Clive.
The name gives me chills, leaving the haunting scent of campfire smoke and the memory of smeared red clay stains on my clothes. It was a name from simpler times; a time of water pumps, tents and sleeping bags, making concrete from scratch and six hour truck rides to civilization.
It was almost six years ago that I met Clive on a visit to Zambia, which is around the bottom part of Africa, perched next to her sister Zimbabwe. I was fifteen years old and had just survived my first year of high school when I decided I wanted to go on a mission trip to Africa in order to abate the ever-growing part of myself that wanted to go out of the country. I decided on a trip to Zambia, a place that I had never heard of in an area where I had no ties to. My team and I would be building a concrete bridge for the local children to be used in the rainy season when the floods sprang up and held them from getting to school. There were some seemingly daunting aspects of this trip that I didn't consider until I was in the thick of it. The concrete for the bridge? Made from scratch. The team? Twenty-five other people whom I didn't know. The language barrier? Exasperating.
Everything was hard, and at the same time, it was beautiful. Gripping my hands around shovels and digging against the impossible Earth for six hours a day was hard, but the hard work made my mind clear and my body strong. Witnessing the poverty and impoverished cities against the backdrop of exquisite sunsets filled with the most vibrant colors I had ever seen was hard, but beautiful. Seeing the progression of relationships with the people around me despite different cultures, different upbringings, awkward moments and confusion about what was being said was beautiful, but in the moment it was--you guessed it--so hard.
I was unprepared for how much I would fall in love with this country and its people, whose faces looked so somber when they weren't speaking, but were some of the most joyful people that I had ever met. Clive was different, however; I remember his dark skin and neutral expression was one of rarity because of the smile that would flash on his face, like the effervescence of a full moon breaking through the dark clouds at night. He had this laugh that would bust out at any moment, taking you by surprise the first time you heard it, eventually becoming a familiar sound when heard across camp. He was a leader in the community and helped the team teach at the school, becoming an impromptu translator of sorts. He carried so much wisdom, in which my 15 year old self couldn't handle or didn't appreciate at the time.
In truth: Clive scared me.
The first time I had a real conversation with him, we were sitting on logs around the dying embers of a campfire with one of my other teammates. Clive was telling an old African parable about a snake and an eagle while we were listening intently. It was cold and late and I should've been getting ready in my tent for bed, but the way that he talked with such concentration and seriousness made my body stay glued to the seat underneath me. Eventually my teammate left and I didn't know much of what to say after the story, sitting there with an older and unfamiliar gentleman that was helping to lead the project my team was working on. I remember reflecting on my trip, Africa in general and my experiences thus far. And I wasn't sure what enticed me to say it, but I felt so moved by our conversation that I said, "I know that I love the children here and I know that I want to help them in the future. I know that I will come back here in the future." Clive held me to this promise and reminded me often. After this conversation and everyday interactions however, Clive started behaving strangely. I didn't realize that Africans were very blunt with their feelings and felt things intensely and at a more rapid rate than Americans. But in the end, Clive fell in love with me.
I was disgusted because of our age difference and by the fact that I didn't see him that way at all. I rejected him despite his advances, rebuffed him, blatantly ignored him until I left at the end of the summer. And it hurt because our friendship was discarded and I never got to say I was sorry. Preoccupied with my team's project, relating well to my fellow teammates and helping the students, it was easy to discard him during the mess of everyday life in Africa.
I returned home and basked in my old life of running toilets, a warm comfortable bed and cabinets filled to the brim with food. I started my sophomore year of high school and continued with my lacrosse career. I connected with friends that I hadn't seen for a whole summer and took pleasure in reacquainting myself with my old life. Africa, Clive and my promise to them both became a wistful memory, a thing of the past that would be put on my bucket-list to be performed when I was old and retired with enough money to take a trip to Africa in order to visit the place that I fell in love with once.
Months had passed and I missed my teammates and the simplicity of everyday life in Zambia and the community we had built there. We continued to talk almost everyday through Facebook Messenger (this was the olden days before GroupMe and What'sApp) and regularly updated each other on our lives.
One day I looked down at my phone and there was a message from my teammate Gwen:
"Clive is dead"
I just stared at the phone in silent disbelief at the impossibility of someone dying so young and the finality of it all. And it was someone that I knew and spent time with everyday for two months. And it was someone who fell in love with me and I had rejected. Guilt flooded my body at the terrible way that I'd treated Clive as I tried to find out more information. The team was told that Clive had been taking his final exams for seminary school and had finished early. He went down to the local river to have a swim to celebrate the end of school and the escape the weight of the heat. No one was sure how it happened, but Clive's body was found in the river, leading everyone to assume that somehow he had drowned.
As everyone reflected over the news, all of my conversations with Clive played through my mind like a long-forgotten movie reel. And I remembered the promise to him. I went back over my journal from the summer where he had written a letter that lasted four or five pages long, reflecting over the summer and reminding me of my promise.
Is a promise even more important in death? I wasn't sure. Does death absolve me from it? I didn't think so.
Flash forward years later and I've grown exponentially from the young fifteen year old who went abroad and Clive's death has helped with that. My promise to him has shaped what I've planned on doing with my life, leading me to an English degree so that I can one day go back and help the children of Zambia. I grew through his wisdom and parables and, yes, even through the unrequited love. I felt like I owed him something, leading me to try to make amends through helping wherever I could, however I could. The promise changed me, making me want to go back more than anything so that I could be free of this burden of a promise. I felt like Hamlet in the waiting period before he completes the promise to his dead father. I was uncomfortable in the world around me because I felt like I was supposed to be somewhere else. Clive's death solidified my decision to keep helping children around the world and I've gotten to do that in Bangladesh, Greece, Hong Kong and Europe.
Clive might not have been a well known man, but he was faithful to his community, to those that he loved and to Africa. And through his death, he made me that way too. His story will live on this way.
And one day, just maybe, I will be able to go back to Zambia and celebrate his memory.
