Finally & Forever (4 page)

Katie decided she also would send an email to Nicole, who had been a resident assistant with her in the dorms over the past year. It felt a little odd keeping Nicole near the top of her list of forever friends. She and Nicole got along great and had grown close over the past year, but then Nicole and Rick had started to date within what seemed like minutes after Katie had ended her relationship with Rick.

At the time, Rick and Nicole’s relationship made sense and seemed to fit. Katie encouraged their getting together. This morning, though, standing alone in the kitchen of this little bungalow, Rick and Nicole and the entire universe that revolved around Rancho Corona University seemed far away.

The teakettle whistled, and Katie realized she hadn’t yet found the coffee or chai. She opened cupboards and found an eclectic mix of plates, cups, and bowls. The assortment made her smile. That’s how she would have outfitted her kitchen if she had stayed in California.
This was pretty much how she had equipped her dorm — with random bargains she picked up at garage sales and at her favorite clearance store, Bargain Barn.

“Morning.” Eli entered the kitchen still wearing the clothes he had worn on the plane. “You look good, Katie.”

“You don’t,” she quipped.

“Just waiting for my turn in the shower. The shower certainly did you some good. How’s your back?”

“It’s okay.” She crossed her arm over the top of her shoulder and reached to give the affected area a pat. When she did, she flinched at the tenderness.

“Is it still sore?”

“A little.”

“When you got your yellow fever and typhoid shots, did you also get a tetanus shot?”

Katie thought a moment. “I think so. Yes, I’m pretty sure. Don’t they last for, like, ten years or something?”

“I think so. There might be a doctor staying here at Brockhurst in case you need someone to look at that for you.”

“I’m sure it will be fine. I’ll ask your mom if she has some ointment I can put on it.”

Eli reached into one of the cupboards and pulled out a metal tin. When he opened it, the aroma of ground coffee filled the small space. He pulled out from the bottom cupboard an old-fashioned metal coffee percolator. Katie wasn’t sure she knew how it worked, so Eli showed her how to fill it with drinking water and put the grounds into the round canister that was dotted with holes. The canister, with a slender cylinder running up through the middle of it, acted as the filter.

“When the water boils, it will go up through this tube in the middle and come out the top, pouring over the grounds in this canister.” Eli snapped on the lid. “You have to watch it so that the water doesn’t boil over, and you can’t let it percolate too long or it makes the coffee too strong.”

“Okay, can do.” Katie wondered what was next. What sort of wonderful breakfast might they create together? She was so hungry. Scrambled eggs and bacon sounded divine. Or pancakes and sausages.

“Should I start to make breakfast?” she asked. “Or does your mom like to have the kitchen to herself when she cooks?”

“I’m sure she wouldn’t mind if you started something. She might have been planning to just have
ugali
.”

“Is that as in, ‘Eww, golly, Miss Molly’?”

“No, that’s as in ugali, the daily bread of Kenya. It comes from maize and looks like white cement, but it fills you up. And it’s inexpensive.”

“White cement for breakfast? Okay, now you’re just making up stuff.”

“Am I?” Eli grinned and walked away.

“What? Are you trying to tell me you’re serious?”

“It’s my turn in the shower,” he called back to her. “Just relax. You’ll like it. And I bet you’ll like the
chapatti
too.”

Katie stood alone in the kitchen and mumbled, “
Ugali? Chapatti?
Seriously? Those can’t possibly be real words, let alone foods.”

She went back to searching for a box of chai tea bags and thought about how she once told Christy that she would only eat foods from her four preferred food groups: sugar, fat, preservatives, and artificial flavoring. That was back in high school, right after she had broken up with Michael, the health food buff and exchange student who had come to their school in Escondido from Northern Ireland.

Katie smiled to herself remembering that season of her life. Oh, how much she had changed since then.

She thought about Mrs. Lorenzo’s admonition to let her body and spirit settle into the rhythms of Africa. That process might take a little while. But she was excited to dive into the challenge of all the changes that were before her.

