Papering Over The Grief

For almost a week after I learned my brother Fred had died, I literally didn't have time to think about it. I had to put up or shut up, and there was far too much at stake. Like my reputation. Like being exposed for a lot of sound and fury which signified nothing. Like having talked myself into a project I couldn't produce.

Thing is, when I shook the dust of the ill-fated Kilifi journalism workshop off my heels back in December, I was truly ready to pack it in and head back to America. Back home. I was pretty much convinced that doing the kind of journalism training and mentoring I'd won a grant to do was impossible in Kenya, because journalists just weren't feeling it. Journalism isn't considered a "craft" here; it's a job. For too many journalists, "ethics" are for chumps who don't have any influential connections. And who has time to take a week--even half a day--to really think about issues, and to work on improving their writing skills?

I believe I've mentioned that the only reason I'm still on the continent is because I had such a marvelous experience working with Sudanese radio journalists immediately after the Kilifi workshop. They reminded me that not everybody is cynical and unmotivated. Besides, I had already proposed producing a special section in the East African weekly newspaper about the new government initiative to provide free pneumococcal vaccine for infants. The research was conducted in Kilifi, and it was actually a big deal for Kenya. Heck, if nothing else, Melinda Gates' visit a few weeks ago proved the significance of the event.

Mercifully, the only two writers who took the Kilifi workshop seriously--and another reporter who I SHOULD have invited instead of the handful of complaining jerks who wasted my time and theirs--saved my bacon in the end. One of them is my assistant in the new journalism project, who turned in a first draft that almost made me applaud the laptop screen, it was so perfectly on point. The second is a former malaria researcher with three young kids who approached me late last summer, wanting to shift from scientific writing to journalism. Without her analytical expertise and skill, half of these pages wouldn't exist. The third contributor fought long and hard to do more health-related reporting with no support from his editor, and finally had to threaten to quit before they took him seriously.

So....these pieces of paper symbolize weeks of pensive planning, plotting and praying. And just when I really had to dig in my heels to gut this thing out, I learned Fred had died. For many hours after hearing that news, I contemplated flying home for the funeral. Even though family members talked me out of it, in those fevered, eerily still hours before dawn, I almost pushed the button on a flight.

Something made me stay. And it wasn't just fear of losing face. It was the spirit of Eloise and Julie. It was pure mulishness. It was sheer will. It was the ultimate "In yo' FACE!" to the naysayers, to the folks who'd turned up their noses at all my hard work back in December, and then had the nerve to go around bad-mouthing me afterwards.

And it was therapy. I picked up a copy of the published results at around the same time Fred's funeral was occurring, thousands of miles away. Somehow, I hoped it would make him proud. And everybody else up there watching out for me, holding me up.