This book is dedicated to those who have made a difference in the Zambakari world.

 

AUTHOR'S INTRODUCTION

According to UNICEF, 25,000 children die each day due to poverty. And, “. . .they die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world.”

 

I simply do not have the means to do something about 25,000 children a day.

I hardly survived awareness last spring of five Nuthatch babies dying in a nest. Better for me to avoid all signs of suffering.

 

But, in 2009, my willful avoidance vanished when I heard a specific voice, an African voice speaking English with a British accent. I was drawn to it and I hope to draw you into the story of the woman who possesses the voice—a woman of strong sorrows but a strength to match it.

 

2009—Late spring, Phoenix, Arizona

            “It’s seven,” said my mother, who was then in her ninety-first year. Robbed of a steady gait and a sure mind by a recent stroke, Alice nevertheless held tightly to determination. White double doors of the Assisted Living Residence dining room opened for breakfast at seven and Alice meant to walk through those doors on time. Caregivers—who doubled as wait staff—arrived with coffee about thirty minutes later after completing their morning rounds.

           

I visited often from my home near Seattle and the delay between the dining room arrivals of my mother and her caregivers always caused me to balk, to beg for time.

 

“Can we wait at least another ten minutes?” I pled. “We won’t even get coffee till after seven-thirty.” I got the look. Seven o’clock is seven o’clock.

           

Alice left her second-floor apartment with me in tow. She locked the door, pocketed the key, and patted the pocket, then shoved her walker down the corridor like a woman meaning to win a race. Shortly after the hour we were seated at her table, chatting until close to the hour of eight when a caregiver arrived with coffee and breakfast plates.

           

“Good morning, Alice,” Arketa said, singing the sentence and placing a plate holding an over-cooked egg, gull-grey sausage, and limp wheat bread posing as toast.

           

“Good morning, Barbi. Welcome back to Phoenix,” she said, setting my plate in front of me.

           

Greasy eggs caught my eye but Arketa’s British English caught my ear. She was African and I was reading a book set in Africa. Her accent piqued my curiosity.

           

 “Arketa,” I asked. “What country in Africa are you from?”

 

 “Sudan,” she said.

 

 “Ah! I’m reading a book about a Sudanese Lost Boy."

           

Arketa stepped back, took a deep breath, and put a hand to her ample breast. “Dah Lost Boys in Phoenix? Dey call me ‘Lost Mum.’ I made a walk like dem,” she said quietly. I saw it in her eyes, the stuff of suffering.

           

 I stood. “Could I hear your story?”

 

“It is difficult.” She paused. “It is very difficult.”

           

           

 But that afternoon, during Arketa's break and while my mother napped, we met. In fifteen minutes time I was locked into a wildly unexpected commitment to her.

“May I hear more?”

 

In ZAMBAKARI, find Arketa’s courage, her overcoming, her indomitable tenacity, her determination, her kindness, her easy laughter, her cleverness, her fury, her tenderness, her terrifying temper, her longing to die and her stubborn will to survive horrific and unmanageable circumstances. Her story is hard, like a marathon run through hills and in humidity. It is brutal and dangerous like a forced famine. It contains the harsh snatching away of treasured things. It’s the unbearable . . . until she proves it isn’t. 

Over the last eight years, Arketa and I have shared life, family, and friends. We have laughed and cried together. We have completed a commitment fraught with complications that required many more resources and people than either of us could have imagined at the beginning of things. Over these years I have heard and recorded her profound story. Now, on the following pages, we share it.

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