Mists of the Serengeti(6)
I opened my eyes and stared at the whirring blades of the ceiling fan. Mo had left her mark on it. Bright ribbons left colorful trails as it rotated above me. It was such a vivid, painful reminder of her—her boundless energy, her spinning, kaleidoscopic life—that I felt an acute sense of loss all over again. When you lose someone you love, it doesn’t end with that event, or with their funeral, or with their name on the tombstone. You lose them again and again, every day, in small moments that catch you off guard.
Almost a month since her memorial service. I had kept putting off the trip to Africa, to collect her belongings and clear her room.
“Don’t go,” my mother had said, looking at me through red-rimmed lashes. “There’s still a travel warning in effect.”
My father stood silently, shoulders hunched, bearing the weight of a man whose daughter’s body was never recovered from the wreckage. We had all been denied the gift of closure, of seeing her face for the last time.
“I have to,” I replied. I couldn’t stand the thought of a stranger going through Mo’s things, disposing of pieces of her.
And so I’d arrived, the non-traveler in a family of voyagers, at Nima House in Amosha, where Mo had signed up as a volunteer for six months. It had started out as a romantic quest to climb Mount Kilimanjaro with the love of her life. Well, the love of her life that month. When he refused to share his ration of toilet paper with her, somewhere between 15,000 and 17,000 feet, Mo dumped his arse and trekked back—no toilet paper, and no plane ticket out of there. Our parents offered to bail her out, but Mo wasn’t done with Tanzania and talked them into coughing up some cash so she could stay longer. She signed up for an unpaid position, working with kids at an orphanage in return for cheap food, accommodation, and time off to chase waterfalls, flamingos, and herds of gazelles in the Serengeti.
“Do some good, see some action,” she’d said, the last time we’d talked, before giving me a detailed account of how loudly and noisily lions mated. “Every fifteen minutes, Ro! Now you know why Mufasa is the motherfucking king of the jungle.”
“You’re a perv, Mo. You just sat there and watched?”
“Hell, yeah! We had our lunch there too. You need to get your arse down here. Wait till you see an elephant’s schlong, Ro . . .”
On and on she had babbled, and I’d only half-listened, not knowing it would be the last time I spoke to her, not knowing that I would be in her room, looking up at the same ceiling fan that she had probably gazed on when she called me.
Except for the last time, when she’d called me from the mall.
When I hadn’t picked up.
When she’d needed me the most.
I flipped over to my side, trying to escape the thoughts that kept haunting me.
The bed next to mine was empty and neatly made up. Mo’s roommate, Corinne, was gone. She’d let me in, the night before and hugged me.
“I’m so sorry,” she’d said. “She was such an amazing soul.”
Having Mo referred to in the past tense was painful. Waking up in her bed was painful. I got up and drew the curtains open. It was later than I had anticipated, but I was still adjusting to the time difference. The cement floor was hard on my feet, so I slipped into Mo’s slippers. They were rabbit-faced, with pink-tipped noses, and ears that flip-flopped when I walked.
I stood in the center of the room and looked around. Mo’s side had a narrow closet, but the clothes had either slipped off the hangers, or she’d never bothered to put them up.
Probably the latter. I smiled. We were so different, and yet as close as two sisters could be. I could hear her chatter in my head, as I sorted through her things.
Hey, remember when I filled a balloon with glitter and stuffed it in your closet? It popped, and all your clothes were so sparkly that you looked like a disco ball for days.
Thinking of her there beside me, sitting cross-legged on the floor, helped me get through it. It kept me from breaking down as I folded the tops she’d never wear again, her smell still alive in them.
Don’t forget the drawer, Ro. I’m so relieved it’s you who’s doing this. Can you imagine Mum finding that dildo? I kind of debated about it myself, but it’s so realistic, you know? You should totally get one, dude. No Mufasa? No worries . . .
And so the day progressed, with Mo’s commentary flitting through my head, like a butterfly that went from flower to flower, saying goodbye as the sun dimmed over the horizon.
It was late afternoon when I stood back and surveyed the room. Mo’s side was all boxed up, except for a map on her wall with Post-it notes in her careless, cursive writing, and the ribbons she had tied around the fan. I couldn’t bring myself to remove those. Besides, I had three more weeks before I headed back to England. I wanted to see the places she’d mentioned, understand the magic that drove her, find some resolution in the place that had claimed her.
Kilimani Mall was still a wide, gaping hole in the ground, but the civilians had been collateral damage. The gunmen’s target had been a government minister who was speaking at a convention that day. His security team was moving him to safety when a car bomb exploded, killing them all. It had gone off in the underground parking lot, and large parts of the mall had collapsed. No one had claimed responsibility, and investigators were still sifting through the rubble. It was one of those tragic, senseless things, like when a sinkhole appears without warning and swallows up your car, your home, the people you love. There’s no one to blame for it, so you carry your pain and anger with you, all the while waiting for an epiphany, a kernel of understanding that would help you move on, because surely it all meant something.