Christmas and New Year’s in Africa: a trip very typical of my mother to conjure up, and beyond exciting for a 15-year-old girl.
The last leg of our adventure was a drive from Kenya to Tanzania, where we would spend New Year’s Eve in the Ngorongoro Crater. As customary, we pulled over at the border for immigration, and immediately the locals crowded the van to an overwhelming point, begging for money, clothing, food, or anything we could offer. Mom instructed me to wait with my younger niece and brother while she pushed her way to the patrol shack with our passports in hand.
What I witnessed on her return is now a mental picture of my mother, forever frozen in time. With a huge smile on her face, surrounded by other smiling Africans trying to help her, she balanced a zoo of hand-carved wooden safari animals in her arms, trying not to drop them as she stumbled into the car. And then I noticed: She was no longer wearing her jacket, hat, or the shirt tied around her waist, and her shoes were gone. Her white socks caked with mud, she sat there sorting through the animals as if nothing was wrong. When we asked her about it, she just laughed and said, “I couldn’t give any money because I left it in here. They pointed to my shoes. Why not, I can get new ones? And look what they gave me, they’re for you all. Aren’t they cute!?”
That’s my mom.
