Dear Exile
D e a r E x i l e
The True Story of Two Friends Separated
(for a Year) by an Ocean
H i l a r y L i f t i n
a n d
K a t e M o n t g o m e r y
V i n t a g e D e p a r t u r e s
V i n t a g e B o o k s
A D i v i s i o n o f R a n d o m H o u s e , I n c .
N e w Y o r k
A VINTAGE DEPARTURES ORIGINAL, MAY 1999
FIRST EDITION
Copyright © 1999 by Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. Published in the United States by Vintage Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York, and simultaneously in Canada by Random House of Canada Limited, Toronto.
Vintage Books, Vintage Departures, and colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.
Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:
Doug Dorph: Poem “Love” by Doug Dorph (originally published in Mudfish, #6, 1991). Reprinted by permission of the author. East African Educational Publishers Ltd.: Poem “The Beloved” by A. R. Cliff-Lubin from Poems from East Africa, edited by David Cook and David Rubadiri (1971). Reprinted by permission of East African Educational Publishers Ltd., Nairobi, Kenya, and the editors. Nation Newspapers Limited: Two articles “Dirty Kwale School Closed” and “Police Battle Rioting Students” by Nation correspondents, copyright © Nation Newspapers Limited. Reprinted by permission of Nation Newspapers Limited, P. O. Box 49010, Nairobi, Kenya.
Liftin, Hilary.
Dear exile : the true story of two friends separated (for a year) by an ocean / Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery.— A Vintage departures original 1st ed.
p. cm. — (Vintage departures)
eISBN 0-375-72608-X
1. Ramisi (Kenya)—Social life and customs. 2. New York (N.Y.)—Social life and customs. 3. Liftin, Hilary—Correspondence. 4. Montgomery, Kate—Correspondence. 5. Peace Corps (U.S.)—Kenya—Ramisi. 6.Ramisi (Kenya)—Description and travel.
I. Montgomery, Kate. II. Title.
DT434.R36L54 1999
967.62—dc21 98-47190
CIP
www.randomhouse.com/vintage
This book is also available in print as ISBN 0-375-70367-5.
Contents
Prologue
Part One
Part Two
Part Three
Part Four
Postscript
Epilogue
Acknowledgments
Acclaim for
Hilary Liftin and Kate Montgomery ’s
D e a r E x i l e
“I love Dear Exile, and I love the women in it. I opened it one afternoon, then just couldn’t put it down. Here is a girlfriend relationship that I actually recognize. Their humor, love, and world view is to me, simply, perfection.”
—Whitney Otto, author of
How to Make an American Quilt
“Remember how Rebecca Wells’ The Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood inspired women all over the country to form all manner of spirited girl-circles? Now there’s a book that should motivate us all to buff up our bonds through the perhaps-not-so-lost art of letter writing. . . . [Dear Exile] brings worlds—and, one might hope, the friendships of readers—closer together.”
—Daily News
“An unusually thoughtful record of a female relationship and of the emotional swings that greet most of us in our mid-20s.”
—Newsday
“An encouraging look at the post-college world as well as a tribute to female friendship. It seems that there is, indeed, both life and friendship after graduation.”
—USA Today
“Delightful. . . . The wicked pleasure of reading someone else’s mail reaches new height here, as both women are such engaging writers: funny, original and vibrant.”
—Austin Chronicle
“A humorous, touching, real-as-daylight collection of letters that appeals on several levels: as engaging travel literature, a witty exploration of modern women’s lives, and as a testament to the power and blessing of friendship.”
—Publishers Weekly
D e a r E x i l e
P r o l o g u e
Kate and I go way back. When I was in the fourth grade I pretended to have a friend named Kate to make my then best friend jealous. During math I’d write letters to the imagined Kate telling her secrets Lisa didn’t know. Eight years later, as if to prove my supernatural instinct, I got a letter from a real Kate. It was just before college, and all three of my future roommates had written to introduce themselves. I was too cool to write a letter. Kate’s was the last to arrive. All I remember about her letter was that she informed us that she wasn’t a kleptomaniac, didn’t drool excessively, and wasn’t a Republican. As soon as I read her letter I called Kate and explained that she and I should share a room.
Little did she know what sharing a room with me meant. Kate’s blond hair belied her studious, ascetic sensibility. While I was actively celebrating release from an all-girls environment, Kate had actually communicated with boys before. This did not mean, however, that she wasn’t supportive of my experimentation. I would regularly enter our room at three a.m., flick on the bare bulb that hung only inches above her bunk, and start telling her how Charles or some other heartbreaker had flirtatiously sprayed beer on my shoes. Or we’d have to take that hour to hyperanalyze what it meant when Sam wrote, “I feel like a thief when I’m with her, Hal,” on the bathroom door. Kate insists that we bonded during these late-night sessions. I guess I believe her.
