Her “Southern Friend” was going off to explore Africa. The attack on the World Trade Center had just occurred and Kristie was concerned about her friend’s safety. “Aren’t you afraid?”
“Oh no,” Jeananne insisted in her southern drawl, “I just love A-rabs!”
She continued, “We take our own bacon frozen in our suitcases because you can’t get it over there, you know.”
Kristie wondered how that would go over in a culture that forbids the eating of pork. She imagines the smell of frying bacon drifting out through an open window as the muezzin calls out morning prayers. “Oh, everyone is just so nice to us in Morocco! I just love it there!”
Jeananne is full of enthusiasm for just about everything. She and her husband fly all over the world on “Space-A” (space available). He is retired military and knows all the ins and outs of arranging flights to military bases. He can get them wherever there is an American base. Of course, sometimes they have to wait for an available flight, and sometimes they get bumped, but they’re used to that and they love the adventure.
Jeananne shows her pictures of their last trip… “And here we are going down the river…” She is dressed in a pastel lime green and white striped French style t-shirt and matching lime green pedal pushers. She wears pure white canvas tennis shoes on her feet. Her legs are demurely crossed at the ankles and her thighs are pressed together at the knees as if they were holding a sacred dime between them.
The bottom of the dugout canoe is filled with some murky water, but Jeananne manages to stay pure as a dove, her toes pointed just so like a ballerina. She wears a short pink scarf covering her meticulously highlighted bouffant hair do. She has some dark sunglasses on and is smiling ear to ear.
The man poling her down river is half naked and missing more than a few teeth. He is smiling for the camera and she looks like she’s having a blast. “I just love Africa!” she says as she continues to show off her photo album.
Kristie thinks she is the bravest woman she has ever met.
(First published 10/26/13)
