“C’mon, we’re going over to Jen and Irene’s,” I said, shaking out my sweatshirt for good measure and tossing it on.
“I was praying you’d say that!” Holly said, hustling to get her shoes on.
We knocked lightly and pushed our way into the other hut. The girls were reading placidly in their noncontaminated beds.
“Let me just come over and take a look,” Jen said. “If it’s really so bad, you guys can just stay here for tonight. We’ll figure something out.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
Jen put on her headlamp before walking outside. “Are the headboards really infested?”
“Yeah, it’s pretty awful,” I said, relieved that Jen and I were talking about something other than computers or e-mails or missed auditions. Even if it was about the bugs in my bed.
“Doesn’t this remind you of that time in Belize?” said Jen. “With the dive-bombing roaches?”
“Oh yeah, totally!” I laughed. Belize had been the first vacation Jen and I had taken together after getting “real jobs” in New York. We’d spent a chunk of cash on a jungle lodge in the Cayo District and been booked inside a thatched-roof hut with a tree branch resting on top. Which would have been fine, except the tree branch happened to have a roach nest inside. No matter how fast we’d killed them, more bugs had wriggled through the thatch and dropped on the floor. Then, as if our panic incited theirs, the roaches had started flying directly at our heads. We’d run outside onto the porch and screamed for a good five minutes before a guard went to the main house and woke the owner’s wife.
“I mean, this is the jungle, ladies. We’ve got living things here,” she’d said, pissed that we’d interrupted her beauty sleep to come down and see what the fuss was about. She’d barely finished her sentence before the mother of all roaches landed in her hair, sending her into paroxysms of terror. The last thing I remember is standing outside watching the woman thrashing a few bugs before finally coming back out and switching our room.
Now Jen stared at our bed frames—alive and shimmering with roach bodies—and said the one thing that made me abandon the room for good.
“Wow…they’re probably in your mattresses too.”
Shit. I hadn’t thought of that.
“Okay, you’re sleeping in our room. The beds are a little bigger than a twin, so we could probably line up head to toe. It’s not ideal, but you absolutely can’t sleep in here.”
“Are you sure? I mean, would that be a huge imposition?”
“An imposition?” She stopped short and shined her headlamp directly in my face. “You’re ridiculous, you know that?”
We walked back inside her hut and laughed. Holly hadn’t been worried about imposing. She’d already curled up underneath Jen’s covers, put on her eye mask, and lowered the mosquito net.
“So, um, Irene, I would never ask if the cockroach situation weren’t really bad over there, but is it okay if I share—”
“Don’t sweat it.” Irene pulled up her mosquito net. “I promise, this wouldn’t even broach the territory of weird or too personal back at Yale.”
Once we were as cozy as we could get with our feet in each other’s faces, Jen snapped out the light, and we finally got some sleep.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Holly
KIMININI, KENYA
SEPTEMBER
The woman stretched out her bony hand, and her knuckles were rigid and knobby, like knots on an old oak tree. I wrapped my hand around hers, and my skin glowed white against the blackness of hers. It was the first time I’d ever touched a person with AIDS. Well, at least that I knew of. I thought I’d feel scared, but standing there with her hand in mine, I wasn’t.
“Habari,” I said. She smiled back, revealing a gap in her mouth where her two front teeth used to be. Then she put her arm around me to lead the way inside the small home with a corrugated metal roof.
There were twelve women crammed in the main room. Some of them had scarves tied around their heads, some wore beaded necklaces, and all were draped in long skirts that covered their ankles. There wasn’t any furniture apart from a low table and five empty wooden chairs. The women stopped speaking when Jen, Amanda, Irene, and I tucked our heads to duck through the doorway. “Habari!” they called in unison.
“Msuri sana!” The four of us gave the now-automatic response, standing so close to one another that our shoulders were touching. The women just stared back at us expectantly.
“Are we supposed to say something?” I whispered to Jen after a few seconds of awkward silence. Before she could answer, the first plump woman I’d seen yet in Kenya besides curvy Mama Sandra strutted over and grabbed Amanda’s hand.
