A Change in Altitude (17 page)

After a particularly grim and rainy weekend of no social engagements and no excursions, she drove to Nairobi with a portfolio she had assembled the previous day. She parked the car on a side street off Kenyatta and walked into the offices of the
Kenya Morning Tribune.

“B
ut maybe these are not so nice.”

Solomon Obok sat across from Margaret at a metal desk so cluttered with papers that he’d had to lay her portfolio on top. He’d apologized for the mess, saying that he knew where everything was, but Margaret found that hard to believe. He’d begun with pictures she had taken of the countryside and portraits of men, women, and children (African, Asian, and white) she had done since arriving in the country. Those, he had admired, or at least Margaret had assumed he’d admired them, since he’d examined each slowly and nodded. Now, however, he was studying the clips she had brought from the Boston alternative paper, the pictures small and grainy and not at all as compelling as those he had just seen. How could a photograph of a meeting at the statehouse compare with small black bodies emerging from the dust of a truck that had recently passed their way?

“You have improved since coming to this country,” he said.

“Yes.”

He removed his glasses and pinched the bridge of his nose. He had the blackest skin Margaret had ever seen on a human being. His face was oblique and long and handsome. When she had entered Mr. Obok’s office, he’d risen from his desk and had shaken her hand, immediately sitting again, as if he had only a minute or two to spare on her. In that time, she’d noticed his tall, slim frame and the grace with which he moved. His fingers, elegant and tapered, were smudged with pencil graphite.

He set aside the newspaper photos and once again examined the portraits Margaret had taken.

“This I like very much,” he said, referring to a shot of the mother on Kimathi Street whom Margaret had passed so often, the one who sat on the sidewalk with her children.

“It is all here,” Mr. Obok said, lifting the photo and tapping it lightly with the backs of his fingers. “This is exactly what a good picture should be. It must tell the story at once. That and a headline should be able to stand alone. Of course, we wish to lead the reader to the text. We are a newspaper, so we cannot be as artful as we would like. But that does not mean that strictly reportorial photography cannot be art. If we have a great photograph, we will work a story around it. I am already thinking this would be a picture to illustrate an article on beggars. We might keep it for when the need to write such a piece comes round again.”

“Thank you,” Margaret said.

“I see that being a woman is perhaps advantageous for a photographer,” he said, reviewing the picture of the beggar and her children again. “The woman here might have pulled her head scarf over her face had the photographer been a man.”

Margaret thought, but didn’t say, that if the man had put enough shillings in her tin cup, the woman would have let him take all the photos he wanted.

Mr. Obok leaned back against his wooden swivel chair and for the first time actually looked at Margaret. She’d been surprised at how claustrophobic the office of the
Kenya Morning Tribune
was. Only Mr. Obok had his own separate space. Several chairs were scattered around the room—for editorial meetings, she guessed. From the front door, she’d been shown the way through a larger room of metal desks, each occupied by a reporter or a secretary or an advertising salesperson. Hardly anyone had glanced up at her as she’d made her way to Mr. Obok’s office. Putting together a newspaper, Margaret knew, required intense focus. The reporters searched for hot leads; the advertising executives, for great ad buys. Each of the desks had on it a manual typewriter and a telephone. Margaret had noted that there were no windows, which lent the place an air of the sweatshop.

“You worked for this newspaper in Boston for how long?”

“I had the job straight from college.”

“You were lucky, then.”

“Do I hear an American accent?” Margaret ventured.

“I was educated at a college in Indiana.”

Margaret couldn’t imagine Mr. Obok in Indiana. “Really? Where?”

“A small Quaker college named Earlham. I was raised as a Quaker.”

Margaret had guessed Mr. Obok, because of his name in addition to his looks, to be a Luo, or from a Nilotic tribe similar to the Luo. But she had to stretch her imagination to picture the Quakers moving into his parents’ village, converting the inhabitants there.

“How did you manage the Hoosier winters?” Margaret asked.

Mr. Obok smiled broadly—purple-black lips, white teeth tinged mauve near the gum line—and then he laughed. “My first year, I thought I would perish. The snow, it is like fire on the face, no?”

