I Built No Schools in Kenya

by Kirsten Drysdale

  ‘Kinda like yoghurt,’ I say.

  ‘Yes! It is similar to yoghurt,’ David says. ‘Now, with sukari.’

  He pours what must be an entire cup of sugar into the pot, then stirs it with a sanded strip of timber.

  ‘There. That should be done,’ he says, topping up our mug again.

  I take a sip first this time. It is sickly sweet. Like syrup. I screw my face up trying to swallow.

  David thinks this is hilarious. So do the rest of the staff. They cackle and slap their legs with mirth. ‘Okay, so for you next time, no sukari,’ he says. ‘And you?’

  Alice takes a hesitant sip. She has a similar reaction. ‘No thanks,’ she says. ‘I prefer the first kind.’

  The staff suddenly turn around – Fiona has come to find us. I worry for a moment that we’ll be in trouble – that she’ll disapprove of our fraternising. But she’s smiling. She doesn’t seem to think there’s anything at all amiss.

  ‘Jambo, Fiona,’ David says, standing up to meet her at his door. ‘I was just showing Alice and Kirsten the maziwa lala,’ he says.

  ‘Ohhhh yes! I remember that!’ Fiona says. ‘Do you take it with sugar?’

  ‘Yes,’ David laughs. ‘Too much sugar for them.’ He passes her the cup.

  ‘Yes, a little bit of sugar is okay,’ Fiona says, taking a sip and recoiling. ‘But I think that’s a bit too much, David! You’ll give yourself diabetes!’

  David laughs, taking the cup back from her, then passing it on to James to share with the others.

  ‘Girls, come,’ she says. ‘We should restock Dad’s pills while he’s asleep. I want to do an audit and see if there’s anything I need to order in.’

  We wave goodbye and thank David, then follow her back to the house.

  ‘Isn’t that name just so sweet? “Maziwa lala”,’ Fiona says. ‘“Sleepy milk”. I’d forgotten about that. I love it.’

  I love it, too.

  I wake up early and lie in bed scrolling on my phone while the call to prayer warms the dawn sky. There’s an email from the production company I work for in Sydney. It’s confirmed: Hungry Beast has been commissioned for a third season on the ABC – I have a real job to go back to. The producers have called a meeting with all of us to discuss new ideas for the show and talk about where we want to take it next year. I’ll have to Skype in.

  I head down to the Club to dial in from the computer room. I sit with my laptop in the phone booth they have in the corner, my headphones in, waiting for the Skype ringtone. The Club attendant is helping an older white couple in matching sweaters print their digital photos out from one of the PCs on the glossy hardwood table; through the windows I watch a Kenyan family playing croquet on the lawn. This is such a strange place.

  I’ve got mixed emotions about the prospect of going home. On the one hand, I’m keen to get back to reality, I realise how much I’ve missed making sense of numbers and words, rather than sighs and glances. But on the other hand, I’m just settling into life in Kenya – and feel like there’s so much more to discover here.

  The Skype alert bleeps, and I see a room full of my friends and colleagues. Their Australian accents echo, pulling me right out of Africa, back to a land free of security fences and attack dogs but full of rules and anxieties.

  ‘So,’ my boss says to me, ‘we’re all a little confused about what exactly it is you’re doing there. You’re a bodyguard to a sugar daddy or something?’

  ‘Yeah.’ I laugh. ‘Look, something like that.’

  In a couple of months’ time, I’ll be back to explain it all in person.

  After dinner that night, we set about capturing a senile man’s testimony. ‘Dad,’ Fiona says, balancing the recorder on the arm of Walt’s chair while he sits gazing into the fire; he startles and looks back at her. ‘Dad, you know how you’ve been quite unwell lately?’

  Walt frowns, thinks for a bit. I wonder whether he does ‘know’ that – and what ‘lately’ means to him. It seems a bit unfair to be demanding this kind of self-assessment from someone so clearly incapable of it.

  ‘Oh well,’ he says, ‘I suppose I’ve been a little off-colour, but nothing to worry about!’ He laughs it off, but his face tightens up a bit. We’re making him worry about whether he should, in fact, be worrying.

