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The Warm Heart of Africa
by
Kevin M. Denny
Copyright 2011 Kevin M. Denny,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by 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
