Describe an older person you respect

The older person I want to describe is Mrs Grace Wanjiku, but everybody in our street call her Mama Grace. She's seventy-eight years old and she lives two houses away from my family in Nakuru, in Kenya.

Actually, she was the first person who hold me when I was born, because she was the midwife who helped my mother. Now I visit her almost every Saturday, because she has a smartphone and she always needs help for it.

She have done a lot in her life. She trained as a nurse in the 1960s and then she worked in small clinics in the countryside for more than thirty years. At that time there was no ambulance, so sometimes she walked many kilometres in the night to help women which were giving birth. Later she trained a lot of young midwives, and after she retired she started a reading club for children in her living room.

I respect her because she never complains about nothing, even though her knees are very painful now. Also she is still learning new things. When she was seventy-five she learned to use WhatsApp, so she can keep contact with the nurses she trained. And she treats everybody the same, rich or poor, young or old. I hope I will be like her when I am old.

I'd like to describe Grace Wanjiku, although nobody on our street has called her anything but Mama Grace for as long as I can remember. She's seventy-eight, and she lives two doors down from my parents in Nakuru, in Kenya's Rift Valley.

Our connection goes back further than I do, in a sense, because she was the midwife who delivered me. These days I pop round most Saturdays, partly to drink her extremely sweet tea and partly to sort out whatever her phone has done that week.

What she's achieved is remarkable. She qualified as a nurse-midwife in the late sixties and spent over thirty years in rural clinics, often with no electricity and no ambulance. She's told me about walking for hours through the dark, carrying a torch and a delivery kit, to reach women in labour on remote farms. Later on she trained dozens of the younger midwives, and since retiring she's turned her front room into a reading club for local kids, who turn up every afternoon after school.

The reason I respect her so much is that she's never stopped growing. At seventy-five she decided to learn WhatsApp so she could keep up with the midwives she'd trained, and now she sends more messages than I do. On top of that, she treats a street sweeper with exactly the same courtesy as a politician. I've never once heard her complain about her knees or her pension, and I'm not sure I could say the same of myself.

The person who comes to mind is Grace Wanjiku, known to the whole street simply as Mama Grace. She's seventy-eight and lives a couple of doors along from my parents in Nakuru, in the Rift Valley.

You could say she's known me longer than anyone, since she's the midwife who brought me into the world. I still call in most Saturday afternoons; officially it's to troubleshoot her phone, but really it's an excuse to sit on her veranda and hear her stories over a cup of tea that's more sugar than tea.

And the stories are extraordinary. She trained in the late sixties and then spent more than three decades in rural clinics where a working generator was a luxury and an ambulance was out of the question. She's described setting off at midnight with a paraffin lamp and her delivery bag, sometimes walking for three hours to reach a farmhouse in time. She went on to train a whole generation of midwives in the district, and since she retired her front room has become an informal library, with a dozen children reading on the floor most afternoons.

What earns my respect isn't her age; it's that she's never stopped adapting. At seventy-five she taught herself WhatsApp so she could stay in touch with former trainees, and she now runs a group chat for them with real authority. She also treats everyone, from the man who collects the rubbish to the local MP, with the same unhurried courtesy. And despite constant pain in her knees, I've never heard her feel sorry for herself, which, frankly, puts my own complaining to shame.