It took me two years after I got back to Austin, of calling and sending forms and checks to the Department of Immigration to finally get a visa issued for Asiya. I had also been sending letters to her, so that she wouldn’t think that I had abandoned her. I would send the letters to a guy I had met who worked at the rest house where Mike and I had stayed in Zanzibar. He spoke English and KiSwahili, and would get the letter, and go find Asiya, and read it to her, and she would dictate a response to me, which he would translate and then send to me. It was very unsatisfying, and took forever, but it was the only way to communicate with her. I kept her apprised of the progress with the visa. When it finally came in the mail, I sent it to Zanzibar, along with a plane ticket to Houston, where I could go, and get her right after she cleared customs. I also sent a little note, that I asked her to pin on her shirt, so that people would help her get to me. It said:

Hi Everybody! This beautiful woman is my wife, Asiya. My name is Sam Birchall. I live in Austin Texas. My phone number is:—–. Please call me if there are any problems. Asiya does not speak English, so if you could help her get to where she has to be, I would really appreciate it. Sam Birchall.

On the day the flight from Africa was due to arrive, I drove over to Houston. I had not heard from her since I sent the plane ticket a month or so before, and was just hoping that it got to her, and she had gotten on the plane. I sat in the arrivals hall, and was so excited to see her walk out through customs, with my note still pinned to the front of her shirt. I had spent the past two years trying to imagine how to help her acculturate to life in America. Now, here she was, and it was on me to help her feel happy that she had married me and had come here to a foreign country. As we drove from Houston to Austin, she spent the whole 2 1/2 hours gazing out the window at this strange land. That evening, we began the torturous conversations through using my KiSwahili dictionary. She would say something, and I would have her repeat it until I got the jist of what she was saying, and then flip back and forth through the dictionary until I figured out what she was saying, and then more flipping pages until I had a response for her, and I would say it. Then it started all over again. She would often speak really fast, and it was difficult for both of us. We had a patois for the simple things, just like when I was in Zanzibar, but for more specific things, it was just slow as molasses. I had two days to get her settled, then I had to go back to work during the days, leaving her alone in my apartment.

She watched a lot of TV while I was gone. Awful shows, like the Jeffersons. And other black sitcoms. She wasn’t getting much out of the dialogue, which is just as well, because the dialogue on these shows is so stupid. TV is full of colloquialisms, and implied meanings, and the English was mostly unintelligible to her. But there were black people in the sitcoms she watched, so I guess in some way, that was satisfying.

In the evenings, I would cook dinner, and carry on our discussions with the dictionary. That was when I learned that her mom with whom she lived, had died during the two years while she waited. She had no job, so she couldn’t pay rent, so a neighbor took her in. I set up an appointment with my doctor, and my dentist, to get her health cared for. The day I took her to my doctor, he was in the examining room with her, and after taking blood, and checking all her vitals, he came back into the waiting room smiling.

Dr Lewis: Good news Sam. Asiya is healthy as a horse. Everything looks good. And you will be happy to know that you will be a daddy in about 6 months.

Baboom. She had only been here for two weeks. And was evidently 3 months pregnant. I have never been a jealous guy, so I smiled at the doctor, and thanked him, paid for the visit, and we went home. I brought it up during our dinner conversation. She told me the story of how when her mother died, her father, who was then married to a different woman, could not take her in, because his new wife wouldn’t let him, so she had moved in with the neighbor that she had known for a couple years. In Africa, because of the male dominant culture there, it was rare for a man to help a woman, unless there was sex in it for him.

It reminded me of the time that my fellow Peace Corps volunteer in Swaziland, Linda, took the awful bus ride out to my school to visit me for a weekend. She had been teaching in a school in the city, with running water and electric lights, and wanted to see how it was in the outback, so I had invited her to visit. As soon as she got there, she wanted to shower. Well, I didn’t have a shower. Just two 25 liter jugs of water I had been saving for her visit, so she had to make do. She went into the bathroom and splashed around for a while, and came out wrapped in a towel.

Linda: Well, that was a change. I haven’t bathed like that since Homestead Visit, back during training.

Me: I have been saving those jugs of water for you, because I knew you would want to wash the dust off after the bus ride.

Linda: Yeah, well, I am glad that I am not staying more than one night.

Me: Well, excuuuusseee meeeee! I told you that I had no running water or electric.

Linda: Yes, you told me. I don’t know how you stand it.

Me: I am tough.

Linda: So, I used some soap from a small bottle there in your bathroom, to wash with, and now, my ummmm… my ummm… labia, are tingling. What kind of soap was it?

Me: Your labia are tingling? I can help you with that.

Linda: In your dreams, asshole. What kind of soap was it?

Me: (slightly offended by her lack of appreciation for my efforts in providing her the water) Oh, that was Pine Sol. I keep it to wash the bathing area.

Linda: WHAAAAT??? You let me wash with Pine Sol???

Me: Hahahahahaha!

