Back from Africa

You Can Learn Anything if You Try

I'm flicking through the small ads as usual when suddenly my eye lights on a boxed ad looking for a woman between twenty-four and thirty with knowledge of the dental business to sell high-quality products to dentists. Experience in the sales representative business would be an advantage but is not essential. The job offers a good salary and a company car. I read it again and tell myself it's just the job I've been looking for. You can learn anything if you try and my experience as a sales rep has got to count in my favor. What sort of dentist is going to buy anything from a twenty-four-year-old.

That's the frame of mind I'm in as I apply to the agency. A week later I get an invitation to a preliminary interview. I go through my CV with the interviewer and he seems particularly interested in my time in Kenya. At the end I have an hour in which to do a test on the computer. As I'm leaving the interviewer tells me I'll have to wait to hear if I get onto the shortlist. There have been more than eighty applicants for the job. When I hear that I decide not to get my hopes up as I don't exactly fit their bill too closely.

In the next few days I pop into a bookshop to ask which publishers might be interested in taking a look at my manuscript. I reckon on talking to the big firms only as there doesn't seem any point in making my life story public if only a few hundred copies are going to be printed. If it's going to come out it would be best if it were published in Germany, and then Switzerland would be just automatically covered. I leave the bookshop with a whole list of addresses and when I get home I start ringing round.

It doesn't take long for the reality check to kick in. After giving a brief description of my story over the phone I'm already getting automatic rejections. One or two of the firms, however, agree to take a look at the manuscript, including Scherz, Knaur and Heyne. I get copies made of a few of my best photographs from Africa and write an accompanying letter referring to the phone conversation. Finally I attach a recent photo of myself to the accompanying letter and send it off with my fingers firmly crossed. They say I'll have to wait up to three months for an answer.

The employment agency invites me for a second interview, which perks up my interest in the job again. If I've got that far maybe my chances aren't that bad after all. Once again I have a meeting with the same interviewer who tells me I did well in the test. Then he asks me if I would be able to go abroad on a training course lasting about ten days. Of course I say yes. At the end of our conversation he asks me rather embarrassedly if I would mind toning down the bright-red color of my hair as dentists are rather conservative, as is the head of department I'm due to meet in the next few days. I have to laugh but tell him:

‘Look, up to now I've done fine with my hair this color, selling all sorts of things. This red hair is sort of my trademark; it's become part of my personality. I don't think it does any harm to bring a bit of color into the lives of people set in their ways.’

‘Fine, fine, I get the message. We'll see how it goes,’ he says. ‘I'll let you know some dates but there are still eight other people on the shortlist.’

I thank him and leave the building, hoping against hope that I really do get the job. On the way home I even stop at a church to light a candle and offer up a prayer.

A couple of days later a letter inviting me to go and see the dental company arrives. It's a big, modern pharmaceutical concern and as soon as I enter the building my initial nervousness vanishes and I feel at ease even before I've met the man I've come to see. He turns out to be just a few years older than me and seems very nice, quiet and even a little shy. With my height, my red hair and in my classic blue suit I feel even as if he might find me a bit intimidating. But he relaxes a bit as we get talking and before long he's even chuckling at my stories. I get the impression we're getting on well. After an hour he tells me he's made his mind up: my energy and my unusual life story make me just the right person as far as he's concerned but the ‘big boss’ will have to agree.

There are still two more people the top man is interested in who actually have experience in the dental profession. It's possible the ‘big boss’ will want to see me. He does, two days later. The ‘big boss’ turns out to be a skinny little man which makes me feel even more awkward. We've barely sat down together than he fires the question at me: ‘Just why do you think you're the right person for this job? Where do you see yourself ten years from now? How good are you at coping with the pressure of training, working and looking after your child?’ After two hours’ interrogation I'm allowed to leave and told I'll hear in a week's time either one way or the other or be called back in for another interview. I stand up and look the two of them straight in the eye and say: ‘Gentlemen, I would be delighted to come and work for you but I don't think there is anything more I can tell you. You've seen me now too and I think I'm the last of the three candidates you wanted to interview, so I'll expect to hear from you by Monday, as I'm afraid I do have other offers. I hope you'll understand my situation and I wish you both a pleasant weekend.’

