The Lost Girls: Three Friends. Four Continents. One Unconventional Detour Around the World.

by Jennifer Baggett

  “Shah-kee-rah! Shah-KEE-rah!” the girls shrieked, no less pumped to hear “Hips Don’t Lie” emanating from the tinny speaker than if they’d been watching the singer live at Madison Square Garden. I’d played the track at least eight hundred times, but they never tired of it.

  “Not yet, girls,” I said, putting on my instructor hat. “What comes before that, at the beginning of dance class?”

  “The warm-up!” shouted Naomi, thrilled to know the answer.

  “That’s right. Okay, let’s get started. Everyone stand with your feet hip distance apart, swing your arms up over your head, and take a deep breath in,” I said, guiding everyone through a series of gentle stretches and low-impact movements. “Now let it out slowly…good…and let’s repeat that again.”

  This warm-up—something I’d done a handful of times with the boarders—was an abridged version of one I’d done hundreds of times as a kid. When I was five, my mom had enrolled my sister and me in gymnastics, the perfect activity for two girls with enough pent-up energy to demolish her perfectly tended home.

  We’d both excelled at the sport, so after we were old enough, Mom had moved us both to Houston to train under Bela Karolyi, coach to the gold-medal Olympians Nadia Comaneci and Mary Lou Retton. I thrived under the intense pressure, but when a back injury forced me out of competition, I didn’t want to give up the sport altogether.

  I still can’t believe that at fourteen, younger than some of these boarders were now, I was hired by a local gym to teach classes. I was responsible for three sessions per day, every day, after school. My students not only listened to me, they actually looked up to me, something that blew my mind at the time. I continued coaching gymnastics through high school and part of college but decided to stop midway through my sophomore year, right around the time that it dawned on me that pretty soon, I’d be entering the “real world” and I should probably start preparing for it.

  While many of my friends at Florida State were partying or chilling out on the beach, I went to the university career center to research internships. Spring break of sophomore year, I skipped a trip to Cancún with my sorority sisters and flew to New York, where I managed to talk my way into a summer internship at Miramax Films. After eight weeks of watching rough cuts of movies, clipping articles out of Variety, and spotting celebs at the office, I knew I had to do two things after graduation: move to New York and get a job in entertainment.

  Almost as soon as I crossed the stage and collected my diploma, that’s exactly what I did. By the time I got hired in the city, I’d long since stricken “gymnastics instructor” from my résumé. My passion for working with kids had been neatly wrapped up and packed away along with my high school scrapbooks and old ballet shoes. In fact, I’d buried that side of myself so well that years later, when Irene had given us her whole “talents and abilities” speech, it hadn’t even occurred to me that I’d once been a coach and mentor to dozens of little girls. It wasn’t until my fellow volunteers and I began spending several hours every day with the boarders that I remembered the other job I’d once been pretty good at and started to think that I might have something to offer the Common Ground program after all.

  During tonight’s class, I wanted to try something a little different. After hitting REPEAT on Shakira for the eight hundred and first time, I stopped the iPod and made an announcement.

  “All right, everyone, line up in the corner of the room and watch me. Don’t move your feet yet, just look with your eyes,” I called out as the girls immediately moved to follow what I was doing. I explained that instead of me showing them the moves, I wanted each one of them to take turns teaching the class. Jaws dropped, and they looked totally freaked out.

  “It’s just like follow the leader,” I said. “Everyone will start here in the corner, and one person will walk across the floor, doing whatever steps they want. It can be anything. Heavy clumps like an elephant. Lunges from side to side. Skipping on your tippy-toes. Then everyone else copies those exact same steps until we call out the next person to lead.”

  Once Jen, Irene, and I demonstrated, the girls caught on quickly. I started the music, and the girls laughed hysterically as I went first, popping my head in and out in a version of the chicken strut. Naomi was up next, and she did a jazzy little walk, crossing one foot over the other and bouncing her shoulders. Then Diana went, followed by Nancy and Barbara, who got into the spirit of things, tossing in funky moves that impressed the other girls.