The thing Katie was discovering about Eli was that she couldn’t always tell when he was serious and when he was teasing her. She liked that about him. She liked watching him come “home” and settle into
his natural rhythm. It helped Katie to understand how challenging it must have been for him to make the adjustments to the culture and fast-paced lifestyle of Southern California.

Katie thought of all the times during the past year when Eli seemed to be staring. Perhaps it was his way of simply standing back and observing. Katie had tried to help him last fall by giving him a signal when he was doing the staring thing, but now she was beginning to understand how concentrated observing was a normal response in an unfamiliar situation.

For Eli this was familiar. Comfortable.

For Katie even the birds spoke a different language. And apparently chai didn’t come in a box marked “chai,” because she had no success finding it in any of the cupboards.

Leaning against the sink, she waited for someone to come in the kitchen and teach her the basics of how to prepare a Kenyan breakfast. She really hoped Eli was teasing about the ugali.

B
efore Katie put her head on a pillow at the end of her first full day in Kenya, she had compiled an extensive list of “Notes to Self.” During college she came up with a variety of short reminders whenever she wanted to make sure she didn’t step into the same awkward situation again or fumble and say the wrong thing a second time.

Here in Kenya the note-making seemed essential if she was going to find her rhythm, as Cheryl had suggested the night before. Even calling Eli’s mom “Cheryl” was a different rhythm for Katie and therefore went on her list of notes. Other top reminders included:

Katie rolled on her back in bed and decided to stop with the notes to self for the moment and try to downshift. This first day had kept her in a state of constant surprise. She knew jet lag had to be part of the reason for that. But a bigger part was that nothing was as she had expected. And that was saying a lot, because she had very few expectations.

The family breakfast time included Eli’s dad reading from the Bible and the family praying together. Katie loved it.

She also loved the tea, or “chai,” Cheryl had prepared for them. It was as delicious as the chai she had served the night before and the preparation was an eye-opening experience. First Cheryl boiled two cups of water in a saucepan and added about four teaspoons of loose tea leaves. She then poured in two cups of cold milk and what looked like about an eighth of a cup of raw sugar. Handing Katie the spoon, Cheryl told her to keep stirring the concoction. At just the right moment, Cheryl pulled the saucepan from the heat before it boiled a second time.

Then she poured the steaming beverage through a large sieve that caught the spent tea leaves, and the faintly fragrant mixture was poured into mugs.

“Lots of people like Kenyan chai with cardamom and ginger mixed in,” Cheryl said. “I like it plain, so that’s usually how I fix it.”

Katie took a sip and knew this was going to become her new go-to comfort beverage. It was thick and sweet and certainly helped the not-so-tasty ugali to go down.

Cheryl had explained that she only used a certain type of tea leaves when she made chai. She opened her tea canister again and showed the deep black contents to Katie. “See how finely they’re chopped?”

“It almost looks like ground coffee,” Katie said.

“Another tip is always to shake the canister first or stir the tea up with a dry spoon — just in case some bugs are burrowed in the chai. If the tea moves on its own before you put it in the boiling water, give it a good sift and remove the intruders before using.”

“Got it.” Katie considered adding that tip to her list of notes to self but had a pretty good feeling she wouldn’t forget that one.

The same commonsense spirit of “adjust as you go, and make use of all your resources” was in effect the rest of the day, as Eli and his parents helped to settle Katie in her new digs. She was assigned Room #3 in Building A, located behind the main office. As a newer accommodation, the building was where the single, long-term visitors stayed at Brockhurst.

Her room was in the middle of a stretch of six individual rooms connected by common walls in a long building with a red tile roof. The rock composite construction made her room feel private, secure, and quite cool. She had no heater, but the bed came with two blankets. Under the single window by the front door was a narrow desk with a lamp. Beside her bed was an end table with another lamp, and across from the foot of her bed was a wardrobe-style dresser made of dark wood with engraving along the sides. Katie ran her fingers over the vine carving and admired the craftsmanship that had gone into it. She was impressed. This wasn’t a precut piece of furniture like the bookshelf one of the girls in her dorm had tried to put together last year with a tiny screwdriver and glue.

