I Kissed the Devil & Found Myself at Mathari PT1 #MyStory-ish

I started doing media advocacy through policy and not thro 'my story' like most patient/lived experience advocates. One day I was invited to speak at a media station on policy. I had six conversations with the producer to discuss the topic, audience and most importantly the questions. I had conversations with the Ministry of Health to perfect answers that I had obsessively edited for days. I practiced and paced in circles. Finally at 5am on the day of the interview, I left home for Nyayo Market to repair three lines closest to my forehead. These were pulled back tight so I could look like a government spokeswoman. I walked through Kirinyaga Road on construction with no walkways. Yelping from the sharp pain under my feet from sharp building stones. Through Kijabe Street while practicing lines in my mask. A polite makeup artist pampered my face then ushered me to a room spread with a queen's breakfast. I went to the studio 20 minutes early and confirmed with the producer that there were no changes. As the interview started I smiled like a girl and said good morning like the government. Then the host asked 'So Charity, tell us your story'. I felt a trickle of hot sweat from my spine go up to my neck and do a somersault.

This was the one question I did not want to answer. The question I repeatedly said I did not want to answer. I had even offered to find someone else to answer it as I cover policy. All the preparation was to avoid his question. Surely? I still don't know what I said that made the host pause and widen her eyes in shock. The rest of the interview went well. This was also the only media interview that makeup or a meal was offered. Transport? Ahem. When 'my story' is asked for in a mental health context, then I assume you want to know how far my madness has taken me. Whether I danced naked on top of a camp bonfire or bit off the OCS’s ear. When you know I am a Mathari patient I assume you want to hear about the true madness of Mathari that no one seems to reveal. Sindio? Truth is, there is a lot I do not remember and I am glad that I don’t. In my second admission I went through ECT (electro-convulsive therapy), alias thitima sessions. They affected my memory. I have forgotten events, sometimes unable to tell whether jumbled memories are from the first or second admission. Sometimes I literally get stuck on a sentence or slowly piece a memory in months. I was told not to worry about such because the brain is a muscle. So it can be flexed through brain exercises after ECT.

The bigger struggle is that there has been a lot of commendable progress at Mathari in the last two years, as a result of the new leadership and semi-autonomous status acquired by the hospital. Also due to Covid restrictions that limited admissions thus improving food quality, staff to patient ratio etc. So when you ask for my experience, you need to understand that it may not be as sexy as that of recent minji minjis admitted to Mathari. I hope each story gets to reveal the times, seasons and fortunes of Mathari… as of life. And finally, about my TUKO inspired headline, if you really want to know which red devil with a blue nose and yellow socks I kissed when I was mad, jumpstart my memory... teach me chess. Till then, here is what I remember. Let’s start with the easy part...

My father was in ICU following a heart attack. It was days of rising early, encouraging him, monitoring tests and following up with doctors. Fundraising, smiling and updating up to forty visitors daily on his progress as a family. Explaining a hundred times that the expensive hospital was the nearest and different doctors in & out said he may not survive a move. Watching him try hard to impress visitors he was well and his exhaustion when they left. Fighting within the family. Finally, I did a ‘No Visitors’ post on the fundraising whatsapp group. Became the enemy of the state. I hardly slept for days. Had a shouting match with a friend. The urge to break everything. I remember a security guard or two. Then blank. Next thing I remember my mother was sitted on the floor with my head on her lap, trying to feed me. I breathed in the familiar scent of Mathari before I opened my eyes. It smelled like... a hustler, redemption and home. She said my father would be discharged soon. We spoke a bit and she left to see him.

