It Happened on the Way to War (18 page)

“Is it possible?” Tabitha asked with uncharacteristic excitement. Since my mother did her own research and writing during the summers, she might travel to Kenya. Tabitha's enthusiastic reaction prompted me to ask.

My mother was thrilled when I asked her to fly to Nairobi for ten days to help Tabitha. I didn't ask her to be the guest of honor at the opening ceremony. That would have made her uncomfortable. We spoke about how we knew Dad would love to return to Kenya as well. Unfortunately, he was busy with his own research on the effects of a coalmine disaster in West Virginia.

Mom's security was heavy on my mind a month later when she arrived in Kibera. One morning toward the beginning of her visit, I spotted her walking alone near the clinic. I had just returned from a sports-program meeting with Salim, and I was on a part of the tracks that towered above Kibera on a steep, four-story-high slope.

“Mom, up here!” I shouted.

She couldn't hear me. A tall man staggered toward her. The man pointed at her. Mom stopped. He stepped toward her. I leaped off the tracks and bounded down the muddy slope. He stepped closer.

I barreled toward the man like I was back on the high school gridiron, shoulders lowered, fists clenched. Just before I could plow into his midsection, I slipped and skidded in the mud between them. When I stood up, his strong body odor and alcoholic breath made me gag. He stuck out his palm and slurred, “
Mzungu
, give me something small.”

“Get lost.”

“I am lost,
mzungu
.”

He was probably harmless, but I was too worked up to laugh. As I escorted my mom back to the clinic, the man stammered in Swahili, “Something small. Something small.
Mzungu
has something small.”

“Thank you, son.” Mom put her arm around my shoulder. “You came to the rescue for Mama Omosh.”

TABITHA HAD MOVED into the new, seven-room clinic beneath the railroad tracks, and Mom stayed in one of the empty rooms. Kash lived in the other spare room rent-free in return for security.

My father would have lost his temper if he had known about Mom's living arrangements. No security precaution in Kibera would've been strong enough to satisfy even his most basic safety requirements. After all, my mother may have been the first fifty-year-old white woman to have spent nights in Kibera. Although I thought she had one of the safest arrangements in the slum, it was not without risks. Even Salim and Tabitha differed in their opinions when I asked them separately for advice. Salim, the only person I knew who was as hyper-security-conscious as my father, thought it was too dangerous. “I don't recommend it,” he said. “Anything can happen.”

Tabitha, on the other hand, was confident that my mother would be safe as long as she didn't walk alone outside of the clinic at night. I shared both perspectives with Mom and left the decision to her. Not surprisingly, she wanted to give it a try. Mom still had an adventurer's spirit and a nurse's heart.

ON HER SECOND night in Kibera, Mom awoke to a clamoring noise on the tin roof above her room. She called Kash, who was sleeping in the adjacent room. Responding immediately, Kash inspected the premises with his machete and a hammer.

“
Hakuna matata
, Mama Omosh,” Kash reported after a thorough search. “No problem. It's just a pussycat.”

Mom laughed and went back to bed. She saw her stay in Kibera as a precious gift. She cherished her interactions with Tabitha, Jane, Kash, and the clinic staff. She spent a fair amount of time, as well, with the first Nubian I had met in Kibera, the cofounder of the Gange car wash, Ali Khamis Alijab. Ali offered to walk Mom around Kibera. He was older than most of the youth representatives Salim and Kash were mobilizing for the sports program, but he wanted to stay involved and was honored to welcome my mother to his community.

Ali still lived a Spartan life. He survived on a meal a day and put what little savings he generated from hawking used shoes toward school fees for his beloved daughter, Khadija. Over the past year, he had taught himself how to type with the scrap keyboard that he had borrowed from a friend. Mom and I helped Ali set up an e-mail account and send his first e-mail. We celebrated the event with lunch at a pizza place downtown. It was Ali's first taste of pizza.
“Tamu.”
He grinned and released a baritone chuckle. “Sweet.” He ate one piece, boxed the remainder for Khadija, and insisted that we not purchase any more. “You have done enough.
Shukran
, Thank you.”

