A true story

I was in boarding school – or actually staying in a teacher’s spare room, because the dorm was full, in Thika, Kenya when my father died at 41 years old. He was in Vancouver, BC.

I got the news on a phone – at a neighbor’s house – from my mother in Dar es Salaam. “I’m sorry Lili but your Dad is dead” Since my parents were long divorced, my dad was the paradigm of health, and my mother never talked to him. I assumed she was telling me about my stepfather. I asked if she meant Oscar but she said no my real Dad.

After saying “oh thank God” at the death not being of Oscar. My next mature and dispassionate thought was “I’m going to ignore this news” I was so happy at my school, not having to deal with my family that – at the age of 15 – I was ready to say “oh well” and forget all about my father in Canada. Maybe this wouldn’t have been a good long term response but it was how I thought I would cope at the time: By plugging my ears and humming so as not to hear the bad news.

But my stepfather, who had lost his own father young, insisted that we fly back for the funeral. He paid for our flight ‘home’ for the funeral. He did get his money back, but he wasn’t sure he would. So, in mid-January 1976 I flew to the other side of the world to see my dad’s corpse, and I guess to take part in the wake.

It was decided that Ari (11-year-old sister) and I, should fly ‘home’ immediately to Vancouver. (Dad’s home. I had spent some summers there with him, but it sure wasn’t my home.) She was put on an airplane in Dar-es-Salaam, with my ticket from Nairobi in her hand, and I had to get myself into Nairobi. I think I took a matatu (public nissan bus)– but maybe somebody drove me. Honest I can’t remember. What I can remember is getting to the Killick’s (friends of my parents, and my friend’s parents) house, well before my flight. They were very kind. I remember very clearly that Mrs. Killick, not knowing how to sooth me, had suggested I lay down to rest, with an “I’m so sorry dear, would you like a nice cup of tea?” What more can you say?

Then they drove me to Wilson Airport, at the time it was just Nairobi Airport. Also at that time, one would regularly see wildebeests, giraffe, zebra and even the occasional elephant on the trip from Thika to Nairobi mind you. Now the Thika road is all heavily populated with humans and Thika is a commuting town.

That evening Mrs. Killick, hugged me and dropped me off at the airport where I was supposed to wait for my ticket to be brought to me from within the flight from Dar-es-Salaam as it stopped over on its way to Europe.

But at that time and place in history, a 15-year-old white schoolgirl who was crying about her father’s death got let all the way onto the plane without having a ticket. I was walking up the steps onto the plane by the time the stewardess was bringing my ticket out to give it to me and get me through customs.

We were travelling as ‘unaccompanied minors’, Ari and I, so we got the royal treatment – toys and candy and lots of juice. But of course the stewardesses kept bugging us constantly to make sure we were okay. And we were.

It is significant that I don’t remember packing back in Thika, because when we arrived in Calgary, Alberta the next day we had no winter clothes. This was late January remember. The stopover in Calgary lasted four hours and Ari and I wanted to leave the airport but of course we couldn’t go out into the snow in our sundresses and sandals. So instead, we tried to hide from the ‘accompanying’ airline staff and appear all grown up.

Luckily when we got to Vancouver Mom’s mom who lived in Buffalo – had got there too, and she was carrying winter boots and coats. So, we were ok.

But Dad’s body had already been flown down to his mom in Colfax Washington (500 miles away and in the USA). My 19-year-old brother had gone with it. My sister from university (on the other side of Canada) was in Vancouver as well though, and we three girls – 11, 15 and 21 – tried to fly to Colfax ourselves. Of course, we were fogged in in Seattle, so the whole plane was piled into a bus and driven the 8 hours to Spokane (the nearest airport to Colfax) I remember that we three were talking much too loudly and making too much noise and fun as the other passengers watched. I thought we might be entertaining them, but in retrospect they were probably horrified. We laughed a lot about stupid things, but I guess that way we didn’t cry a lot over a very sad thing.