Not much had changed in ward 5F. I sat in the shaded central space. It was day 3. The entrance behind me had a low wall fence and a rusty locked gate. On the right there was our long ward, closed during the day. Opposite us were three seclusion rooms, the laundry room, the nursing station and about 8 small closed rooms. The same filthy washrooms were at the corner. Another ward stood on the left which was used as a store. This summarised our square of existence. Seated on my right was a woman who stared at the distance until the day I left. On my left one rocked her head. Another walked agitated. A few restless ones paced. Some whispered or laughed to themselves. Some shouted from the blues. Others were sitting or sleeping in the shade or on the grass. Many others just existed. Those sleeping on mattresses made of heavy carton material on the corridors had come in yesterday or the day before. They were sleeping off the injection we all get when we land. We call it the 'stopper'. It halts our madness in its tracks on day one. Then we would start wondering what happened as we started treatment cocktails. Yet then and now, I find the madness of Mathari more peaceful, authentic and freeing; than the competitive and seemingly pretentious world beyond it. I looked forward to leaving, but hoped to stay a little longer.

*Jeniffer caught my attention. From the way she hanged her paperbag on a rusty nail, I could tell she was a hustler. From how she carried herself she was determined to make this her temporary home. And she sighed long and hard from the weight of life… like an old reggae redemption song. We made friends fast. She was in for alcohol addiction treatment but was in the ward while awaiting space in the rehab. Her pockets were full with tropical mints. She said they helped a little with the nausea of alcohol urges & withdrawal. Njoki from Kangemi also got my attention, but getting to know her could wait. I was still drowsy-ish from the stopper. The following day the cleaner opened the ward at 7am and asked who wanted to volunteer to clean. Jennifer, myself and Njoki ran to the door like our lives depended on it. We washed the fairly clean corridors with the gloves and mops the cleaner gave us, while she cleaned the dirtier shaded area and filthy washrooms. When we finished she gave us what we had worked for. Disinfectant to wash the buckets and the decency to shower as three women. That's what hustlers did before 8am when eighty women pushed and shoved competing for buckets, water, the two broken bathrooms and the open square outside. Hustling to avoid bumping on dirty bums or the one who stares at your privates without blinking or those who kick you accidentally while dancing naked.

Soon we sat and took porridge. At 10am we sat and took tea and bread. Then we sat at 1pm and ate lunch. At 3pm we sat and ate supper. At 4pm we lined up for medication. By 5pm we were locked in the ward and sat on our beds. A whole lot of sitting. We were the same number as last time. Eighty women, forty beds. Sharing beds while some slept on the floor. The three loos in the ward were always much cleaner than those outside so we learned statistical timing. The usual chattering and story telling begun. At 6pm women started sleeping. At 2am they started waking up and by 3am the drama was in full force. The harvesters were always first to wake up. They stole slippers from newbies and snacks from those visited that day. From anyone who slept carelessly without securing their belongings firmly with their bodies. Then the Kipchoges started running. The Prophet Kawuos started prophesying. The Gikomba women started selling. 'Camera! Ni ya leo! Ni ya leo!' The KBS hawkers- 'Dawa ya panya, kobamwiko, na minyoo.' The rest of us watched, encouraged or ignored them. I couldn't stop laughing at how the entertainment seemed like the same script with different casts. Same old, same old Mathari.

The next day I went into my dawa hustler mode. I pretended to take my meds at 4pm. I read a nice book as my ward mates started sleeping. Took my meds at 7pm as I do at home. Slept at 10pm as I was used to. Slept right through the drama of the nights that followed, that always exceeded daytime drama. Slept properly on my slippers, books and snacks. I suspect you are still scrolling, hoping the next paragraph will finally be about the real madness. Only two women really shocked me. One was a Maasai probably with fistula or had gone thro’ FGM. She would squat and blow out her big pink uterus like a balloon behind her. It would touch the ground. Then deflate and return into her body. And there was nothing we could do to stop her as it always happened too fast. It didn't help that she did this at the gate, shocking new visitors. The other was a young lady who would take the bowl at lunch time and disappear. Later we would find her hiding, eating human waste from it. Neither of them could reason. These are things I would rather not say, but will explain why I have in part 2 of this story. Probably more than half of the women had low reasoning capacity due to how severe their illnesses were before treatment. Some went home calmer or somehow better than they came in. The rest of us were recovering from the speed train that landed us there. Mostly living in slow motion with little bursts of entertainment that seemed we all needed to keep us sane.

