Happy Friday: Here is my life part 9

Ok. Here we go and it's Peter at the keyboard. There has been some travelling that came in between my story so a little back kick is not wrong. We had travelled to both New Zealand and the Transmongolian Railway.

My youngest son Billie had for the first time completed a year at school with no problems and it was grade 6, in a small class of six children. We had just inherited money and bought our first campervan and my eldest son Robin was 20 years old and in love for the first time. Now we're off to school and Kenya. Ok, follow me!

Wrong decision

The municipality said that the children who attend the small group in the middle school are sent together in a small group to the secondary school. Excellent, we thought, BUT Billie had done so well in the 6th grade that he can manage the upper secondary school in a large class, the municipality thought. NO, hell no. My ex and I fought bloody hard to prevent this from happening, but the municipality did not give in because there were other children who were in greater need. How wrong they were!

On the first day of secondary school, Billie went to the front door, grabbed the front door and turned around. Security was gone and she was back to square one. It's called social phobia, or an insecure teenager who only had her five friends from her last class, and felt left out. Home from work and looking for Billie. There was no way I was going to get him back into regular class at school. Thanks for that!

Second chance

The school couldn't fix this right away and there was a lot of work at home and I asked for homework. It went like that because he turned the clock and we didn't have any

fixed times anymore. After two months we got a place in a new small class in Kallhäll in Järfälla outside Stockholm. When you're a teenager, "småklass" usually means messy children.

It was a learning experience for a teenager. Billie made a new friend who was a nice guy but had trouble controlling himself when anger came up. There were two more guys who were friends and one of them also had trouble controlling himself, so there was always a volcano ready to explode.

One afternoon on the way home, Billie's mate jumped on the other boy and punched him, breaking his nose bone. An ambulance and a mad scramble ensued and the school called a meeting the next day. Billie has always been afraid to fight and had never hit anyone else before. He was also not a person to steal even a tenner and he always told the truth. He suffers from other problems but not these. He said that his friend had suddenly just lost it and hit the guy. Ok, let's solve it at school, I thought.

Sometimes being honest doesn't help

Billie and I came to the school the next day for a meeting with the teacher and principal. He told his story but the guy who had been beaten had his mate, and he said that both Billie and his mate had done it. Suspension from school came like a letter in the post, and back to square one again.

Back home again and it was impossible to work full time with meetings at school, and now how do we solve everything? We talked to the parents to try to get the guy to admit that Billie wasn't in on it, but he refused to take back what he said. Even the guy who did the hitting said Billie wasn't in on anything, but it was no use.

Kenya

After a very difficult autumn, Helena and I decided to go abroad on our own and we chose Kenya. We booked the tickets but not even a hotel and we only travelled with one backpack each. We arrived in Nairobi and took in a first hotel but we were not allowed to go out on the streets. Hmm not fun at all.

We bought train tickets to Mombasa in south-eastern Kenya and left the next day. We met a couple from Holland sitting opposite us in the train restaurant who were incredibly nice. She worked in Kenya as a kind of reporter and reported to Holland about what was happening there.

Marlon and Linda from Holland were going to a guesthouse in Mombasa for a holiday. They were going to ask the owner if there was room for us but we had to stay in a hotel in Mombasa for the first night. The election had just ended in Kenya and the votes were being counted, and it was close.

Mr Odinga, who had the most votes, was challenging incumbent President Kibaki and was predicted to win. All of a sudden all the TVs went out, and for us it was something normal in Kenya we thought. We felt a little lonely as whites in the hotel and there were a lot of cool Rastafarians there, and a little tougher atmosphere.

You never know

We ate our food and when we had finished, a big black guy asked in pure Swedish, "Hi, I'm from Stockholm, what are you doing here?". Completely shocked, we asked the same thing. His father had died and he had gotten married a few months earlier, so they agreed to go to Kenya and bury his father. He was also going to meet his brother at the hotel for the first time, and he was really nervous.

He said that first they went to Uganda where they had relatives, and the tradition of the old people was to chew chewing tobacco and spit on the bride and groom. They had dressed up and ruined their nice clothes and stopped the old people from the village. They said that this is not possible and there is no other way. Then they calmly said that we can massage your feet instead, so it worked out for the better, haha.

