Guest Post: Rebecca, Kristiina, & Caroline

After many flights from several different corners of Africa, carrying far too much luggage, and exhausted after our various adventures in Liberia, Uganda and Kenya – four friends found each other at the domestic terminal at Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi and bounded off to the magical island of Lamu to rest, relax, gossip, and spend some quality time together.

We were all at cross roads in our lives. Rebecca had just moved from Liberia to Uganda to start a new job, Kristiina had left Liberia and took a detour to Kenya on her way to start her new life at the World Bank HQ in Washington, and Caroline was packing up her life after many years in Liberia to move back to her home country, Canada. 

Helena had left us Monrovia girls a few months earlier and was by then settled in Nairobi. It was September 2009, and little did we realize that a few weeks later Helena’s path would turn so abruptly when she received the cancer diagnosis that changed her world.

In retrospect that sunny, slow weekend on Lamu seems like stolen time. A short interlude where we all managed to break away from our routes and schedules, switch off our cell phones, and most important of all - soak up Helena’s sunny company, hear of her stories and dreams, share her hopes and ambitions, before it was all snatched away from her far too early.

Helena had picked our destination. Lamu is an island in the Kenyan archipelago – a smaller, cosier version of Zanzibar - famous for its beautiful beaches and warm waters, stunning Swahili architecture, delicious seafood seasoned with ginger, coconut and garlic, and donkeys trotting the narrow alleys (smelly and dirty animals according to Helena who didn’t fully embrace their presence on Lamu, but grudgingly accepted that they did add to the ambiance). 

In this little paradise we rented a lovely, simple house with a rooftop veranda overlooking the town and ocean. During the days we went for dhow trips, swims and snorkelling sessions. We ate grilled fish and fresh chapatti aboard the dhows, listened to Caroline’s endless Akon and Ryanna soundtrack, and burnt ourselves in the bright Kenyan sun. 

Helena knew the local Lamu legends and pointed out the mansions belonging to various celebrities. We debated which of these mansions we would choose to holiday in when we became fabulously wealthy. In the evenings we retreated to our private rooftop with a bottle of wine, fresh crabs and calamari, to long rambling conversations about our lives, our many opportunities and challenges. 

We spoke about our ambitions and dreams – those (admittedly corny and perhaps a tad repetitive) girly conversations about the men of our dreams, our future lives as successful career women yet with loving husbands and beautiful well-behaved children, the countries we would like to live in, the places we would like to visit. 

We talked about our existing families (not only our future fictional ones), the challenges of living and working so spread out across the globe. We shared warm memories of our times together in Liberia.

During that same week we also got to enter Helena’s Nairobi life. She was truly in her own element in Nairobi – we stayed in her beautifully arranged Blixenesque mansion which skilfully combined the elegance of Europe and Africa; experienced her mad driving style that she must have learnt from the Kenyan matatu drivers; and enjoyed her ability to arrange suave dinners and parties. She handled Kenya’s roads and markets and soirées with Kenya’s diplomats with equal grace and sophistication.

Our memory of Helena will always be that of a strong, smiling 29 woman with lots of dreams and ambitions, with plans to have a family of her own one day, with career goals and new resolutions. We thank you Helena, for those special days we shared in Kenya in late 2009, that still shimmer in our memories. We will always remember you, and miss you.

Rebecca, Kristiina and Caroline

Rebecca, Helena, Caroline & Kristiina on the dhow

Relxing on the dhow

Helena reading in the hammock

The Magic of Zermatt

A little more than a year ago Helena, Cecilia and Anders and I made a journey back to one of our family's favourite places on earth, Zermatt. Our grandfather discover the small but glamorous ski town at the foot of Matterhorn in Switzerland in the sixties, and we spent many very special holidays there growing up.

We had only been a couple of times in the past few years, but when Helena suggested we go back in February last year we all knew it was a must. We packed our ski clothes and fancy dinner outfits and flew in from three different continents to come together in this magical town.

Just like when we were kids us three girls shared a double room at the beautiful Hotel Monte Rosa, with me on the extra cot. We weren't quite the same size anymore so it was a little tight, but it wouldn't have been right any other way.

We unpacked and stepped right into our childhood routine, getting up early and rushing off to the lifts, skiing up and down the amazing slopes, and finding a chalet to replenish us with sausages, rosti, and sparkling apple juice for lunch.

Helena skied with her usual combination of elegance and speed, while Cecilia and I struggled to keep up and marvelled at her strength. She felt so good and grateful for her tarceva medication that coined a little expression for herself: "look at tarceva go!"And go she really did.

