6:05 pm : I am walking in our front garden, free in the evening, on a week day, after many months, as the academic year comes to a close in India and I start winding up my classes online. Our dog and our upstairs neighbour's dog, both run circles around me. (Literally and figuratively!) Just a few minutes ago I had asked my husband to go out to the mall and buy some milk. (Unlike India, there's no friendly neighbourhood grocer here, it's the mall for everything!) We need our fresh packets of milk since I cannot bear to use long life milk and unfortunately, there is no daily delivery of milk in this area, unlike where we lived earlier. My son has accompanied my husband, happy as usual, to push doing his homework by another thirty minutes...
6:15 pm : I notice a thin spiral of smoke curling up from the bungalow which is around 200 metres across the road from ours. The thick hedge around their house obscures everything else. "The house cannot be on fire, can it?" I half jokingly ask myself. I stop at our gate and stare for a few seconds. The smoke is white and in the cold, crisp, clear Nairobi air, has formed a whitish haze over the top of the house. "No, it's just a garden bonfire," I tell myself. It is Thursday the 15th, the Ides of March and there had been a very rainy start to the day, with buckets of water pouring down from the heavens almost all night and all day long, the reason why I hadn't been able to go to buy the milk myself. So I obviously come to the conclusion that some one had decided to light a fire to beat the cold.
6:30 pm : I decide to head into the house, savouring my free evening, planning to read for a bit before I need to start making dinner. Both the dogs follow me inside. Ours jumps into her basket in our bedroom but the upstairs dog refuses to settle down. She keeps touching me with her wet nose and going out of the bedroom. Soon ours jumps out of the basket too and follows her. Both the dogs now prance in and out of the room. I find it hard to get back to reading my book. I begin to wonder why the two are so restless.
6:54 pm : Our night guard gives me a missed call, the signal that he is at the gate and we should open it. I go out with both the dogs rushing ahead. There is no one at the gate. How strange!
6:59 pm : Hardly had I entered the house, when there's a missed call again. I'm at the gate in a minute and this time, he is there too. " The house opposite is on fire,that's where I had gone," he says.
I find it hard to believe but when I look beyond him, I can see the evidence with my own eyes..The first call is made to my husband, to ask him and my son to rush back home because I can well see that soon the road is going to be blocked with fire trucks and other vehicles. By this time I can see the fiery orange flames blazing up towards a rapidly darkening sky and thick grey-black smoke is beginning to vend it's way towards our house, the direction in which the wind is blowing. I quickly message my upstairs neighbours who are out with their little baby to give them a heads up of the situation and to ask them to stay away with the baby because by this time the smoke is pouring thick and fast and babies have such delicate lungs...
Then I ask for the Kenya emergency numbers on the school moms group. Lesson no 1 of the evening, keep the general emergency numbers handy, not just those of your own private security provider. A friend provides the number , it's 999, and I make the call. It is answered rather promptly and the dispatcher tells me they are aware of the fire at our location and engines have been dispatched to the site already. Simultaneously, I can hear the loud wails of the sirens coming closer and closer and soon the cacophony is right up our street. My heart skips a beat because until now I had only seen fire engines rushing down roads towards some unknown fire somewhere and made way for them, but never this close to home...
From our front gate:the orange blaze, the thick plumes of smoke, the jets of water hitting the flames.
By this time my son and husband are back, and my son tells me the house belongs to an American family whose children go to the same school as him, and he knows the boy who is just a year senior to him.. I knew new tenants had moved in a couple of months ago but I had NO clue who they were. The perils of modern living, forget about love thy neighbour, we do not even know who he/ she is...Lesson no 2 of the evening : Make an effort to get to know who lives around you.
My son will rush in to help where angels fear to tread...We spend five minutes arguing in our garden, his point being he needs to go see what he can do for his friend and mine being that since we weren't sure of the source of the fire (and we know everyone got out safely), and there could be explosions in case the kitchen area is engulfed, he should wait for a while. Finally I agree to let him go with my husband and the security guard and I, being the cautious Capricorn that I am, follow only a few minutes later. My son has found his friend in the melee of fire engines, police cars and security vehicles of different companies and has managed to convey to him that our house is open and they are welcome to come there. I convey the same message on the school group so that it can reach the affected family, since I do not know them personally and to my son's friend too, who we find perched on the footpath on our side of the road, against the backdrop of the steady hum of water pumps from fire trucks which are throwing an unwavering stream of water over the flames . As we head back home, my son's succinct words are, "Mom last night he was at home, feeling cozy in his house, listening to the heavy rain pattering on the roof, today he is sitting on the footpath outside his burning house...Lesson number 3 of the evening : Here today, gone tomorrow...life can be and often is completely unpredictable...So expect the unexpected, cliched but true.