Swedish foreigner

For his father's funeral, the Swedish-Kenyan boy was told that he should buy a goat and cut its throat and spread the blood over the coffin. He thought uhhhh! He didn't want to do that and asked if there was any other way. They said he could buy sweets and give them to the children on the street, yippee, that's what I'll do, he said like a grown-up Swede.

While we were talking, a slippery guy with rasta braids and two chicks also with rasta braids, sunglasses and the whole gang looked like they came from a YouTube video. He said that this must be his brother and that he had to run to the toilet, haha. What a fate.

Unexpected turnaround

Our new friends called us and said there was a room at the guesthouse, so we took a taxi there. By the time the televisions came on, the incumbent Kibaki from

Kikuyu tribe won over the leading challenger Odinga who would have won from the Luo tribe, the same tribe that Obama's father came from. "If someone wins and becomes president, you give the jobs to your own tribe first, and this was high-level electoral fraud.

Roads, railways and ferries were closed and eventually charter travellers were flown home. We backpacked and were stuck in a guesthouse with two more couples and the charming French owner and her staff. We felt quite safe because there were high walls and barbed wire at the top. Before it really broke out we tried to go to the shop, but everywhere there were military with machine guns so we just had to turn back.

Scared

Now the tribal wars began and they burned cars, shops, houses and started to kill people with machetes. Children and adults were burned inside a church that was locked from the outside during services. A reporter from England was stabbed to death and 300,000 people were displaced in a very short time, and now I was scared for the first time in my life.

I spoke to the Swedish embassy and they said it was fine because they had spoken to the police. ARE YOU ASHAMED? Who owns the police? Well, the president! And they certainly don't want to spread unrest to the outside world. WHAT DO WE DO NOW?

We all discussed how to get out of there, and one suggestion was to hire a boat and go to Tanzania, but we didn't know if they had surveillance on the lake, so we dropped the idea. It was New Year's Eve and the owner offered a fantastic 6-course menu in French cuisine because it was so hard. We discussed around the table that if we get out of here alive, what should we do? That's crazy!

Escapes

The days and thoughts passed and after six days the ferry opened in Mombasa and that was the one we needed to get to Tanzania. We talked to one of the taxi drivers who drove a lot to this guesthouse and it was possible to drive to the border. He asked for two months' salary but his wife didn't want him to go anyway, but it was all said and done and we went with the couple from the Netherlands.

We couldn't leave the car and all the dark windows had to be up. Whites were a hot commodity because we have money. When we got off the ferry, we had to go through the ghetto and there were burning cars in the middle of the road. All the shops, petrol stations, everything was burnt down. There were dark men all over the roads trying to find something to do next.

Our taxi driver drove like a maniac between the cars so as not to be stopped by a mob, because then we would be screwed, he said. We got to the border and he told us to pray for him to come back home. We got his mobile phone number because we wanted to know and he texted a few hours later that he had come home, phew.

Safe soil

It would cost $50 each to cross the border and we filled out our papers on an old wooden bench outside the office. As we filled out our paperwork, a woman in a black burka with only a line to open her eyes and five small children running around her legs. She leaned forward and asked in Swedish how to fill in the boxes. Haha, what a shock!

She had also fled from Kenya and was also going to Tanzania. We went to pay and I told Helena that if the woman doesn't have enough money, we have to help. What made me think that she would be poor? Idiot! She pulled her blanket up to her thighs, and there was as much money as she wanted attached to it in bands around her thighs, so there was no need for her.

Tanga

We went on a local bus that went to Dar es Salaam and the four of us were the only whites and the others had a lot of fun with that. A laugh went through the bus and we heard "mzungu" (white) all the time, haha. We travelled for an hour, then we said we were getting off in a place called Tanga in the middle of nowhere.

A small village that actually had a taxi and we asked if there was any accommodation somewhere. He drove us in difficult terrain straight into the jungle for 45 minutes and we ended up in a place that was for overlanders, you know people who drive across Africa in off-road vehicles. Here we also met researchers and aid workers who wanted a few days' rest.