Linda: YOU LET ME WASH MY PRIVATES WITH PINE SOL???????

She was really furious. Sparks were shooting from her eyes.

Me: (trying not very successfully to stop chortling) No, Linda, I wouldn’t do that to you. I was kidding. The bottle is Dr Bronners Pure Castille Peppermint Soap. I save it for when I have had a bad day, and need cheering up. One of my friends sent it from the states. Your… um… labia… are just minty fresh. The tingling will wear off in an hour.

Linda: You asshole. I am never coming to visit you again. I hate you.

But she didn’t mean it.

After she got on the bus to go back to her school in town the next day, the agriculture teacher caught me walking back to my house.

Simelane: Hey, Maseko, your girlfriend is very beautiful.

Me: She is not my girlfriend, Simelane, she is just my friend.

Simelane: Not your girlfriend? And she slept in the same room with you? Did you have sex with her?

Me: That is none of your business, Simelane. Why do you ask?

Simelane: I could never spend the night with a beautiful woman in my room without having sex with her.

And that seemed to be true, and a cultural difference between Swaziland and America. Sexuality was more basic there. A woman would not stay the night with you, or even be in your house with the door closed, unless she was ok with the sex. Sexuality was more open. And it was a polygamous culture in Swaziland. How else would you select a second or third wife, unless you had sex with her as well as getting to know her?

Meanwhile, back to Asiya. I could understand how in desperation for a place to live, that was a price she would have had to pay. And as I said, I am not of a jealous nature. In fact, I thought, well, good, now I will have a kid to raise. That was cool with me. I love kids. And I told her so.

For some reason, she was afraid of my electric stove in my apartment. She wouldn’t go near it. Even though I cooked on it every night, and showed her how it worked, she would not go near it. If it couldn’t be cooked in the microwave, she ate it cold. I did most of the cooking anyway, so it was not much of an issue.

I tried to do things that would help her feel better here so far away from what she had known. I had met a guy at the convenience store up the street, who was from Uganda, and spoke KiSwahili. I took her by the store and introduced her. They seemed to be getting along ok, the KiSwahili flying back and forth so quickly that I could not follow it. I took her to talk with him several times, but she seemed to be really uncomfortable with him after the third time, so I asked her about it. As it happened, he was asking her where the apartment was, so he could come by during the day, when I was at work. She told me that he had propositioned her, and she did not want to go back there.

I had tickets to the Kerrville Folk Festival, which I tried to go to every year, where I camped in my tent with the other hundreds of Kerrville lovers, and listened to great folk music in the evenings. I took Asiya with me. My friends, who normally camped all together, were great with Asiya. They included her in the things they did, and in spite of the language barrier, she had a pretty good time. She was nervous about sleeping in a tent, where wild animals could come around, but she smiled a lot, and seemed to enjoy the music and the camaraderie. And pitched right in with the campfire cooking and the washing of dishes.

I had a couple friends nearby that we went to visit a lot on weekends. Dawn and Amy were a mixed race couple, and Dawn, a black woman, took Asiya right under her wing, and we had a lot of fun with them. They had two little kids, and Asiya liked them a lot. Then one day, as we were leaving, Amy came and gave a big kiss to Dawn as we were standing there. Asiya was horrified. All the way home, as I drove, unable to use the dictionary, she went on about them. She kept asking me something. When I got home, the dictionary told me that she was asking if they were lesbians, and if so, how could I be their friend? It is very hard to explain my non judgementalism about people, and unconcern that they were lesbians, using a dictionary. I think I got the point across, but Asiya was not happy about it, and, I fear, felt it was poor judgement on my part. She never wanted to go back to Dawn and Amy’s, which was sad.

I had been leaving the apartment every day about 7:30am, and going to work until about 4pm. Then coming home, and cooking dinner. She seemed kind of upset with me after a couple weeks. Being me, I just asked her what was up. She went on about me not caring enough about her, and rushing off every day to hang with my homies. Well, not in those words, but as we discussed it, I realized that she thought I was doing what many African men do when they don’t have a job, and going somewhere and hanging out on a corner with their buddies, macking on any woman who passed by, and drinking beer all day. I had told her many times that I had a job, but she wasn’t really getting it. Tomorrow was payday from my job, so I made it into a lesson for her. I came home after work, having already cashed my paycheck. I sat her down at the dining room table, and took out the bills. Rent was due, and by next payday, the electric and gas bills would be due. Me and the dictionary showed her my bills, the dates they were due, how much they were, and then I showed her my paycheck stub, and the pile of cash. I had her count the money, and showed her the check stub, to prove that was where the money came from. I told her more about what I was doing to earn the money. Then I took each bill, and explained what it was to her. I put the rent bill down, and counted the rent money out on it. Then the electric bill, and I counted out money that was about half the amount, and put it on the bill. Then the same for the gas bill. I took the money left over, and got out my grocery list, and counted out some of my pay on it. And explained that was how I paid for food when we went grocery shopping. There was a small pile of money left over. I counted it into two equal piles, and gave her one pile. She wanted to know why, and I explained that half of what was left after bills was her part of my paycheck, because she was my wife. Mine? Yes, yours to spend on what you need. That was also a hard concept for her to get. But if I am nothing else, I am an egalitarian, and she got half of the leftover money. She put it away, and I never saw it again.

