But there’s no recognition whatsoever, not a flicker. ‘Just going to put my feet up for a few minutes,’ he says, waving as he moves on. I try not to feel offended.

  I didn’t think he’d last more than a few months when I first arrived – now, it seems he’ll be kept alive indefinitely.

  Having put him down for a nap, Fiona comes back to my room and quickly gets down to business. ‘Hiya, hope the flight was okay. I want you to read this excellent book.’ She hands me Contented Dementia by psychologist Oliver James. ‘This is how we should deal with Dad from now on.’

  I flip through the pages as Fiona summarises the book’s lessons. It details what’s known as the ‘SPECAL’ method of dementia care: SPECAL being an amalgam of ‘Specialised Early Care for Alzheimer’s’.

  ‘It’s all about how to work with dementia rather than against it,’ she says, as I land on a chapter about how dementia carers should ‘make a present of the past’ by going along with whatever delusion a sufferer is experiencing at any given moment, rather than constantly trying to reorient them and consequently causing them unnecessary stress and anxiety.

  ‘Oh,’ I say, ‘I think I saw a documentary about this! It’s like in Denmark where they’ve got those nursing homes with fake bus stations and post boxes and shops and things, so the residents just think they’re all going about their old lives.’

  ‘Yes, exactly,’ says Fiona. ‘Lots of places are doing this now – it’s very effective. But the Alzheimer’s Society aren’t behind it – they say it’s unethical.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘They say that it’s “systematic deception”. Which I suppose it is in a way. But the point is it focuses on the emotional wellbeing of patients, which really is the most important thing as far as I’m concerned. Dad’s been much happier since we started doing it.’

  When I read up on it later, I see that the Alzheimer’s Society’s position is based on the principle that people should have choice and control or influence over decisions about their lives. The organisation says that SPECAL’s intentions are good, but that the method ultimately disempowers people. I can see where they’re coming from – but I also think there comes a point in a person’s cognitive decline where their happiness and serenity is more important than trying to give them an agency they’re incapable of exercising (provided they have trusted guardians overseeing that care). That’s what I would want for myself should I be in that state.

  A squeaking wheel on the laundry trolley draws my eye through the window, to where Esther is wheeling out a load of washing. She pegs Walt’s sheets to the line, bright white and billowing in the sunny afternoon breeze.

  ‘Dad’s sheets should be changed every second day now,’ Fiona says. ‘There’s a plastic liner on the mattress. We’ve only had the one accident so far, but it will probably become more common as time goes on.’

  Then I return to the book, which stresses that we are to follow the method’s three ‘golden rules’:

  1. Don’t ask direct questions. Open-ended enquiries can be overwhelming for someone with cognitive impairment. Instead, give the patient options. ‘Would you like a sandwich or a salad for lunch?’ is a much simpler proposition than the blank slate of ‘What would you like for lunch?’

  2. Listen and learn from the patient. Listen to the kinds of things a patient repeatedly asks about – this will often reveal a source of anxiety for them – and try answering with information that is best from their perspective. Instead of telling someone a loved one is dead when they’re asked after, say they’ve just popped out to the shops. If you find a response that works – use it, re-use it, and tell everyone else to use it too.

  3. Don’t contradict. Challenging someone’s sense of reality can only result in distress for them. Agree with whatever they’re saying, roll with it. Think of it like theatre improv – become a character in their world!

  All of this makes sense to me. I realise I was already doing it at times during my first stint. Playing along when Walt thought we were ‘on the train’, or that I was his latest mistress.

  But we won’t just be doing standard SPECAL. As with everything in Walt’s life, Fiona wants his SPECAL care to be gold-plated: we are to learn the details of his entire life story, so that whatever era he may find himself in, we’re fully equipped to make it real.

  So begins my crash course on the life and times of Walter Smyth. Fiona hands me a small green notebook. ‘This is now “the Bible”. It should be with whichever carer is on duty. And you should make a note in it every time you find something that works or doesn’t work.’

  ‘What do you mean “works”?’

  ‘Like, say you come up with a response for a repetitive question that seems to placate him. Also, make sure you record it if you notice a new “trigger” – we already know the main ones: dogs barking, car engines, car keys – you record it in here. The other day he heard the microwave bell ring and it set him off on a whole thing, wanting to know what the alarm was all about. So, I’ve asked Esther and Khamisi to make sure they stop the microwave before the timer’s up from now on.’

  The Bible already has a page with the names of his best friends from school. Another with the kinds of flowers his mother grew around the house. The names of his neighbours near the highlands tea farm in the 1960s and ’70s, his neighbours in the UK in the 1980s and ’90s, the dog he had thirty years ago, the fishing trip he took in 1993, the kind of car he drove in 1984, the name of the nearest town to the farm he managed in ‘Tanganyika’.

  The notebook is filled with the skeletons of memories. How as a schoolboy in England, Walt and his friends used to ride around the fields collecting shrapnel from bombs dropped during the Second World War. How as a young man, he served with the King’s African Rifles, helping to ‘kick the Italians out of Somalia’. How he was attacked by that lion, crushed by a buffalo, had a close call with a hippo. What it was like during the Mau Mau Emergency, living in constant fear of being attacked, of being disembowelled and left to rot on the front lawn. Where he and Marguerite were when Al Qaeda bombed the US Embassy in Nairobi in 1998 (having lunch with friends on the ot
her side of town, in Karen). How he had known Daniel arap Moi – long before he became Kenya’s second president – before he entered politics, when he’d been a teacher in a nearby village.

  Walt’s whole life is a proxy history lesson. And SPECAL, I hope, will be our saviour.

  I crash early, waking – just as I did on my very first morning in Kenya – to the muezzin’s call to prayer and the smoky dawn sky. It’s a welcome change from the sounds that normally wake me in my flat in Redfern: the clanging and beeping of a garbage truck, or drunks staggering home past my room.

  I use the quiet of the morning to start laying plans for my productive stint in Kenya. Marguerite and Fiona know I’m keen to get some real work done this time, and have assured me I’ll be able to get decent chunks of time off to do it. I let Sarah and Jack and Claire know that I’m back and would love to catch up. I send Alex an email to let him know I’ve touched down and am keen to arrange a visit to Dadaab for the video workshops. I research the logistics of getting to the deformed animal sanctuary in Kitale; it looks like there’s a series of buses and matatus I could take – but I’ve been warned against doing that on my own. I’ll need to find a fellow traveller. Ideally, someone with a vehicle.

  Breakfast that morning is interrupted by an unexpected visitor – we hear Patrick’s keys jangling and the gates swing open, as Magda pulls into the driveway. I love that she’s familiar enough to just march on into the house and join us mid-meal. ‘Hello, hello,’ she says, circling the room to give everyone a kiss on the cheek, before taking a seat at the other end of the table. ‘Walt! You are looking very well.’ Walt is evidently put at ease by her confidence. ‘And you! You are back!’ she says to me, arms up in amazement.