“Thank you for coming to visit the Masaba widows’ group. My name is Rose, and I’m the secretary.” We each introduced ourselves, and Rose asked, “Did Joshua tell you of our purpose?”
“He said you’re a support group for women who’ve lost their husbands and that you’ve started businesses using micro-finance,” Irene announced for our watchful audience. We could always count on Irene to take charge—I’d had yet to see anything intimidate her, not even killing a chicken for our dinner. “If I can’t kill a chicken, then I shouldn’t eat meat,” she’d declared as a flurry of feathers whizzed by us in the cooking hut. Like Amanda, I’d become a vegetarian in the weeks we’d been living so close to our food.
Indeed, Joshua had explained that many of the widows had lost their husbands to AIDS, and many had also become HIV-positive themselves. Common Ground and Village Volunteers helped come up with small loans for the women so they could start their own businesses to support themselves and maybe even send their kids to school.
“Let us eat first, and then we’ll show you the kiosk,” Rose said, gesturing for us to sit in the rickety chairs. Some of the women had set up small stands in front of their homes to sell staples such as rice, salt, and eggs to their neighbors. Three of the women disappeared behind a back door, and I spied a black pot set over an open fire before the door slammed closed again. The women returned minutes later, holding a pile of plates, silverware, and ceramic bowls heaping with ugali, kale, and beans.
“I had no idea they were going to cook for us,” Jen whispered.
“Yeah, Joshua hadn’t mentioned that,” Amanda agreed. At this point, we were used to going with the flow. Joshua had taken us on what we referred to as “field trips,” proudly showing off his many projects in the surrounding villages. This often called for stops at farms where he’d taught a family how to increase the amount of food they grew so they could feed themselves rather than have to rely on food from the markets. As soon as the farmers saw Joshua approaching, they’d stop their work and wave wildly. “Come, sit in my house,” they’d offer. And then Joshua and the four of us women would crouch on the edges of tattered chairs, or on the floor if there wasn’t enough seating, as our hosts stood before us. If there wasn’t a man around, there was sometimes a grave dug at the edge of the yard where he now rested. Sometimes they’d ask us if we’d like tea, but usually they didn’t have food or drink to offer. That’s why eating lunch with the widows’ group was so unexpected. We felt honored, and a little embarrassed about all the fuss.
Seated in the wooden chairs next to Rose, we spooned piles of beans and kale on top of the starchy ugali. The rest of the women ate standing, talking in small groups while Rose filled us in on their names and stories. “That’s Mary. She has twelve children. Her husband died of AIDS last year, and so did his other wife.”
I’d heard that Kenyan men sometimes had more than one wife, but I’d never met a man who was married to more than one woman at the same time.
“He had two wives. And when a woman’s husband dies, she loses everything. Her husband’s family can take her home, her cows, and even her children.”
“Seriously?” squeaked Amanda, echoing my astonishment.
“Yes, and when your husband dies, his brother can inherit you.” That’s another way HIV spre
ads, because a woman whose husband has died from the disease might be infected too and can pass it to his brother. That’s why the widows’ group was so important: it educated members about the disease and also helped them combine their money so they had better buying and negotiating power. It gave them more freedom. I thought about how different my life would have been if I had been born here in Kitale instead of upstate New York.
Rose paused to take a spoonful of ugali. Then she turned to me. “How many children do you have?”
“None,” I said.
Her eyes widened, startled. “How old are you?”
“Twenty-eight.”
“Not even one, sistah? Not a single one?” she prodded.
“Um, not that I know of,” I said, trying to make light of the fact that I surely ranked at the bottom of the totem pole by Kenyan standards, where the more children you have, the higher your social status. In fact, it’s tradition that women change their names entirely when they deliver their first baby, adopting that of their child. For example, Joshua’s wife is called “Mama Sandra,” after her eldest daughter. At first I felt a little funny calling another grown woman “Mama,” but I quickly learned it’s a sign of respect.
