Moi Teaching and Referral Hospital (MTRH) was most gracious in providing us with accommodations at the Eldoret Club, an old British golf club built in 1923. It has 18 duplex-style cabins bordering the fairways and greens, each complete with tub and shower...and mosquito netting!... which we found to be essential. They had an excellent restaurant with both Kenyan and continental meals, so we ate breakfast and dinner there daily. There was also a large state-of the-art work-out room with sauna as well as squash and tennis courts. Little had changed over the years; the old highly polished wooden floors creaked, and the waiters and and office staff wore starched white shirts and addressed us as Sir and Madam.
We had very hot water for bathing, and learned it was all due to Benton, who started work at 4 AM. After water collected in the large elevated cistern, it flowed thru pipes to two large drums over Benton’s fire that he stoked in the shorter smokestack and was then piped to our room when we turned on the faucet. Unfortunately, this causes much air pollution, as everyone burns wood for cooking also, often outside over a small open fire. At night, when guests returned to their rooms, he would heat more water for evening baths. Electricity is very expensive and there are very few gas lines, so most Kenyans heat water for all their needs the old-fashioned way: by fire. Finding/selling/buying/getting one’s hands on cheap wood is an essential part of ones daily rituals. Charcoal is also available (it is “home-made” by burning wood underground and the country people bring it into the city to sell), but not much cheaper and certainly more polluting. Interestingly, we once returned to our cabin late morning and found all our sheets and towels had been taken from the room for washing and would not be returned until around 5PM. My guess is that there weren’t any “spares”. As for personal laundry, we did our own and let in dry in our back window.
Our life was good, unlike many, many Kenyans, but in particular the 1.5 million poor Kenyans living in a 1 1/2 mile area outside of Nairobi called Kibera, Africa’s largest slum. Kibera is considered an illegal settlement, so the government does not acknowledge its existence and will not provide any services to it.
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| The Club had many amenities, including this beautiful clean pool |
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Club entrance, with an 18 hole superbly manintained golf course  |
