Dear Exile

by Hilary Liftin

  When we arrived yesterday, to see only lizards, and dust, and a man sitting on a log facing a bush, we were a bit surprised. After he finished praying, Mohammed told us he was a teacher too and that we were all three a bit early. Which we were. Oh yes, we were.

  I think Dave and I really might go completely insane. I tell myself, “Be calm. Go with it.” The meeting was supposed to be at 9:00. Now it’s at 2:00. We sit. The wind blows. It’s 3:30. No sign of the headmaster. We wait. It’s hot. People say time is seen differently in Africa. This is what they mean. I tell myself to relax. We wait. No work. I count sheep. I count goats. I count chickens. Mohammed prays again. I envy his having religion. We wait. The first student arrives. I listen to his footsteps in the sand. He walks to the classroom to wait. Wind rustles palm leaves. There’s silence. We wait. Mohammed and another teacher talk quietly for a second. I hear phrases in Kiswahili ending with “and the bird died.” I feel deep envy of the bird. Heat. Flies. Silence. Another hour passes. Another teacher comes. We greet each other. He sits. The wind blows. Someone writes something on a scrap of paper. Time passes. I remember Sartre’s play No Exit.

  At 5:00 in the evening the headmaster (whose eyes are bloodshot and half-closed) says, for the second time, the only phrase he has uttered to us so far, “Whoze zees Mountegoomery?” And when I indicate myself, he again walks off. I never thought I would live to see the day when I would wish to God I knew how to crochet. The newest teacher to arrive, only two days and five hours late, is sitting at his desk gazing absently out the window whistling three notes over and over again. It’s too hot to talk. Another teacher is playing with a screw on his desk, rolling it around and around and around. The men who guard the school arrive carrying bows and arrows and wearing green outfits like surgeons. What are they defending the school against? Baboons? Appendicitis? Word inches out that it looks like today there are not enough teachers to hold a meeting, we should come back tomorrow morning.

  So here we are, the next day, having arrived at 7:45 as instructed. Now it’s 10:30 and there’s only one other teacher so far. Let me tell you how much David and I are sweating. The first four days here, we didn’t pee at all because we sweated so much. We’re sitting here in this staff room, waiting, and basically pissing out our faces. We brought a watch today, as Dave put it, “just for fun.” You know how my dad always says, “ABAB”—Always Bring A Book? Well, here, my friend, it’s ABAB, BABAC (that is, “Always Bring A Book, But in Africa, Bring A Couple”). I’m sure you can tell me what rhyme scheme that is. Dave just told me he has to pee really badly but he’s not going to go because it gives him something to think about while we’re sitting here. There are now five teachers and two students here. The headmaster has declared it “break time”! What? Are we going to take a break from our marathon of doing nothing by having a ten-minute work time? Maybe we’ll all switch seats for ten minutes and stare at someone else’s wall. Help!

  —K

  P.S. I am amazed that you’re still looking for an apartment. How picky are you?

  NEW YORK CITY

  January 11

  Dear Exile,

  Guess what! I found an apartment. Don’t jinx the deal by being happy for me, but it’s a cute little studio-made-into-a-one-bedroom in Chelsea. It has a dishwasher and Jacuzzi jets in the bathtub and pretty wood floors. The bedroom has glass brick windows through to the living room, which save the bedroom from being confused with a closet. There’s a little kitchen with a funky tile floor, and I plan to paint it very brightly. The whole place has nice fixin’s (as my brother the architect calls them), and the building is kind of fancy, with a doorman and a beautiful roof, and, most of all, it will be mine and I will be alone and I am excited.