I also bump into the guards from our private security service and I tell them to pick up cups of tea and biscuits from our house once they can leave the site. They are so genuinely grateful for this small gesture and drop in a few hours later, once the fire site has been secured to keep away scavengers and others.
By this time offers of help are pouring in from many Moms on the school group and the Indian origin Moms group and I promise to convey all the messages once I get to meet the family myself. By now we know that the bedroom where the fire started in completely burnt and the remaining three bedrooms on that floor are smoked out and uninhabitable. The ground floor, by God's grace and timely intervention by the fire department, is practically untouched.The family has moved to another friend's house and have found shelter for the night.
Next morning I drop in into the house to see if there's any way in which we can help. I can still see smoke emanating from one side of the roof. The term 'smouldering embers' suddenly comes to life..The husband and wife are back in the house and going through the cupboards of the smoked out rooms. I introduce myself and offer to help. They are truly brave people and smile cheerfully, even as they explain to me that they need help in washing out the clothes from cupboards and the sheets from the beds in the smoked out rooms. I eagerly carry home three large garbage bags of smoky clothes, some even with scorch marks on them. It brings home to me what a narrow escape the family had and what thin ice we all walk on just by living our day to day lives.. Also their house help confirms that the smoke I had first seen had, indeed, been a garden bonfire lit by her husband and the fire in the house broke out a short while later, due to an electrical short circuit. I am very relived because I had been berating myself over the fact that I should have gone over to investigate that first smoke I had seen...
Smoked out master bedroom
The older boy's room , where it all started.
The roof was burnt to cinders....
My house help and I run the clothes in three lots through our machine and spinner, with extra detergent and baking soda to remove that charred smell, and since the upstairs neighbours have offered help too, their house help runs the clothes through their drier ( I refuse to operate other people's electronic items!) because in this rainy Nairobi weather clothes are taking a long while to dry naturally... I am able to deliver nearly a hundred washed clothes very soon and am glad at least now the family has some fresh clothes to wear. Three more bags are carried off the next day by three other Moms from our school group and I can see firsthand how 'many hands truly make work lighter.'
The following Thursday, exactly a week after the fire, volunteers are invited for Clean Up Day at our neighbours' house. A group of us, some from the school community, others from their church, assemble at 8:30 am and get to work to empty out the things from three remaining bedrooms and to see what can be salvaged and what needs to be discarded. Their son has lost every material thing he owned and his twin sister's room was affected very badly too and it is heartbreaking to see piles of scorched books, memory books, school texts, memories from their kindergarten years reduced to a half burnt pile.
Their five year old's room is almost untouched but badly smoked out and it is here that I work with a group of other ladies. Wiping out brightly coloured story books, taking out Lego pieces, filling bags with soft toys, pulling out tiny clothes (now permeated with smoke), the little normal things that make up life, that has now been suddenly interrupted...
The family thanked us repeatedly and profusely and as we snacked on croissants and brownies and sipped the coffee and tea that they had organized for volunteers, as we stared at each other's sooty hands, smudged faces and sniffed at our smoky hair, a warm feeling engulfed me. If neighbours don't help each other, who will?
Living as expatriates in a foreign land today and earlier as army families in far flung cities, with no family close by, it was our neighbours who stood us in good stead, no matter what the occasion or the situation. And we remain in touch with so many of them even today. Being neighbourly has many nuances and nitty-gritties, from helping out with forgotten keys to being invited for meals after coming back from a holiday, to sending each other delicacies on festive days and birthdays, to keeping a watch over their houses when you know they are away, to pretending you never heard the spat, to providing comfort for grieving families...Sadly, it is an art that is now rapidly being forgotten.
Forty two soft toys I washed drying on our lawn with our dog being strictly told "Paws off!"
Running the smoked out soft toys through our machine and restoring them to a pristine condition again brought me solace. It was the one bright spot in a day of going through and mostly tossing out smoked or charred or water damaged items. It is hard to see a house literally going up in flames...but I know it is MUCH MUCH harder when it's your own home. We are so glad no one was hurt and my daughter's first question over the phone when I told her ? " Did the pets get out in time?" Yes, Coco their Dacshund is fine!
