Red Cross workers sometimes come across situations that test their own humanity. In Mount Elgon, they helped one woman restore her dignity by digging into their own pockets. Anne Mucheke reports.

Jane Chepsoi had been wondering for some time why she felt so ill. “I used to get bad backaches and stomach pains about four times a month. I would also bleed heavily but then I thought it was the usual women's issues,” she explains. In the absence of medical assistance, Jane would take painkillers and get on with her life, but even doing small chores at home was a challenge.

People thought she had been bewitched and neighbours shunned her. Her husband eventually abandoned her, as he could not understand what was happening to his wife.

When the ICRC and Kenya Red Cross began distributing aid in Mount Elgon, neighbours urged her to seek help from them.

“I approached the Red Cross people with this big stomach and told them of my predicament. They immediately referred me to Webuye district hospital for a check-up,” she says. The team was touched by her plight and used their own finances to ensure she received treatment.

Doctors at the hospital did a scan. To Jane’s horror, they discovered she had been carrying a dead foetus in her womb for two years. They immediately wrote a letter recommending urgent surgery to remove the foetus.

Red Cross staff booked her for an operation at the Moi teaching and Referral Hospital in Eldoret, more than an hour’s drive away. The next time Jane woke up, she was in a hospital bed with a huge bandage around her middle. The first thing that occurred to her was that she had no money to pay the bill.

The doctor reassured her. “You should be grateful for the Red Cross people. Never mind about the bill, it has been settled. This foetus would have killed you if you had kept it any longer.”

Jane was later driven to Bungoma where she recuperated at the district hospital. The members of the Bungoma Red Cross team paid for her medical expenses out of their own pockets right up to the day she was discharged.

Today, Jane is healthier and her tummy is back to normal. “The Red Cross people restored my dignity and I can now face the community,” she says happily.

The after-effects of surgery mean it will be some time before she can resume the hard physical labour of working on her farm. For now, she relies on neighbours and well-wishers for food. Looking after children would be too much of a strain for the moment, so Jane is looking forward to when she will be strong enough to collect her children from Baringo, where they live with her mother.