  One by one, every student got her chance to lead. Any self-consciousness they had over being the center of attention dissolved after the first round. By their second pass, they totally had the hang of it.

  The momentum and energy in the room started to build, and at some point it was impossible to tell who was the leader and who was following behind. We were moving in a big circle now, teachers and students, kicking up a chalky cloud of dust as we blew around the room like an incoming storm. The girls were shrieking and laughing, completely caught up in the moment.

  It didn’t seem to matter that you could no longer hear the music coming from the tiny speaker or that the electricity flickered, plunging the room into semidarkness for a few seconds at a time. Utterly empowered, the girls seemed to be creating their own music and light. Whatever had happened to them before coming to Pathfinder and whatever would come next didn’t seem to matter now. In that moment, they could let down their guard, let go—and just be little girls.

  We danced like this for I don’t know how long, moving in a frenzy until we were all sweaty and exhausted enough to collapse into a heap. Lifting my head to look around the room, I caught eyes with Naomi, who was completely out of breath.

  She flashed me a grin, and I sent one back. I knew there was probably some teacher rule against having a favorite kid, but sue me. She definitely qualified as my “best” student.

  “We ah. Doing this. Again tomorrow?” she asked, as if I might suddenly renege.

  I pretended to consider the question for a while before answering.

  “See ya here at six.”

  Over the next several days, Jen, Holly, Irene, and I witnessed some remarkable changes within “our” girls. Many had been shy when we’d first met them, and they’d lacked a sense of cohesiveness within their ranks. But eventually, one by one, they all started to open up, to become more confident. Within the framework of the dance classes, they took risks and, for the most part, supported one another’s efforts—no matter who led and who followed.

  Of course, they still teased the hell out of one another. But it seemed pretty good-natured, a way of bonding rather than tearing one another down.

  The four of us—who’d all become initiated as dance teachers by now—wanted to keep the progress going after we left, to leave behind something more lasting than a few routines. We put our heads together to brainstorm, but in the end, it was Jen’s idea to write a play.

  It might have been a lot faster to poach a script like Alice in Wonderland or Cinderella from the Web, but we quickly ruled out that option. What would the boarders really learn from a fairy tale of a country girl transformed by magic into a princess?

  Rather than adopting someone else’s story, we decided to write our own original script, one featuring a powerful heroine. We wanted to show the girls that they possessed the strength to rise above adversity and make powerful changes in their world—no pretty dress or fairy godmother required. With the help of Shana Greene and a little online research, we discovered that few women in Kenya—or indeed anywhere—embodied the spirit of self-empowerment more than Wangari Maathai.

  Known as the “Tree Mother of Africa,” Maathai was responsible for launching the Green Belt Movement, a massive grassroots effort to help women conserve the environment and improve their quality of life by planting trees. Her organization has assisted women in planting more than 40 million of them on their farms and school and church compounds, efforts that have reversed some of the deforestation threatening Kenya’s future.
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br />   What we loved about Maathai wasn’t just her groundbreaking environmental efforts but that she fought hard for what she believed in. Despite being arrested several times for her political beliefs (she was an advocate of multiparty elections and women’s rights) and being beaten by the police for her attempts to protect the environment, Maathai never abandoned her convictions. It was only after decades of fighting that Maathai was finally vindicated. In 2002 she was elected to Kenya’s parliament by an incredible 98 percent majority, and in 2004 she became the first African woman to win a Nobel Peace Prize.

  We hoped this would be the kind of role model that would strike a chord with the boarders, a real-life superwoman they could feel proud of, if not eventually emulate. After Shana sent us several documents with background information on Maathai, the four of us spent nights after the dance classes taking turns writing our opus. Although we thought it might be tough to break down the biography into an engaging, kid-friendly script, Maathai’s life was filled with both dramatic and tender moments that made for a pretty cool story with more than enough parts for all the boarders.