  ‘No, Dad, I mean with your dicky heart and all the rest of it – you might not remember it all. But you’ve been very unwell, and we’re wanting to have someone here in the house to help look after you. That’s what the girls have been doing.’

  ‘What girls?’

  ‘These lovely girls, Dad. Alice and Kirsten. The Or-stray-lyans.’

  Only now does he notice us sitting on the couch across from him. He stares at us blankly.

  ‘Hi, Walt,’ we say, waving.

  ‘How do you do?’ He nods politely, throws us a terse smile, then looks back at Fiona.

  ‘Anyway, Dad, Marguerite has decided they shouldn’t be here. She thinks she should get you a local nurse to help instead. Would you like that?’ Fiona says the word ‘local’ with that special sort of intonation that people use to turn it into a pejorative. I actually don’t believe she’s racist at all – but she’s more than happy to pretend to be if it helps bend Walt to her will.

  ‘Would I like what?’ he asks.

  ‘Having an African in to help you?’

  ‘Help me what? We have enough staff.’

  Fiona angles the recorder towards him.

  ‘Help you in and out of bed, to dress in the morning, shower at night – that sort of thing.’

  The penny finally drops.

  ‘Not on this side of hell!’ Walt roars.

  ‘That’s okay. I didn’t think so, Dad.’

  ‘Whose foolish bloody idea is that? I won’t have it, I’m telling you! There’s no need. I’m perfectly alright.’

  ‘I know, Dad. Don’t worry. It won’t happen.’

  Fiona buttons off the device. Mission accomplished.

  The audio file is emailed to a complex network of lawyers, mediators and trustees. I can’t keep track of who’s who and where their loyalties lie. Some are based in the UK, others in Kenya. Some seem sympathetic to Marguerite, others are clearly trying to remain neutral in the developing drama.

  I know this because Fiona – for reasons that will never become clear – starts forwarding me and Alice all of their correspondence and cc’ing us into her emails. Several times a day my inbox pings with a new missive about how Walt must never be returned to England, or about how Marguerite has proven herself utterly neglectful, or about how she really is the only one with her father’s best interests at heart. And the trustees repeatedly write back with the same weary warning that they ‘do not do contentious family law’, and that if things start ‘getting litigious’ they’ll have to hand the matter over to another firm. I can only assume she’s keeping us in the loop because she thinks we’re her allies, or so that she has witnesses to her efforts to help her father. I’d rather not know any of it, but she is relentless. She hassles for copies of title deeds and wills, tells them Walt is ‘constantly expressing a wish to leave Marguerite’, urges them to visit the house in Nairobi and see for themselves. They say they’re not in possession of the documents she’s chasing, and in any case wouldn’t be authorised to hand them over, and stress that this is something the family members need to sort out among themselves.

  Meanwhile, we’ve still got Walt to look after. And without Millicent here, Alice and I are on duty every day, occasionally having to pull a double shift, making it even harder for us to get any kind of down time.

  Walt’s hair isn’t going to cut itself, and it’s my job to take him to the salon down the road. He hates having his hair cut, but the Kenyan ladies there are used to him, and know how to butter him up. I manage to get him to their door before he realises what we’re doing. He hesitates, but the hairdressers spot us and immediately start making a fuss.

  ‘Bwana Smyth! Bwana Smyth! Jambo, we have missed you!’ they say.


  Rose, the manager, wags her finger in his face, scolding him. ‘And look how long your hair is!’ She’s a statuesque woman, wears a bright purple and yellow head wrap in zigzag folds around her soft Afro crown. ‘We have to sort that out!’

  ‘Oh hello, hello,’ says Walt, affable but wary as we guide him to a seat in front of a mirror. ‘What are you girls going to do to me today?’

  ‘We are going to make you handsome!’ Rose says, leaning over him as she drapes a cape around his neck. ‘More handsome than you already are!’

  Rose laughs. Walt laughs. I can see he’s already submitting. God, these women are good.

  Rose wets his hair down with a spray of water, while another woman brings him a cup of tea and some biscuits as a distraction. For a moment, I worry about the biscuits. Is that too much sugar? Would Fiona approve?

