After losing a long court battle for the control of a Sh3 billion hospital, one would have expected William Charles Fryda, an American priest, to give up.
For seven years Fr Fryda and the Assumption Sisters of Nairobi tussled over the ownership of St Mary’s Mission Hospital in Gilgil, Nakuru County and Lang’ata in Nairobi.
When the dust finally settled, the nuns triumphed following a judgment delivered in their favour by Environment and Lands Court in Nakuru in September 2017. Fryda has since appealed the matter in court.
But even as he awaits the court’s determination on the matter, Fryda seems to have picked up the pieces brick by brick and set up another hospital about 100 metres from the St Mary’s Gilgil.
It is here, at St Joseph’s Hospital, incidentally named after Mary’s husband in the Bible, that Fryda is replicating what he lost through the court’s ruling, and taking the competition for patients to the nuns' doorstep.
Although only a week old, St Joseph’s is a beehive of activity. Fryda, in his white dust coat and stethoscope slung around his neck, routinely walks around the hospital.
He stops to exchange greetings with a group of women waiting to see a doctor and in fluent Kiswahili engages them in a conversation.
He is in his element.
“Please don’t take photos of me, I am an old man and my face is no longer attractive,” he jokingly tells journalists as he joins the women on the bench for a chat.
Fryda narrates his journey to establishing a second medical facility after losing the first one in the first round in court. Behind the smile, one detects a tremor of determination.
He smiles as he narrates his story, but it is obvious he does not want to speak about the case that is still in court.
“We appealed against the Environment and Lands Court’s decision and are still waiting for the Court of Appeal to decide,” he says of the matter pending in court.
But just why did he choose to set up another facility so close to St Mary’s?
“We had to start somewhere urgently to help those in need of services as we figure out how to start other facilities,” he says.
Losing the first round in court does not seem to have killed his spirit.
“The skills remained with us and we chose not to bury them. I, however, hope we will get our facility back,” he says.
So where did he get money for the new hospital?
The funds, he says, come from his friends in Europe and Kenya. He says a Kenyan family, whose identity he does not disclose, has offered him 9.5 acres in Njoro, Nakuru County, where he is planning to set up a facility in the near future.
“With me is a group of like-minded medical professionals who have after months of soul searching realised the need to have this facility in place,” he says.
A three-storey building, part of what used to serve as a medical school, has been converted into a 70-bed capacity hospital, an x-ray room and an operating theater.
Records at the facility indicate that more than 100 out-patients have been attended to since it opened its doors to the public on Monday last week. The records indicate that more than 60 patients were attended to on Monday alone.
An American citizen, whose father was a cowboy and mother a teacher, Fryda arrived in Kenya in 1991 with the Mary-knoll Fathers and Brothers.
It is here that the vicious battle for control of two hospitals formed and was fought, putting his at logger heads with the Catholic Church.
On whether he is still a Catholic priest and how he relates with John Cardinal Njue after the bruising court battle, Fryda shoots from the hip.
“Once ordained a priest one remains a priest till the day he receives a letter from the pope for excommunication. That has not happened,” he says.
Locally, the priest was suspended from celebrating mass by Cardinal Njue for refusing to withdraw the hospital case from the court.
“If someone chucks you out of your home into the streets, do you still remain related to them? Fryda is a Catholic and Njue is still his spiritual leader like any other Catholic followers in the country,” he says.