“How many children do you have?” Amanda asked Rose.
“Only six,” she replied.
“And how old are you?” Jen chimed in.
“Twenty-seven,” said Rose.
Rose asked Jen, Amanda, and Irene how many children they had, and each shook her head to indicate she didn’t have any. Rose clapped her hands over her mouth, trying to keep from cracking up. “Not a single baby between all of you?” Her amused expression turned stricken.
“Don’t worry, Rose. We’re going to have babies just as soon as we return to America,” I said, hoping my pledge would relieve her concern. The other three girls animatedly nodded their heads in agreement.
On another field trip to a medical clinic a few days later, we met Sister Freda, as the locals called her out of respect. Leading Jen, Amanda, Irene, and me through her farm, she freed avocados from their branches with a flick of her wrist. Sister Freda was dressed in a white nurse’s uniform, and a silver cross dangled next to a stethoscope around her neck. Her face, the color of ebony, didn’t have many lines, so she looked as if she were in her early forties. I later learned that she was actually in her late fifties. She’d finished her work for the day, which called for treating the sick from surrounding villages who couldn’t afford to go to the hospital in Kitale. If she didn’t help them, many would probably die.
Joshua had insisted we stop by and meet Sister Freda. Although we were still doing dance classes and play rehearsals with the boarders every night, Joshua also wanted us to spend our days learning about a few of the other organizations Common Ground had partnered with, such as the widows’ group and this clinic.
Eager to explore the world outside Pathfinder’s gates, the girls and I flagged a boda boda and rode sidesaddle in our skirts. Our drivers dropped us at the matatu stand, which was really just a dusty street corner where a crowd of locals waited for the next van to arrive. We crammed in beside villagers clutching babies or chickens (or both) in their laps. The van eventually slowed down just enough so we could hop out, and we plodded along a red road crisscrossed by rivers of mud and bordered by cornfields.
About two miles down, we spotted a wooden sign that read: SISTER FREDA’S MEDICAL CLINIC. Rounding the bend, we converged into a clearing filled with a mass of people. “Oh, my God,” I said under my breath. Are all of these people waiting to see a doctor?
A line snaking around a whitewashed building teemed with skeletal men, rag-clad women holding hollow-eyed babies on their hips, and children with bloated stomachs, a telltale sign of malnourishment. The afflicted spilled from the front door, streamed around the sidewalk, and flooded the muddy road. Their pain stretched in front of us, wrapping all around until it was raw and real. I’d watched the faces of the porters on the Inca Trail light up after receiving open tubes of antibiotic ointment during the porter-tipping ceremony and Igo, the kid begging on the streets in Brazil, grin as if it were Christmas when Sam had bought him dinner at that sidewalk café. But now, for the first time on the trip, I saw poverty on a larger scale. Joshua’s house may have lacked electricity and running water, but still, he and his family had food. The boarders had school uniforms and a bed to sleep in. I suddenly understood that staying on Joshua’s farm was like living in a protected bubble. We’d been sheltered from the hunger and disease that were the reality for some rural Kenyans.
When we arrived, Sister Freda came outside to greet us, pausing along the way to pat the back of a waiting child or place a hand on an old man’s forehead. When she got to us, she ignored our outstretched hands and pulled us in for a hug. Despite the overwhelming need around her, she radiated calm and peace.
“God bless you for coming!” she said before gesturing us to follow her for a tour of the compound.
“We don’t want to take you away from your patients,” Amanda said, echoing my worry.
“I have doctors volunteering today who will be taking care of them,” she said, and so we followed her lead.
The shock started to melt, and I felt weirdly detached, as if my emotions had temporarily gone missing. Back home, pain meant a very different thing to me. I might’ve used the word “hurting” to describe a friend who’d gotten fired and was worried about making the rent. I might have called myself “devastated” after finding out a boyfriend had cheated on me. I might have felt life just couldn’t get any worse for the homeless man begging on the subway steps. But the thought “Will my neighbor die today?” or “Will I die today?” didn’t cross my mind the way it might have for someone waiting in line at Sister Freda’s clinic.
