Nairobi Dreaming - Complete!

Chapter 12: The American Dream

It wasn't really until we arrived at the school that I knew what we were there to do. Somehow all of breakfast passed without any clear direction. Instead, it was spent watching Abigail and Atieno have a series of frantic, hushed side conversations just out of everyone's range of hearing and then, at their distracted but definitive direction, piling into the school bus with no more sense of what the day had in store than the knowledge we would be back by lunch.

I sat in the back, took a whole seat for myself, and mostly ignored Kay and James who took the seat in front of me. I got the impression they wanted to involve me in whatever conversation they were having but I wasn't in the mood. I jammed my headphones in my ears, slouched so that the top of my head fell below the lip of the seat and started listening to a podcast about economics that I thought might distract me. It half worked. The host had a soothing voice but I missed most of the story.

It was fine, I told myself. I had no claim on either of them. They could do what they wanted. But the words came through angry and roiling with jealousy, even as I repeated them in my own mind.

When we got to the school there were about a hundred people already there seated under a red tent fanning themselves at the kind of slow, purposeful tempo that suggested they had been there for awhile. They were dressed formally in bright dresses, some with African prints, others in more Western style, colourful shirts or collared shirts and suit jackets. There was a selection of seats facing the audience and a podium and a microphone set up. I noticed school children in matching baby blue uniforms standing in the sun, sweating, obviously waiting for some queue.

The school was behind the tent and I could just perceive part of it. It was on a short, grassy hill facing southward. The roof looked like it was made of corrugated tin and the walls were made of large gray bricks, stained in some places to a deep brown. This was not a well appointed school, even from a distance that much was obvious, and I had a moment of cognitive dissonance as I took in the well dressed guests seated less than a hundred metres away from a building that looked like it lacked electricity or running water.

Had Abigail known that everyone would be so dressed up? I had worn a comfy black knee length skirt and a mock neck blue shirt - the kind of thing I would wear in a classroom back home, so not as dressed up as I could have been but still fine - but Abigail was in cargos, birkenstocks and what looked like another yoga tank top. I looked closer: if she had made any effort at all to dress up she had invested it in her accessories. The watch on her wrist was a diamond encrusted rolex, she was wearing diamond studs with three large diamonds in a flower pattern and the bag slung over her shoulder was a fire engine red Birken.

Growing up my parents had always counselled me against "showing off". I had never been allowed to own anything with obvious branding or wear very flashy jewelry outside of special events. The key, my mother had always told me, with quiet certainty, was to be classy and classy people did not flaunt their wealth. If they made their wealth apparent at all it was only in two contexts: through discreet generosity to friends, family and those who needed it and, very occasionally, at certain events. I had adopted this philosophy wholeheartedly and it meant that just looking at Abigail's bag and jewelry made my eyes ache. It was possible no one else realized that the bag she was carrying cost at least 12K and as much as 200K (Birkins are ugly utilitarian looking things) but the diamonds were an obvious tell. They sparkled like the goddamn sun.

Abigail got out first, striding down the bus steps like a celebrity, and the crowd stood up and clapped. She blinked at them, unsmiling, her accessories glittering in place of her teeth, and waved in a way that suggested she had a floppy weak, wrist, which I knew she did not. A man boomed something into a microphone I didn't catch, the crowd clapped more and Abigail marched right up to the front, her daughters trailing behind her, Tovah in the lead, a perfect imitation Abigail down to her outfit. Essie, meanwhile, dragged her feet, head down, her cheeks bright pink.