I Built No Schools in Kenya

by Kirsten Drysdale

  Finally, I reach the counter and hand over my passport and application form to the woman behind the glass. As she begins to process my documents, her demeanour changes. She becomes surly. She glares at me. ‘You are Australian?’

  ‘Yes …’ I say.

  ‘Where is your letter of invitation?’

  ‘… what’s that?’

  ‘You must include a letter of invitation stating why you wish to visit our country.’

  She hands me a blank piece of paper. It seems I must invite myself.

  ‘Oh, okay,’ I say, wondering if this is standard protocol for all Australians, or just for me.

  ‘Over there,’ she says, directing me to a counter across the room. I take my blank page and write what I hope reads as a flattering request to visit Rwanda to see their world-famous mountain gorillas, and rejoin the queue.

  ‘One hundred US dollars,’ the woman says when I finally reach her window again.

  ‘How long will this take?’ I ask, handing her the cash, and watching my passport disappear into a drawer.

  ‘I cannot say.’

  ‘Okay, but … are we talking days? Weeks?’

  ‘You will have to call to check. Next!’

  Whatever Australia did to Rwanda, they haven’t forgotten about it.

  I ask Magda to pull up outside the gates when we return to the house, to avoid distracting Walt with the sound of the car engine. It’s daylight, Patrick is right there, ready with the keys, so I figure it’s fine to take the risk.

  ‘You girls here will be very good. You will be a help to him and Marguerite, I am sure,’ Magda says, as I climb out of the car. She purses her lips together, frowns, then breaks into a grin. ‘Okey-dokey, then. Bye now, bye!’

  With that, she hits the gas.

  That evening, while Alice is taking Walt through his evening routine, Fiona comes into my room with more reading material: a letter she’s written to ‘the Keen-ya crowd’.

  It’s to be attached to a printout of the Wikipedia page on Citalopram, then delivered to all and sundry tomorrow, before she flies out the following day.

  The letter is nuclear.

  It accuses Marguerite of convincing her doctor in the UK to put Walt on sleeping pills and antidepressants because she felt he had become ‘unmanageable’. Fiona writes that this was an underhand way of resolving marital problems, and unethical given Walt wasn’t properly consulted or able to understand what he was being given.

  She reiterates the points she has highlighted on the Wikipedia Citalopram article: about apathy and emotional flattening, weight loss, insomnia, blood-pressure changes and heart palpitations, about interactions with other drugs.

  Fiona writes that when Walt came to stay with her after a trip to hospital, her doctor made him immediately stop taking the antidepressants, which made Marguerite very angry.

  She writes that she hopes people will consider this information when they wonder why Walt seems so much better from when they last saw him, and when Marguerite tells them her version of events. She finishes by writing that she feels it’s best for Walt that he spends his final years here in the ‘warmth and sunshine’ of the country that he loves, with his dearest friends, and where his health problems can be managed correctly.

  And then she asks me what I think.

  I’m not sure what to say. So I ask her – as gently as I can – whether she’s sure it’s a good idea to put all that down on paper and hand it to people who will almost certainly tell Marguerite they’ve received it.

  ‘Absolutely!’ she says. ‘People here need to know what’s been going on. I know Marguerite’s poisoned them all against me – they think I’m a horrible bitch. And some of them will still think that regardless.’

  She’s probably got that much right. No one has explicitly said it, but I get the sense that most people around here are on Marguerite’s side and think Fiona is kind of bonkers. Then again, not many of them realise just how bad Walt’s mental state is – he’s surprisingly adept at masking it in public. With, of course, our assistance.

  ‘But I don’t care,’ Fiona adds. ‘I have to have my say.’

  ‘Okay.’ It’s none of my business, really.

  Except that the next morning it becomes my business.

  First thing after breakfast, I’m back at the copy kiosk. Fiona has requested twenty-five copies of the letter, to be inserted into twenty-five envelopes in a variety of colours and shapes and sizes. She insists this isn’t overkill. ‘You don’t know who you’re dealing with.’

  She wants each one to be addressed in different handwriting and with a different pen so that if Marguerite twigs to what we’re doing and tries to get the letters back after they’ve been delivered, she won’t know which ones to take out of people’s mailboxes.

