The Making of World Vasectomy Day 2016: Kenya Day 2

NOTES FROM THE FIELD 02

I arrived in Kenya and as soon as I walked off the plane, there was a woman holding a sign with my name. It was a relief. After a 16-hour journey, plus transit time in airports, there’s something very comforting about having someone hold your hand through customs.

I’d got 20 meetings planned over the following 9 days, which I thought was stressful enough, until I turned on my computer and it didn’t boot up. Then the reality of modern life came crashing down on me. No computer, no hard copies of my meetings, no contact lists, nothing. It was a sickening feeling to come this far and end up stymied, not by evolution or male resistance to family planning, not by bureaucracy, traffic or stomach ailments. Nope. It was a failure of, what Tekserve calls ‘the Mother Board’, and what I like to call, the computer.

I realized then, again, that life without a computer is a bit like a drug addict without a fix. Quickly, desperation and despair took over. I wanted to give up. I berated myself immediately, “I’ve come half way around the world to build a movement to save the planet, and I can’t even start my computer?” It was humbling in the worst sort of way. How is it possible that in such a short space of time within human evolution, we’ve become so dependent on our devices, that without them, we are nothing? Well, that’s a whole other discussion…

The happy ending to this story is that after charging my computer for an hour, during which time I literally drunk away my tears, the computer booted up. And just like that, my faith in humanity and myself and Apple was restored, and the journey to lower carbon footprint, inspire loving relationships between men and women and pretty much cure everything but the common cold, resumed. I accepted my own addiction and fired off another dozen emails before finally falling asleep at 3am…

I woke up three hours later… Jet lag is a drag. I decided to get ready for the big meetings I had planned for my first day, so I unpacked and quickly ascertained that I’d brought my entire wardrobe. My entire wardrobe but, for reasons I could not fathom, I had only brought two shoes. The good news – one was for the left foot and another for the right. The bad news… one was black and the other was brown.

At 5.30am, after 20 hours flying, and the most important meetings of my trip coming up in just a few hours, first with my sponsors JHPIEGO, and then immediately afterwards at the Kenyan Ministry of Health, wearing mismatched shoes just felt like a bad move. For one, the outcome of today’s meetings could very well determine the entire World Vasectomy Day event. Worse still, despite the importance of the meetings, I had procrastinated away my preparation time and now, instead of focusing on my presentation, I seemed destined to have to comb the streets of downtown Nairobi buying shoes. Clearly, I couldn’t meet the Minister of Health in sneakers, and my only other option, flip fops, although new, just wouldn’t match my suit.

The receptionist in the lobby told me that stores opened around 10am, so in theory, I could have shopped before my first meeting. Since it was only 5.30am, I put on my sneakers and went to the hotel gym in an effort to de-stress. Now, between last night’s emotional outburst over my computer and this morning’s melt down with my mixed matched shoes, the hotel staff, (it’s a high end establishment by the way), must have been asking themselves the question… how did he get in here?

I wondered the same thing myself, as I normally stay in the lower end of town, in places where bedtime is spent swatting mosquitoes before I’m able to (attempt to) sleep. Here, on the other hand, the sheets are magnificent. The air conditioning works perfectly, the internet is high-speed and there are even blackout curtains to keep my room completely dark. Which was fabulous until I woke up and noticed that it was almost 10am and my meeting was in an hour and I still only had one black and one brown shoe.

Most people would be panicking right about now, but my life isn’t like most people’s and after years of practicing how to function in chaos, I’m good at pulling rabbits out of hats… or in this case, realizing that I have another smaller suitcase which I had forgotten to unpack…I opened it up, to find another two shoes - one black and one brown. Equanimity was restored.

I went to the meeting at JHPIEGO and it flowed beautifully. I met the country director and she agreed to join our effort. I arrived at the Ministry of Health to meet the Director of Medical Services and after patiently waiting for 75 minutes, we enjoyed a wonderful conversation and he declared his support for World Vasectomy Day on the spot. I asked him if I can say that WVD is officially welcomed in Kenya and he said yes!

And in that moment, the trip suddenly felt like a success. Plus – importantly, I have a working computer and two pairs of matching dress shoes. Let the games begin…