Asiya was unhappy. She did not like America much. There were too many white people, and not many who spoke KiSwahili. She felt homesick. I tried to include her in everything that I did, except going to work. She finally, after my second or third paycheck, came to accept that I was actually working during the days, but she just wasn’t very happy. Our evenings were filled with torturous conversations with the dictionary, and though my KiSwahili was improving, her English was not. Some days I would come home from work stressed out simply because I wished for a night without the dictionary. Her pregnancy was showing. I am sure that affected her emotional well being too.

One night I came home, and she was ready to get into it, and I could tell that she had something important to say. She took me over to the coffee table, and open on the table was my old anatomy textbook from college. It showed a page with pictures of the proceeding months in the development of a fetus. In a long slow conversation, with a lot of impatience on her part, she pointed to the photo that showed where she was in her gestation, and where she would be when the airlines would not let her fly any more (I had no idea how she knew this). Then she told me a story. She had an Aunt in Zanzibar, who had been childless, and wanted a baby, and her plan was for me to fly her back to Zanzibar, before she got too much more pregnant, where she would have the baby, and give it to her aunt, and then fly back to America. And she addressed the issue of her having arrived here pregnant. In order to prove that she was faithful to me, and telling me that she would not go near the neighbor who got her pregnant, after having the baby, she would have the doctor sew her vagina shut, and when she got back here, I could take her to the doctor, and have him cut her vagina open again, and everything would be hunky dory. 

I sat there stunned. I didn’t know what to say. I had heard stories in Africa about how rich men would have their wives sewn shut when they were going to be traveling for a couple months, to keep them faithful until they returned, but had thought the stories just urban legends and baseless gossip. I eventually figured out my response to her plan.

Um. no. No f—ing way. no one was going to be sewing anyones vagina shut. No way.

I could not sleep all night with her there next to me. I tossed and turned and could not shut my brain off. I kept thinking, the poor girl, how did she come up with such an awful plan? Early in the wee hours of not sleeping, I accepted that Asiya was even more unhappy than I had thought. What she really wanted, was to go home. I took the day off work and as I cooked us breakfast, I explored her unhappiness with her. Yes, she was very unhappy here. She did not like America. She was unhappy that nobody spoke KiSwahili. Unhappy that my horrible stove made her afraid to go in the kitchen. Unhappy that she wasn’t getting used to Texas. Unhappy that she had no friends here. Unhappy, sadly, that she had married me, and been taken away from what she knew. We both were crying at one point, and I took her into my arms, and hugged all the love that I felt for her into her. Neither of us could think of a way to make it work, and for her to be happy here. I felt like I would be torturing her to try and make her stay. So, I ponied up for a plane ticket home, on my credit card, where I had not yet paid off the plane ticket to get her here. And two weeks later, I took her to the airport, and put her on the plane. Those two weeks were the happiest she had ever been since right after we got married. Me too. We were loving and patient with each other. My KiSwahili, at least in general conversation, had gotten much better. We hugged and kissed, and sat holding each other. But she wanted to go home, and her happiness came from knowing that she was going. It was so bittersweet. She flew home, and I have never heard from her again.

5 years later I was working a job for my friend from PC Swaziland, Kristin, who lived in Seattle. I had driven up there to remodel her bathroom. And get out of the Texas heat for a while. While I was there, a guy that Kristin had met on her own journey to Zanzibar, after I had left Swaziland, was in Seattle, and was coming by for a visit. I knew that he knew Asiya, though peripherally. One night we were drinking beer on Kristin’s back porch, I asked him if he had seen Asiya recently. He had, about 3 months ago. She was in good health, and happy in her life there. So I asked him what she told people when she arrived back in Zanzibar. I knew people must have been wondering why she would return. I can’t count the people who had come to me while in Africa, and asked me to sponsor them to come to America. Everybody wanted to come here. He looked at the floor. and the wall. But would not look me in the eyes.

“Come on,” I said, “you can tell me. It doesn’t matter, I am only curious.”

He swallowed and looked sad. “She told people that you drank all the time, and that you beat her every day.”

Oh. I stuck out my hand, and said, “I know it cost you a lot to tell me that, and I appreciate your candor. Did you believe her?”

“Yes,” he said, “and I was nervous coming here the first time, because that is what I thought had happened. But after I got to know you, I realized that you are not a drinker, nor a man who mistreats women. Kristin would not have you for a friend if this was true.” And he shook my hand. And we drank more beer.

Tis better to have loved unwisely, than to never have loved at all.  

 Asiya, wherever you are and whatever you are doing.