Making Piece by Beth M. Howard

Author:Beth M. Howard
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2012-09-11T04:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER

13

When I was twenty-four, fearless and invincible, I went to Nairobi, Kenya, to work on a coffee farm. I had just gotten fired for the first time—I had been living in Chicago, recruiting students for an outdoor education program, where never before or since have I experienced this degree of nonprofit politics. My disgust and disappointment over the in-fighting was one reason why the words “We have to let you go” were the sweetest sounding ones I had ever heard. But the other reason was that the moment the reality sunk in, a vision of a huge ball of sun setting over the Dark Continent popped into my mind. I had been having this vision since childhood, longing to see the land where “Born Free” was made, and where all those fascinating pictures in National Geographic were taken.

“Good,” I thought as I was handed the proverbial pink slip. “Now I can finally go to Africa.”

Following a series of connections that began with an old boyfriend whose family was in the coffee business, saving up money from three part-time jobs and applying an extra dose of my God-given chutzpah, I landed an invitation to learn the Kenya coffee business firsthand, with the intention that I would apply my knowledge afterward to help promote the country’s number one export crop. I worked on the coffee farm for a month before getting a case of acute amoebic dysentery, combined with sunstroke (I had had the genius idea to work on my tan in the high-noon equatorial sun, while everyone else sat in the shade). A wealthy coffee exporter I had met was concerned about my illness. He insisted, “You need to move off that farm if you’re going to get better.” He scribbled a phone number on a blue page torn from his elegant appointment book and said, “Here, call this woman. She’s American and she takes people in all the time.”

That woman was Kathy Eldon, a vibrant redhead, whose energy and polka-dot skirts whooshed like a gust of wind across the savannah whenever she entered a room. She invited me to stay for a few days, but within minutes of meeting each other we discovered we were both from Iowa. I ended up staying a whole year. Kathy was a journalist, married to a debonair British businessman, and she convinced me that I shouldn’t rush back to the U.S., that I could just start my coffee business in Kenya. Spurred on by her contagious enthusiasm, I designed a zebra-striped tin, contracted with a local roaster, and my Livingstone Provisions brand of coffee was born.

Fast forward twenty-two years later, I no longer sold coffee (that career lasted an impressive three years) and Kathy no longer lived in Nairobi. She had divorced, remarried and now lived in a sprawling, white-washed beach house just north of Santa Monica. And Janice and I were headed there to interview her about pie.

Being from Iowa, pie played a role in Kathy’s background. Her Grandma Knapp in Cedar Rapids, who lived to 106, had written a cookbook full of pie recipes.

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