P.S : All the photos of the house were clicked by me with the affected family's permission and I also took permission to post them here. Be considerate of thy neighbour!
6:15 pm : I notice a thin spiral of smoke curling up from the bungalow which is around 200 metres across the road from ours. The thick hedge around their house obscures everything else. "The house cannot be on fire, can it?" I half jokingly ask myself. I stop at our gate and stare for a few seconds. The smoke is white and in the cold, crisp, clear Nairobi air, has formed a whitish haze over the top of the house. "No, it's just a garden bonfire," I tell myself. It is Thursday the 15th, the Ides of March and there had been a very rainy start to the day, with buckets of water pouring down from the heavens almost all night and all day long, the reason why I hadn't been able to go to buy the milk myself. So I obviously come to the conclusion that some one had decided to light a fire to beat the cold.
6:30 pm : I decide to head into the house, savouring my free evening, planning to read for a bit before I need to start making dinner. Both the dogs follow me inside. Ours jumps into her basket in our bedroom but the upstairs dog refuses to settle down. She keeps touching me with her wet nose and going out of the bedroom. Soon ours jumps out of the basket too and follows her. Both the dogs now prance in and out of the room. I find it hard to get back to reading my book. I begin to wonder why the two are so restless.
6:54 pm : Our night guard gives me a missed call, the signal that he is at the gate and we should open it. I go out with both the dogs rushing ahead. There is no one at the gate. How strange!
6:59 pm : Hardly had I entered the house, when there's a missed call again. I'm at the gate in a minute and this time, he is there too. " The house opposite is on fire,that's where I had gone," he says.
I find it hard to believe but when I look beyond him, I can see the evidence with my own eyes..The first call is made to my husband, to ask him and my son to rush back home because I can well see that soon the road is going to be blocked with fire trucks and other vehicles. By this time I can see the fiery orange flames blazing up towards a rapidly darkening sky and thick grey-black smoke is beginning to vend it's way towards our house, the direction in which the wind is blowing. I quickly message my upstairs neighbours who are out with their little baby to give them a heads up of the situation and to ask them to stay away with the baby because by this time the smoke is pouring thick and fast and babies have such delicate lungs...
Then I ask for the Kenya emergency numbers on the school moms group. Lesson no 1 of the evening, keep the general emergency numbers handy, not just those of your own private security provider. A friend provides the number , it's 999, and I make the call. It is answered rather promptly and the dispatcher tells me they are aware of the fire at our location and engines have been dispatched to the site already. Simultaneously, I can hear the loud wails of the sirens coming closer and closer and soon the cacophony is right up our street. My heart skips a beat because until now I had only seen fire engines rushing down roads towards some unknown fire somewhere and made way for them, but never this close to home...
By this time my son and husband are back, and my son tells me the house belongs to an American family whose children go to the same school as him, and he knows the boy who is just a year senior to him.. I knew new tenants had moved in a couple of months ago but I had NO clue who they were. The perils of modern living, forget about love thy neighbour, we do not even know who he/ she is...Lesson no 2 of the evening : Make an effort to get to know who lives around you.
My son will rush in to help where angels fear to tread...We spend five minutes arguing in our garden, his point being he needs to go see what he can do for his friend and mine being that since we weren't sure of the source of the fire (and we know everyone got out safely), and there could be explosions in case the kitchen area is engulfed, he should wait for a while. Finally I agree to let him go with my husband and the security guard and I, being the cautious Capricorn that I am, follow only a few minutes later. My son has found his friend in the melee of fire engines, police cars and security vehicles of different companies and has managed to convey to him that our house is open and they are welcome to come there. I convey the same message on the school group so that it can reach the affected family, since I do not know them personally and to my son's friend too, who we find perched on the footpath on our side of the road, against the backdrop of the steady hum of water pumps from fire trucks which are throwing an unwavering stream of water over the flames . As we head back home, my son's succinct words are, "Mom last night he was at home, feeling cozy in his house, listening to the heavy rain pattering on the roof, today he is sitting on the footpath outside his burning house...Lesson number 3 of the evening : Here today, gone tomorrow...life can be and often is completely unpredictable...So expect the unexpected, cliched but true.
I also bump into the guards from our private security service and I tell them to pick up cups of tea and biscuits from our house once they can leave the site. They are so genuinely grateful for this small gesture and drop in a few hours later, once the fire site has been secured to keep away scavengers and others.