  I do feel a little weird buying this apartment. Because it’s such a major investment, I’m forced to think in bigger terms than I want or like to. I mean, when you buy a place you need to think about how long, realistically, you’re going to stay there. I like to pretend that my future is up in the air, that I have no idea what I want and that anything could happen. But now I’m forced to talk resale value and mortgage points. People (People, you wouldn’t believe the bridgemix of people who are now in my life: my lawyer; my real-estate broker; my mortgage broker.) have forced me to admit: I want to move in with a boy of the opposite sex one day, and this place will be too small for that. So then I have to say, well, it’s okay for five years. So suddenly I’m saying: I won’t move in with anyone for five years. And then I’m saying back to myself, No, no, no, it doesn’t matter, we’ll be so in love we’ll just squeeze in here together and I’ll throw away half my wardrobe and we’ll pile his books up to the ceiling in the bathroom. Nutty, right? But I love the stability that this apartment represents. I’ve been moving every year since I started college. And because my parents split up I haven’t had a home base the way some people (like you) do, a place where it’s okay to store boxes of books and high school journals. If home, job, and mate are the big three, then at least I can nail down one, by myself, for a good long time. If all goes well, I should close on it and move there in a month or so. Go, I say to roommates, go and never darken my towels again. (Oh, you know I love them, as I loved you, and can’t really complain, but phew.)

  Tell me, do you really have rats and spiders in your new digs? I could handle bats and roaches, but rats and spiders are scary. I imagine you standing in the doorway of a mud hut, face-to-face with a fist-sized spider. (I guess the spider would have to be dangling from the ceiling.) What I can’t picture is some period of activity during which the spider is transformed from a living being to a big, flat, hairy pile. Somehow I just can’t see you doing it. Do you scream and wave your arms? Do you call for your manly husband? Do you pull out a cartoon can of Raid and go to town?

  Are you teaching yet? Don’t you dare become Kenyan citizens and leave me bereft.

  More soon, but right now,

  Love,

  H

  RAMISI

  January 22

  Dear Hilary,

  For the time being, Kenya has totally kicked both of our butts. Now we are full-time housewives, in a big way. Every day we have to go to market (most food spoils overnight), get water by bicycle, and sweep the omnipresent red dust out of our finally and sweatily conquered house. Every day we cook over charcoal fires, burn the trash, bury the compost, pour our tea-colored water through a coffee filter to get out the chunks, boil it (yes, start the fire again), put it through a ceramic filter, and sometimes wash our clothes. Then perhaps a nice flour and water meal and a sponge bath by candlelight, and we try to sleep through the drumming of the neighbors’ Praising the Lord and the shrieks of the bush babies. And now to be teaching too (well, not yet). (As Dave said, the term ends in April, so school probably has to start sometime before that, right?)

  We finally met some of our students-to-be this week, and it got us more excited to start teaching because chatting with them was so much fun. They were really shy at first, but when we spoke to them in Kiswahili and were willing to make fools of ourselves doing it, they started to laugh and ask us questions. One boy wanted to know how many cows Dave had traded to marry me. I think he seriously undermined my credibility as a teacher by saying I was free. That probably makes me a prostitute. The kids thought it was very funny. Later, while having tea, Mr. Mbogo, the Islamic studies teacher, asked us if it was really true. When David confirmed it, Mr. Mbogo raised his hands to the sky and said, “Oh God, take me to America, where the women are free!” Anyway, we’re hoping classes will begin in earnest next week.

  About your vision of me having a face-off with a big spider in a mud hut: I don’t live in a mud hut. It’s made of concrete. (But there is usually a lot of mud in it tracked in by goats and chickens. The door doesn’t close very well.) Upon seeing a spider I mostly walk away and assume she’ll be gone by the time I come back. The house feels like home now, although because it’s so big mostly the rooms are empty. I keep thinking of that line from “Rumpelstiltsk
in”: “There was nothing in the room but a chair, a spinning wheel, and a heap of straw.” Except when I read it in my head I stop after “There was nothing in the room. . . .”

  Already, Ramisi is starting to look different to me. At first I could only see the fallen down, ghost-town decay of the place. Then yesterday while coming back from market, I noticed that on some of the houses, the stoops were washed, the clotheslines taut, and the dirt around the front was packed down and its edges neatened. I thought, How clean! Some parts of Ramisi seem downright bright. I think part of it is self-consciousness over the lamb poop on our own doorstep. (Who wants to use precious water cleaning it?) But then again, there are our neighbors to the right. The son, a guy about our age, has something like cerebral palsy, and sits all day and into the night in front of his tumbled-down house looking out over the dying town. He only responds to our greetings with a sort of half look, and then he goes back to staring. He seems like a character from The Ballad of the Sad Café.

