Landing in Nairobi

"Who comes all the way to Africa without a Plan B?" Hannah grunted and rolled her eyes at her mom. After fifteen hours of flying, she was exhausted. And her stomach still ached from the turbulence. Maybe I should have listened to Dad and stayed home. She wanted to cry. My stomach is killing me. I need a ginger ale.

Her Uncle Brian who lived and worked in Kenya was supposed to pick them up at the airport and was not there. "What are we going to do now?" Hannah asked. Her mom sighed. She took a step closer to Hannah and put her arm around her. With one swift roll of her shoulder, Hannah pushed her mom off. She tilted her head to the side and raised her eyebrows as far up her forehead as they would go. Through her flared nostrils she exhaled an exaggerated breath and started tapping her foot on the tile floor.

Scanning the room for her uncle, Hannah noticed she and her mom — the only white people in the Nairobi Jomo Kenyatta International Airport — stood out like two small children lost in Times Square in New York City. Her white skin made her feel more uncomfortable than afraid. People rushed by. She stopped tapping her foot and observed. Men were dressed in short sleeved button-down untucked shirts with loose-fitting lightweight pants and black rubber sandals. All the colors of their clothes were plain. There were very few women in the airport. Unlike the colors the men wore, the women wore vibrantly patterned dresses, mostly large floral prints, and black rubber sandals. Seeing her reflection in the glass divider at customs made Hannah gasp. She looked down at her clothes — a white short-sleeved t-shirt, a long navy skirt that reached the floor, and orange and blue Asics running sneakers — bothered by how much she stood out. She adjusted her tortoiseshell eyeglasses and tried to ignore her nervousness. Her mom, who seemed oblivious to everything, hustled her along to the desk to purchase visas.

Without expression, the male employee at the counter said, "US Passport and US fifty dollar." Her mom handed him Hannah's passport and $50. He looked Hannah up and down, reviewed her passport and handed it to her. Hannah smiled and thanked him. He nodded, put the money in a drawer and repeated, "US Passport and US fifty dollar." She watched her mom hand him her passport and another $50. He returned her passport and waved them forward. Her mom thanked him and walked ahead like a Pointer dog in search of the perfect spot to bury its bone. Hannah rolled her eyes and sighed, and followed her mom, who looked back every two seconds even though Hannah was right behind her.

There was still no sign of Uncle Brian. They looked through the windows to the outside. Unmarked black cars resembled gypsy cabs Hannah had seen in New York City. Her parents had warned her they were illegal and never to take them no matter how long the wait was for a yellow cab. Her mom tried to put her arm around Hannah and she pulled away again, but this time not too far. It was dark outside and Uncle Brian was still not answering his phone. Outside the airport there were even more strangers and probably fewer people who spoke English. For the first time since they had left home, Hannah nestled in close to her mom.

A man approached them holding a sign, HIGGINS. He had dark skin and his short hair was black with white flecks. In a soft, accented voice, he said, "Meredith Higgins."

She looked at Hannah. What do you want me to do? I don't know who this guy is. She felt her heart skip a beat and hoped her mom would handle it.

Shifting her gaze from Hannah to the stranger, her mom answered. "Yes." Her voice trailed up as she spoke, like she was answering his question with a question. In that moment, the Pointer dog had become an innocent puppy.

The man handed her an envelope. She took Hannah by the upper arm, positioned her where she could see her and opened the envelope. Her face lost its color and her skin looked even paler next to the dark skin of the African man. She handed the stranger her duffel and grabbed Hannah's hand so hard that this time she could not pull it away. Truth be told, she did not want to.

Uncle Brian and the Zinc Lady

"What's the matter? Where's Uncle Brian?" Hannah sat close to her mom in the back of one of the same unmarked cars she had been taught to avoid at all costs. See, Mom? She wanted to say. We're in what's probably the same exact thing as a gypsy cab and everyone is still alive.

"He's stuck on the road somewhere. His bus broke down on its way here. This man is going to take us to a hotel for the night and we'll go to Kisumu tomorrow."

As they drove, it looked a lot like New York City — bright lights and tall buildings. Streets were crowded with people. "Oh," Hannah said. Feeling better with a plan, she reached into her backpack and got out a half-eaten bag of Sour Patch Kids. "Why didn't you just tell me that in the first place? What's the big deal?" She groaned. "You're so frantic." She ate some candy and glared at her mom but kept her thoughts to herself. You always mess everything up. At least Dad's not here. Uncle Brian is going to show me around and take me to buy some cool Maasai bead jewelry.

