Remember Helena: 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