Two Years of Wonder

by Ted Neill

  When they reached Nairobi, Evelyn did not take Miriam to her house. Instead they boarded a matatu, rode it for a while, got off, then boarded another matatu that was very old, rode it a short while, then got off. They alighted at a gate in front of a long driveway, which Miriam was not looking forward to walking down. The gate was opened for them by Maasai. Miriam knew about Maasai. She had seen them before. They could be very backwards but they were the fiercest of all the tribes in Kenya.

  The driveway led to a children’s home. Miriam knew what those were, they had them in Mombasa. But this one was nicer than the ones she had seen before. There were trees, grass, flowers, and three nice cars parked outside. A tall man in a suit seemed to be waiting for them. His name was Bonava. Miriam was afraid of him at first because he was wearing a suit, but upon meeting her, he immediately knelt down beside her and was very kind. He complimented her on her dress. He even tried to make her laugh but she was feeling too ill. Bonava suggested that they take Miriam to the nurse.

  Evelyn sat with Miriam while a nice nurse named Ruth shaved her head and rubbed medicine on her scalp. She did not seem disturbed at all by the sight of the bumps on Miriam’s face. Ruth gave her some small pills that she had to take with soda. Another nurse stuck Miriam with needles, but she was too tired to resist. Someone even brought some rice and green grams for Miriam and Evelyn to eat for lunch.

  Miriam rested in bed and after some time Evelyn said she had to go. Miriam asked if she was coming with her. Evelyn said no. That was when Miriam knew she had been brought there to stay.

  “Why not?” Miriam asked. She felt tears welling up in her eyes. Evelyn began to weep as well. She took Miriam by her hands and told her that she had a sickness called ukimwi. It was why they had taken her blood in Mombasa. It was the same sickness that killed her parents. Evelyn had brought her to this home because it was a special home for helping children with ukimwi.

  Miriam asked if she would die. Evelyn said only God knew.

  She remained a little longer. When she finally left it was getting dark. She promised Miriam she would be happy and that she would come to visit all the time.

  Ivy’s new home was not terrible. She lived in a cottage with eleven other children and a new mother. Her mother’s name was Agnes. She was strict but could be very nice too. Ivy was one of the older children so she got to take care of some of the younger children, although she would rather have been taking care of Maurice.

  They gave her medicines that made her feel better than she had in a very long time. Soon she was playing outside with the other girls. She could even play football with the boys. She got in a fight with one boy, Rashid, when he cheated at football. She punched him in the face. He ran away crying and when Mum Agnes found out, she told Ivy she would have to go to bed early that night. Harvey also spoke to her the next day and told her that if she misbehaved she would not be allowed to see her brother.

  With this threat looming, Ivy made an effort to be as well-behaved as possible. She helped Mum Agnes clean the cottage. She made sure the children got showered and changed before dinner and she cleaned dishes afterwards.

  Ivy was healthy enough to go to school. All the children above grade 3 went to an off-site private school that had green skirts for the girls, gray trousers for the boys, and red sweaters for both. Ivy was in standard four for the third time, but nobody except the teachers knew she was repeating. When people asked her how old she was she just lied.

  One day when they came home from school, Ivy saw a white pickup truck parked outside the main building. On its side it said “Malaika’s Children’s Home.” Ivy ran inside, hoping that they had brought Maurice to come and visit.

  Harvey was in his office. When he saw Ivy, he called her inside and closed the door. There was a fat woman with a scratchy voice sitting across from him. She was very large, her thighs pressed against the chair’s arms and the skirt wrapped around her was the size of a bed sheet. Harvey said her name was Mama Seraphina. She spat a great deal as she talked. She took Ivy’s hands. She was crying and saying she was so sorry. Ivy was wondering if she meant she was sorry that her parents had died. But then she said that Maurice was now in heaven with the Lord. He had been helping with the wash and he had slipped, hit his head, and passed out with his face in a full wash basin. He had drowned.

  Ivy slapped Mama Seraphina. Then she punched her. She heard Harvey yell but she was healthy now and quick. She was out the door and running to the gate before he could get around his desk to catch her.

  All she knew just then was that she wanted to run. But halfway down the driveway, she saw the Maasai guards moving to close the gate. She realized she could not escape. Although she was a fighter, she was no match for the Maasai with their spears and swords. She did not care. She decided she would fight them. They killed lions when they were still children. She would make them kill her.

  It was an old Maasai with gray hair that tried to stop her. She kicked and punched him but now she was crying uncontrollably. He did not fight back even though she wished he would. He held her still and spoke to her gently. A younger, fat Maasai grabbed her hands. She screamed at them to just kill her. She begged them to. The young one looked to the old one. The old man laughed a bit. She had never been so close to a Maasai before. This close she could tell they smelled of smoke and ash and meat. The old man wrapped his arms around her to hold her, and she felt the fight leaving her, felt herself folding into him, surrendering.

  “Pole,” the old man said. “Pole sana.”

  Harmony finally got her mother back to their alley where they slept between the green grocer and the mechanic’s shop. She was very worried about her because she was still talking nonsense. But Loraine was there and she immediately began taking care of Harmony’s mom.