  After a week of writing, we had our full-length play, A Tree Grows in Kenya (or at least one copy of it), but we’d struck out with Kitale’s copy machines. None seemed capable of printing off more than a page a time, making copying the script a daunting task. Irene and Jen volunteered to hang out in the stuffy stationery shop and take turns copying and sorting eighteen scripts by hand.

  “No sense in all four of us just hanging out here, watching the toner dry,” Jen said. “Why don’t you and Hol go head to the grocery store or the Internet café or whatever and we’ll meet you at the matatu depot around four thirty?”

  “Really?” I asked. “That would be amazing. Are you sure? I really have like, six things that I need to send out, and as long as we’re in town, it would be—”

  “Just don’t get sidetracked,” she warned me. “We can’t leave any later than about four forty-five if we’re gonna make it back on time for the auditions.”

  “Of course, no problem. I’ll see you at the matatu stop near the Hypermart in about a half hour.” I said, already rushing to grab my bag and make a dash to the café.

  “Amanda.”

  I stopped.

  “Seriously, we’re already running tight on time. I know you’ve got stuff to do, but we’ve been promising the girls for days that we’ll get started right at six.”

  “No, totally. I understand. If for some reason something comes up, I’ll take the very next matatu right after you. I’ll be like, a half hour behind you…forty-five minutes at most.”

  I turned back to confirm that she was okay with that and saw her features cloud over, just for a second. Then, as quickly as it had come, the emotion blew itself out.

  She sighed and tossed me the computer flash drive.

  “Hey…thanks,” I said, pausing on my way out.

  Jen didn’t respond. She turned back to the pile of papers and started sorting.

  The sky had already turned navy blue and was fading to black by the time I took the boda boda bicycle taxi the last mile or so to Common Ground. I’d left my watch back at the volunteer hut, so I couldn’t tell exactly how late I was. But I knew no matter what the Indiglo dial might have read, the news wouldn’t have been good.

  As Jen had no doubt predicted, I’d taken far longer in town than I’d promised—at least a good hour longer, or maybe even more. I felt terrible about it. The girls had probably waited as long as they could for me before finally hopping on a matatu back to the farm.

  Ugh. I knew I should have gotten finished faster, should have made it back on time. These auditions tonight were among the most important things we’d planned during our time at Pathfinder Academy, and I was missing them.

  But going over it again in my head, I figured it wasn’t really my fault. How could I have known that after all of this time with so few assignments, I’d get an e-mail from a magazine editor saying she’d loved my idea for “Traditional Healing Remedies from Around the World”? Or that the only way she could assign it to me was if I sent her additional examples and potential experts by the next day? Upon reading that, I’d scrambled to throw a memo together with some ideas but had been working too fast to remember to save my document. When the power cut out, as it almost always did, I’d lost half my work. By the time I repeated the process and hit “Send” on my e-mail, I knew my friends were long gone. I guess I just didn’t process how much time had flown by until I walked outside and saw that dusk had already fallen.

  It had taken me ten minutes (and triple the normal fare) to convince the boda boda driver to take me to Pathfinder in the semidarkness, but I’d finally made it. Heart pounding and breathing way too fast, I practically sprinted past the guard at the entrance of the farm and into the compound.

  From outside, in the darkness, it was easy for me to see inside the well-lit classroom. The girls were clutching the scripts that Jen and Irene had printed, and a few were standing in the middle of the room taking turns running the lines.

  I tried to be as inconspicuous as possible as I slipped inside, to silence my heavy breathing, but everybody still stopped what they were doing and stared. Then Irene gently called their attention back to the scripts, and they kept going. Despite my mortification, some small part of me felt thrilled at hearing the boarders read the words that we’d written for them.

  “Miss Amanda! You are okay? You are safe now,” whispered Naomi, clearly worried, coming to sit next to me as I slid into a chair behind one of the wooden desks. “We were thinking you would not come. I believe we are close to finishing for the evening.”

  Finishing? They couldn’t be done already. Glancing up at the clock above the blackboard, a cold flush rinsed down my body: 7:42. Oh, my God, I’d basically missed it all—plus made the girls worry by staying out after dark.

