An Ode to Ann

Kenyatta Hospital is not a place you want to end up. Each ward has 10 beds. You might have a broken leg and be next to someone dying from AIDS. I walked into ward 7B Room 1. Auntie Ann was in the second bed on the right as you entered. At first I didn’t even recognize her. I had seen her the previous Tuesday and she had looked sick but not like this… this was what you look like when you’re dying. And I could tell immediately that Ann was in fact dying. But this being Kenya, we don’t talk about that. We ask God to heal her and yes, that would be the best of all outcomes, but looking at Ann I can see that we are beyond prayers… her body had given in and her spirit is waiting to be called home.

That was Sunday evening. When we left the hospital around 7 p.m. Ann was still alive. Kenyatta doesn’t let family stay overnight, even with critically ill patients. We: Grace, Fayth her daughter, Aunt Lois, Rachael, Ann’s daughter and I get on a matatu for the 40-minute ride back to Ngong. Aunt Lois lives in another part of Nairobi but it is unsafe to travel alone so she comes back to the compound in Ngong with the rest of us. Fayth and I have been at the hospital since about 12:30, Rachael came around 2p.m. Grace and Aunt Lois around 3 p.m. We all smell like that unmistakable stench of a hospital ward. Only worse. I’m told Kenyatta used to be worse (hygiene wise) but I have a hard time imagining worse than the bathrooms I used while there… my feet stuck to the floor of the stall and in front of the mirrors there was standing water on the floor. I find it hard to believe that anybody, even visitors leave Kenyatta healthy.

This morning I awake before 6 a.m. to Grace and Aunt Lois quickly getting ready, I crawl out of bed and make them some tea and fruit to eat before they leave for the hospital. Grace calls at around 8 a.m. to tell me that Auntie Ann has passed. I go to tell the rest of the compound the news. And then we wait for Rachael to return from taking her daughter, Gracious, to school so we can tell her that her mother has died.

So this is what it feels like to be part of a Kenyan family…to sit with my cousin while she wails at the death of her mother. We try to console her but everything we say seems so empty. We spend the morning together… Gladys, Sammy’s wife makes tea, the man who brings water to Rachael and Gladys’ homes comes, offers his condolences to Rachael and then goes back for water for me. Rachael and I go to find someone to hire to do laundry. I don’t have much, but Rachael has piles… too much for one person to do. I help Rachael take the linens off Ann’s bed. Life moves forward, even as we want it to stop just for an instant to let us absorb this tragedy… it pays no notice… life keeps moving.

I find Rachael in her room when I return from the cyber. She is holding a letter she sent her mother when she found out she was pregnant with Gracious. She shows me photos of Ann from before she was sick. One was taped on the wall. “She kept it there to remind her of what her life was like before.” Rachael says.

I think to some extent we all keep mental snapshots of what life was like before - that big event in our life that changed everything - some of us hope to go back, some of us want to forget… what we mustn’t do is cease to live and act in the present. This, right now, is all we have.

Ann lived in denial of the diseases that took her life. She died needlessly. We all have things we deny about ourselves. Some we may be barely aware of, but they inhibit our true potential. Our humanness is our greatest strength and our biggest downfall. It is our kryptonite.

Ann Nyambura died of complications to TB and AIDS at 6 a.m. on January 10, 2011. She was 47 years old, which happens to be the average life expectancy in Kenya.

Ann, I hope you are finally at peace, resting with your maker. I will think of you fondly always. With love, Jessica