  He sits patiently with his eyes closed, while Rose trims the grey strands combed across his scalp. She’s done in less than five minutes.

  ‘Now, what about these ears, mzee?’ she says. ‘Can you sit still for me to tidy these up?’

  ‘If you must,’ Walt scowls, shutting his eyes again, as she trims the wiry spikes sprouting from the side of his head.

  ‘There. We are done!’ Rose brushes Walt down, then whips the cape away. The other women gather around to coo at his new appearance.

  ‘Ohhhh, very maridadi!’ I say, remembering the Swahili word for ‘stylish’.

  Walt blushes, giggles, squirms out of his chair and past the fussing beauticians. ‘Alright, alright – that’s quite enough – you can set me free now! Kwaheri, goodbye!’

  I leave a wad of cash – with a good tip – on the counter and chase him out the door, finding myself doubting Fiona’s certainty that he’d never stand for an African carer.

  10

  BLOOD & BEERS

  Sitting in the living room one evening, the dogs warming their bellies at the fire, Walt reading the newspaper for the third time, I get a Skype call from one of my aunts in Australia. She’s discovered we’ve got long-lost relatives in Nairobi: one of Dad’s cousins on his father’s side, Claire. It occurs to me that I’ve never even thought of my dad having cousins. I know of no one beyond my parents’ siblings – our family tree was ruthlessly pruned by distance when they left Africa for Australia. Claire is younger than my father; she left Zimbabwe a few years later than he did. It looks like she married a white Kenyan guy and has taken his name; apparently they run a bar in town.

  When my aunt tells me the name of it, I’m astonished. It’s the bar just down the road from Sarah and Jack’s place. Could I have been drinking with family all along?

  I manage to wangle an afternoon off a couple of days later to investigate. I find a good spot in the beer garden, down a schooner of Tusker, then ask to speak to the manager. A woman comes out, a stunner, well over six-feet tall. No one in my family is tall, and I’m only five-foot-two. Could we really be related?

  ‘Hi there!’ she says, smiling. ‘How can I help you? Is there an issue with the service?’ I see her glancing at my table, trying to work out what the problem might be.

  ‘No, no, no – no, the service is fine, thank you.’ I jump up from my stool to face her. It’s a strange conversation to initiate. I’m not quite sure where to start. ‘It’s just – um – you’re Claire, right?’

  ‘Yes …’ she says cautiously.

  ‘So, I know this is a bit weird, but I think we might be related?’

  ‘Oh?’ she says. She seems intrigued, but still wary. I don’t blame her – if some half-cut harpy came up to me out of the blue claiming blood ties, I’d be on high alert too.

  ‘My name’s Kirsten. I’m from Australia. You’re a Drysdale, right?’

  ‘Yes – well, I was. Married now!’ She gestures towards the table for us to sit back down.

  ‘Right, so … I’m a Drysdale, too. I think you and my dad, Bruce, are cousins?’

  ‘Oh, go on. Really?’

  ‘Yes!’ I say. ‘On my grandpa’s side. He and your dad are brothers?’

  ‘Uncle Ronny!’ she says, shocked, ‘Is he still alive?’

  ‘Yes!’ I say. ‘He lives with us in Australia.’

  ‘God, he must be getting on.’

  ‘Yeah, he’s nearly ninety. He’s in pretty good shape, though, considering.’

  We just stare at each other for a bit – searching, I suppose, for familial features, and marvelling at our crossing of paths. I sense she’s relaxed now, feeling less like she’s about to be hit up for a loan or a cut of a will. She seems like a lot of fun.

  ‘So, what does this make us?’ she asks.

  ‘Second cousins? Or is it first cousins once-removed?’

  ‘How bloody exciting – a long-lost rellie from Australia! How did you find me?’

  ‘One of my aunts is doing the family tree and heard I was here. She tracked you guys down.’

  ‘All the way here!?’

  ‘Yep. Power of the internet, I guess.’

  ‘Yah, it’s frightening, hey?’ Her Zimbabwean accent echoes my parents’, and makes me think of home.

  ‘The weirdest thing is I’ve been coming here not even knowing about you – my friends live just down the road, so this is their local.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ she says. I shake my head, and we share another moment of staring silence, trying to comprehend the coincidence.

