The child of a friend shows the author that she's found home.
"You do know me, Auntie," the young man in the gray trousers says. "I'm Adam."
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"Adam?" I look at him closely. I know only one Adam in this corner of Zimbabwe ? a child I haven't seen in years.
The youths arrived in the back of a pickup, hooting at our gate. Donny had telephoned earlier this week. "We want to meet the new baby," he said.
There are 13 of them this Sunday morning, squeezed into the chairs on my veranda. Micah has a guitar. Donny, Violet, Shamie, Chenge, Tariro, Farai: These I recognize.
Two girls shyly introduce themselves. Then Adam steps forward.
"Is your mother Siba?" I say, realizing as I speak that I am breaking a local taboo by naming a child's mother in front of him.
He nods. For a few moments I can't say another word.
I met Adam's mother shortly after I arrived in this eastern Zimbabwean city. My son was 2. He adored Adam, who was 11. Adam's sister, Mhishi ? short for Michelle ? was 6.
Some afternoons, Siba and I sat in the sandy yard at her mother's house. We talked of husbands and how we met them. We did up the cottage she lived in with my mother-in-law's hand-me-down curtains. We took the kids to eat ice cream. Adam took cuttings of the mint by my garden faucet and planted them in his granny's flower beds, where they flourished. Siba baked the best corn bread I've ever had.
It was Siba who got me into the offices of a state newspaper, an unusual place for a white woman. She had a temp job. I lent her a blackberry-colored sweater for her first day there.
Then Zimbabwe's economic crisis started to bite. Things were getting hard for Siba's family, though she said little. Then she told me they were moving to Zambia, where her in-laws lived. She left hurriedly, two years after we met.
I felt a little colder after she left.
She came back to see her mother occasionally. One Christmas she floated back into my life for a brief morning in a royal blue ball gown: the same Siba, bright, courageous, and full of life. It wasn't much easier in Lusaka, she said, but at least there was a little money, and a house. A few months ago she banged on my gate, bearing a pair of handmade black sandals exactly my size. She was giving English lessons: "Don't you have some novels?" she asked. "The other mothers are desperate to learn."
I pulled out some from a pile sent by generous Christian Science Monitor readers for Zimbabweans hungry for books. "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," by Alexander McCall Smith: I knew that would please. Some books for the children: an alphabet learner, a jungle story. She took clothes and bars of soap to share, too. We chatted as we'd always done, catching up on family news, the latest on her glamorous sister Louise, my sister Edith in Sweden.
Then she was gone. Again.
"Your mother is one of my very best friends," I say to Adam now.
He fills me in. His parents have sent him back to Zimbabwe to live with his grandmother and finish his education. Adam has thinned out, lost his puppy fat. But he still has the smile of the boy who treasured a paint box given to him by his grandfather years ago.
The youths sing, to the fascination of my pink-clad daughter. They eat my mother-in-law's crackers and then they leave. I walk for a while in the garden, hugging my happiness to myself. When my husband joins me, I try to explain why seeing Siba's Adam moved me so.
He and I have often discussed what makes a place home. My husband was born here. His family lost their home during the land-reform program. I moved here 11 years ago from France, though I was born in Britain. Officially, I'm an "alien."
Seeing Adam made me realize that you have finally come home when you live in a place long enough to see the children of your best friends grow up.
Home is not just where you put down roots. It's where the growth you see gladdens your heart.
?Readers wishing to send books to Zimbabwe may send an e-mail to homeforum@csmonitor.com for details. Put 'Books for Africa' in the subject line. ?
Source: http://rss.csmonitor.com/~r/feeds/csm/~3/ggUEC1_Gr04/Siba-s-gift-to-me
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