‘We’ll be back in a week. You won’t have time to miss us.’
Makena’s mother bent to enfold her in butter-soft arms. She smelled of Ponds Cold Cream and love. ‘Be good and do your best with your school essay. You have plenty to talk about after your Mount Kenya adventure. Neat handwriting, please – not that kind you do when you’re in a hurry so it looks as if a drunken ant has performed a gymnastics routine on the page. And no reading books with a torch after lights out.’
Makena helped her zip up her old suitcase. There was a tear in one side, patched with duct tape. She missed her mama and baba already, but it seemed selfish to say so when they were only going because they wanted to help her sick Aunt Mary. In her entire life Makena had not spent a single night apart from at least one of her parents. At her school, where the majority of children had lone parents, divorced parents or no parents, that made her a rarity.
Her father came into the bedroom, tapping his watch. ‘What’s taking so long, Betty? Samson says we will miss the flight. This Nairobi traffic, it’s too terrible. We only have an hour to get to the airport and it can easily take three.’
‘Haraka, haraka, haina baraka,’ his wife teased him in Swahili. ‘Hurry, hurry has no blessings. Isn’t that what you’re always telling me, Kagendo?’
He laughed. ‘On an ordinary day, that’s my philosophy. But there will be no blessings if we miss the plane either. Your sister needs us. Makena and I will take your suitcase to the car. Check that you have our passports and tickets to Sierra Leone.’
Whenever Makena thought about the West African country where her Aunt Mary lived which, if she were truthful, wasn’t often, she pictured rushing coffee-coloured rivers in which diamonds floated like glittering fish. During the long civil war, children her own age and younger had been torn from their families, given automatic weapons and sent into the jungles to fight over the precious gems.
These ‘blood’ diamonds were later sold to rich people in far-flung places where, ironically, they symbolised romance and eternal love. Some women wore blood diamond rings their whole lives without ever pausing to think of the empty-eyed children who’d scrabbled, fought and died in the mud for them.
The war had ended in 2002. For the past six years Freetown, Sierra Leone’s capital, had been home to Betty’s sister Mary, an aid worker with a charity that provided villages with clean drinking water.
At least, that’s what she normally did. A week ago, she’d fallen ill with malaria in a remote rural area. There’d been problems getting her to a doctor and now the situation was grave. Makena’s father had been granted emergency leave by New Equator Tours and a substitute teacher was going to take her mother’s classes. Their plan was to find Aunt Mary the best treatment they could afford in Sierra Leone then bring her back to Kenya to recover.
Makena was struggling to take in the sudden turn of events. Two days ago she’d been on top of the world. Well, not the top, perhaps, but certainly on the second or third storey of Ngai’s mountain home. She’d stood on Ithangune Ridge and planted a flag made from a stick and a crumpled red T-shirt.
It was more usual for mountaineers to erect a flag when they reached a summit but even Point Lenana, Mount Kenya’s most reachable summit, required acclimatisation and a five-day round-trip – not something that was possible for Makena.
‘Next time,’ her father had promised.
It didn’t matter. Makena was content. On the hike to Lake Alice, she’d had a Verreaux’s eagle’s view of the Great Rift Valley, its plains speckled with zebra, wildebeest and giraffe. She’d seen the gleaming white peaks of Batian and Nelion and had a close encounter with a fox.
The idyll had ended as soon as they came down the mountain and the first urgent message pinged on her father’s phone. To avoid altitude sickness, they’d had no choice but to spend a night in Nanyuki before speeding to Nairobi early next morning.
And now Baba was leading Makena out on to the street, suitcase in hand. Her rucksack bulged with the clothes and books she’d need for the next seven days.
‘It’s really six and a half,’ her mother had pointed out. ‘Not even a week.’
After stowing the case in Uncle Samson’s vehicle, her father took a photo from his pocket. It showed him clinging to a wall of ice by his fingertips. He wore a huge grin.
‘A client sent this to me. You can keep it. Don’t show your mama. It’ll make her nervous.’
‘Yes, you’d better not show her or else she’ll make you take up accountancy instead,’ retorted his wife, overhearing.
‘You wouldn’t,’ accused Makena. ‘You like it that he’s heroic.’
Her mother laughed. ‘I shouldn’t admit it but, yes, I do.’
‘You are cutting it fine to get to the airport,’ grumbled Mr Chivero. ‘If I could drive like Lewis Hamilton, that would be one thing, but Nairobi is so gridlocked it is not possible to exceed the pace of a bicycle with a flat tyre. Not unless you are a Matatu Madness taxi. Then anything is possible. If someone gets in your way, you just ramp over the top of them like 007 in a Bond movie.’
‘Relax, dear man, Makena’s lift will be here at any moment and we will go. Makena, did you pack your toothbrush?’
‘No, Mama, I’m going to use twigs and leaves.’
‘Don’t be smart.’
‘Sorry, but don’t worry so much.’
‘That’s what mothers do. We worry.’
A car pulled up. Out stepped her mother’s colleague, Shani. She was a Kenyan maths teacher married to a Chinese man who had a computer business. They had four children – a baby, a toddler, and super-bright eleven-year-old twins, Li and Leo. They were the busiest family Makena knew. Every spare hour was devoted to running back and forth from Wing Chung lessons to Mandarin and piano. However, they were also very nice, and Li and Makena had a love of reading in common.
‘Give my best to your sister,’ Shani told Betty. ‘I hope she makes a speedy recovery. You’re sure it’s malaria she has and not the Doomsday Germ? That’s what they were calling it on the news this morning.’
‘What’s the Doomsday Germ?’ asked Makena.
Her mother gave her a squeeze. She was annoyed with Shani for mentioning it, Makena could tell. ‘If you are talking about the Ebola virus, Shani, then, no, Mary does not have that. She’s been diagnosed with malaria. There is a small Ebola outbreak on the border with Guinea, but it’s been contained. We will be many hundreds of miles from there, near Kenema. As soon as my sister is well enough to travel, we’ll return to Nairobi – possibly even sooner than Sunday.’
Her husband came over. ‘Betty, we must go.’
He gave Makena’s braids an affectionate tug. ‘See you later, alligator.’
‘In a while, crocodile.’
‘Nakupenda! Love you,’ her mother said, cupping Makena’s face with her palms and kissing the tip of her nose.
‘Love you too. Give a big hug to Aunt Mary. I’ll say prayers.’
Shani opened the car door and Makena squeezed in beside the twins.
‘Hey, see what I’ve got.’ Li thrust a mystery novel into her hands. ‘It’s the latest one in the series.’
As Shani put the car into gear and moved off down the road, Makena was absorbed in reading the blurb on the cover of the book. That’s the thing that haunted her afterwards. She never looked back.
