Alexandria of Africa (7 page)

Along with the people was a strange mixture of animals: cows, goats, chickens, donkeys. They were in the fields, scratching at the dirt in front of the stores, by the road, and on the road. Nebala would bounce the truck forward and at the last minute the cow or goat or donkey would just move aside. He never slowed down for them or swerved, but he never hit any of them. They just got out of his way. Smart animals. I guess the stupid ones had been killed a long time ago. Sort of like Darwin’s theory of evolution, but with cars and cows.

The few vehicles we did see were just as likely to be off at the side of the road. Somebody would be working on a flat tire, or something underneath the hood, or the vehicle itself. And those that were driving were either moving slowly or dodging back and forth all over the road trying to avoid the gullies. Sometimes we’d be passed by these little minivan things. They had bundles on the roof and what seemed like dozens and dozens of people crammed inside. Renée called them
matatus
, and they were apparently famous for both overloading and under-driving. They were, I guess, like taxicabs everywhere. Probably the drivers spoke as much English as the cab drivers in New York City or L. A.

Almost every time we did pass a vehicle, Nebala would wave and the other driver would wave back. Sometimes the vehicles would come to a stop, driver to driver. They’d yell out something or, if they were close enough, even extend their arms so they could shake. Either this guy knew everybody in Kenya or these were the friendliest people in the world.

The first couple of times we stopped for him to have a conversation I tried to listen in, but there was no point, really. Whatever language they were speaking was different from any language I’d ever heard. Nebala obviously spoke
it, but Renée could chatter a bit, as well. She’d nod her head in agreement and throw out a sentence or two during the conversations.

It struck me as strange that they weren’t simply speaking English. Why didn’t everybody just give up all those other, foreign languages like they were last year’s fashions? Wouldn’t the whole world be a better place if everybody spoke English? Wouldn’t that
Change The World?
Because that’s what was written across Renée’s T-shirt. Frankly, if I’d been her I would have started the whole
change
thing with a better T-shirt. Who went around with slogans on their clothing like they were some sort of walking bumper sticker or billboard? I didn’t want any writing on my clothing unless it said “Gucci.”

To be honest, though, the T-shirt—her brown T-shirt—kind of matched the rest of her outfit. Maybe “matched” wasn’t the right word, because nothing really matched, but it did fit the pattern. She was such a fashion disaster—a walking, breathing fashion train wreck. She could have been the poster child for a new season of
What Not to Wear
. Brown shirt, blue safari shorts, red socks and black sandals, and a gold bandana tied around her head. Was she colour blind as well as fashion blind? Or maybe she’d had to get up so early to get me this morning that she’d dressed in the dark. Even then, what were the odds of getting every single colour to turn out differently? Either she had been shot in the head by a strange kind of Russian roulette for clothing, or this was some type of deliberate attempt to look hideous.

I knew some girls like that. They knew they didn’t have the looks to compete so they just didn’t try. I didn’t know whether they were to be admired for at least acknowledging the truth, or pitied, or both. But the thing was, Renée
could
have been a player. She wasn’t wearing any makeup but she had very nice skin, good bone structure, nice eyes, and a nose that was smaller than mine. She was a bit on the short side—certainly there was no danger of her becoming a runway model—but she was relatively well proportioned. Losing a few pounds wouldn’t have hurt, but who couldn’t say that? Thirty minutes with my makeup case, some flattering clothes, and some tweezers—those eyebrows needed some serious work—and I could have lifted her a few pegs up the food chain. Who knows, she might even have managed to get a ring on that empty wedding finger. Probably nothing big or expensive, but a ring, nevertheless.

I guess some people would have called her a natural beauty, but I really didn’t believe in that idea. I saw beauty as the end product of a complicated process involving skin care, makeup, clothes, lighting, and often some surgical enhancement. It was natural to want to look beautiful, but nature was only a bit player in the process. Given enough time, money, diet, exercise, clothes, a good stylist, and a first-rate surgeon and anybody could look right at home on Venice Beach.