“It is,” Margaret said, thinking of a Boston blizzard or, worse, an ice storm.

“You are here for how long?” he asked.

“We’ve been here eight months. We plan to stay for three years,” Margaret said, though she didn’t really know. She doubted anyone would give her a job if she said she was staying only a year.

“You are married?”

“Yes.”

“What does your husband do?”

“He’s attached to Nairobi Hospital. He’s researching equatorial diseases. In return, he gives free clinics around the country when asked.”

“And he is staying here three years?”

Margaret realized this was a fact that could be checked. “We believe we will be,” she said, sure that Obok could see the uncertainty on her face.

“You do not have a work permit?”

She shook her head.

“So that is all right. I will hire you on a freelance basis. Almost all of the photographers I use work under those conditions. Either I will give you an assignment to photograph or I will buy shots from you that I might need in the future. I would, for example, purchase four of these.” He indicated the portfolio. Margaret was elated. “We cannot pay much here,” he added.

Margaret had anticipated this. She’d almost said, but hadn’t, that she would work for him for nothing.

“Three good photographs from an assignment will net you one hundred fifty shillings.”

About twenty dollars, Margaret calculated.

“Not much, according to American standards,” he added, “but I can offer you quite a lot of work. We are shorthanded here.” He smiled. “You might, on a good week, have as many as ten assignments.”

Two hundred dollars a week. And more for the odd shot Mr. Obok would buy from her own collection. Margaret would be adventurous, she decided. She would take shots like the ones of the beggar woman and her children. Two hundred a week would be a good addition to Patrick’s modest stipend. He couldn’t help but be pleased by that.

“That would be fine,” Margaret said, trying not to sound too eager.

Mr. Obok had a captivating smile. “I am not averse to hiring expatriates,” he said, “as are some of my colleagues. I hire the best people I can find, regardless of tribe. Out in the newsroom, you will find Luo, Kikuyu, Nandi, Ugandans, Turkana, and Asians. I am a Luo. The expatriates tend to work freelance, as you will do. But you will find that even in the office, there will be some who will give you a cold welcome. You may find yourself journeying out to Tsavo, for example, with a reporter who feels that all jobs should be given to Kenyans. By the way, do you have transportation?”

“Yes,” she said, “most days.”

“Reliable?”

Margaret shrugged her shoulders. “Pretty reliable,” she said.

“Good enough.” Mr. Obok picked up the four photographs he wanted from her portfolio. “I will pay you one hundred shillings for each. Please give Lily outside all your information. Do you have your passport and visa information with you?”

“Yes.”

“Very fine,” he said, rising. “We give out checks on Thursdays. You can arrange to come in here, or we can send them to you.”

Margaret’s post office box was at the hospital, which meant that Patrick would pick up the mail and bring it home, as he always did. She wanted to collect her own paycheck.

“I’ll come in to get them,” Margaret said.

Mr. Obok put the portfolio back together and handed it to her. “We will see how you do on assignments,” he added, suggesting that until he reviewed the results of two or three assignments, he would reserve judgment as to whether she would find a warm welcome from him. They shook hands.

“Thank you,” she said.

At the door, she gave a quick glance back at the editor’s desk. Mr. Obok already had his pencil out.

As soon as Patrick arrived home that evening, Margaret told him her news.

“It’s with the
Tribune,
” she added casually.

For the first time, she’d noticed that morning a half dozen new wrinkles around Patrick’s eyes. He was often outside for his work, and the weathering was beginning to show. She imagined he thought the same of her.

“The
Kenya Morning Tribune
?” he asked.

She was chewing gum from a pack she’d bought in Nairobi. She never chewed gum. She nodded.

“Really,” he said, setting his briefcase and doctor bag on the floor by the hall table.

“Really.”

“Jesus, Margaret.”

“I’m sorry?”

“Of all the publications in Kenya, you pick the most controversial?”

“It’s a good paper,” she answered. “Very respectable. It’s only photos, anyway. I could make as much as fifteen hundred shillings a week, plus more for the odd shot the editor buys without having assigned it.”

“And that editor would be Solomon Obok?”

“You know him?”

