B009G3EPMQ EBOK (8 page)

I had done a summer teaching gig in Honduras, but nothing there prepared me for the normalized psychosis in Africa. The stark impact of every one of those boys and girls was enough to stop me in my tracks. Their expressions, the very flesh of their faces, had been carved by conflict. They were already old hands at drug addiction, sexual sadism, the uses of wartime weaponry, and the receiving or inflicting of savage outbursts of violence. They were “child” soldiers only in the counting of their years.

The impact on my neophyte self was profound. Humbling, to say the least. We even had to flee the area before it was known whether any of the children had been kidnapped again by the LRA fighters, or if any were still in hiding. The shock left me cowed into silence, not by fear, but by the vague sense of having been rebuked
by circumstance for showing up unprepared. What did I think I was doing?

While our rickety plane sputtered into the air, I considered the miseries visited upon those children and the fact that we were so powerless to give meaningful help. I was barely out of rifle range and already anger was bringing back my natural stubbornness.

If you grew up as a nice girl or you know someone who did, then you realize that nice girls the world over are mostly sweet, good-natured, nonconfrontational, and quietly cooperative in most things. People like having nice girls around because their rough edges have been filed down and sanded smooth.

But if you are one of the nice girls in question, there is only one weapon of social resistance available to you, and it is the trait of quiet resolve. Yes, some people call it stubbornness. I’ve never been the loud and rowdy type, and I don’t believe anyone thinks of me as confrontational. But I can plant my feet and root them to the ground.

That’s how one does the nice girl thing without resorting to life as a wimp. Our failure at the orphanage really turned up the heat on what I continue to call quiet resolve, in spite of those who might describe me as being stubborn enough to teach the skill to mules. It wasn’t the dangers of Africa that appealed to me—I’ve never had a death wish and I’m not an adrenaline junkie. But in the plight of those innocent ones, I saw a place where I could make a badly needed contribution as a teacher, doing this wonderful thing that is essentially the same all over the world, but doing it in a part of the world foreign to me. There was more to learn than to teach, and I loved that.

Susan went on to other pursuits, so I returned to the United States to complete my last semester of college, secure my teaching degree, and then come back down and try it again. A semester later, with my teaching certificate secured, I applied for a job at the Rosslyn Academy in Nairobi, Kenya. Nairobi is a metropolis
with modern infrastructure, and Rosslyn Academy is a Christian school, meaning my troublesome status as a single working woman wasn’t considered a cultural threat. I was glad to take the job in a place where I could begin to get a close-up look at the realities of daily life, but from a position of relative safety, protected from random gunfire and the feuding of clan hotheads.

I would be living in a city, after all. If the new job turned out to be unfulfilling, why, a person could always move out to someplace less developed. For the time being, Nairobi sounded just right. I wasn’t hired to act as a missionary. All the academy asked me to do was handle the core classroom duties with several subjects and teach their fourth-graders in the hope of eventually helping them qualify for productive and legal means of attaining self-sufficiency. I was moved by their humble goal, a variation on the same thing most parents want for their children.

So I happily packed for the return to Africa and pushed the sound of gunfire and the memory of my own screams in South Sudan to the back of my mind. That brief preamble to my Africa journey turned out to be an experience of self-discovery. The first revelation highlighted my vulnerability in remote places. The second was that I only felt more determined because of it.

It was my great fortune in life to come from parents who understood the notion that people can find themselves called to all sorts of things. Mom and Dad understood my return to that continent, with Dad even lamenting that he couldn’t come along. For all those reasons, I felt ready for anything when the day arrived for me to step off the plane in Kenya for Africa redux.

Erik met Jessica for the first time in late September 2007. He was two days away from his thirty-first birthday and by that point he had spent nearly two years in Somalia, with frequent travels around Kenya and Zimbabwe for work and recreation. In spite of the difficulties and frustrations of local political work—three steps forward and two steps back—he could look back on his time in Africa and actually see a measure of progress on the ground.

