She knew I was leaving the country before I told her. She had always known. She patiently watched as I took the last sip of my vanilla milkshake at Café Deli on Moi Avenue, Nairobi. The news did not surprise her. Nothing ever surprised her. She has always had a calm about her that was as reassuring as it was infuriating. It was unnerving when I was her student. Curiously peering through her bespectacled eyes, I had always felt that she could see my very soul.

During that short-lived coffee date, she shared with me plans to start a home-based nursing agency. I had no idea how that was going to happen. I knew many things back then, how to start up businesses was not one of them. A close second on my list of I-Do-Not-Knows  was how to advertise for my services. I had always admired shopkeepers. The temerity they possess to sell products that are already in the market is baffling if not captivating. I was just about to get served an overdose of shopkeeper on steroids.

A few months later after my exit from the Kenyan airspace,CHESED Home Healthcare was born. CHESED is Hebrew for the features of grace, compassion, kindness and love towards people. It is interesting that she would go for a name that means grace because her name is Grace Njiru. She was my midwifery tutor in Basic nursing school and now one of my mentors. She described mechanisms of labour and delivery in so much composure that I could deliver a baby in my sleep. Her passion for everything maternal and child health had me thinking that that was all she could do. How wrong she proved me to be!

Grace has many sides. I would discuss her work in maternal and child health or her work in South Sudan during the recent skirmishes in that country. I would bore you with heart-stopping details of the many times she put her life on the line in South Sudan for the love of proper healthcare. I would miss the point because today, I want to focus on her new-found love for chronic nursing care services in Kenya.

Grace’s love for people springs from a never-ending well of benevolence. She upholds nursing standards to a fault. I nostalgically recall how we used to fear her demeanour in Nursing school. Grace would easily stop a practical exam if she felt that the care standards were remotely compromised. She therefore expected excellence. As a student, it was simply daunting. As a qualified nurse today, I thank God that she had set such high standards for us. Time and over I marvel at how seamlessly I adapted into the Western culture of nursing excellence. She played a major role in this.

CHESED specializes in nursing care to a variety of patients. From those recovering from accidents to the elderly and frail all the way to the chronically and terminally ill. At our last video call several moons ago, I lamented to her how in Kenya we had left our chronically ill patients at the mercy of gigantic hospital bills. How our aged ones are suffering from loneliness and inability to carry out activities of daily living.

I shared with her how working in a care home in the UK has opened my eyes and made me want better not only for the terminally ill but also for our frail and elderly clients. One misconception in Africa is that children are a form of  investment. As such, we are expected to physically care for our ailing or aged parents and grandparents. However, times have changed, and children migrated to the big city to eke out a coin or two.

This left our elderly parents with nobody to effectively mind them. We only see them at Christmas Holidays when we want to shock our social media followers about our plastic compassion. This is where Grace through CHESED Home Healthcare comes in. CHESED takes care of your loved one as if s/he were their own. Families have nothing but good news to report about this super agency. I am not amazed. If you are under Grace as an employee, then you had better deliver and impeccably at that.

Grace is one nurse manager who had rather work alone than entertain mediocrity. Friends, I still check myself even now to see whether I have dotted my Is well and crossed my Ts. Grace’s hawk eyes see the invisible. She hears the unsaid. Best interpreter of body language. Your family will be glad that they hired CHESED.

 As CHESED celebrates her first anniversary, they offer respite care for families. For every person caring for a chronically or terminally ill patient, you may understand carer burnout. Where you feel exhausted and that your allocated portion of patience is wearing thin. CHESED bridges the gap by allowing you time off as they care for your loved one. That is respite. Caring for your loved one for a little while until you are able to take over.

You then have a few days if not more, for yourself; to recharge, rejuvenate. Since CHESED is more than a business entity, they train you on how to do important nursing procedures like stoma care, diabetic wound care, prevention of bed sores, home-based diabetes management and catheter care. These are just some of the services that this elite team of empathetic nurses offer your family. More than this, CHESED cannot help but be an extension of your own family.

CHESED has redefined chronic healthcare in Kenya. Based in Thika town, just under an hour’s drive from Nairobi City, CHESED promises to help families and the community at large come to terms with a chronic illness. This awareness leads to acceptance. The acceptance drives our  need for services.  It serves no purpose for a patient to accrue impossible medical bills when we could take care of them at the comfort of their homes.

There is no point in losing an income from one breadwinner who has to stay at home and care for a parent or a grandparent while we can hire a team of professionals to do it.  The UK has taught me this in the way they have invested in community healthcare services. A large proportion of elderly and sick people live in care homes and others visit day centres.

Contrary to popular belief, care homes are not just for the elderly. They host other people whose medical conditions require constant monitoring but are not in need of acute medical attention.  They host people who need nursing services around the clock. They host people whose mobility is so compromised that they are at an increased risk of falls. Care homes, I must admit, are where Kenya needs to set her eyes upon. CHESED offers the necessary services of a care home without institutionalizing the patient. Everything is done at the comfort of their home. Comfort and care go together. Like bread and butter. Toast and avocado. And if you are in Good Ol’ Britain, toast and beans.