Arriving in Colfax, which had been a one hotel town, back when my grandparents ran the hotel, we were welcomed with open arms and wet eyes by our father’s mother. She was remarried and her husband was a kind man – a real cowboy that one, always wore his hat. We called him Grandpa Dave. I remember Grandpa Vern before him, but I never met my real grandpa. Dad had been an only child, only 18 years younger than his mom. Grandma Letha never really recovered from Dad’s death. She tried but she sorta shut down after her son died. I guess the two of them had not got on so well actually, but that never makes anything easier, does it?

Before the funeral my Dad’s last girlfriend – Abby – took me aside (I was just in from my trip), away from the rest of the family, and told me that “you were your father’s reason for living, and you spoiled his life. But don’t feel guilty now.” I never forgave her for being that mean! Why did she feel she had to say that? I honestly think she chose me to ooze that poison at because she knew all the other three of Dad’s kids wouldn’t have taken it from her. You is such an ambiguous word – plural or single. I figure we all WERE dad’s reason for living, especially compared to his run of girlfriends – but we were kids, we hadn’t asked to be born. He was supposed to take care of us, not the other way around. At the time I just kept crying and apologizing.

But then I got my revenge by relishing the bad mouthing of Abby that went on within Grandma Letha’s many siblings’ discussions. Years later Abby tried to be my friend, but I wouldn’t have anything to do with her. They had not married but I understand she changed her last name to his and called herself his widow for the rest of her life.

There were several other girl friends at Dad’s funeral too, and flowers from ex-wives who couldn’t make it.

To this day my father’s corpse is the only dead body I have ever seen. He had an open coffin. He had died of viral myocarditis while swimming his daily laps (his extreme fitness routine) and so he was not ugly. But I remember that he didn’t look a thing like himself (maybe for the simple reason that he had always had a big open grin when he was alive – one that I have inherited – but obviously his mouth was closed into a tight little smile in death). In any event, to me that one look into the open coffin proved the existence of a soul, and also that it leaves the body at death. My Dad was not in that body, he had gone away.

I remember the wake was at the Chinese restaurant (probably the only restaurant in town). Again everyone was very jolly. We wouldn’t examine our darker emotions. Though I remember lots of relatives coming up to me and saying, “I’m so sorry Cliff died so young” and myself thinking – “What do you mean young? He was 41 for goodness sake!”. I always figured I would die at 41 as well, and then I almost did two days before my 42 birthday….but that’s another story. The forced bonhomie that I remember so well has always helped me remember this joke “What’s the difference between an Irish wake and an Irish wedding? One less drunk at the wake”. Dad was buried next to his father and back five generations in the town cemetery.

We didn’t stay long in Colfax. My grandma Letha was living in a trailer house, very comfortably, and we were four big kids. We were there for a few days in the bleakest winter. Then we younger folks went back to Vancouver to stay with my brother for another few days. My mother’s mother – we called her Meme – was waiting there as well.

It is strange that what I remember about my brother’s house was his music. Warren Zevon ‘send Lawyers guns and money” was important to me. My oldest sister had to hurry back to McGill because she was missing classes but Meme took me and Ari down to Portland Oregon to visit her cousins…she had some that were our ages. We must have been there about a week. They were nice people and it felt weird to have these relatives that we hardly knew and that I knew were feeling really sorry for us.

Then Ari and I went with Meme back ‘home’ to Buffalo. I think the trip to Portland had been decided on because we couldn’t fly straight back to Buffalo because of the famous blizzard. Meme had always been renting out rooms in our big old beautiful house in Buffalo. We got in a short week after the blizzard and the tenants had eaten all her supplies. According to my understanding that was the year “Buffalo wings” were invented. They came from a restaurant across town that had to feed people who were stuck there. They cooked up whatever supplies they had, because they couldn’t get anything else in – So Buffalo style Chicken wings were born using a big bag of frozen chicken wings with blue cheese and tabasco sauce put on them (because that’s all that was available). Sadly, my grandmother’s tenants hadn’t come up with anything so yummy.