  The same young man who served me the first time I came in knows something is up. He locks the door and turns the sign to ‘Closed’ when he notices me poking my head around the corner to see if anyone is coming my way. He hands me my rainbow assortment of envelopes, and I can see he wonders what he’s a part of, but I leave without telling him – there’s no time to get into it. I’ve got miles to cover by lunchtime.

  Peter and I spend nearly two hours driving around town in the Peugeot: pulling up at the gates of old houses, asking the askaris to put this envelope in with the rest of the day’s mail.

  The whole time, I’m vaguely mulling over the ethics of this situation. I figure it all depends on whether Fiona’s right about Marguerite’s intentions. And given I don’t fully trust Marguerite, I can’t be certain either way. Fiona has known her much longer than I have, after all. So I decide, since the stakes are so high – a man’s life in the balance – it’s best to err on the side of caution. That it’s fine for her to be letting people know they should keep an eye out for him. And I convince myself that what I’m doing is okay because I’m just following orders. Then I realise that’s the Nuremberg defence – that I’m basically a Nazi courier, delivering other people’s dirty laundry. Bugger.

  Fiona leaves for England at the crack of dawn. We promise to keep her in the loop, and to call her any time, day or night, if Walt gets worked up and we can’t calm him down.

  With her gone, the end room is freed up for Alice to move into, giving us both a bit more space.

  Finally master of her own domain, Marguerite decides we should go down to the golf club after breakfast and do some putting. ‘Walt loves it. Especially when the weather’s as lovely as this.’

  It’s my morning on duty, so I tag along. One advantage of the outing is that I get an insight into the dynamic between Marguerite and Walt without Fiona around, and a sense of the patter of an ordinary day. A disadvantage is being a passenger while Marguerite drives.

  To reach the golf club we’ve got to get through one of the main highway interchanges, which – like so many crucial intersections in Nairobi – is currently being upgraded.

  ‘Look at this mess at ten o’clock in the morning!’ Marguerite exclaims, swerving as she points at the road workers in their conical aluminium hats. ‘Oh, it’s the Chinese.’

  ‘What in heaven’s name are they doing digging everything up?’ says Walt.

  ‘They’re building a new road, Walt,’ I say, my stomach lurching as Marguerite overcorrects her steering. This is the woman who scolds Peter for a bumpy ride, as though he can do anything to avoid roads littered with potholes.

  ‘Oh well, fair enough I suppose,’ Walt mutters. ‘The Europeans have given up. Might as well let someone else have a turn.’

  ‘These two are going right around there!’ Marguerite points at a couple of matatus mounting the kerb to get past. ‘Oh, that is clever. Shall I do that too?’

  ‘Please don’t!’ I say, clinging to my seatbelt.

  ‘I imagine they’ve no idea what they’re doing themselves,’ says Walt. I’m not sure whether he’s talking about the Chinese workers or the matatu drivers.

  ‘Now you can see why we don’t go driving anyw
here. And it’s not even the rush hour! Oh look, the man behind me is overtaking. No!’ Marguerite waves madly into her mirror, wagging her finger at the driver trying to pass. ‘No! You just go back, you naughty boy!’

  ‘He just fingered back!’ says Walt.

  ‘Did he!?’ Marguerite briefly hits the brakes in a fit of indignation. I brace myself against the front seats.

  ‘Deary, deary me.’

  By the time we pull into the golf club car park I’m nauseous. A mob of caddies swarm the car. ‘Now, they’re all going to come up and say to you, “Jambo, bwana,”’ Marguerite tells Walt, leaning across the centre console to whisper in his ear. ‘So, all you do is pretend you know them all and stick your hand out.’

  It’s obvious this is how he’s made it through all these years without his mental decline being clear to everyone around them – she’s been helping him muck along, his personal guide to everyday life. Like one of those assistants who whispers into a president’s ear, reminding them of the name of every person whose hand they’re about to shake.

  ‘Oh blast, I haven’t got my clubs with me, have I?’ says Walt.