Each night, Mom penciled pages of observations from her days in the clinic and her walks with Ali. She wrote in a yellow tablet notebook as Kash listened to Edith Piaf in the adjacent room. Ever the anthropologist, Mom recorded sights and sounds, events and conversations, and details about the people. It was the people that my mother found most compelling. She tolerated the living conditions out of respect for her new friends and colleagues. It was one way that she lived according to her conviction that all lives are fundamentally equal.

The work never stopped at Tabitha's clinic. Oftentimes the most urgent medical cases came late at night: babies to deliver, rape victims, wounds from fights, and late-stage complications from AIDS. The work did, however, ebb and flow, and Mom and I were with Tabitha during one late afternoon lull when she asked my mother the meaning of the name Rye. Mom explained that I was named after a scene in the book
Catcher in the Rye
, where the protagonist, Holden Caulfield, pictured himself standing at the edge of a cliff in a field of rye. He was there to protect the children playing in the field. Mom described it as a beautiful field with long wisps of amber-colored rye tall enough to touch Tabitha's shoulders, and stretching for as far as the eye could see.

“Oh, I see it. It is good,” Tabitha reacted. “You're a guardian.”

“No more than you are,” I said.

“Yes,” she replied, “that is what I hope to do here for the widows and the orphans.”

“My!” Mom gasped, “this is unbelievable.” Tabitha's insight was genius. Her observation was a link between my two worlds of Kibera and military service. For my mother, it was the first time she had thought of her profession with a word like
guardian
. She later told me that she remembered this as one of the most meaningful moments of her ten days in Kibera.

I knew my mother's trip would impact her, though I underestimated the profound cultural significance that her visit conveyed. Salim and Tabitha viewed her trip as an omen of CFK's potential to survive beyond that summer. Mom's presence cemented our long-term commitment. It was no surprise that Tabitha insisted my mother be the guest of honor for the new clinic's opening. Mom was uncomfortable with the arrangement, but she agreed to it so long as nothing special was done for her, and that she could continue to help Tabitha at the clinic after the formal ceremony.

The ceremony itself required substantial preparation. We needed to use it to build a broader base of support. Salim arranged for a youth group of drummers and dancers from MYSA to open the event, and we invited a number of people whom we thought we could recruit to a board of trustees if we eventually decided to keep CFK alive in Kenya. The invitees included Peter Whaley's friend Chris Tomlinson from the Associated Press, and Jennifer's colleague at General Motors, Ben Mshila. Reuters news agency offered to send a film crew from its television show
Africa Journal
, and an NGO called Pharmacists Without Borders agreed to provide Tabitha with low-cost medicine.

We gathered to the sound of drums in the clinic's triangle-shaped open-air waiting area. MYSA dancers swung into motion as drums thumped and the singing began. Nate spontaneously jumped out of his seat and started dancing with high knees and outstretched arms. People laughed at first, but soon we were all dancing. We were dancing with each other and with members of the community whom we had never met. Mom danced. Even Tabitha was dancing, though she was more restrained with her moves than others.

The only people who didn't dance were Salim and Chris Tomlinson. As confident as Salim could be in the community, he was often more withdrawn in front of larger audiences when his role was not clearly defined. As for Chris, he later told me that the only dancing he did was his native Texas two-step after at least a half-dozen shots of bourbon. I, however, had no problem embarrassing myself with my funky-chicken moves and absence of rhythm. Mom was happy, the sun was out, and Tabitha was about to launch a seven-room clinic. It was one of the best days of my life.

As the music died down we took our seats and Tabitha welcomed us with a speech. She was wearing her black leather coat and pilgrim outfit. She spoke softly as she referenced her note card. Her glasses were foggy and large, and reminded me of the glasses I had been forced to wear at Officer Candidates School. When she greeted “Mama Omosh” as the guest of honor, the audience gave a round of applause, which made Mom blush. Tabitha spoke about her vision to serve widows and orphans, and her dream of one day seeing a doctor who came from Kibera. She closed by talking about her motto for the clinic—Sacrificing for Success. Nate called it the “understatement of the century.”