Years later some things hadn’t changed. Coming home to my New York apartment one night, I found the following note on yellow sticky paper in very tiny handwriting:
Hilary,
Since I’d be your wife if you were male,
And since you’ve never eaten a grape;
Since you have a lust for life
And for men whose initials form rhyme schemes;
Since you don’t much care for spittle
Being dabbed in your hair by blow-dried women
And since you don’t believe Noguchi’s sculpture
Was his contorted feminine side trying to get out;
Since you must sleep with two pillows
And since your table at the library says, “but I love him”;
Since you had to kill that girl you baby-sat for
Because she wore navy and looked so innocent;
Since you can’t like just one part of a love poem;
Since you claim that being happy is not an invitation to sing
And since you are short and fuzzy-headed,
And since I love you,
(And since you sort of said I could)
I took your new green dress.
Kate
I didn’t really kill the girl. And I don’t think I ever got the dress back. But we were too busy to worry about such details. We were older and had less time for each other. Still, when Kate wanted to marry Dave (who makes me believe in love and that people are born to be together and that there’s hope for me and all the rest), it was me that they called on a Thursday to say, “We want to get married at City Hall tomorrow, and we want you to be our witness.” I tried to persuade them to wait until Monday, which would have been much more convenient for me, but they won.
I was afraid that Kate would disappear into married life, and she actually did disappear, almost right away. Kate’s always had a save-the-world impulse, so no one was surprised when the newlyweds joined the Peace Corps and went to Kenya. As part of saying goodbye Kate and I swore to write to each other, but what that would mean didn’t really sink in.
&nb
sp; Then Kate’s letters started appearing in my mailbox, smelling like Africa. Every couple of weeks there would be a new one, handwritten of course, on crinkled airmail paper with multiple foreign stamps. I carried them around with me, reading parts out loud to anyone who would listen. Mine sped back to her, typed at high speed, laser-printed on heavy-stock company letterhead, weighed and paid in the office mailroom. Kate had to bike into the next town to pick up her mail. There was only one mailbox for the entire village. She could always sight my letters right away because the envelopes were bright white and they were addressed in my handwriting, which was smaller and more pointy than any on the local mail. We were both impressed with the speed and reliability of the international postal service. Only my birthday package to Kate was lost (and she still refuses to believe that I ever really sent it).
In compiling these letters for publication, we sorted through them, changed some names, and chose what best represented the correspondence that lasted over a year. The letters that follow are most of what we wrote, and all of what we felt.
—Hilary Liftin
P a r t O n e
O c t o b e r - D e c e m b e r
NAIVASHA
October 8
Dear Hilary,
This morning as the sun rose David and I were waiting by the road for a lift to the Peace Corps training center. In the distance, and coming closer to us, was a man on a bicycle with what seemed to be a woolly lamb tied on its back fender. It was joggling in a very limp way, but I suggested hopefully to Dave that it might be just deeply asleep. Suddenly, the man stopped, got off the bike, walked around to the back where the lamb’s head was flopping against the wheel, and twisted it until there was a loud cracking sound. Dave quietly noted that the lamb was probably no longer asleep, and I agreed. Then, the man got back onto the bike and rode slowly away. We frequently whisper to each other, as a reminder, “Kenya.”
While we were walking today, seven giraffes and a herd of zebras ambled across our path acting completely unconcerned by the fact that they were not in a zoo. Near the training center is a huge, shining lake where flamingos and hippos mingle on the shores, and in the distance, under the fever trees and through the herds of various horned beasts, we can see volcanic mountains and grassy plains. Sunbeams come through the clouds like they do in religious paintings, and you can see for miles. When it’s dark, on the other hand, you can’t see anything—without electricity, darkness is a thing for us to contend with. The moon matters.
So, we’re here, Hil. For the next three months we (and about twenty other Peace Corps teachers) will be in this town for training in Kiswahili and cultural studies, and then we’ll move to various villages where people have requested high school teachers. For now, David and I are staying at the home of a large, welcoming Kikuyu woman. We’re to call her Mama Kamau—her first son was Kamau, hence Mama of Kamau. She’s married but lives alone because, apparently, her husband lives with another wife in Nairobi. If I understood her right, she said he brings her bananas on some Sundays.
On our first night with her, she graciously served a stew made of rancid goat meat. (Earlier in the day, I had been looking for a match and came across a slab of said meat in a drawer.) I got a stomachache from it, which wouldn’t have been much of a problem, except that to go to the training center, we take a matatu. Taking a matatu, as we have just learned, means cramming ourselves into a rusty minitruck along with about seventy other people, their chickens, loads of pineapples, jerry cans of gasoline, or tied-on babies, and careening along at a million kilometers an hour on what still seems to us to be the wrong side of the road. (My first time in a matatu, I got wedged in so tightly I wasn’t touching the floor. Now I know to squeeze in next to a Mama because we women stick together, and she will probably protect me from suffocation.) Anyway, the morning after I ate the nasty meat, I somehow got positioned with my rump only millimeters from a kind-looking old woman’s face. Since farting is considered almost a sin here, especially in front of women and elders, I made some “very interesting faces” (as Dave put it) on the jolty twenty-minute ride to our stop. As you can see, at first we had a lot of fun with rancid meat jokes, but they weren’t so funny when she served up the same stew the next night. And the next.
