Kristie missed out on Africa. She never did make it back to the desert, landing instead in San Jose at the exact moment that Dionne Warwick’s song hit number one. The guy driving had it cranked up full blast on the radio. He was headed to a little beach town down the way to make a delivery. Kristie decided the beach might be fun.
She did actually know a couple of people in this little town, so she thought she’d hit them up for a place to stay, some gossip catch up, and maybe a meal. That’s the way it worked. She or her traveling companion would choose a town where they knew someone. Then they could scope out the scene and see if they could find a job or get a situation where they could live on the cheap.
Her friends switched the tables on her and she ended up baby sitting their four kids while they went out on the town. They must have been desperate for some adult time.
Kristie looked through the cupboards to see what she could make for dinner. It was between pancakes and macaroni and cheese. She decided the mac and cheese would be good with some chopped up hot dogs dipped in ketchup. For dessert she made vanilla pudding out of canned milk, sugar, and corn starch. She placed a dab of grape jelly into each serving and let the kids mix it up. She had a lot of these white trash recipes up her sleeves.
The kids happily watched TV until bedtime. Kristie cleaned up the dishes and thought about what she might do next. When her friends got home, she headed out for the night to find her own adventure. She needed to find a job and a cheap place to stay. She was determined to save money for the trip to Africa she and Vicki had planned together.
Vicki was stopping by on her way there in a couple of months. Kristie didn’t have much time. Jobs were scarce in this idyllic beach community. She did find a part time waitress gig in a small coffee shop, and a part time bartending job at a serious drinking hole, but these were not enough to set her straight for Africa. She needed thousands of dollars.
It became a moot point when Vicki arrived all full of hope and trepidation. Kristie was pregnant and she wouldn’t be going after all. She heard all about her friend’s journey;
- the women making fufu – the taste of it, the texture
- the fire ant invasion inside her tent where she lay reading on her steel frame bed with the legs stuck in small cans of turpentine to discourage crawling things from joining her
- the hundreds of friendly kids, the families, the women in their colorful mismatched outfits singing and laughing
- the torrid love affair she had with a redheaded adventurer named Ernest
- the beautiful Kenyan men she was forbidden to flirt with or bed
- the work of teaching basic hygiene
- getting the mothers to wash their children’s faces at least once a day helps prevent blindness…
Kristie missed out on all of it, but when her children were born, she took the names that her dear friend told her, and she called them Africa.
(First published 7/11/12)
