Kenya (Kitale) – Sister Freda

“Come inside, Franck,” Sister Freda offered under the doorframe of a mud-brick house the size of a middle-class apartment bedroom. “It is okay. The mother just gave birth ten minutes ago.”
Mother lay on her side with her back to the door. I stepped quietly on the dirt floor, tiptoeing over scraps of firewood and the checkered blanket she nursed the newborn above from.
Sister Freda caressed the top of mother’s head with her thumb speaking to her softly in Swahili. The girl, late in her teens, removed the suckling infant from her breast and allowed Sister Freda to pick up the child wrapped in a sparing bundle of cloth, the umbilical still attached and disappearing under the sheets.
The infant cried. “This little boy was born just ten minutes before we arrived. It was a quick birth. Very easy for the mother,” Sister Freda quietly repeated and expanded upon, cooing the child with her delicate and calming demeanor. Her heavy white fabric dress and overcoat against the dark walls holding the baby made me think of Mother Theresa.
An old woman arrived at the doorstep with a small blue and white striped T-shirt. Sister Freda set down the baby beside his mother, opened the sheets and carefully with assistance pulled the shirt over his pudgy head and thin arms. Mother then drew him onto her chest and the newborn quieted.
“You can see the conditions she lives in. Thirteen people sleep in this tiny space and this is all the food she has.” Sister Freda pointed to a small pot of unpeeled maize, sighed and folded her hands across the waist. “I do not have my delivery package with me, so she will have to wait. Either I or I will send someone to take her to the hospital.” She made an accepting murmur and stepped outside after speaking with the old woman.
I remained standing at a corner in the hut and watched the mother and her infant together.

I followed Sister Freda’s white Land Rover through the camera’s viewfinder as it turned the corner and disappeared behind a wood fence. Further down the two-wheel track dirt road fenced by a crop of maize was 31-year old Catherine, stabilizing with her right hand a yellow container of water balanced on her head. A cattle-herding boy snapped his switch ushering the group of animals up a shallow embankment out from her path. The woman turned the same corner as Sister Freda and disappeared.
Appearing no older than a girl in her mid-twenties, Sister Freda took Catherine’s free hand into both of hers and graciously bowed her head, gently closing her eyes with a kind and humble smile. The girl shyly smiled.
“This is Catherine,” Sister Freda introduced, “She is HIV positive, but her son Issac is not. We did all we could during the pregnancy with anti-viral drugs and instructed the mother not to breastfeed after birth.”
Issac, just under the age of two, ran to Catherine for a brief hello before bouncing around the front porch and my camera. “Issac’s father left Catherine after finding out she was pregnant. We have been helping in whatever way we can. Providing food. Providing medical care. It is a miracle he is negative,” Sister Freda continued slowly.
Catherine directed us to the far corner of her yard where two shallow mounds lifted the dark green lawn. She spoke in broken English and Swahili, and Sister Freda translated, “Her first husband and daughter are buried here. They died of HIV.”
We paused for a moment. “What do you do to comfort yourself, Catherine?” Tyler asked.
The same shy smile, but no answer.
“Come on. You can tell us,” Sister Freda encouraged.
“Sing,” Catherine whispered.
“Sing? Can you sing for us?” asked again Tyler.
And as soon as he completed the request, Catherine and the surrounding family neighbor children clapped and sang in unison about the love of God. Catherine embarrassingly laughed finishing the verse. Sister Freda hugged her.
“You’re very close to your patients.” Tyler stated later, his eyes watering after listening to the story of Catherine’s life.
“Yes. They are my children.”

I could write a book about Sister Freda, and in fact one has just recently been published. The lady works non-stop from dawn until dusk, caring for her patients and staff, overseeing the construction of nursing classrooms, organizing and treating community clinics, and guiding volunteers and guests around the hospital and Kitale. Everyday hovering around fourteen and fifteen hundred hours (2 and 3PM), the volunteers, guests and Sister Freda with her husband Richard, a retired Bishop, assemble for dinner at ground’s cottage and eat lunch together after sharing a prayer together. On our last day in Kitale with Sister Freda, she gave thanks to our visit and prayed for each one of us individually and together as a group.
Sister Freda is fond of saying, and said this while fastening a bead necklace around my neck made by a displaced Kenyan refugee as an opening gift, “A neighbor is not someone who just lives next door. Whether it is the Congo or Uganda or the United States, everyone is a neighbor and this is your second home. The doors are always open.” And they are.