Taking tea with Mama B

It may not be the Eat Pray Love route to self-knowledge, but I’ve learned a lot about myself since I set up my charity Mama Biashara (“Business Mother”) in Kenya. The kind of painful truths that – if it weren’t for the Health and Safety nightmare of organising package tours for the terminally self-absorbed – I’d relish introducing to the hate-crime-obsessed and those whose favourite hobby is recreational offensiveness. I spent a wildly entertaining hour recently, trying to explain the concept of a “micro-aggression” to my ladies here. It was the first time I had seen this particular group of women laugh. Not surprising, when they’re wives and mothers trying to protect themselves from constant beatings – or striving to stop their teenage daughters from having everything between their thighs excavated with a rusty razor blade, before being sold off to an old bloke with a lot of cows to spare.

I first came here in 2008 when Nairobi was burning and “the clashes” (post-election violence) were in full swing. And I’ve been travelling between London and Kenya ever since. Back then I did not know that those who have Kikkuyu as a mother tongue, like my adoptive mother Felista, do not pronounce the letter L. They say R instead. So I thought for several weeks that I was in the midst of the “crashes”; some sort of automotive Armageddon. I was barely off the plane when Felista announced that we had to “save the women”, which I felt was, to utilise a sporting cliché “a big ask”. After a bit of expectation management, we agreed on saving mainly the women who had been firebombed out of their homes in Kibera and were living on some scrubland with their smallest children and anything else they could carry. It seemed like a good place to start. Having said that, as we sat the next morning with twelve homeless mothers who did not know how many of their immediate family were still alive, drinking chai and eating mandazi, I felt even that might be over-reaching myself.

Something made me ask the women, “How do you want me to help you?” And that moment changed my entire life

One massive early disappointment for me in Kenya was that, for a country that famously produces quality tea and coffee, the hot beverages on offer to the hoi polloi are quite appalling. Coffee comes in positively homeopathic dilution and tea involves boiling a tiny number of leaves in a vat of milk, with an amount of sugar which goes a long way to explaining the stranglehold diabetes has on the population. The ubiquitous “mandazi” turns out to be what is left when you extract all the joy out of a doughnut. Small setbacks aside, something made me ask the women, “How do you want me to help you?” And that moment changed my entire life. (Not an easy thing to do; I rather liked my life the way it was.) They said that, before the firebombs and the guns and the thrown stones, they had each had a small business; one lady sold panties, another traded vegetables, while yet another made githeri. And then they said that if I’d consider helping them start up their businesses again, “We will take it from there.” So I did.

Which is more or less what I have been doing ever since. Although nowadays Mama B spends most of the time rescuing women and girls (and sometimes men and boys) from violent abuse, rape, FGM, early marriage and a hundred other major aggressions that are visited on them for tribal and cultural reasons. And because, although we’re constantly reminded how much Black Lives Matter in the west, Black Lives don’t seem to Matter so much here. Not if those lives are poor and female.

Before I came to Kenya, my great loves – the printable ones, at least – had been Venice, delicious food and wonderful wines. I had never been to Africa (not sure a luxury riad in Morocco for Christmas one year really counts) and I had certainly never met anyone like these women. They were and are awesome, strong, courageous and endlessly engaged in finding a way to make ends meet for their families. Even when those ends are barely in the same time zone. The wealthy CEOs of the big charities who make millions out of doing nothing much for these amazingly resilient human beings could never, ever live their lives. But if you turned Mama B’s women into CEOs they could rule the world. They just need a hand up. Someone to sit with them and point out to them how good it makes you feel to have enough money to pay your rent, so that when your scummy landlord suggests you pay “another way”, you just hand him the money and tell him to “fuck off”. Although Kenyans aren’t in the habit of swearing. I find it hugely frustrating. But it does mean that you can easily spot anyone who has worked with Mama B. They use the word “fuck” like a natural born Glaswegian. I consider it my contribution to Kenyan culture.

Becoming Mama B required a rearrangement of my previous lifestyle. Sixty quid could disappear in half a dozen lines of perkiness, it could buy a bottle of lovely red that would last a lunchtime, or it could rescue a couple of mothers with their kids, take them to safety and start them up in a group business that would last a lifetime. Make no mistake, it’s a decision that can give me pause if I am feeling dire. But I am Scottish. VFM (value for money) is always king. And my Vs simply changed.

There are many little things that have taken some getting used to. Time, as we know it in the West, has markedly less importance in Kenya. You might arrange to meet at 2pm. At around 3pm it would be legitimate to call and ask your meetee, “Umefika wapi?” (literally, “you have reached where?”; subtext, “Where the fuck have you got to?”). To which the standard reply is: “I am on the way coming.” Current whereabouts is of no importance, while being en route is seen as tantamount to arriving. There is a similarly lax attitude to distance. If something’s or someone’s location is “hapa tu” (literally “just here”) you might want to take into consideration that this expression in Kenya covers an average of about 100 square miles.

If you turned Mama B’s women into CEOs they could rule the world. They just need a hand up

But I have my little room, with intermittent electricity and an unpredictable water supply, and I like it. Unfortunately, the toilet is mainly just to sit on, rather than flush. And what is exiting my bowels at the moment really, REALLY requires flushing. Talking of which, I have learned much about my undercarriage and how it works, during many visits to many long-drop toilets. I urge you to try one, in the interests of getting to know yourself, intimately. I pee (you may or may not be interested to know) to the left. We have all heard of “the angle of the dangle”, but who knew there was a “degree of the pee”. When we are better acquainted, I will share the horrors of the uncontrolled trajectory of projectile diarrhoea. One would think it would be in a downwards direction. Not so much. Some of my bodily events defy gravity itself, I have found.

I know people worry about me out here. But the only truly appalling thing that’s happened in all these years occurred in London. Two weeks ago, two men in what I can only describe as ninja-wear with full-face black masks, ambushed me near my flat. They got me in a choke hold, kicked me to the ground and stole all the money I was taking out to Kenya the next day. Everything. It was clear they knew where I live, that this was the one night I was carrying cash, and they knew what the cash was for. So, now, my Kenyan friends worry more about me being in London than my London friends fret about me coming here. Equality at last. And they are almost certainly right.

If you want to assist Kate Copstick’s charity Mama Biashara in setting up more Kenyan women in business, please donate to: gofund.me/7db27779

Kate Copstick is a Scottish actress, television presenter, writer, critic, director and producer