In the afternoon we would relish in the hotel's afternoon tea, spend some time in the sauna and outdoor pool, and head off to one of our favourite childhood shops to buy lollipops or browse the porcelain dolls. In the evening we would crowd around the mirror, getting dolled up, and then head downstairs to the charming dinning room.

With radiant and eager smiles we would sit down for the hotel's superb five course dinners, and Anders would order wine and grumble that it wasn't the same price as back in the eighties. The pianist would play his dulcet tunes and we would delight in each other's company.

We felt sophisticated and thankful, but most of all happy. Happy to be back in this very special place together, happy that Helena was strong, and happy to escape our very trying reality.

Helena with her grandparents on her first trip to Zermatt

Helena, Anne and Cecilia waiting for the train to Zermatt 

With Grandma, Anders, and Cecilia outside Hotel Monte Rosa 

Already a ski bunny

At the bar in our dinner outfits at Hotel Monte Rosa

Helena and the Matternhorn

A classic christmas card

Back in 2007

Posing before dinner in 2007

Back on the slopes February 2010

Enjoying Afternoon Tea

Ready for our sausage and rosti

Three very happy sisters 

Guest Post: Anne Ostman

To my darling daughter Helena,

I’m sitting in our dear friend Wellela’s house in Runda at the outskirts of Nairobi. I miss you. I miss you so. The birds are singing in Wellela’s beautiful garden and the tortoises are hiding under a flame tree. I can hear her new houseboy as he is doing the dishes after our breakfast. Wellela has gone off to work and I’m really supposed to work as well. But, I had to write to you first.

You see Helena, I would like to thank you for everything that you have given me. Being back in Kenya has made me realize how much your life enriched mine. All your lovely friends all over the world that still care for me and your sisters only because you were such a lovely person. All those places you took me to, the music you sang, all the interesting restaurants and sights you always discovered and shared with me.

Somehow Kenya has become a very strong connecting point with you. Here you had your childhood- a childhood I think that was different in many ways but I know you had a great time here as child. We went to see the baby elephants in the orphanage, to ballet classes with Vera Zerkowitch, riding with Karen Plumb in Karen, singing lessons, and of course the school theatre performances, with all the amazing costumes that we had made at Biashara Street. I also remember how when we walked out in Nairobi National Park you were always a little bit worried but also amazed at your own bravery.

All this came back to me but not as vividly of course as four months together here in 2009. I spent Tuesday night back at our penthouse at Palacina Hotel. You know that, because I talked to you a lot whilst I was there. It was hard at first to open the door and the climb the stairs up to the beautiful rooms we shared, but it was good to meet you there again. I slept in your big bed in the lovely enormous  bedroom. In the evening I had dinner with Paulina, Gun-Britt, Aaron and Nathalie. Nicko, Paulina’s darling little son whom you loved so much, is not all that interested in flowers any more, he prefers to be dressed as Batman.

I have also been to see your Doctor Ajay. We talked about you and he said that you were the most beautiful and lovely patient he has ever had. Then he changed his mind and said that you were the most lovely and amazing woman he had ever met. It made me happy, not that I didn’t know these things, but that he thought so too-him being such a lovely man himself.

Around every corner I see you, with every smell I can feel you. It is lovely and I’m so grateful for all those lovely things we did together. Like the St Patrick’s ball at which you won the tickets to Zanzibar, and our lovely vacation there. Or like our trip to Lamu, and how we both could not really understand the charm of it. Then there is the time you took me to the national park on my birthday because you knew how much I loved going there and how you found the lions hiding, eating their catch.

Helena in Lamu

Helena you gave me so much light and so much worth living for that I will try my best to go on with your spirit, even if it will be hard for me to find all the right places and do all those lovely things since you are not here to tell me about them, but I will try. I am also very happy about my new job that will give me a possibility to make a change in a way I really think you approve of. Planting trees is good and so much is needed here.

It was very emotional to go back to Uganda. Kampala was very hot and the heat contributed to all my emotions. I kept seeing you with your dear old friend from here, Soraya, and I asked about her. Sarita told me that Soraya was hit by a lorry in Toronto three years ago when she was crossing the street with her headphones on.  It made me very sad to hear that she had passed away, and I could see her beautiful little face with her beautiful eyes when she used pick you up for one of your many adventures together. After a little while tears started to drop slowly down on my cheeks and I thought- Soraya was waiting for you. I know she must be pleased to have you around and you her. All my love to you and her.

Now I have to figure out five things that makes Tree Talk special.

Love, Anne 

Helena and Anne in Nairobi