Beverly Hills Maasai Read Online Free PDF Page A

button on the remote and the gate glided open. We passed through and onto the grounds.
    There was a burst of Swahili from the back seat and I turned slightly. Samuel was pointing at the gates as they closed behind us. I hadn’t even considered what they might think. If Samuel had never been in a car before, he’d certainly never seen an automatic gate.
    “It works with this,” I said, holding up the remote.
    “I explained,” Nebala said. “There are gates like that in Nairobi for big houses and hotels.”
    “Yeah, of course.”
    Nairobi was a big city, I remembered—it had as many people as Los Angeles.
    We drove up the driveway past the rows of sprinklers watering the lawns. I didn’t want to go right up tothe house—I wanted to tell my mother about our guests before she saw them. I pulled up and parked.
    “This is your house?” Nebala asked.
    Olivia laughed. “This is their
garage.”
    “Garage?”
    “Where they keep their cars.”
    Nebala pointed to the guest house. “There. Is that your house?”
    “That’s
your
house while you’re here,” I said.
    “And your house?”
    “That’s the big one you saw as we drove up,” Olivia explained.
    “That is where your tribe all lives?” Nebala asked.
    “Just my family.”
    “I did not know you had such a big family,” Nebala said. “How many brothers and sisters?”
    “Just me.”
    He looked shocked. “None? No others?”
    I shook my head. “I’m the only child.”
    “In such a big house?”
    “It’s not that big,” Olivia said.
    It was certainly bigger than
her
house, I almost snapped—but I kept my mouth closed. She wasn’t trying to be snotty; it was just a fact. Compared to some of the monster mansions in the neighbourhood my house was almost modest. Everybody living here had money, but some people had
real
money. There was a big difference between rich and super-rich. We were somewhere in the middle.
    “A house so big for only a few,” Nebala said. “It would be so … so … lonely.”
    “It’s okay. I have friends, and of course Carmella and Carlos are always here.”
    “They are friends?”
    Olivia scoffed. “They’re the maid and the gardener.”
    “What is this …
gardener?”
Nebala asked.
    “It’s somebody who cares for the grounds.”
    “The ground?” he asked, still looking confused.
    “Not the
ground
, the
grounds.
Plants and flowers and the grass and trees—things growing outside the house.”
    “Ah, yes,” Nebala said. “This man, this
gardener
, he must be very wise.”
    “Um … I’ve never really thought about that,” I admitted.
    “Do you know about such things?” Nebala asked. “About the earth and how things grow?”
    “Of course not!” I protested. I didn’t have time for this discussion right now. “Olivia, could you settle them in while I talk to my mother?”
    “For sure,” she replied.
    Samuel jumped out of the car, over the trunk, as the rest of us climbed out through the two doors. Nebala carried their one bag.
    “The door to the guest house should be open,” I said. “I’ll be down as soon as I can.”
    They started off, and I couldn’t help watching. Olivia, all blonde and tanned and perfectly coiffed, wearing her Gucci sunglasses, led the three red-robed Maasai, shields in hand, across the perfectly manicured grounds. It was a bizarre sight, and I certainly understood why so many people had stared.
    I’d made the decision to put them in the guesthouse and not the main house while we were coming up the driveway. The guest house had three bedrooms, a kitchen, a full bathroom, and a simply
wonderful
view of the pool and gardens.
    It also had the advantage that it would keep them a little bit farther away from my mother. This was going to be more than just a surprise for her. It would be bordering on shock. I knew she wasn’t going to say no to their staying with us, but I was still a little nervous about how she might react. With my mother there could be a wide range of