The best part was that her room had an attached bathroom with a shower. She was used to living in a dorm where the toilets, sinks, and showers were down the hall. It seemed like a luxury to have her own bathroom only a few steps away from her bed.

“And here I thought I was going to be roughing it when I came to Africa,” Katie said when Eli showed the room to her.

“It’s still a jungle out there,” Eli said. “You’ll want to be sure to keep your bathroom window closed at night.”

“Right. Your mom told me about the bugs and how to get them out of the tea.”

“Bugs? I’m talking about keeping the monkeys out of your room.” Katie grinned. “Of course. The monkeys.” She thought he was kidding about the monkeys but couldn’t be sure since Building A
backed up to some dense foliage as if the building were nestled on the edge of a forgotten jungle.

After leaving her luggage in her room, Katie and Eli went on a hand-holding, grand tour of the Brockhurst grounds. The conference center was beautifully landscaped and much more expansive than Katie had realized. The high altitude, rainy climate, green grass, and stone cottages spread across the vast conference center made her feel more like she was in an English village than an African locale. It seemed impossible that a monkey would ever find its way to such a place.

Eli stopped at a large, impressive, hand-carved bench that was strategically placed under a shady tree in the middle of a grassy area. “This is my favorite bench,” Eli said.

Katie thought it was cute that he had a favorite bench.

“If you ever can’t find me, try looking here.” He stretched out to demonstrate how it was the perfect length for an afternoon nap and how the armrests had been built at just the right height if you were sitting at the end and holding a book. He smoothed his hand over the well-worn log that formed the perfectly curved backrest.

“A man named Martin made this bench. He was a big man from Belgium with huge hands and a deep love for this place. He taught me a lot about construction and woodwork. Whenever he would announce that he was going to start a new project somewhere on the grounds, I tried to get on the volunteer crew list.”

“I’d like to meet him,” Katie said.

“I’d like you to meet him too.” Eli paused a moment and added, “It’ll be in heaven, though. Not here. He left two years ago. He was eighty-eight and working on a wardrobe for Building A. It could have been the one in your room.”

Katie remembered noticing the carved details running up the wardrobe’s side. Even at a glance when she moved her things in, she knew it was a special piece of furniture.

Eli concluded his thoughts about Martin by saying, “One of the other guys working with him that day told me that one minute Martin
was rubbing oil on the finished dresser, and the next minute his body was sort of crumpled on the floor. He said it was as if Martin’s huge spirit rose and left his body in an instant, and all that was left was a pile of skin and bones. And those huge hands of his.”

Katie had never heard anyone talk about a person’s death like that. The raw, elemental atmosphere of this place seemed to evoke unfiltered discussions and responses.

Dinner that night confirmed her impression when they joined the rest of the staff and visitors for simple bowls of vegetable soup and soft dinner rolls in the main dining hall. Direct communication was best. Information wasn’t couched in a way to make sure no one was offended. The spirit of the conversations was open, as if all of them were family and could speak freely, even if this was the first time they had met.

After dinner Eli led the way to his second favorite spot at Brockhurst, located above the dining hall. This well-designed lounge area was called the Lion’s Den. At the far end was a private area with sofas in front of an impressive fireplace. At the other end was a nice little café called the Coffee Bar. Eli explained that this was one of the places where both of them would most likely end up helping out.

“Sounds good to me. When do we start?”

“Relax, Katie. Give yourself a chance to settle in.”

“I feel ready to go. You can put me to work. Honest, I’m not tired at all.”

Eli suppressed a grin. “Just wait.”

Katie soon discovered what he meant. By seven o’clock that night she felt as if all her batteries had run out. Here she was in bed at the unheard-of Katie-bedtime-hour of seven thirty, thinking again about the monkeys. She still wasn’t convinced when it came to Eli’s warnings about the occasional brazen primate that found its way through the jungle growth and didn’t hesitate to wedge itself through the bars that covered the bathroom window to ransack a room in search of snacks. Nevertheless, she made sure all her windows were closed before she slipped into bed that first night in her assigned room.