In spite of his satisfaction at work, things were definitely dry in the romance department. He’d gotten a stern lesson in all the ways job satisfaction can be limited. While the years rolled on, it began to dawn on him that career advancement can’t stand in for a trustworthy and loving partner.

Workaholic habits and the occasional date with female expats did nothing to relieve the creeping sense of aloneness that had begun to haunt him. It seemed clear this was a time in his life when there was no real choice other than to go it alone—at least until he got back to Sweden someday. It left him with a torn feeling of living an incomplete life, dancing to the music but singing off key.

He had just returned to Nairobi from a week in Zambia. That evening, he went to a small party at a friend’s house. Nothing really
clicked there, so he and another single guy went to Gypsy’s, a local nightclub that was popular with the expats in the area. The place was a bit of a dive, but in a comfortable way: cheap eats and drinks, plus a casual atmosphere that was civil most of the time.

Erik found the crowd at Gypsy’s that night to be the usual mix of foreign aid workers, British military on leave, foreign tourists chasing Kenyan nightlife, and local Kenyan party people, plus a few prostitutes following the money. People were on the dance floor, but that looked like a lot of work to him. The evening was doing nothing for the restlessness that put him there. After one beer he decided to call it quits.

The place was far too noisy to make a phone call, so he leaned back against the wall and sent a text to his friend to let him know he didn’t plan to stick around. He happened to glance up while he was typing away, and over on the other side of the room a young woman on the dance floor locked eyes with him. She was a pretty European-looking woman, a tall one, and she had obviously been doing a lot of dancing; her long hair was plastered down from the exertion. When their eyes met, she smiled and reached out one hand to playfully crook her finger at him.

He laughed to cover up the fact that he didn’t know what she was doing. But he figured it must be some sort of joke and the cool thing to do was to nod, give a knowing laugh, and drop out of the moment.

He went back to texting and hit Send, but that was as far as discipline could take him—he had to look again just to see what was going on with the tall, sweaty dancer. Surely by now she would be casting her attention in some other direction.

Their eyes locked again.

This time she laughed and swirled her whole arm in a sweeping gesture, “commanding” him to cross the room to her. This was a new one for him. It seemed clear she wanted a dance partner. Unfortunately, Erik had spent thirty-one years learning to accept
himself as a guy who will never tear up a dance floor unless somebody tosses him a crowbar and a hammer.

But there wasn’t any reason not to go over and find out if the tall dancer with the pretty face was serious about wanting to talk or dance or whatever. She seemed to radiate a playful sense of humor, and he was already curious to see what that might be about.

•  •  •

Jessica:

It had been a tough evening so far. I was out to dinner with two friends from Nairobi, “chaperoning” them on a fix-up blind date. The guy, Evan, was an American artist who had done aid work in South Sudan, and Jen was a fellow teacher at the Rosslyn Academy. She was a lot of fun to hang around with, a real wild child when she was away from campus, and Evan seemed like a perfect fit for her unconventional personality.

After the first five minutes it was clear my inspiration to put these two together was a disaster. Honestly, it was like they secretly planned out how badly they would fit together, finding themselves in agreement over almost nothing, with personality styles that caused each one to dissolve into dull indifference. There was no disguising their lack of chemistry; you could almost hear the air leaking out of the balloon.

We decided to all go dancing. They wouldn’t have to deal with each other if they stayed on the dance floor with other partners and the music was too loud for conversation. We made our way over to Gypsy’s, where Jen and I liked to stop in on weekends and sometimes dance until three or four in the morning. We avoided the heavy drinking some expats fell into to disguise their feelings of being out of place, but a night of dancing was a great way to blow off steam.

As soon as we got there Jen and Evan both found other dance partners and disappeared onto the crowded dance floor. I danced for a while with a few random partners, but didn’t see anyone interesting and would have gone home except that I was their ride. Having instigated this shipwreck, I felt obligated to see it through.

I looked around for my two friends, but didn’t see them anywhere at the moment.
Ten minutes,
I figured.
Then I’ll find those two and tell them we either leave now or they can hire a ride.
There is a limit to how much responsibility you can take for somebody else’s bad date.

