At the same time I'm busy getting Napirai ready for her first day at school. How time flies! Already my daughter is about to go to school and embark on the first step in the serious business of life. If she had still been living with her father's tribe, she'd probably already be out all day in the baking sun with a herd of goats. Her beautiful hair would have been shaved off with a razor blade and she'd be wearing no more than a kanga and her first necklace. No, when I think about it, I'm glad things have turned out as they have.
My mother and I go along with her proudly for her first day at school. She looks absolutely beautiful in her pretty little summer dress with her brown skin and her braided hair down to her shoulders. She opens up her brightly colored satchel and sets her pencil case on her desk to listen to the pleasant young schoolteacher, who, as a bonus, turns out to have long blond hair which has always fascinated Napirai.
Before long she hardly notices my mother and me, and we slip quietly away for an hour or so.
In the meantime I've been scribbling down my story of Africa like a madwoman. One evening I find myself recalling the time live and a half years previously when I was sitting with Napirai in the bus from Mombasa to Nairobi pleading with Lketinga to sign the piece of paper I've prepared, agreeing to let us leave the country for three weeks. All of a sudden I feel myself beginning to tremble all over and my chest constrict as if there's a huge weight pressing down on it. I can literally hear the parping of the bus horn and hear Lketinga saying in a sad doubtful voice: 7 don't know if I see you and Napirai again’ Then with a brusque couple of words he jumps off the bus and we set off. I look down at the piece of paper in my hands and see he's signed it and the tears roll down my cheeks as I stare silently at the world rushing by outside.
No sooner have I written these few lines than I have to throw the pencil and writing pad to one side and burst into tears. My whole body is shaking and wracked with sobbing. Right then I decide not to write a single line more. I wrap my arms around myself as if looking for some form of comfort and feel as if I'm being pulled down into some hole in the ground. I'm crying for my beloved Kenya, my great love and my shattered dream, for all the wonderful and terrible things I've experienced in this almost surreal world.
All of a sudden my little Napirai is standing in front of me, woken from her sleep and staring at me in shock with tears in her eyes: ‘Mama, why are you crying like that? Have you hurt yourself? You never cry!’ I lift her up on to my lap and hold her tight while I try to get my breath back, taking huge gulps of air. ‘I haven't hurt myself darling. I'm just crying because I couldn't manage to be happy with your daddy.’ ‘But you've got me,’ the child replies, sobbing herself now. I do my best to console her, stroking her back gently until she calms down again. Then I take her back to our bed and promise I won't cry again. Back in the living room I glance at the clock and am astounded to see that it's gone two a.m. That means I must have been wallowing in my own misery for the best part of three hours. I would never have imagined that writing up my African story would have such an effect. I was certain I had achieved closure on that episode in my life. But it looks as if I had only suppressed it all. I haven't cried so much in years and now gradually I feel a great calm creeping over me almost as if I'd been given a sedative.
I make the decision to get this last pad to Anneliese to be typed up as soon as possible so that at last the whole thing will be behind me. Because I've been sitting on the floor to write I ache all over, but at least I've done it! Our story is down on paper and with that reassuring thought in my mind I soon fall fast asleep. The next day my eyes are so swollen from the crying of the night before that I can hardly see to fix breakfast for Napirai. I promise her I'll cook us something nice later and by midday I'm back to my old happy self.
A few days later Anneliese brings me my ten handwritten notepads back along with a typed and printed script. Now my four years in the Kenyan bush are lying there in a file on my desk. I can hardly believe it. We drink to the possibility of it becoming a successful book and I promise her that if it gets published I'll pay for a super holiday for her. I tell the family that my ‘opus’ is complete and Eric offers to make copies for me so I can send it off to several publishing houses.
You Can Learn Anything if You Try
I'm flicking through the small ads as usual when suddenly my eye lights on a boxed ad looking for a woman between twenty-four and thirty with knowledge of the dental business to sell high-quality products to dentists. Experience in the sales representative business would be an advantage but is not essential. The job offers a good salary and a company car. I read it again and tell myself it's just the job I've been looking for. You can learn anything if you try and my experience as a sales rep has got to count in my favor. What sort of dentist is going to buy anything from a twenty-four-year-old.
That's the frame of mind I'm in as I apply to the agency. A week later I get an invitation to a preliminary interview. I go through my CV with the interviewer and he seems particularly interested in my time in Kenya. At the end I have an hour in which to do a test on the computer. As I'm leaving the interviewer tells me I'll have to wait to hear if I get onto the shortlist. There have been more than eighty applicants for the job. When I hear that I decide not to get my hopes up as I don't exactly fit their bill too closely.
In the next few days I pop into a bookshop to ask which publishers might be interested in taking a look at my manuscript. I reckon on talking to the big firms only as there doesn't seem any point in making my life story public if only a few hundred copies are going to be printed. If it's going to come out it would be best if it were published in Germany, and then Switzerland would be just automatically covered. I leave the bookshop with a whole list of addresses and when I get home I start ringing round.
It doesn't take long for the reality check to kick in. After giving a brief description of my story over the phone I'm already getting automatic rejections. One or two of the firms, however, agree to take a look at the manuscript, including Scherz, Knaur and Heyne. I get copies made of a few of my best photographs from Africa and write an accompanying letter referring to the phone conversation. Finally I attach a recent photo of myself to the accompanying letter and send it off with my fingers firmly crossed. They say I'll have to wait up to three months for an answer.
The employment agency invites me for a second interview, which perks up my interest in the job again. If I've got that far maybe my chances aren't that bad after all. Once again I have a meeting with the same interviewer who tells me I did well in the test. Then he asks me if I would be able to go abroad on a training course lasting about ten days. Of course I say yes. At the end of our conversation he asks me rather embarrassedly if I would mind toning down the bright-red color of my hair as dentists are rather conservative, as is the head of department I'm due to meet in the next few days. I have to laugh but tell him:
‘Look, up to now I've done fine with my hair this color, selling all sorts of things. This red hair is sort of my trademark; it's become part of my personality. I don't think it does any harm to bring a bit of color into the lives of people set in their ways.’
‘Fine, fine, I get the message. We'll see how it goes,’ he says. ‘I'll let you know some dates but there are still eight other people on the shortlist.’