“Oh Mike, we talked to Claire about that and it didn’t make any difference,” Mom sniffled.
“Look, the last bomb blast in Gaborone was two years ago and I’ve never heard of running gun battles. The military is on the alert,” Grandpa declared. “In any case, things are changing fast in South Africa. You’ll worry yourself silly with all this talk about bombs.”
There was a brief silence, then I heard sobbing noises. “My babies!”
“There, there Sarah, it’ll be all right. You never know, Bridget might just find our Claire and bring her back home.” Had my Dad really said that?
“You never know,” Grandpa agreed.
Shuffling sounds. All three of them went into the lounge.
I cried a little and felt guilty. Then I pulled myself together and folded my last t-shirt. My trusted duffle bag that had followed me around Machu Picchu and Los Angeles was popping at the seams.
The following day I kissed my parents goodbye and went with Grandpa to London. I left my comfortable Cambridge life behind to find my sister.
The formalities in London would take at least a couple of weeks to apply for visas, get inoculated at the Institute for Tropical Diseases and all that. Two weeks to pluck up my courage. Two weeks – all of a sudden it sounded so very short.
Soon I was sitting in the stylish flat Grandpa owned in Arlington Road in Camden. I stared at the list of prescribed vaccinations. My heart sank. Cholera, typhoid, yellow fever, immunoglobulin. What on earth was immunoglobulin? According to the pamphlet, it had something to do with hepatitis. Surely necessary, but were all these injections on the list necessary? I hated needles. Would I drop dead immediately, if I didn’t have all of them? No, I had no choice; it was part of the travel requirements.
The wind changed its direction and gentle rain splattered against the windows. Down in the towel-sized back garden, the spiky tops of slender cordyline palms waved forth and back. It was puzzling that the London climate was mild enough for exotic plants.
The enormity of my plan hit me. What if my mission failed? What then? Why did it have to be such an unhealthy country that required a battery of vaccinations? No need to panic – breathe in, breathe out...
I leaned back on the leather couch and stared accusingly at the painting on the opposite wall. An African landscape in a broad golden frame of all things. It was beautiful, with baobab trees against an azure sky, a herd of elephants in the distance and a leopard stalking grazing gazelles.
“Does that mean that I must get those awful injections?” I questioned the painting. The African landscape didn’t answer. On closer inspection, the elephants seemed to be moving a fraction. On the left, the leopard had appeared fully between the undergrowth. Was it moving closer towards the gazelles?
“You know what, picture? Let’s just get it over and done with. Enough with the stupid self pity.” Bridget you’re going bonkers, I scolded myself, pull yourself together already, you are talking to a picture!
The last time we were in London, Claire and I had come to see David Bowie in concert. My heart ached at the thought. Claire and I. By the end of the concert, she had danced with others on the stage, but as usual, I was too shy to do something like that. It had even been exciting to ride on the tube and shopping up a storm in Oxford Road with its little boutiques.
I took out Claire’s letters. There were five of them. She had written one of them every week on thin, blue airmail paper. The last link between us. She had written about the landscape, the weather, her colleagues, her job and that she was excited about seeing the Okavango Delta even if it was just for a few days.
I tried to imagine Africa. Vibrant colours, teeming markets and laughing people. Drumbeat and dancing in the streets. Restaurants serving tantalizing food made from coconuts and freshly-caught fish in odd-shaped calabash dishes. Hot humid air, pith helmets, lions and elephants, waterfalls and…Tarzan swinging on a liana. Stupid cliché, I know, but that’s how I imagined Africa. I knew zilch about witchdoctors, tokoloshes and the world of the ancestors…
I found almost all the episodes of a South African TV series in the dingy video shop on the corner. It was about Shaka Zulu, the great and cruel warrior chief of the Zulu people in the 19th century. Not exactly modern, but it would do for starters. Soon I could sing along to the opening tune. “Bayete, kosi, bayete, kosi…we are growing, growing high and higher…”
I don’t know if Shaka Zulu had anything to do with it, but I began to notice 'Africaness' around me. Clothes and baskets in shop windows; drumbeat coming from a flat. Dark-skinned people in the street or in the tube seemed to smile at me more often. Perhaps they sensed that I was going to visit their mysterious continent soon. Perhaps they were just 4th generation Brits from Hackney with a Cockney accent.
Claire would have made fun of me. Claire…
During the two weeks in London, I waited for news from Botswana. Once I imagined that Claire had been found in some village in the Tuli Block and was now sitting in a nice lady’s farm kitchen, sipping hot cocoa.
‘I must tell you all about it, Foompy,’ she would say on the phone with a smile in her voice. ‘You won’t believe what happened to me.’ I could hear a chuckle in her voice.
I was in a constant state of nervous tension, like a tightened spring. No wonder then that I started speaking to paintings and such things.
When it was time to get the vaccinations, I took the C2 bus to Great Portland Street and then the tube to the Institute for Tropical Diseases in Bloomsbury. The needles were just as horrid as I had imagined. I suffered for a few days with a fever and a swollen arm. At least it distracted me from my sadness for a while.
I hadn’t seen much of Grandpa. Then one evening, a few days before my flight, he must have felt the urge to cook. When I came home from the video shop, a simple meal stood on the posh beech-wood table. I choked back some tears. Classical music played in the background. Claire de Lune by Debussy.
“Hi Grandpa!”
“Hi poppet, feeling hungry?”
“Sure, that looks good.”
“Sit down, help yourself. There is salad in that bowl.”
“Did you have to get vaccinated when you went to live in Kenya, Grandpa?” I asked, while sucking green pesto spaghetti through my teeth.
Grandpa had lived much overseas as a fledgling journalist. I guess that’s where Claire had inherited her adventurous streak.
“To be honest, I don’t remember exactly, but I’m sure I had to get some injection or other. How is your arm doing?” He pointed with his chin to my left upper arm. It was still a bit swollen.
“Getting better, the fever is down, painkillers seem to be working.” I rolled green spaghetti onto the fancy silver fork.
“Did you speak to your mother today?” Grandpa asked me.
“Yes, this morning. She’d like me to think about the whole trip again,” I sighed.
“I see, but you have made up your mind?” Was there an undertone. If Grandpa didn’t want me to go to Botswana, he had yet to say something to that effect.
“Of course! I would never get so many injections and then not go to Africa,” I replied. “Mom said they’ll come to see me off next weekend. Well, to say goodbye. She has to be back in Cambridge on Monday morning.”
“Pity. But I’m glad they are coming, even if they can’t see you off on Tuesday.”
“Mhm,” I uttered in consent and swallowed quickly. There would be a lot of tears.
“I must just phone about the visas tomorrow morning.”
“Splendid. Then you’re all set.”
“Grandpa, what