The doctor shrugged. ‘That’s too bad. But it happens sometimes. Maybe the vaccine was out of date and not that effective.’
He explained that the polio virus had attacked my spine, entering in an asymmetrical way and leaving it curved in two places. Some muscles had completely wasted away, though some function remained in others.
‘What can you do for her?’ my dad asked.
‘I’m sorry, there is nothing we can do for her now,’ said the doctor, shaking his head sadly. ‘She can have some physiotherapy to improve the movement in the muscles that are still working and a plaster cast to straighten out the limbs, but we can’t restore movement. We can’t repair the nerves the virus has destroyed.’
My mum started to cry. My dad put his arm around her and did his best to comfort her.
Polio is a virus carried in water and food that causes nerve damage. It attacks different parts of the body, leaving them withered and lifeless. There is a great deal of knowledge about how to prevent it now, but because it has been successfully eradicated in most of the world it is regarded as a disease of the past and not one that researchers are looking into anymore.
As I lay quietly on the examination table my dad sighed heavily, wondering what kind of life lay ahead for me. One thing was certain though: things were not going to be easy.
Still, he was determined to try to make the best of it. ‘Well, thank God my daughter has survived,’ he said. ‘We will find a way to make life as good as possible for her.’ He stroked my hair sadly. ‘You are a strong girl, Anne, and I know that somehow you will overcome all of this. I didn’t give you the middle name Olympia for nothing. I know that despite your polio you will still show the world how strong and powerful you are.’
I didn’t understand what he was talking about and was absorbed in looking at the strange surroundings of the hospital, a place that looked nothing like the traditional village I had spent all of my life in. Things were already changing for me.
Our family moved into Kahawa barracks and without any fuss adapted to my newly diagnosed disability. My dad was given a small two-roomed place which was more luxurious than our home in the village because it was made of stone and had running water and electricity. My mum lavished enormous care and attention on me. Because she couldn’t do farming in Nairobi, she spent much more time doing knitting and needlework and completely devoted herself to her children. I lacked for nothing and she knew instinctively everything that I needed in order to thrive. She made sure I was always clean and comfortable and played with me a lot. My favourite foods were beans and sweet potatoes with fermented milk, mixed with dried leaves and mashed together into a thick paste. She often cooked this for me because she knew how much I loved it.
One of the best things about our new life was that nobody wanted to burn our house down anymore. Nobody living in the barracks pronounced that our family was cursed because of my disability.
Back in the village, our extended family took over the farming of my dad’s land so that we didn’t have to worry about it being neglected.
The doctors at Kenyatta hospital referred me to an orthopaedic hospital, Kabete, on the outskirts of Nairobi. The doctors there were very familiar with cases like mine and, as the doctor at Kenyatta hospital had predicted, put me in a heavy, uncomfortable plaster cast from my feet to halfway up my ribcage with just a space between my legs to allow me to urinate and defecate. I was very floppy and my knees and elbows were starting to bend. The doctors said that the plaster would straighten my muscles and help me to grow to a normal height. You see some polio survivors in Africa whose knees are bent permanently because they were not put into plaster.
‘I know it will be hard for you to put up with the plaster, Anne, but this is the best chance you have to straighten out your twisted body,’ the doctors explained.
I had to endure this for about a year, which would be hard enough for an adult but was particularly tough for a little girl like me. I couldn’t understand why my body was suddenly locked into this horrible white material. In the village I’d adapted well to only being able to use the top half of my body, but being trapped inside the plaster often made me cry. It was the worst kind of prison and always became unbearably itchy. A new cast was put on every three months and each time the medical staff removed the old plaster they found many wounds underneath it where I had managed to dig my finger or a spoon through the plaster to scratch the maddening itches. Sometimes lice got under my plaster and bred there in the warm conditions.
While I was in the cast my mum carried me around everywhere. My sisters Alice and Jane were very good to me and found ways to adapt their games so that I could join in. We liked to play a game with bottle tops where the person who could make the tallest pile was the winner. My hands used to shake a lot and my sisters helped me to steady them as I tried to place one bottle top over another. Unwittingly, they were helping with my rehabilitation.
The hospital staff always used a noisy saw to remove the old plaster and its harsh screech made me cry, but afterwards my body felt so free. I was allowed a few plaster-free days before the new plaster was applied. At these times one of my sisters would fling me onto her back. It was much easier for my family to carry me around when I was plaster-free.
To me the plaster was just a heavy burden—I couldn’t understand the advantage of it at all. Sometimes I poured ink from my dad’s fountain pen onto it so that it didn’t look boring plain white. My sisters helped me decorate it. We giggled over the designs we created and it made the whole thing a little bit easier for me to bear. When I got bored I would pick up sharp sticks and make chipped patterns in the plaster. Whether I liked it or not, it was part of me and so I just had to find ways to live with it.
My mum and dad did their best to stay cheerful, but both were devastated by my condition. Every time they looked at me they saw the happy, active child I had been before the virus had struck. Seeing their little girl struggle with a partially paralysed body caused them great pain.
‘Your sickness is like a knife going through my heart,’ my dad would often say sadly.
My mum and dad were members of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God and when I arrived at church with my mum, the people said, ‘Let that crippled child come forward and we will pray for her.’
Reluctantly my mum took me to the front of the church, where a group of congregants shook me hard and pulled my legs. I can still remember the agony of that pulling.
‘Don’t cry, child. We’re trying to cast out the demons in your body,’ they said.
‘Leave the poor girl alone,’ my mum said. ‘She has suffered enough.’
She and my dad were very unhappy with the church for the attitude they adopted towards me. But both were devout Christians, so they continued to attend services there.
When my mum returned to the village for a visit she encountered similar attitudes. Even though we were no longer living there, people wanted to come to our house to pray for the demons inside me to be cast out. They told my mum she needed to slaughter goats and sacrifice them if she wanted me to get better, but my mum and dad refused to get involved with these superstitious rituals.
‘Our daughter has polio and she’s trying to get help,’ my mum said firmly.
Although we didn’t encounter problems in the barracks, there was plenty of prejudice in Nairobi too. My brother and sisters faced abuse because of my disability when they attended school. ‘Our parents say we shouldn’t play with you because your sister is a cripple and you will bring bad luck to us,’ their schoolfriends said. But they ignored their jibes, loyally defending me and doing their best to protect me. They carried me on their backs to wherever they were going to play and put me down nearby so that I could be part of what was going on. When they climbed trees to pick fruit, they made sure they threw some down for me to eat.
My brother was often busy playing football with the other boys or