Nairobi — A great grandmother is basking in glory for engaging in a practice that is a preserve of those who have burnt the midnight oil at university and taken the Hippocratic oath.

Mama Mary Ajanja, 87, has never been to a medicine institution yet does what pharmacists do - and in her own way.

At her Kondele open-air market display, you will find Brufen, Dichlofenac, Septrin and Coartem, among other drugs. And despite her age, she is at ease with such names and has been in the private business for the last 17 years when she retired from formal employment.

The mother of four, grandmother of 12 and great grandmother of one joined the "medical" occupation as a hand help at European Hospital (King George Hospital), now Kenyatta National Hospital (KNH).

Expelled Asians

She later moved Uganda where she worked for an Asian doctor at his pharmacy. But after the dictator Idi Amin Dada expelled Asians from Uganda, she returned to Kisumu in the 1970s and worked in a private Indian hospital.

Mrs Ajanja retired in 1990.

Her mobile pharmacy has stock in a small cupboard.

Neatly dressed with a sparkling wrist watch and a white headgear, " Daktari" is in full command at her "clinic". She has a young girl who carries the cupboard and displays the drugs.

Those who know her say her experience of 60 years and confidence are proof enough that Mrs Ajanja is not a quack. The Government has never disputed her "credentials".

"How many drivers have the skill and can do better yet they never attended driving schools?" she poses.

Although she is known to have treated people and sold to them drugs in the streets for the last many years, Mrs Ajanja treads carefully by not injecting her patients.

Nurses living in her neighbourhood confessed that they assist her inject patients, although she rarely gives prescription for the jab.

It is common to see sick people swallowing tablets and gobbling syrups at her "pharmacy".

Determined woman

Mama Ajanja is a determined woman who picked tea leaves in Kericho to raise examination fee in 1950s. She defied her husband's intention to consign her to the kitchen and later sneaked to get training in dressmaking, nutrition and catering at Pumwani Maendeleo Centre in the colonial days.

She changed the profession to "medicine" after the husband denied her a chance to study dressmaking in Israel through a scholarship awarded through the late Tom Mboya.

Despite her age, which causes her to walk in a stoop with the aid of an expensive metal walking stick, Mama Ajanja is happy and in robust health.

Daktari, as she is nicknamed, was trained by a Mrs Brown at the European Hospital.

Since skilled people were rare in her days, she, upon her return from Uganda, landed a job at Guru Nanak Hospital in Kisumu where she worked from 1975 to 1990 when she retired and ventured into private practice.

"I have been treating patients and selling them drugs in the streets of Kisumu for the last 17 years," she told the Nation.

Mrs Ajanja was not moved by our enquiries as patients mobbed her to get medical attention.

She willingly offered herself for an interview and started by laughing off questions whether the Government was aware she was engaging in the specialised business.

She claims even medical personnel from known chemists in town buy some drugs from her.

Mama Ajanja is married to Mr Ezron Ajanja, 83. Their three children live in Scandinavian countries. Their fourth child died several years ago.

"Daktari" was born in 1920 in Seme Kayila Location. Some of her classmates at Maseno Junior School included the late Kisumu Town MP Job Omino between 1948 and 1951. She could not go beyond Standard Four due to lack of fees.

She therefore went to Nandi Hills to pick tea and raised some money to enable her return home and sit the Common Entrance Examination.

However, while in Kericho, she started attending adult education classes at Kambi Katela. She returned home and sat the examination in 1955.

She was married in 1956 and joined her husband in Nairobi. Mr Ajanja was a labour inspector.

As a housewife, Mary refused to join other women in idle gossip and defied her husband's instructions that she majors in kitchen affairs.

"When he went to work, I would sneak to Maendeleo Centre in Pumwani to learn tailoring and cookery.

"It was very difficult because I feared being beaten and sent home so I rushed back every lunch time to cook for him. For one year, I did that without him discovering my moves," she says.

Mary said paying Sh5 as fees was beyond her reach so the white woman in charge exempted her.

Her "day of reckoning" came when she fell sick for two days. This forced the white lady to trace her house in Starehe and this incidentally was her turning point.

Her husband was at home reading a newspaper when the woman knocked the door and he warmly welcomed her.

Mr Ajanja was surprised that she had been secretly been undertaking training. But he later signed forms allowing her to continue with the training.

Offered bursary

After that visit, she was taken to Solidarity House and the late Mboya, Mr Sande Mukuna and Mr Eric Khasakhala offered her a bursary. She learnt tailoring and cookery in one year and passed her trade test examination.

Mary left the tailoring altogether and got a job of counting tablets dispensed to the sick at the European Hospital. That was her stepping stone to her career in "pharmacy".

She thanks her husband for the support "after he realised my potential in helping him run the family".

A doctor in Kisumu, however, did not believe that the woman was running such a delicate business. Pharmacist Andrew Oluga, however, said he spotted one of his clients in our pictures.

Dr Oluga cautioned that some of the drugs she was selling were not supposed to be exposed to heat or be sold over the counter, especially anti-biotics.