An Englishman came to meet us in a jungle hat, khaki trousers, long socks and sandals. They had one bungalow left out of six and a tent, so we took the tent. We had to close it properly all the time because you don't know in the jungle what can come in, gulp. We had said that when we get somewhere we will celebrate life, but everyone was so mentally exhausted that we didn't even need to be rocked to sleep.

Peace and quiet

The tent was ten metres from the turquoise sea. The nature was completely untouched and we walked for an hour along the white beach and not a house, not a soul but just pure nature. Absolutely amazing that it still exists! We hired a boat trip with some local fishermen and sailed in a hand carved sailboat and handmade sails. We were back 2000 years and they took us to sand dunes and we snorkelled and not a boat was seen.

At the place where we stayed they had a communal dinner under a canopy and we could eat the day's catch from the lake and drink beer and spirits. There were about 20 people there and we started talking to a frog scientist who was looking for new species and crawling around in the jungle and his girlfriend who was there visiting for a week and she was a brain doctor from Ireland. After a few beers, she started singing Irish pub songs. I was sitting in the middle of nowhere in Africa and thought "is this real or am I dreaming"?

Dar es Salaam

Two days later, Helena and I decided that we should see more before going home and we had two weeks left. We also had to go to Dar es Salaam to rebook the flight, because we didn't want to go back to Kenya. Here we parted ways with our friends from Holland and went off on our own. Our idea was to continue on that local bus and then head out to Zanzibar that everyone was talking so much about.

We bought tickets and travelled on the bus for five hours just with local Africans. After half the time the bus stopped and everyone ran out into the jungle and peed. From what we saw, the women can't wear panties because they just sat straight down and did what they needed to do, haha. You learn as long as you live.

I have been cheated again!

We rebooked the flight and took a taxi to the harbour where the boat would leave to take us to Zanzibar. Africans are very inventive and come up with all sorts of things to make money. I had paid too much several times, so I thought we should do better. When we arrived at the harbour, four Africans rushed forward to sell tickets for the boat and I just said NO.

We went to the harbour office that we saw from the taxi and bought our tickets and they also asked if we wanted first class. We wondered what kind of boat it could be so we took the safe route and bought first class. When we went to the boat we passed the real harbour office. BLOW! Yep, and when we got on the boat there was no first class, BLAST AGAIN, haha. I can laugh now but I was damn annoyed then.

Zanzibar

We came out to Zanzibar and this was really a paradise island. We went around and met even more crazy people, like a French woman who had a two-week holiday working in Sudan. She was volunteering in Sudan and living with 20 people in a villa that was switched off at eight o'clock every night and everyone was constantly worried about their lives.

This French woman had also lived on a small island north of Australia with 100 inhabitants and a boat went there once every six months, which was crazy. After six months in Sudan and war, she partied hard and started playing ping pong with the Christmas baubles in the restaurant where we were. I think she needed to blow off some steam.

The end of the journey

We went around the island and found a new place and there were also private boats to go out to a small island, where there were lots of turtles, special bats living in trees and crabs in abundance. We asked the owner of the place if it was possible to go there. He just looked at us and said quite calmly, "it's my island", haha. A wild and beautiful little island out in the middle of nowhere we also got to see on the trip.

Freddie Mercury from Queen comes from Zanzibar and of course they have a bar with lots of photos and music. We came home after a real adventure. Marlon and Linda came to visit us the following year for Christmas for a week, so we got to show how little Stockholm looked like and it was very nice to meet again.

Establishment

In the spring came the trial of the guys who had been fighting. The guy who was going to testify for his mate broke down and said that Billie wasn't there, but he was too scared to disagree with his friend earlier, but that was it. What do you say about such a thing?

He was taken from a place in a small class to secondary school. We found a gap and against all odds he found safety in a new small class, which he was then wrongly judged by the school and suspended from. Now his confidence in school was at rock bottom. The school tried to have private lessons with him four hours a day in Year 7. There were millions of meetings, he left school several times and I had to leave work all the time. I wonder what the goddess of fate has in store for him?

The motorhome FREEDOM is born, we'll get to that next time and more about my life again. How has your week been?

Did you miss the last Happy Friday? Read the Here is my life part 8