Instantly my hand came up to the bridge of my nose. If rubbing it could have worn it down I wouldn’t have needed to consider surgery.

We slowed down again and Nebala brought the truck to a stop right beside another truck, which had been travelling the other way. He and the other driver got into a long and loud discussion, with lots of laughter.

I didn’t understand much, but what I had been able to figure out was that the word
“jambo”
probably meant “hello,” or some variation on “hello,” and
“kwaheri”
was “goodbye.” And I wasn’t 100 percent sure but the word
“asante”
was used a lot and it might have been “please” or “thank you” or “you’re welcome.” If I could just have figured out how to
say “toilet,” “sparkling water,” and, “yes, I’ll purchase that,” I’d have been all set. Although from what I’d seen of Kenya so far there was nothing I’d actually have wanted to purchase. I don’t know who would have been more shocked by that, my mother or my father. My mother loved shopping even more than I did. In fact, if my family had lived in Kenya my parents might still have been married. It would have eliminated half the arguments they had about her spending money and overextending her credit cards. Dust, mud, and cows were never big on her list of things to buy.

We started up again—everybody yelled out
“Kwaheri”
—and almost instantly we hit a humungous pothole and I was bounced so hard that I nearly hit the roof of the truck.

“Could you try to miss
some
of the bumps?” I snapped angrily.

“Miss them?” he questioned. “You mean I’m
not
supposed to try to hit them?”

Renée cackled like a bird at his lame attempt at humour. Then she jabbered at him in that stupid little language they spoke, and he threw back his head and howled as well.

I almost asked what she had said, because I was positive that it was about me, but I was equally positive that they weren’t about to tell me. Well, let them make their stupid little jokes. In three weeks she’d still be some two-bit tour guide eating road dust, and he’d be some guy wearing a red dress and a blanket driving a beat-up old truck. He looked like some drag queen trucker.

We hit another bump and again I shot up into the air.

“Sorry,” he said,
“miss
them … not
hit
them … 
miss
them … I’ll try to remember.”

This was a new low. I was getting sarcasm and attitude from some guy in a crazy get-up.

“We’re almost there,” Renée said.

I peered hard through the windshield, but I didn’t see any
there
there. We were on a bumpy little stretch of road that looked like every other stretch of road we’d passed for the past hour. Maybe the road was a little narrower and less rutted, but it all looked pretty much the same.

We turned a corner and a large green metal gate stood in our way. Stretched out in both directions were strands of wire making a high fence, and on it were large signs that read, “Danger! Hatari! Electric Fence!” Did
“hatari”
mean danger?

The truck ground to a stop right in front of the gate and Nebala blasted the horn. Two men dressed in identical lime-green jumpsuits came running toward the gate and started to open it.

“What are we doing here?” I demanded. “Why are we going in?”

“This is our destination.”

I felt my whole body flush. Had this whole thing been nothing more than a gigantic scam to put me in jail on the other side of the world, where my father and my lawyer couldn’t help me?

“This isn’t part of the arrangement!” I screamed. “I’m supposed to go to a program! I’m not supposed to go to jail!”

Both Renée and Nebala laughed. This wasn’t funny!

“This isn’t jail,” Renée said. “This is paradise!”

“Since when does paradise need an electric fence to keep people in?” I demanded.

“It’s not to keep people in so much as to keep the outside out. Don’t worry,” she said as she patted me on the leg.

“Don’t touch me!” I snapped, and brushed her hand away.

She was visibly startled. “I’m sorry. I was just trying to reassure you.”

“I don’t need your reassurance,” I lied. And if that was the best reassurance she could give me, it was pretty useless anyway.

The truck bumped forward and through the gates. I looked over and in the side mirror I could see the two guards close the gate behind us.

“You’ll see, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” Renée said.

“I’m not afraid,” I responded instinctively, although the quaver in my voice might have given me away.

The truck came to a stop, and as Renée opened the door I practically pushed her out in my rush to get away.

“You can’t keep me here in this jail!”

“It’s
not
a jail.”

“And I suppose those two aren’t guards? And that isn’t a locked gate and an electrified fence?”