That’s when I looked across the room and noticed a very nice-looking guy about my age casually leaning against the wall and thumb-typing a text. He was clean-cut, short hair almost military style, strong looking, and he didn’t seem to be there with anyone. I caught his eye and made a little come-hither gesture, inviting him to dance.

He just gave this awkward little laugh and went back to his texting.
Okay,
I thought,
if he’s going to laugh off an invitation like that, he better be married or gay.

I could see his left hand, and there was no wedding ring.
Okay, he better be gay.

I don’t normally go after men in public and wouldn’t have been so playful and bold if boredom hadn’t gotten the best of me. So I stared at him until he looked up again. This time I used my whole arm to make a large “come here” gesture I knew he couldn’t miss.

He paused a moment, then gave me a modest little smile and headed my way to inform me either that (a) he was gay, so quit it already, or (b) his girlfriend was in the restroom and again, quit it already.

He stepped up and introduced himself, but the music was so loud I could barely hear him. “Hi, I’m Orik.”

“What?”

“I’m Orik.”

“Orik?”

“No, Orik.”

“Okay, Orik. I need relief from these grabby drunk guys. You want to dance?”

“What?”

“Dance?” I waved my arms and wiggled to the music.

“Oh, dance. Okay.” He smiled but didn’t exactly look thrilled. It made me wonder if I just wasn’t his type.

We got into dancing without trying to engage in more conversation. I jumped right in, working my whole body to the rhythm, but I noticed this guy Orik just sort of rocked to the beat without really letting loose. We weren’t out there for very long when it struck me that I might have misunderstood his lack of enthusiasm for getting on the dance floor. He wasn’t what anyone would call a gifted mover.

Pretty soon I just pulled him off the floor, and we found a table far enough from the noise that we could sit and talk.
Ten minutes of conversation,
I told myself.
Maybe fifteen, tops. Then I will go grab Jen and Evan and tell the failed lovebirds their party’s over.
We made some idle chat for a while and established the essentials. Orik was from Sweden and spoke fluent English with just a mild Swedish accent.

My friends still weren’t in sight, but suddenly that didn’t seem like such a bad thing. Orik was attractive, charming, well built, and sober. He was attentive in getting us set up at the table and making me comfortable. He was charming to our waitress but not flirtatious.
Wow,
I thought,
he just transformed from a dud on the dance floor to a knight in shining armor, all by force of his personality.

I tried to recall anything I could about Sweden, to help drive the conversation. It was embarrassing to realize I had studied Africa all my life and practically ignored Europe. Fortunately, Orik didn’t seem interested in giving me a pop quiz on all things Swedish. Instead he sketched a picture of himself and his life: dealing
with legal issues for an international NGO, traveling the region to promote human rights and democracy. Even in those early moments it was clear that he spoke with passion and commitment about his dedication to his work, his purpose for being in Africa.

“You like to travel?” Orik asked. “I just got back from a week of meetings down in Zambia. While we were there I got to take time to visit Victoria Falls. What an amazing place!”

Uh-oh
 . . . Victoria Falls is one of the status locations for big-time vacationers. It seemed as if Orik might push things too far and start bragging. I’ve never found a blowhard attractive. The expat community attracts some very individual personalities, and some of them are all too eager to let everybody know how unique they are. But those types didn’t seem strong to me, just loud.

On the other hand, it seems natural for the males of most species to try to court a little bit. I think a courteous female lets a man puff out his chest once in a while. It’s true in the jungle and true here at the watering hole—a man is mostly following genetic orders when he does that. Boring sometimes, but no real threat. I figured he had his DNA and I had mine.

Orik kept going. “I know you have Niagara Falls in America but this is just as impressive, maybe more! Yesterday morning I got to take one of these small microflights over these amazing falls, and then on the way back we saw elephants crossing the Zambezi River just below us. It was unbelievable. Nothing but fantastic!”