not that I’m just pretending. As a matter of fact, I instantly push all my problems to the back of my mind.
“My son,” she starts, and now I become completely concerned.
“What has happened to your son?”
The tears in her eyes have turned into a full-blown breakdown. She is crying uncontrollably. I take her in my arms and we sit down together on the bench. Whatever it is must be quite bad.
After what seems like ages, she stops crying. I give her the tissue that was in my bag. I had used it before, but it doesn’t matter. I think it still serves the purpose.
“Roswitha, whatever it is, just calm down and tell me. I am sure we can find a solution together.” That sentence sounds very wise and almost too academic for me. And I know why: it is the favorite sentence of my fantasy therapist. I imagine him telling it to me, and I have convinced myself that I hate it.
“He has gone to the Krippe ,” 42 she says amid sobs.
“OK.” I expect that she is going to finish the sentence with something to the effect that something catastrophic has happened to him at the Krippe .
“He is alone there,” she continues, and despite myself, the temptation to kick her butt completely engulfs me.
“You mean with the caregivers and the other children?” I cannot only hear the sarcasm in my voice but feel it as well.
“Yes,” she answers.
“Is it his first day there today?” I ask in my characteristic kind way.
“No, it’s the third week. The familiarity phase is now over and I have to leave him there,” she adds and bursts into a fresh bout of tears.
I don’t know why a kid going to the Krippe is reason to walk around wailing. I have a strong feeling that the woman has mental issues, but I just watch her sympathetically. I wonder what the real reason for her tantrum is. I know that her tantrum is just a tip of the iceberg.
I hold her hand and we sit there silently. My mind is back to the self-help books I have been reading. Visualize your future . . . visualize the kind of life you want . I think of the interview at Lufthansa and wonder if I have not taken that advice a bit too literally. I sat and visualized myself in an airplane as a stewardess. But more importantly, I saw myself at a destination. A warm, beautiful destination with friendly people. I look at Roswitha, and realize that among the things I want for my new life, mentally stable friends rank quite high.
Irmtraut
Kenya, 2010,
a Night Out in Nairobi
E xpectations. They are the biggest cause of human misery. The period of time after I landed in Kenya had so far contained some of the happiest moments of my life. I hadn’t expected to survive the flight. I had not only arrived safely but was also beginning to actually love my life.
I generally had either no expectations at all or very low expectations. The result was that any small achievement made me smile. Mr. Makokha dropping me at the office safely made me smile. Pouring myself a cup of instant coffee made me smile. This was in sharp contrast to my life in Europe. Africa, I was learning, was nothing like I had thought. It was as close to paradise as I had ever been.
My phone rang. The breathless voice of Charity, my Kenyan assistant, came through.
“Mr. Crack is on his way to your office,” she said apologetically. Mr. “Crack” was actually Mr. Clark. He was our accounts director and a native of the United Kingdom, or what he fondly referred to as the “motherland.”
“Thanks.” I smiled into the phone. I found it cute that she called him that, especially because I knew how much it infuriated him. Most Kenyans spoke English with a funny accent but I was slowly getting used to them. I had so far identified three categories of these accents. There were those like Charity who didn’t seem to realize that the letters r and l were two different letters. A conversation with this type ended up with sentences like ‘The reandership of that company is torerant to such things !’
“My son,” she starts, and now I become completely concerned.
“What has happened to your son?”
The tears in her eyes have turned into a full-blown breakdown. She is crying uncontrollably. I take her in my arms and we sit down together on the bench. Whatever it is must be quite bad.
After what seems like ages, she stops crying. I give her the tissue that was in my bag. I had used it before, but it doesn’t matter. I think it still serves the purpose.
“Roswitha, whatever it is, just calm down and tell me. I am sure we can find a solution together.” That sentence sounds very wise and almost too academic for me. And I know why: it is the favorite sentence of my fantasy therapist. I imagine him telling it to me, and I have convinced myself that I hate it.
“He has gone to the Krippe ,” 42 she says amid sobs.
“OK.” I expect that she is going to finish the sentence with something to the effect that something catastrophic has happened to him at the Krippe .
“He is alone there,” she continues, and despite myself, the temptation to kick her butt completely engulfs me.
“You mean with the caregivers and the other children?” I cannot only hear the sarcasm in my voice but feel it as well.
“Yes,” she answers.
“Is it his first day there today?” I ask in my characteristic kind way.
“No, it’s the third week. The familiarity phase is now over and I have to leave him there,” she adds and bursts into a fresh bout of tears.
I don’t know why a kid going to the Krippe is reason to walk around wailing. I have a strong feeling that the woman has mental issues, but I just watch her sympathetically. I wonder what the real reason for her tantrum is. I know that her tantrum is just a tip of the iceberg.
I hold her hand and we sit there silently. My mind is back to the self-help books I have been reading. Visualize your future . . . visualize the kind of life you want . I think of the interview at Lufthansa and wonder if I have not taken that advice a bit too literally. I sat and visualized myself in an airplane as a stewardess. But more importantly, I saw myself at a destination. A warm, beautiful destination with friendly people. I look at Roswitha, and realize that among the things I want for my new life, mentally stable friends rank quite high.
Irmtraut
Kenya, 2010,
a Night Out in Nairobi
E xpectations. They are the biggest cause of human misery. The period of time after I landed in Kenya had so far contained some of the happiest moments of my life. I hadn’t expected to survive the flight. I had not only arrived safely but was also beginning to actually love my life.
I generally had either no expectations at all or very low expectations. The result was that any small achievement made me smile. Mr. Makokha dropping me at the office safely made me smile. Pouring myself a cup of instant coffee made me smile. This was in sharp contrast to my life in Europe. Africa, I was learning, was nothing like I had thought. It was as close to paradise as I had ever been.
My phone rang. The breathless voice of Charity, my Kenyan assistant, came through.
“Mr. Crack is on his way to your office,” she said apologetically. Mr. “Crack” was actually Mr. Clark. He was our accounts director and a native of the United Kingdom, or what he fondly referred to as the “motherland.”
“Thanks.” I smiled into the phone. I found it cute that she called him that, especially because I knew how much it infuriated him. Most Kenyans spoke English with a funny accent but I was slowly getting used to them. I had so far identified three categories of these accents. There were those like Charity who didn’t seem to realize that the letters r and l were two different letters. A conversation with this type ended up with sentences like ‘The reandership of that company is torerant to such things !’
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