The Warm Heart of Africa

Kevin M. Denny

Description

The Warm Heart of Africa, fifty years in the making, is the story of Susan, one of the first Peace Corps Volunteers. It is also the story of Peter, a ninety-two year old African who became her salvation. She meets him soon after attempting to quit the Peace Corps...but failing. Peter is at first reticent to talk of his past, for fear of opening old wounds. With time, he learns to trust and slowly shares his stories with Susan, beginning with, "My father was the first man to see Livingstone and he almost killed him!"

Later he tells her how Yao slave traders invaded his village when he was six, burning houses and killing the very old, the very young and the weak – those who would not endure the cruel march to the Indian Ocean. He recalls the bitter memory of a slaver dragging his mother from his grasp to be sold for a sultan's harem, never to be seen again.

He then shares with Susan how he and his father were auctioned at the slave market of Zanzibar and crammed into an Arab dhow sailing to Yemen, to be sold once again, his only consolation being that his father was still with him. Two days in, a frigate fired a shot across the bow and Arabs began throwing their cargo into the sea in the grim hope of out sailing the frigate. Peter, too small to be of notice, watched in hiding as an ugly Arab hurled his father into the sea. Then a cannon shot from the frigate demasted the dhow, hurling him into the sea. Unable to swim, he survived by clutching the splintered mast until he was plucked from the sea by men in blue coat who brought him back to their frigate where he took his first step in his twenty-one years in the service of the Queen. As major domo to a young officer, Horace Smith-Dorrien, he would come to see battle against Zulus, Afridis, Pathans, Boers and Sepoys, before returning home to start a life in the service of God, a story he slowly and painfully shares with Susan, like him, a stranger in a strange land.

The author met Peter and was Susan.

Sujets

• Historical
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 04 juillet 2011
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456604080
• Langue: English

Extrait

The Warm Heart of Africa
 
by
Kevin M. Denny
 
Copyright 2011 Kevin M. Denny,
All rights reserved.
 
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
 
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-0408-0
 
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.
 


 
 
 
To
 
The Peace Corps at Fifty
 
And
 
Our Friends in Malawi 
 
Their Constant Kindness
 
Warmed Us All
Introduction
 
Susan Jarrett Brewster, MD
122 Coleridge Road
Perinton, N.Y. 14435
Christmas, 2011
 
Dear Jessica and Will,
Merry Christmas!
I hope I don't have to tell you how much I am going to miss you all...but babies don't choose their seasons and this year it’s my turn to catch them when they drop! So, I'll just remember all the fun we had last year and look forward to being with you again next year. My hope, my dear ones, is that you will accept this year's gift for what it is...at once, an act of audacity and of love.
As you can see, this "gift" had its origins many years ago---to my great horror, almost fifty years. But, it had its rekindling only last February. I can recall the moment. All mother's friends and well-wishers (and all the Baptist do-gooders) had finally left. The three of us were in her living room, enjoying the rarity of an evening cool enough for a blazing fire. For a while, we all just sat there, exhausted, missing her and locked in our own thoughts.
Then, as I recall it, it was you, Jessie, who asked me what I was going to miss the most about her. I gave you one of those empty, pea-rolling-in-a-tin-can-answers: Her smile, her peach pie, the way she always wiped her flour-covered hands on her apron, the way she could never tell a lie and never keep a secret.
You were both quick to add your own favorite memories and we laughed late into the evening telling stories. In the end, I think we slept satisfied that we had captured the essence of your grandmother.
Flying home the next day, I confronted my own dishonesty. I hadn't even come close to sharing with you what I was going to miss the most about her: that gentle voice, so seldom used in anger and so free of expectation---expectation that a daughter should live her life to please her mother. And I thought about the things I never heard her say: "Susan, you will never be able to do that!"; "You have to consider what others will think, my dear!"; "Susan, you'll see the wisdom of my ways, some day!"; "No daughter of mine is ever going to… "
And I could hear her soft voice, once again, affirming me as her daughter, refusing to be my conscience.
Curiously, when I got home, exhausted as I was, I was restless. In the strangest way, I found myself drawn to the old trunk in the attic where I had hoarded away anything remotely worthy of salvage. Without knowing exactly why, I began paging through the journal I had kept in Malawi and, as I did, I began to realize how much her voice was with me then, as well. I heard it, thin but indelible, "Now my dear, I didn't go to all the trouble of having you just so that I could snuff out all your fantasies!"
Reading one's journal is unnerving. It is at the same time both embarrassing and self-aggrandizing. But, the more I read, the more I could see my notebooks full of scribbles for what they really were, naked and painfully honest revelations of a stranger in a strange land and the blueprint of an individual, shaped by her past, forming her future.
At many points, the reading was painful. Perhaps, Will, you can relate to this by remembering your eighteenth birthday and how it felt when we showed those old home movies of you as you were growing up! It tends to make us laugh and cringe at the same time when we dare to look at how we were.
I’ve done my best to turn those decaying notes into something that can pass as a story, debating at times what to include and what to spare you. Without a doubt, the most difficult decision was what to share with you in regard to your father and me. In the end, I chose to err on the side of inclusiveness, rationalizing that you, as fully-grown and mostly-matured adults, might possibly, in some perverse way, better understand how we came together and why, in the end, we failed.
In your kindness, I hope that you will see this year's Christmas gift for what in truth it is: a sadly-delayed thank you to my own parents and a proud hope that I, too, may spare you the fetters of my own expectations.
If, in the end, you would have preferred a sweater, or a shirt or some new underwear, please do not hesitate to lodge your complaint.
MERRY CHRISTMAS!
As Always,
Mom
Chapter 1. The Dignitaries Lounge
 
