I thank him and leave the building, hoping against hope that I really do get the job. On the way home I even stop at a church to light a candle and offer up a prayer.
A couple of days later a letter inviting me to go and see the dental company arrives. It's a big, modern pharmaceutical concern and as soon as I enter the building my initial nervousness vanishes and I feel at ease even before I've met the man I've come to see. He turns out to be just a few years older than me and seems very nice, quiet and even a little shy. With my height, my red hair and in my classic blue suit I feel even as if he might find me a bit intimidating. But he relaxes a bit as we get talking and before long he's even chuckling at my stories. I get the impression we're getting on well. After an hour he tells me he's made his mind up: my energy and my unusual life story make me just the right person as far as he's concerned but the ‘big boss’ will have to agree.
There are still two more people the top man is interested in who actually have experience in the dental profession. It's possible the ‘big boss’ will want to see me. He does, two days later. The ‘big boss’ turns out to be a skinny little man which makes me feel even more awkward. We've barely sat down together than he fires the question at me: ‘Just why do you think you're the right person for this job? Where do you see yourself ten years from now? How good are you at coping with the pressure of training, working and looking after your child?’ After two hours’ interrogation I'm allowed to leave and told I'll hear in a week's time either one way or the other or be called back in for another interview. I stand up and look the two of them straight in the eye and say: ‘Gentlemen, I would be delighted to come and work for you but I don't think there is anything more I can tell you. You've seen me now too and I think I'm the last of the three candidates you wanted to interview, so I'll expect to hear from you by Monday, as I'm afraid I do have other offers. I hope you'll understand my situation and I wish you both a pleasant weekend.’
With that I shake hands with both of them and leave. I've no idea whether my little speech was a good idea or not but in the end people have to make up their minds!
It's nearly noon so I drive over to where Hanni works to have lunch with her. As it's Friday, we decide to go out dancing again this evening. On the way home my mobile phone rings and it's my future boss: ‘Congratulations, Frau Hofmann. You've convinced the ‘big boss’. Now it's up to you to show us what you can do. You start on November 1.’ I'm completely taken aback and laugh aloud as I answer: ‘Wow! Super! I'm really really pleased and will do my absolute best for you.’
‘I know you will,’ he says, laughing too, and promises to send me out a contract in the next couple of days. I've done it again! I've beaten off eighty other competitors. I'm absolutely delighted to find I'm no longer unemployed and have a well-paid and interesting job.
When I get back home I'm in seventh heaven until I open my letter box and find the first of my manuscripts returned with a brief accompanying note: ‘Returned with thanks. We regret we see no place in our catalogue to publish your work.’
I take a look at my manuscript and get the immediate impression that nobody has even bothered to take a look at it. Every single page still looks as if it has just come off the printer: neat, tidy and never been read. I don't give a damn! I've just got a good new job that I won't be tempted to give up over the next few years. I can go and choose a company car, I've got a decent expense account, a good salary and I get a percentage of the sales profits. I'm not giving all that up easily, I tell myself, as I dump the returned manuscript in the cellar.
By the time I'm due to start my new job on November 1, all the other packages have come back too, each one with a similar rejection. One of the publishers even says that it's just not exciting enough! I can hardly believe what I'm reading. There I was living out in the open, deep in the bush, going from one extreme to the other, giving birth to a child in the craziest circumstances, describing dangerous encounters with buffalo and elephants out in the bush, car breakdowns that could have cost me my life, without even mentioning the woman who pulled her dead baby from her own body in my car, something that nearly sent me insane. Just how much more excitement do these gentlemen publishers expect? That's what I end up asking myself as I put all the returned manuscripts away.
Actually I tell myself I'm pleased. Who knows what telling all that in public would bring upon us? I've got an interesting job and an intelligent, pretty daughter. Writing down the story of my life in Africa has been therapeutic and now I feel I'm changing and have got a new lease on life. Only the pains in my back remain as an almost daily reminder of the manuscripts now lying packed away in the basement.
By now, however, I'm starting to feel we're a bit cramped in our little flat and that at seven, Napirai could really do with a room of her own. If I get a chance I should start making an effort to get a bigger flat as long as I can afford it. Nowadays I scarcely even have time to attend the lone mothers’ club and it comes as a surprise to me one day to find out that it's been dissolved. All that remains for me is the close contact I've build up with two of the women I met there.
I start to find my feet at work but it takes time to get to know all the products and what they're used for. The two other sales representatives are trained dental technicians and have been working in this sphere for more than ten years. I have to spend my evenings going through books and brochures and feel sometimes as if I'll never get my head around all the complicated names and processes.
My back pains won't go away though and one Friday I take it into my head to use a massage voucher I was given by my German friend, Andrea, three months earlier as a birthday present. While I'm lying there on the massage table the masseuse asks me if I'm the woman from Africa who's written a book. She wants to know when it's coming out. Obviously Andrea's been telling her all about me.
‘Probably never,’ I reply. ‘So far not a single publisher has shown the slightest interest.’
‘But it has to get published,’ she says enthusiastically and asks my permission to get addresses of some more suitable publishers from a friend of hers who runs a bookshop. Somewhat reluctantly I nod OK and a few days later I find a note pushed through my door with the addresses of four small publishers. I'm not at all certain I should even bother, as everything's going fine at the moment. But a few friends coax me into it and I eventually ring up one of them. The publisher tells me however that they only publish books by foreign authors. If my husband had written the book for example then they might at least in theory have been interested.
I then try a Munich publishing house called a1, which strikes me as a funny name. A man's voice comes on the line and he hears my story out quietly before asking me how I managed to come across them. We have a long chat and in the end he asks me to send in the manuscript so he can take a look at it. So I take a copy down to the post office, thinking to myself: This is the last time I spend so much money just on postage. He says it could take up to six months for them to get back to me.
My first few days out selling are nice and simple as they let me accompany one of the others. I listen to him carefully and begin to worry that it'll take years before I'm able to make a presentation as expertly. In January 1997 I'm sent off on a one-week training course in Germany. I'm supposed to learn all about ten out of some two hundred products, including the way in which they are supposed to be applied. It's a hard course but well taught. All the time these people are teaching me about what you can do and what you need to repair or replace bad teeth or even how to fix an entire set of teeth, I can't help smiling to myself and thinking of my family back in Africa. Protruding teeth or teeth that have large gaps between them, things we see as disfiguring and often spend large sums of money correcting, their tribe consider to be attractive. In any case, all Masai are missing their two lower middle incisors. Usually the children do it themselves when they are seven to nine years old, using a sharp knife or a needle which they push into the gum and then bang with a stone until the tooth falls out covered in blood. The children tend to be very proud of themselves afterwards and the adults shower praise on them. Why each and every member of the tribe went through this ritual was something I never found out, but it must have something to do with a fear of choking if they catch some illness or other. You'd be surprised what different attitudes people can have towards their teeth.