It was after midnight by the time they checked in to Room 312 of the Intercontinental Hotel. Hannah had no idea what time it would be at home and was too tired to do the simple math. She got out a brush and started combing through her knotted hair. It felt so good to get a brush through it. No more tangles. Just the softness she was used to. Pulling out her long brown strands of hair from the brush, she realized she had lost her hair elastic sometime during the last leg of her trip, but she had plenty more, a pack of assorted colors. She grabbed a green one and tied her hair back into a ponytail.

She stumbled into the tiny bathroom with her toiletry bag — light pink with white polka dots — and turned on the sink faucet. A thin stream of water flowed. She twisted the knob as far as it would go, but the pressure did not change. She could still feel the film from the soap on her face and hands when she climbed into bed.

As tired as she was, she could not sleep. Her parents' harsh words to each other from the night before she and her mom left for Kenya were still fresh in her mind. She heard her mom's voice, her emphasis centering on the pronouns like darts hitting a bulls-eye. He's your brother, Dan. You should be going, not me. I take that back. I am happy to be taking our daughter to fulfill the promise we made to your brother.

Just as sharp, her dad fired back. The promise we made? We? I never promised to do anything.

Of course you didn't. You never would. You're too selfish.

I'm selfish? You're the one dragging Hannah because you want to go. Brian thinks he can change the world, Meredith. He can't. Poverty has been around forever and it always will be. It's bad enough right here in the US. In Africa, it's worse. No one person is going to change that, not anywhere.

You're just too closed-minded to see that even if what Brian's doing helps save one life, he's making a difference.

Oh, stop. You sound like one of those syrupy clips on the news. And what do you know about it anyway? You've never been to one of those places. And how's this all going to work, Meredith? Now you're going to save the world? Make a difference? You and Hannah?

Yes, Dan. We are.

Hannah remembered sitting in her bedroom holding her Tibetan Terrier, Livvy, and listening intently. She wanted to rush to her mom and side with her. But part of her agreed with her dad. And throughout the years she had learned it was best to stay out of it anyway.

There was a knock at her bedroom door. She heard her dad's voice. "Hannah? Can I come in?" His gentle tone made her crazy. He can be so fake. Does he really think I didn't just hear that whole conversation?

"Yes," she muttered.

"It's not too late to decide you don't want to go. You can stay here. It's your summer vacation from school, after all." They always want me to choose between them. It's like he's saying, 'Pick me! Pick me!' "Mom's been obsessed with this trip since Uncle Brian started working in Africa," he grumbled. "In her Peace Corps days after college, she never had the courage to travel so she stayed and worked in the home office. She feels like now is her chance. But you'll have other chances, if you decide you ever want to go." His voice was slick like when salespeople get too pushy trying to sell stuff.

Hannah hated when her parents made their problems into her problems. And she hated that she did not want to go and wanted to go at the same time. She felt like her mom in her "Peace Corps days."

"What about Uncle Brian? I already told him I was going." He's the only reason I want to go. "And weren't the plane tickets like a million dollars?"

"Uncle Brian will understand. And no, the ticket wasn't a million dollars." He chuckled. "It was a few thousand, but it's a refundable ticket, Hannah, so it's your choice. Think about it and we can talk more in the morning." He kissed her on the top of her head and walked out.

The pressure to choose whether or not to go — to choose between her parents — consumed her. She wished she could be half as relaxed as her dog, belly up and snoring on her bed beside her. Her dad was right. It was her summer vacation and she wanted to be with her friends. But she loved adventures and her uncle. She lay down next to Livvy and thought of the last time Uncle Brian had visited.

She had been sent to her room for lying to her parents about unfinished homework. Sitting on the top step of the staircase with her elbows resting on her knees and her chin propped up in her hands, she listened to them playing $25,000 Pyramid downstairs. Her mom gave clues. "Lace. Piping. Mexico. Canada. Fringe."

Unable to resist having the answer, Hannah called out, "Borders!"

She expected loud cheers. Instead, there was silence.

"Want to play?" Uncle Brian broke the tension. He got up off the couch, leaned his head up the staircase, winked at her and smiled. "You got it, so you're up!" They played for the rest of the afternoon and somehow she was no longer in trouble.

After dinner, her mom was making tea. Hannah excused herself from the table and said she still had one more test to study for.

"Want me to quiz you?" Uncle Brian asked.

"Sure," Hannah answered. "It's in science. Not my favorite subject and I don't really like the teacher."

"Why not?"

"Because she says things like, 'I zinc you know the answer!'"

Uncle Brian laughed. "That's hilarious. Come on, she sounds funny."

Hannah continued defending her case. "She has a poster on the wall that says, 'Think like a proton and stay positive.'"

