We end up in a proper slanging match. I can't believe he doesn't see my point of view and on the contrary is trying to take my customers away from me. I've sometimes worked until late at night building up a customer base selling to company staff and now he stabs me in the back. I'm horribly disappointed and feel as if I'm being used. I can't take being treated like this and react accordingly: I resign on the spot. ‘You just go ahead and do that then,’ he replies with an ironic laugh and hangs up on me.
After a few minutes thinking about what I've just done I realise that he obviously wanted to get rid of me. Now that I've built up a customer base for him he'd rather save my salary. I feel so angry and let down that I feel tears welling up inside me. I can forgive anything but not being treated unfairly. But there I am, just eight months after making a success of my first job again, writing a letter of resignation. But I'm convinced I'll find something else. He'll have to write me a reference and he'll regret it if it's not a good one. A whole series of companies whose staff I've sold to wrote in to thank me for my personal efforts and to say how well-organized everything was.
A week later I turn in my car and my sample stock but only after making sure that I'm paid whatever salary is outstanding. I also want to see the reference he's written first. All of that, however, goes without a hitch and we part with the minimal amount of words. Even though I've enjoyed this first job up until now I'm still glad to have made the right decision. It's fairly obvious that if things had gone on longer it could all have got worse.
Now, however, I no longer have a car or a job, just a flat for which I need money to pay the rent. That evening I drive over to Rapperswil. I need to think things over, but also a bit of distraction. Napirai is sleeping over at the girl-next-door's for the first time and is really excited about that.
In the course of the evening I bump into a few old friends and tell them I've quit my job. One of them says he knows another firm that trades in promotional gifts and he'll ask them if there's anything going. A few days later I'm invited in to meet the relevant people. Their offer is hardly overwhelming but it's better than nothing and maybe I can build it up into something. They deal in all sorts of promotional goods: printed cigarette lighters, ballpoint pens, wallets, etc. They see any firm as a potential customer. But here again it would mean starting from scratch as they don't have any customer base in my area.
A week later I start my new job, but it's almost impossible to fix up any meetings. As a result I end up trawling around restaurants, offices, small businesses with a car laden down with stuff. Our prices however are cheap and people end up giving me loads of orders there and then on the spot. After two to three months the word has got around that the stuff I'm selling is decent quality and good value. As a result people recommend me to others and before long I'm getting potential customers calling me.
It's much easier to get to know the staff in this sort of work and when I turn up at one small firm during their morning break they invite me in for coffee while they take a look at my samples. It's a very different selling technique to my last job but I enjoy it, particularly getting to know lots of people.
By now my circle of friends and acquaintances has got much wider. In particular I've become friendly with a large group of women so it's not hard to find a few people to go out with of an evening. What I like most of all is going dancing.
I notice people sitting or standing close together in bars scarcely able to hear one another speak over the loud music and I can't help thinking they're all waiting for something. It's as if there's an invisible wall between them and me. I get the impression I'm there but not part of it. I can't explain it even to myself as I meet lots of people and even end up flirting mildly with one or two of them. But it all somehow seems unreal, superficial to me. On the other hand I can't get over how much the music and the fashion have changed.
When I think back to the Bush-disco I put on a couple of times in Barsaloi, I have to almost laugh at the comparison. There we made do with the rear room of our shop, after we'd cleared the floor of maize sacks. The only music came from a transistor radio wired up to the battery of an old Land Rover. We had beer, coke and grilled goat meat. Everybody, young and old, piled in to this improvised disco, most of them attending something of the sort for the very first time. They stood there, staring like big children, even the tribal elders wrapped in their woolen blankets, squatting on the floor and laughing. Only the women stayed outside, which didn't stop the men getting on with some wild dancing. They were all happy and gave off this great feeling of ‘togetherness’. Back there I didn't feel any invisible wall between me and everybody else. It was a moving experience, while here it seems more like an extension of consumerism. Even still, I go out on to the floor, let the new music take me and sometimes dance for hours.
All this time Napirai is growing up into a bright happy little girl. We have a strong relationship between us even though I've long since given up breastfeeding her. We still share the same bedroom, and indeed the same big bed.
One weekend I take her over to Biel where I used to have my wedding dress shop which I sold to a friend before moving to Africa. On the way I wonder to myself whether or not I ought to call Marco, whom I used to live with and only dumped because of Lketinga. But as I haven't quite made my mind up by the time we get there, I park the car in the ‘old town’ where my shop used to be. I've long since lost touch with Mimi who took over the shop from me and she doesn't even know I've come back. I walk down the steps to the shop and notice that a few things have changed. Mimi is in the shop talking to two customers. When she looks up and sees us she bursts out in astonishment: ‘Non, c'est pas vrai, Corinne, is it really you? I don't believe it. What are you doing here?’ She's still staring at me in disbelief when I rush up to her and kiss her on both cheeks.
‘Oh, it's a long long story, but let's leave it for another time. First of all, you must tell me how you're doing with the shop,’ I say to snap her out of it. By now of course she's also staring at Napirai. When the two customers leave the shop, we get down to telling each other our life stories of the past few years. Since taking over the shop she's met a new partner, I'm glad to hear, as before she had been on her own for ages after a divorce. Then I fill her in on my story, which even cut short takes a little longer. By the end she sympathies with me on the fact that my great love affair ended so tragically. Out of the blue she asks me if I wouldn't like to bring my daughter down to visit her and her partner in St Raphael in the south of France: they've rented a nice villa for a couple of weeks because her partner has taken on a job working on ship engines for the summer season. She's going down there in two weeks time and we'd be welcome whenever we want. ‘The villa is in a wonderful location, has a big pool and lots of room for all of us. Then you could tell me all the rest of the story of your life in Kenya.’
I take up the offer immediately, as we haven't had a holiday in years, even though whenever I mention having spent four years in Kenya most people here think that must have been a holiday.
After she writes down the address for me, I ask her about Marco. Unfortunately she doesn't see the same old crowd any more but she does know that Marco's moved. I decide therefore just to give him a ring. He sounds neither surprised nor angry to hear from me so we have a longish chat on the phone, before arranging to meet in a restaurant. He's hardly changed at all. We make short work of filling in the bare bones of our lives over recent years and he tells me he's just put a broken relationship behind him too, and has finally had enough of being in a couple, he adds with a beaming smile and no trace of bitterness. After a while, however, we run out of conversation and say goodbye to one another, which is a relief to Napirai who's been getting bored.