I do remember that the mail quit being delivered until I could get out there and shovel the snow. It was now more than a week after the blizzard and our sidewalks were ice packs six inches thick of firmly packed ice/snow so it was hard work to shovel. Nobody had shoveled the several feet of new snow that had fallen evenly over the whole lawn. They had just trudged through it and packed it down for me to deal with later.

My grandma was always sewing for us kids. This time, while Ari and I did very little of anything in our house. Meme sewed me a money belt of clever design: she took two ace bandage rolls and sewed them together in such a way that dollars could slide between them and all the way around my waist. This way the elastic stayed tight around my waist and the money belt could fit 2000 dollars in it without being visible at all.

After three weeks in the New World Ari and I flew back home to East Africa. I got off the plane with a money belt around my waist and got myself to Thika where I simply showed up at school unannounced. I had given no warning to the teacher that I would be back, luckily he hadn’t rented out my room to someone else yet. But he did scold me for my poor communication skills….still he had no phone. Someone might have called his neighbor again I suppose – but nobody had.

I did a lot of sitting around and telling my friends that it was all my fault that my father had died because I had fought with him over the phone the summer before and refused to go out and visit him. We had shouted at each other and I had cried as I chose my sisters over my day. That was the day our beloved family dog had jumped in front of a car and killed herself. I knew it was all my fault. Once the teacher heard me saying this and he really scolded me! He said that I was acting insane and that he must never hear me say that again. I guess he was right. Though to this day I half believe my guilt.

But this money belt with its $2000 cash wasn’t for me to spend in Kenya. At that time my family was in Tanzania. It was managing its money exchange rates and had criminalized black market trading or even leaving Tanzania with its currency. My stepfather, Oscar was getting ridiculously few Tanzanian shillings to the dollar (and he was paid in dollars). The scheme was that I would – highly illegally – trade dollars for Tanzanian shillings at about ten time the official rate while I was in Kenya. Dar-es-Salaam was the capital of a planned economy, copying China’s five-year plans and Nairobi was the capital of a wild west style capitalist economy (and it still is to this day). Anyway, I took one Saturday from Thika and went into Nairobi and went up to an Indian/Kenyan merchant (I think he was officially a textile seller) I pulled out my money belt (he wasn’t nervous at all) and handed the shiny compact pile of ten twenty-dollar bills to the shop keeper. He gave me a big old messy and bulky stack of Tanzanian shillings, counting them out loudly and officially with the shop door open. They were worth ten times what I would have got in a bank. Of course, they didn’t fit nicely into my money belt – but I shoved them in as best I could.

Then Tanzania updated its currency so as to no longer allow these old bank notes. I went ‘home’ to Dar-es-Salaam that weekend for my mid-term break from school in Thika, conveniently just before the Tanzanian Banks quit accepting these old notes. I wasn’t terribly concerned as we landed in Dar because I had seen the white privilege work wonders for me before. But when they started pulling apart everyone’s suitcases looking for currency I began to think twice. My money was ‘safely’ around my waist – but the belt was at least an inch thick all the way around. Luckily, I was wearing a school skirt that I had sewn for myself, so it didn’t fit well, I had rolled up my waist band to make it fit nicer, so it was already fat. It looked like I had a snake around my waist. The police took some men directly to jail when they found some Tanzanian Shillings on their persons. I had no plan B. They frisked all the men who had been on the airplane with me. My sweat really stunk by now. But there were no women officers around and the exclusively male police force certainly couldn’t touch a young white schoolgirl – so they just asked me how much money I was carrying. I showed them my almost empty wallet and answered five dollars and they let me through.

That was when I vowed to never black-market money ever again. We stopped at the bank on the way home from the airport in Dar-es-Salaam and deposited the old bank notes for full value.  

A week later I returned to Thika and didn’t do so well in my exams that term.