Baba Joyce

Joyce was our ‘daughter’, Upendo’s best friend and as teenage girls, I remember embarrassing them when I caught them climbing a guava tree for fruit that was nowhere near ripe. They were doing no harm, just being kids, but they were supposed to be cutting fodder for their families’ cows.

Most people in the village were afraid of Joyce’s father! We called him Baba Joyce because we knew Joyce so well, but locals would have had another name for him. The urban myth was that he was a mchawi, so people were afraid of upsetting him because he might inflict a hex or bad luck on them. The time when he had broken his leg, he often asked Mbise to ferry him down to his rice paddies down towards Manyata on his bicycle. Mbise was never keen but didn’t dare refuse.

I think part of the fear of him was on account of his two dogs. They were aggressive, ugly buggers and he thought they were good guard dogs, but because there were always bitches on heat somewhere in the village, his dogs were more often than not, AWOL! But at Baba Joyce’s house by day the dogs were tied up securely, and would angrily let him know when someone was around. People didn’t like going there in case he let them off!

Mama Joyce was a good friend of our friend, Mama Upendo, which brought us together often. I could speak her tribal greeting because Mama Joyce was of the Arusha tribe and she enjoyed the opportunity to use it. Baba Joyce on the other hand was Chugga. He doted on his daughter but he made her work hard, keeping what he thought was an iron grip on her activities! He had another wife and family at Moshi some twenty five miles away, which is the home place of the Chugga people. He went there often to see them, but spent most of his time in our village.

A family member in Arusha became HIV positive, so Mama Joyce stayed with her, nursing her for almost a year. Meanwhile Joyce took on the role of looking after her father. During this whenever I was going into town, he would cadge a lift so he could see his wife and the sick person. Sometimes Joyce accompanied him and sometimes I took her on her own.

One day as I was leaving for town at around 9:00am, Baba Joyce as usual, must have heard on the grapevine that I was going in. He was the only one among many to regularly be on time when he needed a lift! Anyway, I dropped him off and as it happened, on my return trip at around 2:00pm I spotted him on the road heading home so I gave him a lift.

That night at about 9:00pm, there was a gonging at the gate and Mbise came to tell me that there was a sick person needing to go to Tengeru hospital. This was during a time when bandits had been plaguing the villages, so I told him to tell the person it was not safe for me to go but I would take them at daylight. Unusually, Mbise politely asked me to go to the person and tell the person myself – that was the way he said it. The woman was crying, obviously distressed. She had her head and most of her face covered with a kanga, which is a thin cotton material like a wrap or sari. Through her tears, she told me her father was very sick, in extreme pain and needed to go to hospital. I told her no, and explained about the bandits. She removed her kanga and said, ‘Mzee, it is me, Joyce.’ Joyce is quite dark-skinned, it was a dark night and because she was crying, I had not recognised her voice. Out of friendship I asked her if her father could walk down to the gate, and she told me he could manage – there was only foot access to his house.

I decided to leave Mbise with Mags, and I put some money down my sock, because I knew the hospital would want payment for rubber gloves or cotton wool. Baba Joyce and his daughter arrived just as I pulled up at the gate to wait for them. He was groaning with pain at every bump I managed ti hit! He told me that he had not urinated, not one drop, since before I picked him up at two in the afternoon. ‘Prostate’, I told him and he seemed happier that I knew his problem, he did too. I silently cursed though because had I sat him in the creek, before we left, or better still in our warm bath, he may have been able to pee!

Joyce asked me to stop at Kilala, on the main road, but in the circumstances, I told her it was dangerous to do so at that time of night. There was big enough risk travelling but the risk increased sharply by stopping! She wanted someone else with her at the hospital and a relative she could conscript lived at Kilala almost beside the main road.

Reluctantly I stopped and Joyce ran across the road to rouse her cousin. Meanwhile her father was writing in agony beside me and groaning softly. I told myself that there were no bandits sitting in the dark willy nilly waiting to pounce on anyone who stopped, more likely they were congregated elsewhere - hopefully! I left the motor idling. After too long for my liking Joyce returned with a young fellow.

There was a power cut at Tengeru so the hospital was pretty much in darkness, but I knew where to pull up, I had done this before. Joyce went inside and a short time later she returned with a nurse in tow. Poor old Baba Joyce was still in pain and groaning, which did not deter the nurse from asking for 10 000/- to admit him. I wasn’t about to haggle because I felt sorry for the guy and I wanted to get home, it had already gone past 10:30! Joyce and her cousin manhandled Baba Joyce into the hospital with the bossy nurse leading the way. The two were going to stay the night with him.

My trip home was uneventful except for the odd cyclist with no lights, which are always difficult to pick up on the edge of my headlights! And even more difficult were the two drunks, about half a mile apart, but asleep, prone on the road, soaking up the warmth from the tarseal – this wasn’t a rarity! Whenever I was driving at night, I liked a ‘spotter’ to sit on the passenger seat to pick up these sort of obstacles.

It is difficult to imagine the pain of Baba Joyce and the stress that imposed upon Joyce and her cousin because the poor man was not seen by a doctor until ten the next morning! He received no treatment until after the doctor had been! His treatment was a temporary fix and so he reduced his fluid intake until he could raise enough funds to have his prostate removed at the larger hospital in Moshi.

A couple of years after we returned home, we received the news that Baba Joyce had succumbed to ‘complications from his operation’.