After kissing the nurses feet every day and being a good ward prefect, I was moved to the amenity ward. Ward 6 patients did not understand the relief because theirs was a newer brick building. In comparison with ward 5, amenity was heaven. Sparkling clean that stays clean because we were only twenty. A TV in the common area. Hot water. Each room with only two beds. You leave your something for two minutes or overnight and you find it. Your things belong to you. However, amenity (now former amenity) does not receive patients directly. You have to prove your worth in the general wards. By having no drama. By being nice and polite. Quiet and obedient. Extra points if you kiss the nurses’ feet by complimenting them until they blush. Practicing jokes until they have a punch. Then you hope that the patients in ward 6 have no front teeth. So that they give sloppy yucky kisses. Pray to God that there are no professional masseuses in any ward. The one fantastic thing about ECT, is that it needs close monitoring. So my kissing spree was much shorter than in admission 1. Honestly these things are very easy to do, because the nurses at Mathari are true angels. I am outside so I am not competing for amenity now. When I say the nurses at Mathari are better those in any hospital I have been to all my life, I mean it.

How the hospital operated with nurses being on strike I cannot remember. However as a result, the two weeks of six sessions of ECT turned out to be six weeks. The concept of having electricity going thro' my brain was scary. I wondered what would stop the wires from burning my head, boiling my eyes or toasting my hair. The only psychologist at the time, who was not employed as a psychologist… did her best to get me ready. Bless her heart but I had many questions. Will I forget my name or identity? My childhood or family? How to swim, ride a bike or my secret pancake recipe? Would I forget I am a woman? Nod like I am keenly listening while stroking my invisible beard? Or forget how to balance on a nduthi while eating sugarcane and sending mpesa? I was on treatment for consistent suicidal ideation as a last resort of failed treatments. Yet I still wanted to have the capacity to decide whether to live or die. Suicidal ideation had been such a constant companion for close to three decades. I was scared of losing the familiar. Wondered if what would replace it would be as exciting. The strange paradox of my mind.

ECT is hosted in one of the many one hundred year old buildings at Mathari. I mean literally. One. Hundred. Years. Old. There were three receiving beds in the waiting room. The guy on bed 1 looked like a former bodybuilder, with hefty shoulders and very big hands. With a surprisingly cool demeanor and soft voice. Seriously funny. We chatted as our drip needles were fixed then he was called in. He said 'cheers to frying our brains' and he went into the ECT room. I heard something like gas being pumped, followed by silence. After less than a minute the anaesthetist called him like she was singing 'Geeeooorge... Geeeooorge! Then he responded. As he left the ECT room, I asked him 'kumeendaje?'. He said ‘good, good’ winked and left. I went in to a setting very similar to a dentist’s room. Similar reclining chair, but instead of sharp instruments there was something like a dashboard with speedometers. As soon as I sat the anaesthetist injected a chemical into the needle taped to my hand. I don't know how much of it was liquid or gas, but its very strange pungent smell has stuck with me since.

Each time I would go back to the ward feeling the same as I left. Then sat in the sun, slept or read a book. It is not until I left the hospital and started meeting people saying strange things: —That they visited me in hospital, that we met at a conference or that I had said things that I bitterly denied —Until I remembered that these were some memories I had lost. Was ECT worth it? I would say it helped reduce the intensity of the suicidal ideation that usually comes as an extremely overwhelming urgency that suicide is more urgent than anything else. Later I started specialised suicide prevention therapy that was very illuminating and both helped in different ways. Around this time of the year the ideation tends to be stronger. So it hasn’t helped that people keep sending me different suicide crises when I have just managed to have a better afternoon. So sometimes I will harass people around me to finish things very urgently because of the death deadline in my mind. Then the following hour or day I am very patient because I am going nowhere. Yet I am definitely in a better place than in the last 28 years.

This is the easier part to share about my Mathari experience. The more difficult part that keeps me up at night… why it has taken me long to write again… my plagues of disillusionment… are in part 2. So please kiss my feet to enter amenity membership😂. Leave a comment & click back a page to subscribe.

Here is part 2:

https://charitymuturi.wixsite.com/read/post/i-kissed-the-devil-found-myself-at-mathari-pt-2-humanrights