To cope, I put on my reporter hat and started firing off questions. “How much funding does it take to run the clinic—does the government help?” I asked Sister Freda while we walked in the farm behind the building.
“I don’t really understand your question,” she paused, twisting free another avocado before continuing, “I don’t receive money from the government, but I do raise some of what I need by growing crops on this farm.” She sold coffee, maize, bananas, avocados, pears, kale, and local vegetables such as dodo and sutcher sucker at a local market to earn income. The farm also helped her save on the cost of medications, since she harvested plants she could use in traditional remedies.
“But the government has to help you a little, right?” I asked, incredulous. A small farm couldn’t possibly pull in enough cash to run a healing center that treated hundreds of people.
She laughed at the question and explained no, but she channeled all the money from a few paying patients to buy meds and to help cover doctors’ wages. She also said a few churches back in the States helped support her work.
“Truthfully, most of my patients are poor and can’t afford a single Kenyan shilling,” she added. She’d watched men die of AIDS, leaving behind wives and children to live in makeshift shacks and forage for firewood and food in the slums outside Kitale. She believed it was just as much her responsibility to help those who couldn’t help themselves as it was anyone else’s. “Someone has to save them. Why shouldn’t it be me?”
I kept asking questions and learned that Sister Freda hadn’t been in a much better position than many of her neighbors. Like many rural women in Kenya, her family had married her off when she was barely fifteen years old to a man she didn’t know. By the time she was nineteen years old, she’d already had four children. But her husband had had lots of affairs, which had put her at risk for contracting HIV. Sister Freda was brave enough to actually file for divorce and cut ties with her husband, even though many Kenyan women wouldn’t because they depended on men for financial support. Only in Kenya financial support typically didn’t mean a house with a white picket fence but a hut with a cow-dung-coated floor to call home and chapatis to feed the kids.
Still, Sister Freda left her husband and di
dn’t ask him for help but was able to go to nursing school because her parents and sister took her in and watched her kids. Then she worked her way up at a private hospital in Kitale, caring mostly for wealthy patients. She’d accomplished something I took for granted as an American: she was able to earn a living as a woman on her own, without a husband.
Still, Sister Freda wanted to do more to help. She couldn’t wipe away the images tattooed into her mind of the poor crawling to the hospital each day but unable to reach it, some dying along the roadside. Rather than just shake her head over how wrong the situation was, she raised money to open a mobile clinic to bring treatment to those who couldn’t travel to the hospital, let alone afford payment. After ten years, her mobile healing center had expanded into the full-blown hospital we were walking through, thanks to donations, her personal savings, and funding from Richard—her longtime friend and second husband. She had even started a feeding program for the hundreds of poor children, and created a separate wing at the clinic for orphans who’d been literally abandoned on her doorstep. As her center grew, she left her coveted hospital position in Kitale, and some of her former coworkers from the hospital in Kitale even volunteered their services.
Sister Freda was the closest person I’d ever encountered to a living Mother Teresa, and I couldn’t hold back questions about how she’d done so much. As I spoke, she just clutched the cross around her neck, and I realized she’d never thought she was working alone. “It’s a miracle. When I’m deep in trouble with no medicine and a dying patient, I pray for help from the Lord and He answers, maybe by sending someone to pay an overdue bill or a visitor to give a donation,” she explained. “God is always here and listening to our prayers.”
In a land where AIDS has been called an epidemic, where many people can’t afford to eat, where girls are often married before their sixteenth birthdays and have little chance at a higher education, maybe the only way to keep going is to wrap yourself in faith. I watched Sister Freda, smiling in spite of witnessing so much suffering. She was living proof of how something as intangible as faith—in God for listening to her prayers, in herself for having the courage to divorce her husband and find a job, and in the goodness of other people for donating their time and money—can provide the power to make a real difference. Sister Freda carried her faith beyond the wooden walls of her Sunday church services, sharing it with the people forgotten on the roadside. She filled me with hope.
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