  Harmony was hungry, so she told Loraine she would take Michael and beg for food. This was how it continued for days: Harmony begging and her mother laying down and resting. Harmony even tried selling some of their sweets, which she learned she was good at if she found people in nice suits or even wazungu. They would give her extra money for a sweet every time. Sometimes she would return to find her mother sitting up, but not often. She knew her mother could walk, but not far, because Harmony could tell she had been urinating just a few steps away from their blankets. The cuts on her mother’s head were red, yellow, and wet. The bandages turned brown and gray. One time her mother came back from pooping and had some on her hand but did not notice. Harmony cleaned her off.

  Her mother ate though, which Harmony knew was good. She sometimes would eat Harmony’s portions of food as well, but Harmony said nothing. One day when Harmony was too tired and weak to get up from her own blankets, her mother was particularly restless. She got up and wandered out of the alley. Harmony was too tired and hungry to follow her. She simply hoped that her mother would bring back food or maybe go back to the church and get more sweets and cigarettes to sell.

  A few minute’s passed. Harmony started to hear a commotion in the street. Usually she would go see, but she was still too tired. But then a child of one of the hawkers ran into the alley and said,

  “Harmony, your mother is dead.”

  Harmony ran out. The sunlight dazzled her eyes and her head felt light. She saw people gathered around a green and yellow matatu. Its windscreen was broken and it was turned a bit sideways. On the street in front of it was her mother. Her head was split open. Her eyes were open and she looked alive but there was blood on the ground under her. Harmony screamed and cried until she felt snot running from her nose into her mouth. People were clicking their tongues. Others touched her and told her they were sorry but she told them to get away.

  Then a blue police car stopped and two men got out. They were different men than the ones that had beaten her mother but Harmony was terrified nonetheless.

  She got up and ran.

  Chapter 21

  More Shenanigans, Chess, and Pictures

  I Should Have Taken

  The Kenyan
school system does not have summer break (Kenya doesn’t even have the corresponding seasons). In place of a three-month break, the kids have April, August, and December off. As volunteer coordinator, these months, thirty solid days crying out for structure, become my busy seasons. I bring in more volunteers from Kenya and all over the world. We have eighteen-hour days and if done well, volunteers, staff, and children are happy and I’m sleep deprived.

  These months are when the kids go to the movies and play games (hopscotch, soccer, tag, hide-and-seek) for hours. I introduce projects, inter-cottage competitions and cultural enrichment trips to see traditional African dancing or visit museums. The water park is one of my favorites, partly because it wears the children down, but also for the rickety zip line that runs the length of the property. At its highest, it’s six feet off the ground, but my favorite part is the way it brings the participants’ ride to an end: a wall. No foam or hay pit, no staff member to catch the kids, just a solid wood wall with a rubber mat added as if an afterthought. It’s a death trap that would never be allowed in the litigious US, but in Kenya it’s a total go. The kids swing off the platform, kicking and screaming their way down until they collide like crash test dummies with the wall at the end. I offer to catch the kids but they insist I don’t. It seems slamming into the wall and getting stunned by the abrupt stop is part of the draw. Even when some of the big kids build up serious momentum and peel off the wall like dead flies, it’s only moments before they collect themselves and are off running back to the pool, the slides, or for another go on the zip line of death.

  There are casualties from the shenanigans. Namely Lassie, one of the orphanage’s guard dogs. She is a border collie, but the resemblance is enough for the children to name her after the iconic dog of American television—after all, I am Peter Parker. But Lassie, the product of centuries of careful breeding and genetic selection, is driven bat-shit crazy trying to herd uncooperative children. The children remain engaged in whatever game they are playing at the time, ignoring the barks and nips from the border collie that is forced by her DNA to fruitlessly attempt to corral the children. They are always too many and they are too fast for her. On a Saturday morning it is not unusual to see her literally spinning in a circle, wide-eyed, tongue flailing, her brain short-circuited by a creature her breeding never prepared her for.

  There are things that the kids say as well. A cat lives on the premises that the children call “Pussy.” The alpha guard dog is a beautiful Rhodesian ridgeback named Tommy. When he sees Pussy he launches into full hunter mode, chasing her down and snapping at her tail. He never catches her but the one time he gets a piece of her tail in his mouth, the kids come running to me. “Ted, Tommy ate Pussy!”

  Tommy and I have a relationship of mutual respect. Unlike the Kenyans who see him as a working dog more than a pet, I play with him. As a result he likes me and one day even shows up at the door of my office. He was trained never to enter any of the buildings but his urge to spread out on the cool cement floor in my company is strong. He turns and backs into my room a step at a time, leading tail first. I imagine in his doggy mind he is hoping that by coming in backwards he will perhaps fool me into thinking he is actually on his way out. I watch him as he moves across the room to the far side where he bumps his backside up against the wall and then lies down on the floor, watching me tentatively. For all his canine cognition, I decide I have to let him stay.