One Peace Corps woman has already decided to Early Terminate her volunteerhood (it’s been five days). Getting dropped off at her homestay to find four staring children, no one who spoke English, a none-too-clean pit latrine, no electricity, and one bucketful of water for the week’s bathing pushed her beyond her limits. She spent the night at the training center and was on a plane for home the next morning. No one is very surprised she left because she had even seemed a little freaked out by the food in an Italian restaurant during our training sessions in the States.
Mama Kamau invited us to her Catholic church Sunday morning—lots of drums and singing under the tin roof. The whole three-hour mass was in Kikuyu, so even the little Kiswahili we’ve learned so far helped us not at all. Someone put English Bibles in our laps so we could follow along. Do you think I’ll find God in Kenya? The landscape we saw when we left the church was almost unbelievably beautiful, though at the same time one always seems to be walking through dung and breathing dust. I love it.
Don’t you worry, I’m wearing my sunscreen all the time. (Although I think it’s too late to save my skin.)
Love, love, love,
Kate
NAIVASHA
November 7
Hello Hilary,
Other people are getting lots of letters from their friends, small Hilary. Could it be that you, you, my fuzzy-headed companion in your wacky shoes, could it be that you are a Lesser Friend than they? I will imagine that it could not be so.
I want to tell you that there’s a vicious cow living with us at Mama Kamau’s, and he’s taken a particular dislike to our dear David. The cow waits behind the choo (outhouse pit) and then comes storming out to wipe gooey, bigger-than-your-arm cow boogers on him and to violently head-butt him. Once, when Dave was laughing too hard and not taking the threat seriously, the cow actually stuck his head between Dave’s legs and lifted him off the ground. It was better than a rodeo. Mama Kamau came running out of the house with a big stick, yelling “N’gombe mbaya!” (bad cow!) and whacking him harder than I’ve ever seen anyone whack anything. Now, she hands Dave the big stick whenever he goes outside—just in case. She told him in Kiswahili, “David, I would like you to beat the bad cow.” Dave said the whole situation reminds him of Russell Denniger picking on him in the third grade.
I sort of like when I have to use the choo in the middle of the night. You might think it would be a drag, but I get out my kerosene lantern and go out under the African stars (we can see Scorpio here!) and try not to trip over the goats. Then I have to gently move the sleeping twin lambs off the doorstep of the choo so I can go in and squat over the hole in the ground. I’m sure it’ll get old, and of course it’s unhealthy, but I still like it.
Today Dave and I walked the long way into town. We passed through forests of cacti, and I almost stepped on a wild gerbil as he popped out of his hole. Two men in white smocks and white turbans, one walking a bicycle and one pulling a mule, told us in Kiswahili that we were going the wrong way. They led us on a twisty route through people’s gardens and past purple jacaranda trees and over hill and dale, all with a view of silver Lake Naivasha in the distance, into the ramshackle, dusty town. It’s Sunday, so along the way we were hearing people sing and drum in church and Muslims getting called to prayer. I began to shake hands with one of the men to say thank you and farewell, but he only shook David’s hand, explaining that he could not touch me. On the way back, a woman tending the corn in her shamba asked which tribe we were from. When I said American, she protested that we couldn’t be from the same tribe because of our “different stripes”—Dave with dark hair and me with light. She added that it was okay, she was modern.
Mama Kamau is still, a month later, serving us generous portions of ra
ncid stew, despite our repeated offers to cook. The pot on her fire is like one of those magic pots in the fairy tales that never empties no matter how much we eat (in hopes of never having it again). It’s just always full of rotten goat meat. But eating it is, admittedly, better than eating brains out of a boiled sheep’s skull by the fingersful as Mama Kamau did at her party last week. She offered us a little piece of roasted lung, but I ate some intestine instead because it looked more like hamburger. (Last week, when she left us to heat up our own stew on the fire, Dave covertly made me an avocado omelet with orange Fanta to drink, and it was the most delicious thing I’d ever eaten.)
From what we can gather in our painful Kiswahili, it seems that Mama Kamau’s doctor told her that because she is so fat, she really should eat nothing but bananas. That was three years ago. She’s pretty tired of bananas, as you might guess. Every night, she sits in front of the fire on her little stool and picks up her enormous plate of banana stew. Then the ritual begins. She sighs heavily and closes her eyes. She looks like she’d rather die than eat. She puts her hand on her chest and just sits for a minute, staring at the stew. Takes a bite. Waits, looks up to heaven, and sighs again. I might add that this “only banana stew” reminds me of the story of stone soup made from “only” a stone. We try to cheer her up afterwards by laughing and pointing with her at the fuzzy World Wrestling Federation transmission she has on her little car-battery-powered television. She chortles and chuckles at the men getting pounded and jumped on, and the three of us bond. It’s really the best we can do since our Kiswahili is still pathetic, and it’s not her first language either.