  As for food, yesterday when I saw a shriveled-up carrot for sale in the market I dove on it excitedly. We pick rocks out of the rice like we are supposed to but never get them all, and it would increase your nightmares of losing your teeth. On the bright side, we can now officially add coconut milk to our short but growing list of ingredients. The other night we decided to make coconut rice. We had the coconut, a hammer, and a deadly, serrated, deer-gutting knife we got as a wedding present. I was holding the knife and the coconut while Dave tried to pound it open and hold the tin dish under it to catch the juice. There were a lot of hands and instruments and noise going on, and not a lot of coconut juice. To make it all that much more embarrassing, there were about twenty neighborhood kids staring at us from our doorway (as always since we’re such a spectacle), probably thinking we were trying to do a magic trick. To make conversation I said, Hey kids, I can’t get the coconut open. Cute little Ali dashed off, and I figured I had scared him, but he soon came back bringing one of our neighbor women whom we hadn’t met. She was carrying a huge double-edged sword and looked very determined. I was thinking, Sure, we’re having a little trouble here, but you don’t have to kill us for it. (Then I thought, Yes, maybe that would be best.) She walked right in, helped herself to our tortured coconut, and with one blow cracked it in half. It was a Wonder Woman moment. Dave is very excited that we will be buying such a manly kitchen instrument. Unfortunately, all the coconut juice went onto the floor when she did it, but who’s going to argue with a woman with a panga? (This incident has evolved into a friendship, and Mama Abdu has since taught me many cooking tricks, like that coconut milk isn’t the whitish water in the center of the nut, it’s made from the meat. Who knew!)

  It’s amazing the different meals Mama Abdu taught me to cook out of just flour and water (and some lard): a hot, liquidy, Cream of Wheat thing for breakfast called uji, a congealed lump like polenta (or Play-Doh) for lunch called ugali, and a flattened fried patty for dinner, called chapati. I felt like I was watching an infomercial for flour.

  Last night Dave and I sat on our back stoop and watched the sunset. Yes, we sort of have a wasteland in the backyard, but in the not-so-distant distance, beyond the burnt ground, is some greenery—trees and palmy things, and there’s a palm tree right by the house, so we saw the pink and orange sunset, the silhouette of a coconut palm, and a bright planet overhead. We were just sitting there by the charcoal fire, and occasionally a monkey or a jungle chicken would squawk or a sheep would wander over and nose through our compost. Then we had ourselves some warm, flat Coke, and Dave fried up some chapati, which he is very good at cooking, and we munched in the toxic incense of mosquito-repellant smoke. Now and then a child running by would yell, “Habari, Daudi! Jambo, Katie!” Or a man returning from the next-door village would stop and chat with us about the day. We were thinking—hey, this is pretty okay.

  But I don’t think you need to prepare for us living here permanently. I miss you all too much, and it’s too much damn work. Still, I am learning how to do things for the first time, with help from our neighbors, who teach us how to do everything because it’s never done the way you might think (the Lesson of the Coconut). I can’t just go to the store and get Scotch tape to fix things. If I need to make two items stick together, I have to figure out how to do that with whatever is around—spit, dirt, melted garbage, whatever. My students use thorns as pins to hold their papers together—when they want to hold their papers together. It’s nice not to feel the slightest need for plastic wrap. Yes, Hilary, I know plastic wrap prevents a lot of very unsanitary and microbial things from happening. But since a person doesn’t die right away from eating food that hasn’t been wrapped in plastic (usually), and because thorns seem to work rather well as paper fasteners (when you don’t accidentally run your fingers over the corners of your students’ papers, leaving a messy dribble of blood), it gives one a feeling of independence.