With that I shake hands with both of them and leave. I've no idea whether my little speech was a good idea or not but in the end people have to make up their minds!

It's nearly noon so I drive over to where Hanni works to have lunch with her. As it's Friday, we decide to go out dancing again this evening. On the way home my mobile phone rings and it's my future boss: ‘Congratulations, Frau Hofmann. You've convinced the ‘big boss’. Now it's up to you to show us what you can do. You start on November 1.’ I'm completely taken aback and laugh aloud as I answer: ‘Wow! Super! I'm really really pleased and will do my absolute best for you.’

‘I know you will,’ he says, laughing too, and promises to send me out a contract in the next couple of days. I've done it again! I've beaten off eighty other competitors. I'm absolutely delighted to find I'm no longer unemployed and have a well-paid and interesting job.

When I get back home I'm in seventh heaven until I open my letter box and find the first of my manuscripts returned with a brief accompanying note: ‘Returned with thanks. We regret we see no place in our catalogue to publish your work.’

I take a look at my manuscript and get the immediate impression that nobody has even bothered to take a look at it. Every single page still looks as if it has just come off the printer: neat, tidy and never been read. I don't give a damn! I've just got a good new job that I won't be tempted to give up over the next few years. I can go and choose a company car, I've got a decent expense account, a good salary and I get a percentage of the sales profits. I'm not giving all that up easily, I tell myself, as I dump the returned manuscript in the cellar.

By the time I'm due to start my new job on November 1, all the other packages have come back too, each one with a similar rejection. One of the publishers even says that it's just not exciting enough! I can hardly believe what I'm reading. There I was living out in the open, deep in the bush, going from one extreme to the other, giving birth to a child in the craziest circumstances, describing dangerous encounters with buffalo and elephants out in the bush, car breakdowns that could have cost me my life, without even mentioning the woman who pulled her dead baby from her own body in my car, something that nearly sent me insane. Just how much more excitement do these gentlemen publishers expect? That's what I end up asking myself as I put all the returned manuscripts away.

Actually I tell myself I'm pleased. Who knows what telling all that in public would bring upon us? I've got an interesting job and an intelligent, pretty daughter. Writing down the story of my life in Africa has been therapeutic and now I feel I'm changing and have got a new lease on life. Only the pains in my back remain as an almost daily reminder of the manuscripts now lying packed away in the basement.

By now, however, I'm starting to feel we're a bit cramped in our little flat and that at seven, Napirai could really do with a room of her own. If I get a chance I should start making an effort to get a bigger flat as long as I can afford it. Nowadays I scarcely even have time to attend the lone mothers’ club and it comes as a surprise to me one day to find out that it's been dissolved. All that remains for me is the close contact I've build up with two of the women I met there.

I start to find my feet at work but it takes time to get to know all the products and what they're used for. The two other sales representatives are trained dental technicians and have been working in this sphere for more than ten years. I have to spend my evenings going through books and brochures and feel sometimes as if I'll never get my head around all the complicated names and processes.

My back pains won't go away though and one Friday I take it into my head to use a massage voucher I was given by my German friend, Andrea, three months earlier as a birthday present. While I'm lying there on the massage table the masseuse asks me if I'm the woman from Africa who's written a book. She wants to know when it's coming out. Obviously Andrea's been telling her all about me.

‘Probably never,’ I reply. ‘So far not a single publisher has shown the slightest interest.’

‘But it has to get published,’ she says enthusiastically and asks my permission to get addresses of some more suitable publishers from a friend of hers who runs a bookshop. Somewhat reluctantly I nod OK and a few days later I find a note pushed through my door with the addresses of four small publishers. I'm not at all certain I should even bother, as everything's going fine at the moment. But a few friends coax me into it and I eventually ring up one of them. The publisher tells me however that they only publish books by foreign authors. If my husband had written the book for example then they might at least in theory have been interested.

I then try a Munich publishing house called a1, which strikes me as a funny name. A man's voice comes on the line and he hears my story out quietly before asking me how I managed to come across them. We have a long chat and in the end he asks me to send in the manuscript so he can take a look at it. So I take a copy down to the post office, thinking to myself: This is the last time I spend so much money just on postage. He says it could take up to six months for them to get back to me.