  ‘No, you’ve only got a putter. But that’s alright because we’re only putting today!’ Marguerite shoos a caddy away through the window – ‘No! No!’ – then says to Walt, ‘They’re all coming to see you. Let’s go and pick one, shall we? How about that nice chap, Ernest. He was good last time, wasn’t he? And doesn’t he look smart in his cap and vest.’

  Ernest carries the clubs down to the practice green and I hover nearby, staying out of the way but close enough to observe Walt and Marguerite together. Small groups of other grey-haired golfers in knits – Indian and African and European men and women – wave familiar hellos as they pass by on their way to the first hole. Every now and then I wander over to tie Walt’s laces when they come undone, or to help Marguerite chase Egyptian geese back down to the water. I watch closely for any signs of tension between them. But all I see, all I overhear, is a sweet old couple tapping some golf balls around: ‘Splendid shot, darling!’ ‘Jolly good show!’ ‘Oooof, you only missed that one by a whisker!’ They laugh, they tease, they enjoy the morning sun. You wouldn’t know there was anything wrong with Walt. There’s nothing for him to remember or forget: he just has to live in the moment. This is surely as good as things can be for anyone in his condition.

  Eventually, they’ve had enough. Ernest collects the balls and takes the clubs back to the car while we head inside for tea and warm mandazis – East African doughnuts – in the clubhouse. Walt shakes the hands of a dozen people he doesn’t remember and Marguerite tells a seven-year-old Kenyan boy, dressed head to toe in Callaway apparel, that he looks ‘just like a baby Tiger Woods!’ His father doesn’t seem to mind. He and Marguerite arrange to play the following week.

  ‘You know, my handicap is still just thirteen!’ Marguerite brags.

  ‘Oh, I know, Mrs Smyth,’ the Kenyan boy’s father says, laughing. ‘You are the star of this course!’

  Marguerite is beaming by the time we’re back in the car to drive home, and Walt is in a wonderful mood too.

  ‘That was great fun, I thought,’ Marguerite says, blindly reversing out of the parking spot. ‘We all enjoyed it, didn’t we? And your new granddaughter – she enjoyed it.’

  ‘Who?’ Walt says.

  ‘Me, Walt!’ I say from the back seat. ‘I’m sitting here behind you!’

  ‘Kirsten – your new granddaughter!’ Marguerite says.

  Walt spins to see me, as though for the first time, even though only moments earlier I had helped him into the car and done his seatbelt up for him. ‘Oh, yes – hello there …’

  We take the backstreets to get home. It makes for no smoother a ride, though it does mean we pass by the British High Commissioner’s house where a TV crew are setting up cameras out the front.

  ‘Aha! I’ll tell you who they’re waiting for,’ Marguerite says, drifting off the road briefly as she turns to tell me. ‘They’re waiting for “the couple”.’

  She’s talking about the Chandlers, a British couple who were kidnapped from their yacht by Somali pirates and held hostage for over a year. I’m well across this story – Dad forwarded it from the BBC News site in an email that just said, ‘Piglet – watch out for bloody nyamazanes.’

  ‘They’ve been found,’ Marguerite says. ‘Well, they were released. Very lucky. They were very stupid. They were told not to do it, and they did it. Stupid! Went on a boat from the Seychelles to Kenya. Now they’re with the Commissioner having special tea. I know, you see, because I met a girl from the High Commission yesterday at the Club and well, you know, I do like to find things out, so I made her tell me!’

  ‘They were on a cruise?’ Walt says.

  ‘No,’ says Marguerite. ‘In their own sailing boat. And they were told not to. Husband and wife. And they were captured.’

  ‘By whom!?’ Walt is outraged.

  ‘The Somalis,’ she says.

  ‘Somalis?’

  ‘Yes, pirates!’ Marguerite says. ‘You’re really not following, are you darling? And they wanted an enormous ransom. Well, the people did not have the money. And you know, the British government won’t pay it, nor any government. But somebody got half a million from family, and somebody paid the next half – you know, kindly. And they were released.’

  ‘Thank heavens!’ says Walt, as we fly over an unmarked speed bump.

  ‘But they were in a terrible state!’ she says. ‘Lost all their teeth. Can you imagine!? They were thirteen months in the jungle. Separated, too. Him in one compound, her in another.’

