A day to remember

We were out and about early today since our ‘daughter’ Isabellah was arriving from Nairobi. We had promised to take her to her home village about 20 km outside Kakamega. An orphan, she was brought up by her grandmother who is now well over 80 and growing frail. The old lady has said she wanted to see us ‘before she died’ because we have put her granddaughter through high school and now employ her grandson at the computer school. We also send him to Business College. isabellah is also finishing business studies. These two are the hope of their family.
We heard that Isabellah would be late because her overnight bus ‘had a problem.’ The 400 km journey from Nairobi took sixteen hours!
At ten, we had arranged to meet Robertson, a Rotarian, who teaches in the local medical training college to ask about the possibility of Johnstone, another of our ‘boys’ registering for clinical medicine in January.
To our surprise Robertson informed us that they had a new course with a delayed start. They were just finishing their student list and he thought there might be one or two vacancies. To cut a long story short, Robertson verified the availability with the Principal, but only if all the paperwork was in order and fees were paid by 4 pm when the Principal would carry the class documentation to Nairobi. We bounced out to Shikunga (Johnstone’s secondary school) to pick up his official certificate (this involved getting signatures from all and sundry to ‘clear’ him), swung by Isabellah’s home to drop her and greet the family and the grandmother, returned to Kakamega to withdraw money, paid the fees, completed the application, bought Johnstone’s uniform including lab coats and set him up to be in class tomorrow morning. All before the bank closed at 3 pm and the Principal left at 4.
Amid all this, I suddenly realized we hadn’t even asked Johnstone how he was feeling about this sudden change in his life. I posed the question. Answer: I feel great! Me: Just a little bit scary? Answer: I am a man! He’ll be ok. Although a shy boy he has a subtle sense of humour, which is coming out more as he feels more comfortable with us. By what has happened today he has saved almost a year in the waiting time for registration in such a course. He told us he finished his leaving exams on Nov 11 2007. Nov 11 2008 he is on his way to becoming a rural doctor.