That may have deterred any marauding monkeys, but the closed windows didn’t stop the distinctive, early morning birdcalls from finding their way to Katie’s ears on her second morning in Kenya. They seemed determined to rouse her so that she would get up, pull back the curtains, and discover what the other sound was this morning. It was rain.

A sheet of silver rain splashed against the metal roof and ran in rivulets down the angled walkway. The morning light was dim. Katie’s room was cold. She wished she could make a cup of her new favorite comfort drink. Especially on such a chilly morning.

Katie got up and dressed in several warm layers. She found a baseball cap she’d packed and was glad that at least her head would be covered since she didn’t have an umbrella.

Charging her way uphill to the Lorenzos’ cottage in the downpour, she knocked softly on the door. No one answered. She felt odd trying the doorknob and letting herself in. Cheryl had invited her to come to their cottage when she woke up, but she hadn’t made it clear if they would leave the door unlocked. Katie didn’t know the protocol when it came to letting herself in to use the kitchen.

Rather than knocking louder and risking the possibility of waking everyone, Katie dashed through the rain and climbed the steps to the Coffee Bar above the dining hall.

A wonderful sight greeted her. To the right of the entry, in a well-situated meeting area, a fire was lit in the large hearth. The slender red flames lapped at the stacked, dry logs, filling the area with warmth and a sense of comfort. Facing the stone hearth was a tattered sofa, and someone wearing a knit beanie cap was sitting on the sofa with his head bent.

Katie recognized the beanie and the free-for-all brown hair that tumbled out at the edges. Slipping out of her soaked jacket, Katie took off her baseball cap and shook her rain-kissed hair. The wood floor creaked as she made her way over to the sofa and said, “Hey, Tarzan.”

Eli didn’t turn to look at her.

Katie stepped around to the front of the couch and felt the delicious warmth of the fire. She smiled when she saw why Eli hadn’t responded. His head was dipped because he had fallen asleep in front of the fire with his Bible open in his lap. In the same way he had slept so deeply on the bumpy van ride from the airport, he kept sleeping even after Katie sat beside him and put her legs up next to his on the hassock. She took off her shoes and wiggled her stockinged toes, relishing the warmth coming from the fire.

Katie leaned over to see where Eli had been reading in his Bible. It was open to the book of 1 Thessalonians. She looked closer and saw that he had underlined parts of chapter 3.

“May the Lord make your love increase and overflow for each other … May he strengthen your hearts so that you will be blameless and holy in the presence of our God and Father.”

Katie also noticed that Eli had written something in the margin that looked like it started with a
K
, but his arm was covering part of it so she couldn’t see what it said. She considered tickling his nose so he would lift his hand to swat away the imagined bug while she caught a glimpse at what he had written.

Did he write my name in the margin beside those verses? Is he praying those verses for us?

Katie leaned back and smiled. It seemed like just about the most romantic thing a guy could ever do, to write her name in the margin of his Bible next to a passage about love increasing and overflowing and God strengthening their hearts.

Katie couldn’t say she remembered ever reading all the way through either 1 or 2 Thessalonians, but she had a feeling they were going to become her new favorite books in the Bible.

Is this what you desire for us, Lord? Are you going to make our love increase and overflow for each other?

She read the underlined portion again.
Strengthen our hearts, Father. Make us blameless and holy before you.

Katie drew in the soothing scent of the burning wood and felt as warm inside as she was feeling outside from the delicious fire that had
turned her feet toasty. She looked at Eli, secretly wishing she could figure out how to cuddle up to him without being too invasive or interrupting his sleep.

Her snuggle plan was cut short when the door to the lodge opened. It sounded as if a stampede were going on, with everyone stomping feet and speaking in loud voices about this being the place to go for coffee.

Katie glanced at Eli. He had woken up and looked dazed, as if he didn’t remember where he was or why Katie was there beside him.

“Hi,” Katie greeted him.

“Hey.” He looked at her more closely.

“Remember me?”

He grinned and rubbed his right eyelid. “So, what’s going on?”

Katie chuckled softly.

“What?”

“Every time you wake up, you look like you have amnesia.”