  ‘Sorry,’ I say, ‘I didn’t mean to interrupt if you’re busy. I just wanted to come and say hello.’

  ‘Of course! Bugger work for the day. It can wait. We should have a drink.’ Claire stops a passing waiter and asks him to bring us a couple of beers.

  ‘So, what are you doing in Kenya? Are you here on holiday?’

  ‘It’s a long story,’ I say, then tell her how it all came about. ‘We’re not really nursing so much as … supervising. They’re a slightly odd family.’

  We drink and talk until it gets dark, my new cousin and I, filling each other in on the branches of family tree that have been grafted onto different continents, while fleshing out the new growth and tracing our roots back as far as we can to Scotland, England, Ireland and France.

  Claire tells me about a whole offshoot of the family who ended up in Canada and the US, and how she and her husband, Robert, toyed with the idea of emigrating but now have three daughters, all at primary school here, all proudly Kenyan, here to stay. She can’t help but worry about them, though – she still wonders now and then whether they should go somewhere safer.

  I tell her how hard it was for my parents to start again in Australia, how Dad was twenty-eight years old and had nothing more than the twenty-four dollars in his pocket when he landed in Brisbane. They’ve done well there, though: decades of hard toil and good fortune have rewarded them with a wonderful life in what they see as a generous country. (Being migrants who don’t ‘look’ like migrants was also no doubt an advantage; it’s fair to assume black Rhodesians moving to Queensland in the 1980s wouldn’t have had quite the same experience.)

  When I wonder aloud about how things would have gone for my parents had they stayed, I discover that their leaving Zimbabwe was a slightly more urgent affair than I’ve been led to believe.

  ‘They couldn’t stay,’ Claire explains, seemingly surprised by my naivety. ‘Your dad, his brothers, all of those guys who were in the army, they really had to get out in a hurry after the war. Mugabe wasn’t going to be kind to them. Even the blacks who’d fought with the government were scared.’

  ‘You’re lucky your folks got to Australia,’ Claire says. ‘They were smart to go when they did – it’s virtually impossible to get in there now. So many ended up in South Africa – I did for a time, my parents went there, and my sisters – but it’s got its own problems, too. I moved here when I met Robert. It’s better here. Kenya has so much potential, so much hope.’

  We’re interrupted when I get a text from Fiona. She needs me to come back to the house as soon as I can.

  My family
is put on hold while I return to another.

  The moment I arrive at the house, I’m dragged to the desk in my bedroom and dialled into a Skype conference call with the trustees. I tell Fiona I really don’t want to get involved in her PR war, but she’s insisting on it. She wants them to hear from me and Alice – her ‘independent sources’ – about how everything relating to Walt’s care should be done exactly the way she’s demanding it be done. ‘It will help convince them to approve the payments for you girls, too,’ she says. Hmmm, I’ve never been bribed with my own earnings before.

  ‘So, Kirsten, how does Walt seem to you?’ the trustees ask, also seemingly under professional duress.

  I tell them the truth as I see it: that his physical condition has improved significantly since I arrived, but that mentally he seems to be in steady decline. That some days are better than others, but that a ‘good’ day in this context has come to mean ‘incident-free’, not that he’s happy, per se. That a ‘good’ night means he’s only up once or twice, and a ‘bad’ night requires resettling every hour. That he’s anxious about something at least 80 per cent of the time, in my view. I tell them that Fiona is going above and beyond to make his world comfortable. That she has thought of everything – from his diet to his physical environment to his heart and his feet and his teeth. That he could not possibly ask for a better case manager – that it’s a shame he doesn’t realise his daughter is making sure he’s looked after so well. I tell them he is hot and cold when it comes to Marguerite – that at times he claims to want to divorce her (or worse), but at others wants to know where she is and clearly regards her with great affection. I say that in my opinion, it does seem, generally, that he’s better when she’s around. That he misses her – wittingly or not – when she’s not here.

  No doubt this irritates Fiona, who’s standing listening at the door. Eventually I’m released, my statement recorded, and Alice takes over. I assume she tells the trustees much the same thing, though I know she’s less sympathetic to Marguerite than I am.