Kindness of Strangers by Unknown

Author:Unknown
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760340704
Publisher: Lonely Planet
Published: 2015-04-30T16:00:00+00:00

Egg Child

SARAH LEVIN

Sarah Levin is originally from the US East Coast but moved to Alaska after she graduated from Wesleyan University in 2001. She is a violinist and freelance writer, and enjoys running sled dogs and clambering over glaciers when she can. In addition to her semester abroad in Tanzania, she has travelled in Europe, the Middle East and South America, finding herself in countless humbling situations along the way. This is her first book publication.

‘Egg Child’ © Sarah Levin 2003.

WHEN I WOKE UP it was still dark and I thought I was in the bowels of a ghost. My mosquito net hung loosely over the bed, white and gauzy and full of holes. I slapped a hand to my temple to crush a mosquito that had found an entrance, and slowly raked my fingernails over the row of bedbug bites on my elbow.

The equatorial heat, even at five in the morning, had settled over my limbs like moist candyfloss. I could hear the call to prayer being broadcast over loudspeakers in the mosque down the road, haunting and lovely Arabic words sounding brassy over the antiquated system. I shuffled to the bathroom in my flip-flops, sat on the toilet and put my face in my hands. Yesterday the doctor had said that my stomach lining was coming out, that I should take it easy. Today I could not take it easy.

Downstairs in the dining room, the kitchen staff was setting out a thermos of tea and bowls of sugar. Their brown faces were sleepy, quiet and smiling. One of the women came over with a mug and a piece of lemon. She touched my hair and said, You will be better. Have a good journey.

I had made this trip several times before. I was living in a wildlife refuge, monitoring the animals for parasites, and had to come into town every few days to use the veterinarian’s microscope. As the crow flies it may have been one hundred kilometres back to the refuge, but it would be five hours or more before I would see my tent. I took three tablets of Loperamide as I waited by the roadside for a minibus. They chugged along the road in droves, the drivers’ faces looking hard and stern, the slim young boys who collected the fares slapping the side of the vans with callused hands. One slap meant a pick-up, two a drop-off. I lifted my arm and a van careened to the side of the road. The boy who opened the door was wearing a New York Yankees baseball cap. He grinned at me with brown-stained teeth and yammered in Swahili, and all I could catch was ‘white lady’.

Pulling my scarf tightly around my head, I worked my way into the van. There was no room to sit, so I hunched over and grabbed onto the back of a seat, accidentally yanking on a young girl’s hair as we rolled over a pothole. She turned and smiled gently, took the bag I was holding and nestled it in her kilt-clad lap as we braced ourselves for the next lurch.

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