  ‘Jungle or sea?’ asks Walt.

  ‘Jungle,’ says Marguerite. ‘In Somalia.’

  I say, ‘I don’t think there is a jungle in Somalia …’

  ‘Oh, you know, the desert-jungle. Mud huts and all that lot.’

  ‘Well I think it’s a very good thing,’ says Walt. ‘All these foolish people who come out and don’t do as they’re told. But off they go because they think they’re being big bright safari people. But they don’t know Africa! I think it’s bloody good if they’re put in jail for six months or so. They cost the British government thousands of pounds.’

  Marguerite pulls up out the front of the Club, just as fat raindrops start splatting on the windscreen. ‘Now you wait here. I’ll run in to see if there’s any mail. Won’t this rain be good for the country?!’

  She races inside, and we sit quietly for a few seconds, as the percussion of the sun shower picks up pace. Walt taps the dashboard, mutters to himself, ‘I have no idea what’s going on. No idea at all.’

  ‘We’re just at the Club, Walt,’ I say, ‘checking the mail, then we’ll head home.’

  He spins around to look at me, startled. I realise he thought he was alone in the car. Then he offers his hand and smiles. ‘Oh, hello there! I don’t think we’ve met …’

  ‘Hi Walt, I’m Kirsten,’ I say, for what must be upwards of the hundredth time.

  ‘And you’re here with the Foreign Service?’

  ‘Um, yeah – that’s right …’ Sure. Whatever. It doesn’t matter, does it?

  ‘Oh, splendid. Well, I’m sure they’ll make sure you have a marvellous time here. They don’t like to work you lot too hard.’

  Walt remains in a good mood for the rest of the day and is still chipper when Alice puts him to bed around nine o’clock.

  But around half an hour later, when Marguerite joins him, things turn sour. Their voices grow louder. Alice brings the monitor into my room. We watch Marguerite sitting on the end of her bed, Walt pacing up and down past her, waving something we can’t quite make out in her face.

  ‘Darling, I told you,’ she says, ‘there’s plenty more cash in the safe!’

  ‘Don’t “darling” me!’ he snarls.

  ‘And we have our chequebooks too, of course. And we can go to the bank tomorrow and get you more cash, if you like.’

  ‘I know what you’re up to – you’
re all up to your elbows in it!’

  ‘What are you talking about?’

  ‘If you swallowed a nail you’d pass a screw! The lot of you!’

  ‘Walt, you’re being very silly now.’

  ‘Get out!’ he shouts. ‘Get out of my house!’

  ‘It’s my house too, you know.’

  ‘No, it bloody well isn’t!’

  ‘Okay, darling. I’ll sleep in the study, shall I? Just let me get my night things then.’

  Marguerite gathers her robe and some items from her bedside table. She pokes her head into our room as she comes down the hall.

  ‘I think I’d best sleep in the study,’ she says. ‘My friend through there is quite cross with me tonight.’

  Walt follows her down the hallway. ‘If I see you in here again I’ll knock your bloody block off!’

  ‘Alright then,’ says Marguerite, starting to sound a bit shaken.

  He stops at my doorway on his way back to his room. ‘And you too! I want all of you out of my house in the morning.’

  Behind him, Millicent sticks her head out of the sunroom and pulls an alarmed face. She’s on duty in the morning. If we make it that far.

  ‘Okay, Walt – we’ll leave tomorrow,’ Alice says, taking him back to bed. ‘Promise.’

  ‘That was hectic,’ I say to her when she returns. No wonder she wanted him sedated, I think.

  ‘Yeah. Pretty standard, though. He’d have episodes like that fairly often when we were in England.’

  ‘But he was in such a good mood today! They were getting along so well.’

  ‘Yep. It can turn just like that. It’s so hard to predict. Usually something has triggered it, though. Probably Marguerite said something to make him start thinking about money. He’s always on about having enough cash – that’s why we need to make sure his dummy wallet is always full. It’s actually good having the shillings here because they’re all in hundreds, so it makes him feel like he’s got heaps. When really it’s just a few dollars.’