I had just beat one of my duffel bags for half an hour with a shoe and the rat inside was still alive when Rahema knocked on my door. For a while I had thought about letting him out and letting him run away while I shouted, “okay...okay little buddy that was impressive.” But I'd only poison him later. I really didn't want him breeding more superrats in my kitchen. So I opened up the zipper a sliver and dropped in two pieces of poisoned banana and closed it with the luggage lock.
I had also considered inviting one of the boys from the dormitory to open up the bag and hack him to death with a hoe. But the duffel bag is where I keep my emergency stash of packets of cheap gin. No, the real solution was the poison. I'd thrown another shoe at him that morning several times, chasing him out of his hiding place first by whipping a bright african-print cloth at where I thought he was. But he'd only run back into my spare bedroom and into the duffel bag and I'd had to go to parade at school. The poison or a cat. I'd gotten a cat for a few months and he had been great. He'd killed five rats that I'd seen him eat (and one song bird that he'd chased all over my living room and finally devoured under my couch because I gave up on chasing him out). But he'd lost an eye and subsequently his life probably to one of the mangy, wild dogs circling my house at night. It hadn't felt right to replace him and I was still insisting to Mama Benny that he'd probably just gone to Dar es Salam to greet his parents.
But I picked up the duffel bag and threw it into the back part of my courtyard where no one ever goes but me and let Rahema in.
Rahema is one of my favorite students on campus. We met when I took her to the Iringa girl's conference a few months before and she was the girl who had taken her role as “peer educator” most seriously. Also, for some reason I like that she calls me teacher and not madam, which even after eleven months still makes me feel like I run a whorehouse instead of an advanced physics classroom. She is the student in charge of the food for the boarding students, one of the loudest talkers I have ever met and almost comically fat and short. I am allowed to say that because 1. Tanzanians think of “fat” as a descriptive word like any other and not an insult and 2. her only comment on my photo album was that I had really gotten fat since coming to Tanzania. She presented it as a reason that I should stay in Tanzania forever.
She came in and we sat on the floor. No one sits on my furniture. I am not sure how it's possible or why it's true but it's infinitely more comfortable to spread the cushions on the floor and recline on them. I like to think of this as lending a certain urban and bohemian ambiance to my house. I like to think it makes the mat that is printed to look like tile and the scattered buckets and cardboard boxes used as actual containers seem intentional and ironic.
She wanted to talk about the life skills club we've been trying to start with limited success and our plans for it over the break. Mostly we just look at my photo album and talk about how things are going for her at school. But we do decide to postpone anymore meetings until after the midterm exams and then she presented the idea that we could do something for the form four graduation ceremony, like a song or a skit. I said I'd get her space in the schedule for it and help her choreograph it.
Then we walk up to the football game together and sit on an old dead log and watch the boys play. We talk about her future and what she plans to do in A-level and afterward. We talk about America and her tribe the Wabena. And then we walk back a little before the game ends because she needs to check on the food in the kitchen and I need to get back and start cooking and heating my bathwater.
Rahema is everything that I hope the next generation of Tanzanian women is. She is not exactly a radical departure from the culture and she's the opposite of the archetypal revolutionary. If she went to Hogwarts instead of Sadani Secondary she would be in Hufflepuff for sure, not Gryffindor. But she's incredibly smart and motivated, especially for someone her age. And she's outspoken and strong in this way that frankly leaves me speechless. She knows how to command the men around her in a way that doesn't make them resent her, but love her. She is going to be a great wife and an even better mother someday. I don't think that Rahema would ever burn her bra but I hope she raises daughters who do.
The next morning the rat is still alive (too smart to eat the bananas) so I carry the duffel bag out to the road and let it run out into the bushes, hoping its too far for it come back to my house.