  After Randolph dies his skin is so tight over his emaciated body that his teeth—once the heart of his becoming smile—now stick out grotesquely as he lies in his casket. It is a funeral that the staff have a difficult time accepting. Randolph was healthy. He had made it to the age of fourteen. He had all the medications he needed to keep his body sound, his virus in check. Yet all are struggling with the notion that he seemed to give up in his final weeks, he stopped fighting, whereas so many other children fight until the end. Bonava, the chief manager in title but really the father figure to every child at the orphanage, is morose like I have never seen him. The house moms and uncles are quiet and withdrawn, especially David, the soft-spoken house uncle who had cared for Randolph in Cottage Red.

  But Monica takes it the worst. I sit with her on the balcony of the volunteer house after the funeral saying little, the two of us staring out at the eucalyptus trees and ponds the next lot over, tropical birds flashing overhead like escaped pieces of a stain-glass window.

  “He made a choice,” I say. “You were the only one who respected it. That’s why he chose you to be with him until the end.”

  “Doesn’t mean I have to like it,” she says.

  The home was founded as a hospice. In a hospice for children the goal is to keep them happy and comfortable. But now with ARVs the children are living. Those kids that grew up without consequences, with only a “keep them happy for today” mentality, are growing up into spoiled teenagers. I network with other orphanages and bring in counselors that have expertise with teenagers. Teenagers bring a whole host of problems, but as Bonava says, they would rather have teenagers and all their problems, than be losing all the children.

  I agree.

  The teenage girls are a particular problem. I organize a retreat for them with a few female Kenyan volunteers in their twenties that are good role models. We do community building exercises and all the kum-ba-ya stuff I hated on my own church retreats. The girls regularly point out to me that I don’t go to church. A few times I have gone at Miriam’s request, only to have her make fun of the way I make a half-hearted sign of the cross in mass.

  On the second evening of the retreat, among other exercises, I have the girls take paint and write things they would like to change about themselves on some rocks. This is the second half of an exercise. The first half included painting things they liked about themselves on a clay tile, which will be glazed and put on display at the home. The rocks we will toss off the edge of the Ngong Hills, which the girls do not know we are climbing in the morning.

  I walk around inspecting; making sure not too much paint is spilled. Ivy writes on her rock that she hits others. Sofie has written that she is lazy in school. Joyce has written that she is lazy and that sometimes she fibs.

  I come down to the end of the line where Miriam is still staring at a blank rock. I had a feeling that she would have difficulty with the exercise, in all seriousness, she is a perfect child. I have never known her to get in trouble or to be anything besides helpful. I sit down next to her. She tells me that she can’t think of anything.

  “That is ok, because you are a very good young lady. But is there anything about yourself you want to get rid of, improve, or change?”

  “I have something,” she says coarsely and reaches for the paint. I leave her to work. I check on the other girls. Alexis has written in big red letters that she wants to get rid of her temper. Elizabeth wants to get rid of her laziness in school. Eventually all the girls are finished and I send them inside to wash their hands.

  Miriam is still sitting on the ground finishing the final letter on her rock. I come over and sit next to her. There in yellow capital letters, made wobbly by the surface of the rock, is the one thing Miriam no longer wants herself to be: LONELY.

  She looks up at me.

  “I did it wrong.”

  “No, if that is something you want to change,” I say, feeling overwhelmed. “That is what you can put. You don’t have the same problems as the other girls.”

  “It is still wrong,” she insists as she puts down the paint brush. “The things the other girls wrote. Those are things they can change.”

  Now she does not look at me. She gets up and says she is going inside to wash her hands.

  The first time I meet Oliver he is lying on a bed in the sickroom receiving a transfusion of blood. He has a red knit cap on, threadbare in places, a few of its threads beginning to fray, and a few places where different colored yarn has been used to repair tears in it. The nurse explains to me that Oliver is chronically anemic and the doctors cann
ot figure out why. As a result he has to be transfused every few months.

  The first Harry Potter book is sitting on the chair beside his table. I assume that it belongs to one of the volunteer nurses, but when I pick it up Oliver asks me to read it to him.

  “It is yours?” I ask.

  “Yes.”

  “Can you understand it?”

  He nods. I begin to read aloud to him. The nurse tells me that the transfusion will take five hours. I agree to stay with Oliver and keep him company. We finish the book about the same time the blood bag has emptied out. I call the nurse over. As she unwraps the tape, the gauze, and finally removes the needle from Oliver’s arm, he cries out in pain, slapping his hand to his face and pinching his cheek. But there is discipline in Oliver: the transfused arm remains completely still, almost as if he were paralyzed. It was only when the nurse gives him permission that he pulls the arm up to his chest protectively.

  I walk Oliver back to his cottage, Cottage Yellow, where Miriam lives. I suddenly realize that I have noticed him before, but only as the quiet child who is always sick and always wears that red knit cap, even on warm days. I just have never paid him much attention.

  Oliver walks back to the cottage slowly, holding tightly onto my hand. I ask him which part of the Harry Potter book was his favorite. He says it is the end where they play chess on a life-size board. I ask him if he knows what chess is. He says yes. Can he play? Yes. I ask him how he learned and he says that his grandfather taught him.