  Of course, I can walk through a magical doorway any second I choose and be back in my American world of OfficeMax and plastic popper-pins-that-tell-you-when-the-turkey’s-done-roasting. So my feeling of independence is really not from deprivation but actually from privilege and wealth. I can feel lighter, relieved of the load of a life of luxury. Poor American me. This is how I make myself sick in my free time—by making sure I realize that I’m lucky to have those things that I’m happy not to have. And for the record (just so it’s clear that I am bent on making myself morally miserable) I also think it’s ridiculous to believe you have to feel lucky about every staple. No one should really have to appreciate staples. It would just take too long. What I’m saying is that it’s okay with me if you go ahead and continue taking your spoiled, rich little life for granted.

  Some graffiti in an old schoolbook I found says, “So far as I discovered you are the only girl who has qualification to be centre of my universe.” That goes for you, babe.

  Still unable to carry anything of consequence atop my head,

  Kate

  P.S. I have learned that there used to be many large pythons around here when the sugar plantation was active because pythons love sugar. I think you should put that in one of your poems.

  RAMISI

  January 23

  Dear Hilary,

  Today while we were teaching, the Inspector from the District Headquarters came to check up on all of us teachers. He was a straight-backed old man with a carved walking stick and a full uniform. When Mr. Kasumbi, a teacher notorious for not showing up for class, saw the Inspector approach, he stopped writing on the chalkboard midsentence, looked around him in every direction, and took off running into the jungle. The students in his classroom were giggling and covering their mouths. The Inspector only went to the headmaster’s office and then left, so I imagine Kasumbi will get a bit of a ribbing when he comes out from his hiding place.

  Yes, as you can see, school has actually started. When I walked into class on the first day, I was definitely nervous, and a little awestruck at the scene in front of me. The classroom has four crumbling and filthy concrete walls that reach halfway to the corrugated tin roof, so it’s virtually as if you are still outside. One wall has the remains of a blackboard, although it would be impossible to write a straight line on it because of its holes and lumps. Then, crammed into the back of the room, there are row upon row of grungy, dilapidated desks and chairs, many missing legs or tops, or both. But the most important part, of course, was all the beautiful, eager faces. There are about fifty-five students in one of my form one classes, each in uniform—brown pants or skirt and purple shirt. Everyone must have a shaved head, boys and girls alike. Some of the girls are Muslims, so they wore shining white wraps over their heads. They all were staring at me, of course. Staring is not considered impolite, so they made the most of it. That first day I told them about me and Dave and what we’re doing here, began learning their names, and asked them to write the answers to some questions about themselves. They are very, very shy, but my sorry attempts at their names made them smile
, so I had hope right from the start that we could connect. (One girl wrote her name on the top of her paper as “Peter’s Daughter”!)

  A normal Kenyan teacher spends each class hour copying onto the chalkboard notes from his exercise book (which he has copied from some other book) for students to copy into their exercise books. The whole class passes this way, without a sound uttered. The teacher will have a very stern demeanor, and no talking or questions are permitted. Some teachers explain the notes more fully as they go along, but this is not considered necessary. A test will entail regurgitating the copied notes onto the proper blanks on the test. Indiscipline and failure are punished by canings, manual labor, or tauntings.

  Can you picture me doing this, Hilary? It pains me. I have all my little plans for group work and developing critical thinking skills, for reading and writing for real purposes, for acting out plays and figuring out the meanings of poems together. Already, my form fours think I am a total fruitcake. They are worried that I am not a serious teacher, because I laugh and try to get them to laugh, because I tell them they have good ideas, because I sometimes say “I don’t know” when they ask me a question—a Kenyan teacher no-no—and because I won’t cane them. Nonetheless, despite their worries about my leniency, they work with me, they talk with me, they protect me, they teach me. It will be good with them, I think. (Mwasho gave me a little bundle of roasted cashews today, which I’m now eating. He also asked me about a Nike ad he saw in my Peace Corps Newsweek that had a picture of a man running into the sky. “Madam, can you get for me some shoes that do that?”)