Elephants and hospitals

The Nairobi Hospital is a big, beasting building which most Nairobi taxi drivers seem proud of. “One of the best hospitals in Africa” they tell me. Until yesterday, I muttered my approval but hadn’t expected to visit it. After being struck down with the finest food poisoning Africa can serve, I did visit it – and very good they were too.

Runs a plenty. Before the proverbial hit the non-existent fan, I went to one of the many sports clubs to speak to Scotland prior to yesterday’s game. Their training session was to be held at the Sir Ali Muslim Club (SAMC), a run-down and rather decrepit, sad looking place. Khan, the manager, stood motionless inside the gloomy hallways and spoke at length of the club’s ailing fortunes. Like many, they need money. Desperately. And they don’t know when it will come, nor how much they will get.

The money is there though. Each of the grounds that I have seen all deserve their ODI status. The pitches are good and true (the outfields, as one Ireland player told me, are “pretty shoddy” in some cases) and the facilities, on the whole, are impressive. However, the problem facing Kenya has more to do with the link between schools and these clubs. The better the facilities these clubs can offer, the greater the chances of producing more Kenyan internationals.

As I should’ve suspected having spent a week in Africa, Scotland’s planned training session, at 9.00am, was moved. “Maybe they’ll be here at 3, maybe 5,” Khan told me. So on the way back to my hotel I stopped off at The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (who rely on donations). They only open for one hour each day, between 11 and midday, as the orphaned elephants aren’t yet used to human contact. You wouldn’t have believed it, though, as they marched around, oblivious to the 40 or so onlookers, and wallowed in the mud beneath our feet - even spraying a group of Americans who got a little too close with mud and water.