Brian laughed harder. "Well," he admitted, "that one's a little more questionable."

"She puts scratch-n-sniff stickers on our homework, and ..." She burst out laughing.

"What?" Brian asked.

Hannah could not control herself. Tears streamed down her face. "There was this one time ..." She could barely get the words out. "She puts the stickers on our homework."

"You said that already," Uncle Brian said, laughing. "And I have no idea what's so funny."

Hannah took a deep breath and waved her hands in front of her to refocus. "One time, we had all made mistakes on our homework." She started laughing again. "And she thought it would be funny to use stinky scratchn-sniffs. And she chose poop." Fully crying with laughter at this point, she said, "And she had to dismiss us early because the whole room smelled so bad!" She wiped the tears from her eyes and caught her breath. "You're right," she said. "She actually is pretty funny."

The following morning Uncle Brian asked Hannah, "On a scale of one to ten, how much would it humiliate you if not only I drop you off at school, but I also go in and see the legendary zinc and poop lady?"

Hannah laughed. "Ten is the most humiliating?"

"Yes," Uncle Brian confirmed.

"Eleven."

He gave her a joking jab in the arm. "Seriously, Hannah, now that I know you're learning about the periodic table of the elements, I'm wondering if she's going to be teaching about water." He paused. "And I wanted to ask her if I can come in and talk to your class about access to clean water in places like Sauri."

"You mean like the wells being built in Africa that you told me about?"

"Yes, but there are wells being built all over," he explained. "And it's awesome. Because, you know, people can die from bacteria in water."

"Can't they just take antibiotics or something?" she asked.

"This is why I need to talk to Zinc." He leaned into Hannah. "I zinc I really do need to talk to her."

Hannah laughed. "You can talk to her, but I zinc you'll zinc she's crazy!"

As Uncle Brian had hoped, Hannah's teacher invited him back later that week to talk with the class about his work in Kenya. He looked at Hannah. "Scale of one to ten?"

"Five hundred!" She laughed. She leaned into him and whispered, "Just don't embarrass me, okay?"

"I zinc I will try not to," he whispered back.

Two days later and after a brief introduction by Hannah's teacher, Uncle Brian showed a slide with a picture of a boy wearing a dirty white button down shirt, a blue sweater with holes in it, and ripped blue shorts. He was smiling and holding a cell phone carved out of wood. Uncle Brian said, "This is Kiano. And he carved this cell phone himself." He pointed to the phone on the screen. "Look at the buttons."

Hannah looked around at her impressed classmates. She could hear them whisper, "That's so cool."

"Kiano and his friends have phones like this and talk to each other on them." He put a pretend phone up to his ear. "Allo?"

He took a step to the side and used his other hand to hold up a different pretend phone. "Ah, allo!"

The kids laughed.

"The kids there use wooden cell phones because there aren't many cell phones there. Yet. This is in Sauri, Kenya, where I live. I work for an organization in New York City and my job is to find solutions to help end poverty so people will have enough medicine, food, and clean water. And having cell phones will help people communicate with each other and others outside their community. I wanted you to see Kiano because he knows about cell phones and his family will likely get a cell phone before they have a toilet."

The class giggled. I should have warned Uncle Brian we still act like five-year-olds sometimes.

"Really?" He laughed. "Because I said, 'toilet'?"

The kids laughed harder. You said it again.

He looked at Hannah and she smiled and threw her hands up in the air. He shook his head. The boy sitting next to Hannah leaned over to her and whispered, "One cell phone for the whole family?"

Hannah shrugged her shoulders. "I guess so."

Uncle Brian continued talking. "More people in the world have a cell phone than a toilet."

The kids stopped laughing. The novelty of "toilet" had worn off.

"2.4 billion people — 1 in 3 — lack access to a toilet. And 663 million people — 1 in 10 — lack access to safe water."

Uncle Brian called on a student who said, "That means 10% of people in the world don't have safe water." The child paused. "That's a lot of people."

Another student called out. "And a third of the people in the world don't have a toilet?"

Uncle Brian nodded. He went on to talk about how many kids in Sauri, including Kiano — but more often girls than boys — need to walk a long way to get water each day sometimes instead of going to school. The class asked lots of questions and Uncle Brian answered them, including what can be done to help like getting toilets and proper waste removal systems, and building wells in places that need them.

The bell rang and nobody moved. "Oh, sorry, I can talk about this stuff forever." Uncle Brian said. "I'm really impressed. You know, Hannah's the best niece a guy could ask for." Pausing a moment, he added, "She's my only niece." He winked at her and laughed. "But seriously, she's awesome, and between her and having you guys as her friends, I am really hopeful for our future, I really am."