“Those are guards—we call them
askari
—but they’re here to protect you.”

“Hah! They’re here to keep me imprisoned behind your fence!”

Renée didn’t answer. Instead she got that smirky look that had already become familiar and annoying. She turned toward the guards and yelled something I didn’t understand. They both nodded, and one unlocked the chain holding the gate shut and swung it open.

“Please feel free to go out, if you wish,” she said. She bowed and gestured toward the gate.

“Go where?”

“Wherever you wish. This is not a prison. But I have to warn you of the dangers out there.”

“Dangers?” I scoffed. “I’ve been in some pretty dangerous places before.” Once, when I was twelve, I’d got separated from my parents and ended up walking through downtown L.A. all by myself—not the shopping part, but the places where nobody speaks English and the street gangs hang out. It was the scariest fifteen minutes of my life.

“Well, in that case I’m sure you wouldn’t have any trouble with a leopard or an elephant or a lion.”

“Yeah, like those are around here.”

“Alexandria, we’re in Africa. Where is it that you think elephants and lions live?” Renée asked. “That’s why the fence is electrified. That’s the only way to stop an elephant.”

“Here,” Nebala said. He pulled a wooden club from under his belt. “This is a
konga
. You can use it against a leopard.”

I drew my hands back, refusing to take it. “I’ve got something more powerful than that.” I opened my purse
and pulled out my cellphone, holding it aloft like a weapon. “I’m going to call both my father and my lawyer. You two are in
such
trouble!”

“Again, feel free.”

I flipped the phone open and it started searching for a network to connect. It continued to search and search and search but it was finding nothing.

“You can’t stop me from calling my lawyer. I know my rights!”

“Nobody is stopping you except nature, the laws of physics, and a complete absence of cellphone towers in this valley. Even
you
can’t defy the laws of nature, Alexandria.” Renée paused. “But you see through those trees, in the distance? I know you can get reception from the top of that hill. Right, Nebala?”

He pulled back his blanket. Beside the
konga
was a long, sheathed knife, and beside that was a cellphone! He took the phone off the belt and held it to his ear.

“Can you hear me now?” he asked.

Renée burst into laughter. I finally figured out where I’d heard that laugh before—in
The Wizard of Oz
, the Wicked Witch of the West!

“Up there you can get reception,” Nebala said.

“If you can get past the animals, you can make a call.”

“And don’t forget the snakes,” Nebala added.

“There are snakes?”

“Pythons, adders, black mambas, and spitting cobras,” he said.

Renée shuddered. “I hate those the most. They really freak me out.” She turned directly to me. “Do you know about spitting cobras?”

I shook my head.

“They basically spray venom in the form of misty droplets. It can travel up to two yards. It causes permanent blindness if it isn’t treated.”

“How do you treat it?”

“You wash out your eyes,” Renée said.

Nebala nodded. “With milk or urine.”

“Urine? You mean
pee?”

He nodded again.

“That is just totally disgusting. Why would you even think of using urine if you could use milk?”

“Milk may be hard to find. Pee is always available.”

“I’d rather
die
than rub pee in my eyes!”

“Interestingly, that’s basically the choice,” Renée said. “Wash out your eyes or die. Once you’re wounded and can’t get away then the snake bites you and injects venom directly into your bloodstream.”

“Dead, pretty quick,” Nebala added.

“How quick?”

“Depends. On the size of the snake, how much venom has been stored since it last struck, and the body weight of the victim.”

“How much do you weigh?” Renée asked.

“About one-fifteen,” I said, lying off the last seven pounds I needed to lose.

“That’s awfully light for your height.”

Said like somebody who was extremely jealous. Envy, straight envy.

“At your weight you’d probably be dead in about two hours. But those sunglasses of yours would probably protect you anyway and you wouldn’t need to wash your eyes out. Just try not to surprise one. They generally strike only when they’re startled.”

“Walk like this,” Nebala said. He made exaggerated
steps, landing very heavily. “They need to feel the vibrations so they can get away.”