Tabitha's words were as modest as her delivery. After she finished speaking, I delivered brief remarks that I had memorized in Swahili. My main point was that although the clinic was named after me, it belonged to the community. That was what made it unique.

An assistant chief made the closing remarks. The chief had been fairly supportive of our work after he realized that we might make his life difficult if he continued to ask Tabitha for “something small.” The chief said he knew that CFK was different from other NGOs because he had seen Tabitha, Nate, and me walking late at night “when even I don't like to walk. If I'm out then, you'll see me carrying my club.”

One night earlier that summer, the chief had spotted me walking with my hammer in my hand. Late night in Kibera was no time for fist bumps and small talk. I had greeted him in Sheng and kept walking. The chief retold the story of this brief encounter.
“Wazungu hawa wana Kibich damu,”
he said, pointing at Nate and me and using the
Sheng
word for Kibera as the audience laughed. “These white guys have Kibera blood.”

The ceremony ended and Tabitha began treating patients with a volunteer Kenyan medical doctor named Sarah Onyango. Nate, Semaj, and I sat back and observed as residents lined up for care. Semaj was impressed. He wasn't sure what he'd discover when he joined us after our first month. He certainly didn't expect to see international press coverage of a new clinic led by a local nurse.

“What's gonna happen to CFK?” Semaj asked. “I mean, we can't just go away now, can we?”

He was asking the pivotal question. Although Tabitha was making great strides, health care was never our primary focus. But there was something magical at that moment. If Tabitha could do all of this, why couldn't we do more in partnership, not only with her, but with the other Tabithas of Kibera?

THE U.S. AMBASSADOR didn't come to the clinic opening. In retrospect, it was a good thing. Tabitha wouldn't have been pleased if the ambassador had upstaged my mother. My outreach to the ambassador did, however, secure us a private meeting at his office. I planned to take the full team to the meeting: Salim, Tabitha, Elizabeth, Nate, Semaj, and my mother. Unfortunately, I was authorized to bring only three visitors to the meeting, each of whom would need a thorough background check. Security was a major concern at the embassy, where the memory of the 1998 Al Qaeda attacks on the U.S. embassies in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam was still fresh in people's consciousness.

Although Nate, Semaj, and my mom immediately offered to bow out of the meeting, I was frustrated by the limit on the number of visitors. I thought the embassy was overreacting to the threat of terrorism. If not for my father sending me e-mails to be on the lookout for signs of Islamic extremists, terrorism wouldn't have entered my mind. Dad repeatedly warned me to conceal my identity as a U.S. Marine, and avoid “tourist traps” and other “soft targets.” He commented to me and his gang of old Marine friends that the terrorist Osama bin Laden needed to be the focus of U.S. national security. Dad rarely advocated for the use of lethal force, but he was uncompromising in his views on bin Laden. I didn't understand why at the time. I thought he was overreacting and discounted his warnings until we arrived for our first meeting and I witnessed the spectacle that was the U.S. embassy. Heavily guarded with high, cinder-block walls, stadium floodlights, and ribbons of razor wire, it looked like a maximum security prison.

There was one complication before entering. Tabitha had insisted on bringing Ronnie, her adopted, eight-month-old son. Sure enough, the Marine sentry, a sergeant, stopped us before we reached the metal detector. “There are only four people on the manifest to meet with the ambassador,” the sergeant, a young hard charger, said in a crisp tone.

“My mistake.” I took out my military identification card for the first time since I had arrived to Kenya and tried to make my voice sound deep. “Lieutenant Barcott, good to meet you, Sergeant.”

“Sir.” The sergeant inspected my ID and looked at me skeptically, “You're a Marine?”

“Yes, special assignment, Sergeant,” I replied, thinking about the length of my hair. It had been four years since I had kept it so long.

“Well, sir, I'm sure the ambassador won't mind a baby.”

“Oohrah, Sergeant.”

“Oohrah, sir.” He popped to attention as we passed through the metal detectors.

“What was that?” Salim asked.

“That's our greeting,
oohrah
.”

“Sounds funny, and, ‘sir'? I hope you don't start expecting us to call you sir in Kibera.”

“No way, bwana. You're the sir.”