The two-and-a-half-hour drive was ridiculous to me considering all we really wanted it for was electricity. Jinja was surprisingly well developed since all I’d ever seen from Kampala to Masego was undeveloped land excluding a random petrol station here and there. Ian told me it was the second largest city in Uganda. I had to keep myself from laughing while looking on it knowing those statistics. The main roads were paved, which was a rare sight, but they were poorly maintained and buckled in many spots. The establishments were plentiful but mostly one story. The roads were filled to the brim with bicyclists. Our truck seemed to be the only one among a handful in the entire city.
“The source of the Nile is here,” Ian explained after parking in front of a promising-looking restaurant.
“Get out!” I exclaimed, genuinely surprised.
He opened the door for me and I stepped inside. We were the only ones. An Indian woman called us over.
“Excuse me,” Ian said, “I wonder if you wouldn’t mind if we trespassed on your kindness for a little while. My friend’s phone is almost out of battery and we need to charge it. What would it cost us to use your electricity for, say, eight hours?”
She held up her hands to stay us and went behind a door, emerging with a pen and piece of scrap paper. She wrote down a number and I bent over to examine what she’d written. It read “2 American dollar.” I nodded at the figure and handed her two dollars from the small stash I’d brought. We set the phone up to charge and sat at a nearby table.
Suddenly things became uncomfortable between us. We both knew it was the only privacy we’d be afforded for some time and neither of us was bold enough to speak our minds. This is so unlike me. I stared out the dirty window before me, watching the men in dress pants and button-ups cycle along the streets. The woman interrupted the awkward quiet by setting a pot of tea and two cups at our table.
Ian thanked her and poured the tea over a sifter to catch the leaves, handing me a cup. Our hands touched and a spark of literal electricity shocked our hands apart.
“Static,” I whispered. We stared at one another, our hands inches apart on the table. I brought my gaze down and inspected them. “Talk,” I ordered finally, taking in his eyes again.
“The lesson.” A breath whistled through his nose.
“I thought you hated me.”
He shook his head, his hair falling a little into his eyes. “I don’t hate you, Soph. I never did.”
“Then why treat me like a pariah?”
He sat back but kept his hands flat on the table, his eyes searched me deeply.
ER FIFTEEN
It was the best night’s sleep I’d had since I arrived. I awoke early, grabbed my shower bucket and I ran across the cool morning air to the wood stalls and stared inside.
Clear.
I searched the grounds and spotted Ian’s back on the other side of the baobab tree. His head raised as if he felt my stare and turned around, scouring the landscape around him. His eyes caught mine and the morning sun glinted off his bright blue eyes, making them even more vibrant. I inclined my head toward him and he nodded subtly in return. Butterflies drowned my empty stomach in flutters.
I showered, not even recognizing how cold the water was that morning like I did every other morning. When I dressed in my room and began plaiting my hair, my hands felt clumsy and nervous. I was so flabbergasted at myself. I couldn’t believe I was acting the way I was. Me, the queen of control. The queen of attraction. La Fée Verte. The old name crept into my conscious and I dropped my hands, studying myself in the mirror. The prior giddy feeling I was so happy to enjoy a moment before felt terrible now. I realized I didn’t deserve Ian. Recollecting all the terrible things I did back home made the wonderful butterflies die and nausea take their place. I steeled my hands, fighting back the feeling I was being swallowed by a black hole and finished my hair.
Karina’s knocking at my door reminded me I was there to do a job.
“Sophie, my love, are you dressed?”
“Yes,” I said, opening the door for her. Her face was white as a sheet. “What’s wrong?” I asked, my stomach dropping to the floor.
“Mercy has measles.”
“Measles? How? I don’t understand.”
“A nurse confirmed it late last night. She will live, I’m certain, but the young ones, none of them are vaccinated and two of the children have fevers,” Karina explained, wringing her hands.
“Why couldn’t you vaccinate?”
“We lack the resources.”
“Okay, well, what does this mean? What do we do?”
“We call Pembrook.”
This surprised me.