  I kept quiet all through dinner, just listening as Jen, Holly, and Irene discussed how the auditions had gone and which boarder would be right for what role.

  After we’d cleared our plates and walked outside, I pulled Jen aside.

  “Hey, got a second?” I asked tenuously. I knew Jen well enough to sense that she was upset.

  “Sure…what’s up?”

  We stood outside in the semidarkness, holding the kerosene lanterns we took to the huts with us every night. I could hear the quiet rustling of the cattle that grazed in the pasture directly behind our volunteer huts. In the beginning, it had been a little disconcerting living in such close proximity to livestock, but now the animals’ presence—the soft footfalls, the deep lowing—was slightly comforting.

  The words tumbled out in a rush. “Jen I don’t even know where to begin. I know you reminded me what time the auditions started. I can’t believe that I screwed up. I’m so sorry to you, to Irene, to Holly—”

  “Hey, you don’t have to be sorry to us at all.” Her voice was stiff as she shifted her weight from one foot to the other. The lantern light threw long shadows across her face, making her expression all but unreadable. “I mean, it would have been great for the boarders if you’d been there, but realistically, you don’t need four people to hold auditions for fourteen girls. We handled it okay by ourselves.”

  “I know, but I really, really wanted to be there, to watch the girls read for the parts.” I brushed away the whirl of the insects drawn in by the glowing lamp in my hand.

  “Really? No offense, Amanda,” she said evenly, “but I don’t think you did.”

  That made my head jerk up.

  I took a step closer to Jen, held the light higher. “Of course I did. It’s just that something unavoidable came up, an editor had some questions for me that I had to answer right then and there, something that couldn’t wait another three days.”

  “I’m sure it was important. It’s always important. But realistically, you made a choice tonight. It was either that pressing work thing, whatever it was, or the auditions we’ve been preparing to do with the girls all we
ek. And one was just more important than the other.”

  I tried to think of a response, to find some way to show Jen that the boarders meant more to me than some stupid e-mail, but I couldn’t. I had chosen some nameless, faceless editor who might see fit to assign me a story over fourteen boarders whom I’d spent every single day with since coming to Common Ground. I’d promised the girls I’d show up, that I’d be there on time, and they’d trusted me. It wasn’t good enough that Jen, Irene, and Holly had covered for me. I’d been the only one of the four of us to completely flake out.

  Now, not only had I prioritized the little girls who’d come to trust me below my work demands—I’d disappointed my best friend. I didn’t need to see her face in the darkness to be sure of that.

  I could hear Holly freaking out and slapping at things under her mosquito net just before she turned on her headlamp and ripped the netted nylon away from her body.

  “Hey…you awake?” she whispered loudly as I snapped my headlamp on in response. Awake? I was lit up like a lightning rod. I felt like some kind of tweaked-out junkie who thought that she had roaches crawling all over her entire body. Except the difference was, the bugs that Holly and I both imagined were darting beneath our sheets were very, very real.

  The Bastyr students had vacated this hut that morning, so Hol and I had finally been able to move in and get our own beds in a private, chicken-free room. Unfortunately, it sounded as if we had some new visitors. The second the lights went off, I could hear the pitter-patter of little roach feet scampering nearby. Down the walls. At my feet. Near my head.

  I dashed over to the wall and flicked on the overhead light. Holly shrieked, a true bloodcurdler, as she bashed the headboard with a rolled-up magazine. “Oh, my God, they’re everywhere! We can’t sleep like this! What are we going to do?”

  I couldn’t comprehend how, since three people had slept in this room directly before us, no one had noticed that our wooden bed frames were infested with roaches. When a full can of Doom bug spray failed to kill every last creepy crawly, we tried to be brave, to endure the mendes (cockroaches) that the boarders had seemed shocked we were afraid of. “We do not fear them. They will not harm you,” Naomi always said to me. But tonight, as Holly and I levitated above our mattresses and attempted not to scream loud enough to bring Joshua and Mama Sandra running, I decided that a little fear was probably healthy.