An East African Story
Her delicate hands fumbled with my watch because it was something from an unknown world, mysterious. The others scolded her and the apologies poured out. I laughed and tucked the moment away.
5:02. It’s a daily occurrence I’ve come to expect. It doesn’t surprise me like it used to, when I’d hear the high pitched beeping and fumble with the buttons until it finally stopped. Now I just accept it into the rhythm of my day. I allow the the reverberations to wash over me and remember. 5:02.
When I catch her eyes looking at mine she quickly looks away with a sheepish grin as if I’d caught her hand in a cookie jar. I smile back and we laugh a little at our vulnerability.
I don’t want to forget the bright eyes that looked up at me in the middle of a rainstorm, soaking wet and laughing. I don’t want to forget the way she silently slipped her hand in mine as we walked to Sunday school together. I don’t want to forget the way they watched me, wondering if I knew they were watching. I don’t want to forget the games they included me in and the way their laughter pierced the bright blue Kenyan sky. I don’t want to forget the dreams she whispered to me in that moment that was only ours. Mostly, I don’t want to forget how we’re the same, you and I.
Three languages pour out of her mouth like it’s nothing new. Rote. Routine. Her hands are covered in salt, sand, and scales, so she brushes them off on her skirt. Good as new. She looks at us with dancing eyes, always bursting with a smirk and a comment delivered to her closest ally in her local staccato tongue. She wants her face to be white like ours, she says with a smile. I grimace with the pain that comment sends to my stomach. ‘But your skin is beautiful — tell her she’s beautiful!’ I say, forgetting one of her three languages is one I know and speak. No, it must be to protect from the sun. It must be tradition. It must be anything but that. But me wanting what isn’t doesn’t make it so. She looks at me in her painted face and smiles.
Boys walk by like they haven’t a care in the world. They are the owners of these streets in the unwritten rules of the land. Rules that my white skin and foreign accent protect me from. I am just a visitor to these places. I watch from a distance, see the interplay of the sexes as a casual observer. But I don’t forget the way the boys swayed with the confidence of nations. The way the girls crouched in their hidden corners, not hidden enough. All the fabric in the world couldn’t make them invisible, remove their reproach, open their world.
Your culture has its rules, its traditions, its history. Deeply embedded, like the scars on your skin. Just as painful. Just as jarring.
So you fled. You fled because you wanted to. Because the world wasn’t going to tell you what to do, who to be. You didn’t want that life. Didn’t choose it. How did you know? Where did you find your bravery? You were wise beyond your years.
Here, you’re allowed to be a child again, and so the rain washes over you without abandon, warm beads caressing your face. The face of a child who has seen too much, felt too much, lived too much. But in this moment, you are here and the rain washes away the past.
Lightening cracks and we scream and run for cover. This time your screams are made in play. You are safe here. At last.
