Charlotte

Charlotte is 25 years of age, is a single mum with a child of 4. She cleans my hotel room every day (poor girl - I am not the tidiest). The room is always spotless when she is finished despite it being only one room of the 20 that she is responsible for on my floor. There are no washing machines - everything is hand washed including sheets and towels. I often see her scrubbing away on the hotel rooftop in the afternoon where she washes and dries everything in the Mombasa tropical sunshine. She works 12 hours a day 6 days a week.

For her troubles she earns about 2 euros a day.

Over the last few weeks I have got to know her through short chats we might have as I am leaving the hotel in the morning when I have to leave my key with her. She is very shy but amazingly calm about life and really grateful for her job.

A few days ago I had a brief chat with her as usual and noticed that she was not herself. However, I have pretty dulled sensitivity at the best of times so I let it go and went out to catch a taxi to take me to a meeting. I was about 50 metres from the hotel when I realised that I had forgotten my phone so I came back to the hotel and found my door ajar. I could hear somebody crying inside.

Charlotte was sitting on my bed with her head in her hands crying.

I sat down beside her and asked her what was the matter. She would not tell me and just kept sobbing. Then one of her friends came into the room and told me that Charlottes child had been rushed to hospital that morning and had been diagnosed with a combination of Malaria and Typhoid. She was in serious need of medical attention and Charlotte was not able to pay the medical fees to have her child treated.

'How much are the medical fees' I asked.
'2000 schillings(about 20 euros)' was the reply.

What do you do in a situation like this? If you scratch under the surface of any local person here you would be faced with a tragedy like this every time. Development 'experts' tell us that we cannot intervene at times like this. It clinically reminds me of going on safari - even when you see animals engaged in the cruellest of acts you are not supposed to intervene - it can cause more problems than it solves...I heard it all before and yet it was counter to every human instinct in me to just stand there and just offer my condolences.

So I gave her the money for her child.

Some of you reading this will say that that was wrong - that it is not sustainable, that what happens next week when I am not there etc etc? I have no real answer to be honest. I spoke to Charlotte this morning and Natasha (her child) is improving every day. She is smiling again and somehow that feels like justification.

The human response to help honestly gives me hope about our species. It might be blunt and clumsy at times but surely there is more to it than just 'creating dependancy'?