By this time offers of help are pouring in from many Moms on the school group and the Indian origin Moms group and I promise to convey all the messages once I get to meet the family myself. By now we know that the bedroom where the fire started in completely burnt and the remaining three bedrooms on that floor are smoked out and uninhabitable. The ground floor, by God's grace and timely intervention by the fire department, is practically untouched.The family has moved to another friend's house and have found shelter for the night.
Next morning I drop in into the house to see if there's any way in which we can help. I can still see smoke emanating from one side of the roof. The term 'smouldering embers' suddenly comes to life..The husband and wife are back in the house and going through the cupboards of the smoked out rooms. I introduce myself and offer to help. They are truly brave people and smile cheerfully, even as they explain to me that they need help in washing out the clothes from cupboards and the sheets from the beds in the smoked out rooms. I eagerly carry home three large garbage bags of smoky clothes, some even with scorch marks on them. It brings home to me what a narrow escape the family had and what thin ice we all walk on just by living our day to day lives.. Also their house help confirms that the smoke I had first seen had, indeed, been a garden bonfire lit by her husband and the fire in the house broke out a short while later, due to an electrical short circuit. I am very relived because I had been berating myself over the fact that I should have gone over to investigate that first smoke I had seen...
My house help and I run the clothes in three lots through our machine and spinner, with extra detergent and baking soda to remove that charred smell, and since the upstairs neighbours have offered help too, their house help runs the clothes through their drier ( I refuse to operate other people's electronic items!) because in this rainy Nairobi weather clothes are taking a long while to dry naturally... I am able to deliver nearly a hundred washed clothes very soon and am glad at least now the family has some fresh clothes to wear. Three more bags are carried off the next day by three other Moms from our school group and I can see firsthand how 'many hands truly make work lighter.'
The following Thursday, exactly a week after the fire, volunteers are invited for Clean Up Day at our neighbours' house. A group of us, some from the school community, others from their church, assemble at 8:30 am and get to work to empty out the things from three remaining bedrooms and to see what can be salvaged and what needs to be discarded. Their son has lost every material thing he owned and his twin sister's room was affected very badly too and it is heartbreaking to see piles of scorched books, memory books, school texts, memories from their kindergarten years reduced to a half burnt pile.
Their five year old's room is almost untouched but badly smoked out and it is here that I work with a group of other ladies. Wiping out brightly coloured story books, taking out Lego pieces, filling bags with soft toys, pulling out tiny clothes (now permeated with smoke), the little normal things that make up life, that has now been suddenly interrupted...
The family thanked us repeatedly and profusely and as we snacked on croissants and brownies and sipped the coffee and tea that they had organized for volunteers, as we stared at each other's sooty hands, smudged faces and sniffed at our smoky hair, a warm feeling engulfed me. If neighbours don't help each other, who will?
Living as expatriates in a foreign land today and earlier as army families in far flung cities, with no family close by, it was our neighbours who stood us in good stead, no matter what the occasion or the situation. And we remain in touch with so many of them even today. Being neighbourly has many nuances and nitty-gritties, from helping out with forgotten keys to being invited for meals after coming back from a holiday, to sending each other delicacies on festive days and birthdays, to keeping a watch over their houses when you know they are away, to pretending you never heard the spat, to providing comfort for grieving families...Sadly, it is an art that is now rapidly being forgotten.
Running the smoked out soft toys through our machine and restoring them to a pristine condition again brought me solace. It was the one bright spot in a day of going through and mostly tossing out smoked or charred or water damaged items. It is hard to see a house literally going up in flames...but I know it is MUCH MUCH harder when it's your own home. We are so glad no one was hurt and my daughter's first question over the phone when I told her ? " Did the pets get out in time?" Yes, Coco their Dacshund is fine!
P.S : All the photos of the house were clicked by me with the affected family's permission and I also took permission to post them here. Be considerate of thy neighbour!
Beautifully penned!!
ReplyDeleteSo well written and as we read it we feel we r part of it
ReplyDeleteAnupama, you are a wonderful neighbor. A true gift to everyone who has the honor of living near you.
ReplyDeleteMartha that's SO kind of you. Thank you so much! Miss being within five minutes driving distance of each other...
DeleteHad missed reading your blog for a while now. This one brought back fond memories of your innate kindness and helpful nature. A talented writer like you envelopes the readers in the warmth that flows out from your words.
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this comment! I'm truly touched. Saw it only recently as you know how crazy June and July were for us!!
Delete