My first few days out selling are nice and simple as they let me accompany one of the others. I listen to him carefully and begin to worry that it'll take years before I'm able to make a presentation as expertly. In January 1997 I'm sent off on a one-week training course in Germany. I'm supposed to learn all about ten out of some two hundred products, including the way in which they are supposed to be applied. It's a hard course but well taught. All the time these people are teaching me about what you can do and what you need to repair or replace bad teeth or even how to fix an entire set of teeth, I can't help smiling to myself and thinking of my family back in Africa. Protruding teeth or teeth that have large gaps between them, things we see as disfiguring and often spend large sums of money correcting, their tribe consider to be attractive. In any case, all Masai are missing their two lower middle incisors. Usually the children do it themselves when they are seven to nine years old, using a sharp knife or a needle which they push into the gum and then bang with a stone until the tooth falls out covered in blood. The children tend to be very proud of themselves afterwards and the adults shower praise on them. Why each and every member of the tribe went through this ritual was something I never found out, but it must have something to do with a fear of choking if they catch some illness or other. You'd be surprised what different attitudes people can have towards their teeth.

When I get back to Switzerland it's time for me to go out on the sales beat on my own. As usual I start out trying to make appointments over the phone but it simply doesn't work. Almost everyone I call comes back with the same answer: ‘We've got all the stuff we need but by all means send us some brochures. The boss never has time to see anyone anyway.’ Or: ‘I'm sorry we're not seeing any new sales reps; we've been using the same ones for years and we get on fine.’

There's only one thing for it, therefore: I've got to go out and knock on doors. But with this sort of customer it's not that easy to get to see the right person. It's nearly always busy at their practices and time and again I get asked: ‘Have you got an appointment?’ Sometimes I get the impression that these women sitting behind the counter see themselves as an impenetrable wall to protect their boss from me.

The best that happens is that occasionally someone will ask me if I'd like to have a cup of coffee and the boss will see me briefly in ten minutes or so. That cheers me up but has me worrying if I'll have the right answers to his questions when he finally sees me. I've never worked in an area where I felt quite so uncertain of myself. But every little order I achieve gives me that extra bit of self-confidence.

Late one afternoon when I return home I find a letter from lames waiting. I'm always pleased when I see from the envelope that I've got mail from Kenya. He'd written this one on 5 January 1997.

I feel a shiver run down my spine at the thought of how bad things had become for them. My beloved Mama had to flee to Maralal after having lived all her life in the one little village. She never wanted to come along in my car; she thought life in a town was terrible. She loved her Barsaloi and unless a particular ceremony obliged her to make a journey somewhere else, she spent all her time happily around her little manyatta. And now this had happened! They must have had to flee through the dangerous Loriki jungle, and with lots of little children in tow. Thinking about the fate of my Samburu family I realised that had things between me and Lketinga gone better, I too would now be destitute. If I had not given up before, I certainly would have now.

With such thoughts running through my mind I couldn't help feeling a huge sigh of relief that here I was living safe in Switzerland, yet at the same time I still felt forever bound up with these people. It was always those who had the least that suffered the most! I drive straight away round to the bank to send them some money so they can at least buy a few goats and something to eat. Then I pray for them and post a letter of commiseration.

At the beginning of March I'm off on another course, in Holland this time. I'm really impressed by the new range of products and find it easy to identify with them. I come back from Holland full of enthusiasm and can't wait to display my new knowledge. But because I'm going to need a good few minutes of the dentists’ attention now, I change my tactics to avoid being turned away at the reception desk. I go round all the dentists in a particular town trying to arrange appointments over the next few days. As we currently have attractive offers for new customers I succeed in about fifty per cent of the practices. My appointment diary is starting to fill up now and after six months in the job I feel I'm starting to be successful.

