Nairobi Dreaming - Complete!

Chapter 14: Things in Common

I was one of the last people to get breakfast and, not wanting to be the person who held everyone up, I ate too quickly and ended up feeling sick. Not enough to vomit but enough so that when I noticed Tovah clutching a workbook in her hands and a stack of handouts about winter I wasn't upset by it. It struck me as surreally comedic that of all the things she had decided to teach a classroom of East African school children about she had picked winter and no adult had questioned her choice. I even saw Abigail praise her lavishly for being prepared.

On the bus I avoided making eye contact with Kay or James so that I could sit by myself and spend the ride wondering why I was friends with Kay. Was it her illness that made her behave the way she did or was this just who and how she was? Had she once been different? Did it even matter? I had always told myself I did not want to abandon her. To be one of those people. But if I left, who would I be leaving? A friend I no longer liked or a friend whose mental illness had changed her?

I had so many questions.

Why hadn't she had some kind of light conversation with me about what she intended to do with James? We weren't dating, we barely knew each other, the lines were blurry, she had clearly been flirting with him, but it still felt like the right, friendly thing to do. To just make sure. Especially after I had so clearly spent the afternoon with him.

Perhaps, I thought, suddenly, that was actually precisely why she had made such an aggressive move. If I thought for a minute about James not as a person, but as a beautiful, fascinating thing to be pursued and won, it made sense.

There were images, flashes, that passed through my mind that I had no interest in diving too deep into. I imagined her sidling up to the slim, muscular body I felt so drawn to, her fingers slithering over his toned torso, her lips by his neck, and it filled me with pathos. Jealousy wasn't quite the right word. I was more angry at her than I was worried about what he might want somehow.

I forced the image out of my head and in its place another uncomfortable thought: I realized I hadn't even told her about the shooting, about why I had been so keen to go on an adventure, and that she had never bothered to ask what would make me pack up and go like that. Perhaps it was expected. A sudden shift like that for someone like me had no real consequences but she knew me better than that, didn't she?

Every now and again I would hear Abigail, her voice cutting through the low chatter on the bus and try as hard as possible not to hear the words. I figured out she was scolding Essie about something and I knew whatever it was was probably stupid and I didn't need another thing to be upset about.

***

We arrived to find the teachers seated outside on chairs, under the shade of a large tree. There was a blank flip board positioned across from them and they looked bored, like they had been waiting awhile. I checked my phone, feeling my temper begin to rise: It was 9:30. When had we told them we would be there?

I noticed that there was what looked like an outhouse at the bottom of the hill the school was perched on. There was writing on the side of it in multi coloured paint that was hard to read because the siding was corrugated metal and the lettering was not very clear. It looked like it had been painted by children.

I had just figured out that, contrary to every guess I had made about what it could be, the first word was "gonorrhea" when Richard and Mr.Odinga emerged from one of the dimly lit classrooms.

"Ah, you're here, finally," Richard said. He didn't say it with malice but he said it pointedly.

Abigail gave him a cold look and a shattered, restrained smile. "We came as soon as we could."