Am I having a heart attack? 

Some of our medical practitioners in Kenya advertise their services on street corners. ‘Bad omens, lost lovers, broken marriage, BIG PENIS,’ say hand-painted notices nailed to telegraph poles. ‘Love potions, LUCKY RING, Do-As-I-Say Spells, business boosting magic, land issues, lost items, herbs from the underseas.’ I admit to needing help on many of these things, but on this day, my GP only wanted me to get an electrocardiogram. Feeling on top of the world, I skipped into a gleaming white clinic in Nairobi, paid the fee, lay down, got rigged up with electrodes and had a pleasant chat with the nurse. Within minutes my report arrived, explaining that my heart was damaged from a heart attack, I was at this very hour suffering a heart attack and, in all likelihood, I was about to die of more continuous heart attacks. Then they told me to go and have my blood pressure checked. Predictably, it was so high I felt I was about to bleed out of my eyes and ears like a man who has contracted Marburg virus from the famous Kitum caves of western Kenya’s Mount Elgon.

I drove to Nairobi hospital, where I nearly exploded in my vehicle while trying to find a parking space. I had been lucky enough to get an appointment with Dr David Silverstein, Kenya’s best cardiologist, and now I was going to be late. Finally, when I was already very late, I found a place and collapsed like Basil Fawlty on my knees in the car park, fisting the sky. After I was checked in by the nurses, they took my blood pressure again and everybody looked genuinely alarmed. Silverstein is a spry, tanned 80-year-old who was raised in the USA, qualified in his early twenties, served in Vietnam, then headed to Africa, where he has been ever since.