March 19, 1964
Wheels hit the runway with a thud and then a skid. Suddenly, the plane scooped skyward, like a fish eagle having plucked its prey. Gravity's pull sucked me to attention. My body became weak and heavy. I gasped for air. It could have been from the force or from the fright---most likely the force, as I was strangely without fear, at least, the fear of dying in a fiery conflagration. In fact, as we landed my mind jammed with thoughts of the snakes lingering in the lush, green patches below: black mambas, the fastest reptiles known to God or man, capable of out-running a horse; slit-eyed Gabon vipers hanging stealthily from trees, poised to strike at the top of their victim's head, death coming in a matter of seconds; cobras rising to their full height, flaring their hoods and spitting their venom, blinding their victim in preparation for the fatal attack. Again and again, the thought intruded: "Susan, sometime in the eerie calm of the night, you will startle awake to a scaly-slithering, reptilian nightmare." In truth, at that moment, death by incineration held considerable appeal over death by venom.
Then, as we regained our altitude, a voice filled the hushed cabin. It was British, calm and understated, "Bad show that. Seems that a rather slow-witted cow decided she wanted to graze on our runway. We'll give the fellows down below a few minutes to show the brainless creature that the grass really is greener on the other side of the tarmac, then, we'll give it another go."
I felt safe, the voice telling me that I was in the steady hands of a seasoned pilot, a pilot, I imagined, who had logged thousands of hours over Burma, the South Pacific or the European theater and who knew every bolt, rivet and toggle switch of his nearly indestructible old DC-8---the beast on the runway being merely a minor inconvenience on an otherwise routine East African flight.
By the time that we landed I had pushed my anxieties into the recesses of my mind. If snakes were indeed such an unthinkable menace, Nyasaland would be barren, littered with bones. I looked around at my fellow travelers, studying their faces---the twenty-nine of us who had survived the ten weeks of training. Were their doubts the same as mine? Was I doing the right thing? Would our T.B. project make any difference? Would I have what it takes?
I looked out the window and saw several men in tattered coveralls and knee-high rubber boots rolling the metal stairway to meet the plane. The door opened and warm air, smelling of burning wood and sweetly fragrant flowers, rushed in. Serpentine fears invaded once again. My stomach tightened, then rumbled. As we descended the stairway an official in a baggy brown suit, two fountain pens in his shirt pocket, approached, "You are the Peace Corps, isn't it?" he asked, pronouncing "corps" as if he were in search of the dead.
Indeed, after an inebriated ten-hour flight to Rome, a nine-hour whirlwind tour of the wonders of antiquity, followed by a ten-hour flight to Dar es Salaam and a six-hour layover passed in the sweltering airport, we might easily have been mistaken for corpses. To prove that I was living, I tried out my heretofore, untested Chinyanja, " Muli bwangi Bombo. Dili bwino ?.... How are you? I am well.”
My God, it seemed to work! His smile brightened and he replied, " Ah, dili bwino. Kaya inu ! How wonderful! You speak our language, isn't it? Now let's have you queue up so we can make sure we have everyone accounted for."
Our greeting party was small but enthusiastic. The Peace Corps Director, Mr. Blackwell, himself only one week in the country, was there to meet his first-ever volunteers. Our official greeter, who introduced himself as Mr. Mbalume, expressed his apologies that the Minister of Health could not personally greet us, but hoped we would understand that he was required in Geneva to attend a World Health Organization meeting.
I stood shivering. I had made a huge mistake . Susan, you are not going to be able to pull off this off. It'll take more than you have to give. You're not the person you're pretending to be. You've got to tell them you can’t do it.
Mr. Mbalume collected our passports as we waited in nervous little clusters, the humidity draining the remaining body from my hair. "We will expedite these through Customs for you," he said. "You are our special guests." I reluctantly gave him mine. I was now a hostage without passport. Eventually, an even more official-looking gentleman, young, with perfect teeth and a perfect Oxford accent appeared. "My, my. You all look so hot. It will take a brief period for you to accommodate to the climate," he said, a hint of condescension in his voice. "I am Mr. Msala, Director of the Airport. Please, let me usher you into our Dignitaries Lounge."
We dutifully lined up and marched behind Mr. Msala, who appeared to be no older than any of us. We saw the sign identifying the "Dignitaries Lounge" and filed into the room, the Director personally guiding us to an assortment of well-worn chairs and vinyl sofas ringing the room. Soon, four white-jacketed, red-fezzed waiters appeared, carrying t