One of my neighbors tells me there's a flat in a new block in our village that's still available and up for viewing. Even though the rent seems too dear, I go and take a look. And once again it seems nothing can go wrong, inevitably the inevitable happens: it's absolutely the nicest flat I've seen for ages. It's spacious, open-plan and with big windows. I'm really taken with it even though I've had to find my way round with a torch as there's no electricity yet. All of a sudden the amount of the rent no longer seems important and I decide to take it. And happily I get a promise that this dream flat can be mine. We can move in on April 1. Even so it's hard saying goodbye to our old neighborhood. The girls are like members of a blood sisterhood, and I've enjoyed the company of my neighbors.

It's also not all that easy settling into the new flat. Up until now Napirai has always slept in my bed, whereas now she has a room of her own. Instead of going straight to sleep in the evening now she's calling out every five minutes, ‘Mama, are you still there? I can't see or hear you Mama. I want to go back to our old flat.’ But after a few weeks even these problems fade away and I start to take as much delight in our new flat as if it were a precious jewel. Sitting in front of an open fire in the evening I daydream and think of Africa. It's the smell of the fire that even still reawakens old memories. I imagine myself squatting on the earth in front of a campfire preparing a simple meal or making tea for Lketinga and his warrior friends.

I can still feel that sense of well-being I had in our manyatta which for all its primitiveness still provided protection from the heat, the cold and the wild animals. I realise that I have never had quite the same feeling of safety and security in any of my Swiss flats, no matter how luxurious they might be. On the other hand I have to admit that I'm able to enjoy a bit of luxury again now. When we first came back I wanted to live a life with just the bare minimum essentials. Now I've fitted out the flat with the best modern equipment; I hardly ever go into the second-hand shops any more and am gradually piling up all those things that people here think are absolutely necessary. I've got myself back to the standard of living I enjoyed before I went to Africa, and despite a few misgivings I have to admit I'm proud of it.

Napirai soon makes friends among the girls in our new neighborhood and little by little our old ties fade away. She feels at home with her childminders and her grandmother's house is directly on her way to school. I'm really feeling fulfilled in my job. By now I'm going back to several dental practices and getting a friendlier and more relaxed reception.

In the continuing number of courses and further education classes we have to go to we're now even sitting in on certain dental operations. Not everyone finds it easy to stomach the sight of blood and drilling into bone, but having lived with the Samburu is to my advantage. After all, I've seen the men slaughter an animal and drink its blood to increase their own strength. After a hard school like that, the everyday sight of blood hardly troubles me.

One evening just as I'm doing my daily report for work the phone rings, and I recognize the voice of the publisher from Munich. Oh God, I had completely forgotten about that manuscript. So many things have changed over the past six months, what with the new job and new flat. The act of committing all my past experiences to paper seems itself a distant memory now. Now I hear the publisher say: ‘Things are looking good for your gripping life story. But before we make a final decision we'd like to meet you in person.’

I'm rather taken aback. Nine months ago I'd probably have been jumping up and down but right now I'm not sure if I've got room in my new life for this. Nonetheless I accept his invitation to come and meet him. If I don't get on with the publishers I can always withdraw my manuscript.

A few weeks later I'm on the train to Munich, not at all sure that I'm doing the right thing. The publisher comes to meet me at the station and I find I get on with him straight away. A group of other people are waiting to meet me at the office, including a lively press lady who I immediately get on with really well.

On the train home after this encouraging meeting I begin to feel a little thrill of anticipation about what might come of it. A few days later I get a definite positive decision from them and details of a contract. There's no stopping me now. I ring up everyone who gave me moral support while I was writing, to get the news off my chest. They're all delighted but none of them really knows what happens next.

Christmas is getting close now and for the first time I can invite all the family to come round to our big flat. We have a really good, happy, quiet family Christmas, the harmony broken only by the arrival of a letter from Kenya.

Because of the continuing conflict the family still can't go back to the village. But thanks to the money we sent them they have at least been able to buy food and some goats which James has divided out between the family members. At last we also have photos of Napirai's half-sister. She's a pretty little girl too, but with her shaven head she doesn't look much like Napirai. But both girls definitely have the same eyes. There are also pictures of James at the ceremony marking him of marriageable age and for the first time I see him with the traditional face paint and wearing just a kanga. He looks strangely unfamiliar, as up until now I've only seen him in his school uniform or in his ‘normal’ clothes. These few photographs we receive remind me every time that my emotional contact to Kenya remains undiminished.