Patrick moved into the living room with his hands on his hips. Moses had set out a bouquet of pink and white lilies on the coffee table.

“Everybody knows him,” Patrick said. “Did he call you?”

Margaret laughed and inadvertently swallowed her gum. “No,” she said. “How would he possibly know me? I just showed up with my portfolio.” She was aware that her tone was a little too offhand.

“Why?” Patrick asked.

“Why?”

He paced behind the couch.

“I’m going mad here, Patrick. I need a job. You have one. I had one before I came here. I can’t dabble anymore.”

“Well, I guess I’m glad for you, then,” he said without enthusiasm.

“Mr. Obok thought the stuff from Boston routine,” she said, “but he liked the African photos.”

“Good.”

She waited.

“That’s all?” she asked. “Good?”

“I can’t say I’m thrilled, Margaret. I’ll worry for you. I can’t pretend that I won’t.”

“Why is it necessary to worry about me?”

“Have you read the paper? It’s run by Luo, and they have an agenda, and the tribe that runs the country is Kikuyu, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

“There are half a dozen expats who work there and at least as many Asians.”

“And?”

“And nothing. There’s nothing nefarious about it.”

Patrick nodded slowly in the way that people do when they’re not buying any of it.

“If he asks me to do something I think is risky, I won’t do it,” Margaret said.

“We’ll see.”

It was all she was going to get, and it would have to be enough. Besides, she reminded herself, she wasn’t doing this for Patrick’s approval. Or was she?

“Oh, and there’s one other thing,” Margaret said. “I might be needing the car more now. Mr. Obok expects me to be able to drive to some of the assignments. You and I can work it out. I can take you in in the morning and use the car and then pick you up when you’re done.”

“You just be careful, Margaret,” he said.

“I’ll be making some money, so maybe we could save and go on a real vacation. To Mombasa. To a resort. Just lie in the sun and swim. We need that.”

Patrick took a deep breath and exhaled. “We sure as hell do,” he said.

Margaret sensed that some of the reporters wrote better English than they spoke. Her first assignment was with a man named Jagdish Shah, a reporter who had been with the
Tribune
more than a decade. He was that day to report on an event honoring the marketing manager of East African Airlines.

“You are living in Karen?” Jagdish asked with a distinctly Asian lilt. Margaret wondered if she’d been assigned the story simply for the transportation. The luncheon at Utalii Hotel wasn’t far from the
Tribune,
but the journey required a car all the same. She had bought a second camera for her job, a Leica M3, which lay in its case in the backseat. Jagdish sat stiffly forward. He had a full mustache and beard that were trying to hide a bad complexion. Dressed in a white shirt, jacket, and tie, he wore large, thick glasses that made his eyes pop. Because the car didn’t have air-conditioning, Margaret drove with the windows down, which seemed to bother the man. He smelled heavily of cologne.

“I am third of three boys,” he said before they’d even reached the city limits. “My father is giving his business to his first son. To his second, he arranges to buy for him a motorcycle-distribution business. But me, I am expected to go out and work for someone else.”

At first, Margaret didn’t know what to say. It seemed a startling revelation from someone she’d known less than five minutes.

“This bothers you,” she said.

“Oh yes,” he answered, looking out the window. “It is bothering me all my life. My wife, she is at me always:
Tell your father this…. Tell your father that
…. She tries to charm him, which is horrible to watch.”

“Perhaps you could find a job you like better than this,” Margaret suggested.

“No, I am not finding anything else. There is nothing in Nairobi for me to be my own boss.”

Jagdish lapsed into a depressed silence. He sighed. Margaret wondered if she would be attached to him for all of his stories. She hoped not.

Jagdish wasn’t any more charming with the marketing manager of EAA than he’d been with Margaret. Her task, Mr. Obok had told her, was to get the principals—the marketing manager, the minister of tourism, and the head of Utalii—in a three-way handshake, each looking at the others, but somehow revealing all their faces. The most interesting part of the dull photo was the mix of black and white hands (four black, two white) at the moment of the handshake, but though Margaret took a number of shots of that alone, she knew that Mr. Obok wouldn’t use them.