‘For the love of my brother’

How many times have you received a windfall, say, an unexpected sack full of fresh vegetables straight off a farm, and rushed to share it with your siblings?

Or, when you receive your annual bonus, thought of sharing even a little bit of it with your brother or sister just because of the bond you share?

For Florence Kyalo, sharing everything she has – and she doesn’t have an awful lot – is not something she has to think about twice, especially when it comes to her ‘baby’ brother, Mwanzi Kasuni.

When I first meet Mwanzi, my first impression is that he looks like one of the characters in the comic series-cum-Hollywood film, Fantastic Four; the really strong one with the body that is made of stone.

Mwanzi suffers from a skin disease that quite frankly makes him scary to look at.

But after a few minutes of interacting with him and understanding his medical condition, it becomes easier to look past his appearance and into the warm personality inside.

We sit outside his house in Kabiria, a little beyond Riruta Satellite, in Nairobi.

The structure is a humble one-room affair; some of the walls are reinforced with polythene paper.

The warmth with which Florence welcomes me to her brother’s house diverts my attention from the poor surroundings.

“Welcome and please feel at home,” she says with a smile. “Mwanzi, our visitors are here,” she calls, heading inside the house.

Then she comes back outside holding a wooden stool in one hand and supporting her limping brother with the other.

Private joke

“This is my small brother,” Florence says teasingly, as Mwanzi smiles at the joke.

At 39, he is hardly “small” but compared to her 49 years I guess he will always be ‘baby brother’ to her.

Florence pulls up a rusty upturned steel drum and sits on it, next to Mwanzi who takes the stool.

The two exchange a glance and burst into giggles, perhaps at some private joke or at the excitement of an interview.

Mwanzi’s eyes are two bright spots in the midst of all the hard layers of skin on his face – the result of many years’ accumulation of dead skin cells that have piled since 1980.

In ‘normal’ cases, the skin is constantly regenerating, with the old, dead cells falling off naturally.

For Mwanzi, the old doesn’t fall off so the new simply grows on top of it.

The condition has affected his head, chest, back and legs.

It has also affected his relationship with other people, many of whom have chosen to ostracise him.

It doesn’t help that he can’t afford the necessary treatment and goes for months without medication.

This has led to his skin getting infected, giving rise to a body odour that only drives everyone further away. Everyone, that is, except Florence.

Big Sister goes out of her way to visit Mwanzi every single day despite the fact that she is a jobless and widowed mother of four.

But she doesn’t think this is extraordinary – “he is my brother, after all,” she says.

“I pop in to see if he slept well and to clean his house, clothes and bedding because he can’t do it for himself,” she adds.

Because of an infected and very painful wound on his left heel, Mwanzi cannot stand upright let alone walk without support.

In addition, Florence disposes of her brother’s ‘waste’ – the outside toilet is simply too far for him to manage what other people would naturally do.

She looks surprised at my suggestion that she must feel really burdened. “That is not the way I see things,” she hurries to correct my perception. “He is my brother and I want to make his life as comfortable and dignified as possible under the circumstances.” Then she looks at Mwanzi and smiles.

Florence’s devotion to her brother is such that whatever she has is shared between her, her children and him.

But even when she has nothing, she will still come and sit with him.

“I have discovered that company is like medicine,” she chuckles.

When the weather is pleasant, brother and sister sit outside and read a Kamba Bible together and chat.

Their love and laughter seem out of place in the face of the odds so greatly stacked against them.

Florence’s husband died in 1989 and while she was still mourning his passing, she found herself in the middle of a battle for property with her in-laws.

After going back and forth trying to secure an inheritance for her children, she found herself homeless and penniless, left with little choice but to move from her marital home in Kitui District and come to Nairobi to find a way to fend for her children.

But she was faced with a small dilemma – she didn’t know what would happen to Mwanzi when she left.

When her brother learnt of her plans, he called her to his parents’ home where he lived and asked her to always think of him as one of her children.

“I told her whatever she did for them, she should also do for me,” he says, “and that is exactly what she has done ever since. I had no one else looking out for me because our father had died and Mum was very old.”

When their father died in 1999, Florence took on the responsibility of caring for her brother and ageing mother.

“This was a very trying time for us as a family. Sometimes we had nothing to eat,” she recalls. Then in 2005, their mother also died.

Florence agreed not to leave her brother alone and that is how he ended up living with her and her children in Nairobi – in a one-roomed house in Riruta Satellite, which was what she could afford.

Within a few months, however, it became clear that the situation wasn’t working.

Florence’s children were growing and Mwanzi was a grown man – in the confined space, privacy became a big issue.

“So I found this house for him, which is a little way away from mine,” says Florence, who earns a living selling charcoal outside her house and doing domestic chores, such as washing clothes, for other people.

In 2007, Mwanzi was admitted at the Kenyatta National Hospital and continued attending the clinic after he was discharged.

Florence ensured he never missed a single doctor’s appointment, even looking for money – sometimes borrowing it or selling a household item – to hire a taxi because he could not walk.

They would leave each appointment with a fresh prescription and new hope – but with not a cent to buy the medicines. They simply couldn’t afford the long-term treatment.

Hold hands

Whenever things got really desperate, the two would hold hands and pray.

“Prayer and our trust in God is what has kept us going,” Florence says, as Mwanzi adds that he firmly believes he has come this far by the grace of God.

“I am born-again and I know it is because of Him (God) that I am,” he says. And since he is not able to go to church on his own, he prays in his house.

Many are the times Florence has visited different churches and asked for a chance to share her brother’s situation with the congregation and ask for help of whatever kind.

“I am not embarrassed to do it,” she says. “Some have responded very positively and that is how I am sometimes able to feed my brother.”

Recently some well-wishers donated money towards Mwanzi’s hospitalisation.

“He was very sick – there were big rashes on his skin that were oozing pus and his body stank, which in turn attracted flies,” says Florence.

But even though the hospital was some distance from where she lives, she visited Mwanzi every day and was overjoyed as his health began to improve.

“I have been with him to six different hospitals and seen him at his best and his worst,” she says.

Owing to his illness, Mwanzi only went up to Standard Three at Magina Primary School in Kitui District.

His parents would take him to hospital but more often than not, the lack of money meant he received medication when and if possible.

Even as a married woman, Florence visited him and took him to hospital whenever she could.

“I would accumulate whatever I could find and take him to hospital in the hope that the next visit would bring a change. Years passed and we learnt how to live with our circumstances. But he and I share a dream – that one day he will be cured and be able to live a normal life,” she says.

Part of that life includes nurturing a dream, and Mwanzi’s is to be an evangelist who will transform people’s lives one day.

“Many times in my dreams I have seen God taking me places as an evangelist changing people’s lives for the better,” he says. “I see myself getting cured, finding a wife and having a home of my own.”

He does admit to sometimes feeling envious of his age-mates who have achieved great things while he lies in his house waiting to get well.

“I do wish I could be like them. Right from my childhood, I have never had a smooth life. But I am a lucky man to have such a wonderful sister,” he says of Florence. “It is one of the things I thank God for everyday.”

Asked if whether any of their six siblings offers support, Florence says: “One of our brothers had his right hand amputated so he can’t work. But there are sisters who can step forward and offer help; but I cannot force anyone to do it.

“I do not give because I have a lot. All I know is that I cannot go to sleep at night knowing Mwanzi has not had a meal. I would rather borrow to ensure he is okay,” she says.
mmwololo@nation.co.ke