They herded us into the cafeteria and shut the door.
“Mutabikh! Mutabikh!” The calls yanked me into the flow of feet moving toward what we called the “kitchen”.
Women squatted on benches and on the floor, or leaned against frigid tile walls to wait. None of us knew what we were waiting for and why.
Abby and I found each other near the back. Abby, my Kenyan bunkmate, carried one of the Filipino babies with her.
Tiles, metal tables and closed doors magnified the voices and noises in the kitchen until all melded into a clamor of meaningless babble in a multitude of languages.
Baby Noah fussed. Abby rocked him and began singing, “There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder working pow’r…” . I softly joined her.
Rocking, back and forth. “…in the blo-o-o-d of the La-amb, there is pow’r, pow’r, wonder working pow’r…”
Abby tended to speed up when she sang, and it was no different this time. Our tongues tripped around the words and we grinned at each other.
Wouldyou-o’erevil-avictorywin? There’s pow’r-intheblood-pow’r-intheblood…
Our voices grew louder, our bodies swaying with the swinging baby.
There’s wonderful power in the blood.
No one minded us—not with the mixture of banging and drilling, of metal clanging, and the voices of women arguing, complaining, and laughing, the invisible voices of the male construction workers all blended together.
There is pow’r, pow’r, wonder working pow’r.
Suddenly, I noticed the attention in the room shifting to the door. I stopped singing.
I heard her before I saw her—the bang of a shutting door, her voice bulldozing over all other noises, the thump of her shoes as she stepped onto the bench. Mama Lela the prison guard, dimunative in size but formidable in sound, frowned down over us—“Girls! Listen!”
She shouted her announcements, first in Arabic, then in English.
“Starting this week, no ziara. NOT ALLOWED!”
She looked around, daring us to disagree.
“No visitors. Clothes and cigara only. ONLY!”
“Food—NOT ALLOWED.”
“Things—NOT ALLOWED.”
“Visitors, NOT ALLOWED. Family only! ONLY!”
I shivered, suddenly cold. The breath I was holding turned into a whirlwind of fears—the most terrifying of them: no visitors. No visitors. I would lose all connection to the outside world. I would have nothing to look forward to all week. I would be cut off. Forgotten. Abandoned.
Next to me, Abby grimaced, then shrugged, “Anyway, Alisha is family.”
Alisha, my small group leader from church, regularly visited my bunkmate. Abby called her “Mum”. Alisha, also Kenyan, could possibly pass for Abby’s family.
But I didn’t have family here. My friends, with their Mexican, Canadian, German, and South African passports, could not possibly convince the guards they were family. None of them looked remotely like me.
“NOT ALLOWED! NOT ALLOWED!” The guard shouted at us a bit more, just in case we didn’t understand.
As soon as she left, Abby picked up where she left off rocking Noah, with both grimness and determination, There is power, power, wonder working power. Power. Power. I sensed those words pushing back—power, power, Someone else holds the power.
I inhaled, and joined her— in the precious blood of the Lamb.
I began to breath again. We are stuck. We are helpless. But we will keep singing. Wonder working power.
Suddenly, the door opened again. I tensed at the sounds of Mama Lela’s voice. But then I saw that she was not alone. Behind her—someone I recognized.
It was Alisha.
My heart began to race. Did they arrest my friend? Alert, my body buzzing, tingling, working to decipher the situation before I panicked, I noted her suitcase with a sliver of assurance. Surely, she wouldn’t have a suitcase if they arrested her.
Alisha stood quietly behind Mama Lela.
I couldn’t read her face.
If she saw me, she did not reveal recognition.
I held my breath.
Lela jumped back up on a bench, her voice the megaphone. “GIRLS! This is Mama Kenya, girls. She is coming to teach you something. Girls, you listen to Mama Kenya.”
Abby beside me had stopped rocking Noah. The air between us pulsed with our apprehension. Is Alisha okay?
Alisha addressed the women in the room, her voice quiet yet confident. “Do you want to earn money?”
With one sentence, she captured the attention of every woman in the room.
Alisha opened her suitcase and held up beaded necklaces. “I will teach you how to make these.” She nodded at us. “Then I will sell them on the internet. See? You can earn money, not just sleep and worry about your family.”
Lela interrupted her to reiterate everything five times louder with the addition of exclamation points. “Do you want to earn money, girls? Tomorrow morning Mama Kenya come. She teach you everything. You make money, girls.” She barked this like a command. She seemed pleased with herself.
Then she turned to march out the room, motioning Alisha to follow.
“I am going to talk to her,” Abby thrust Noah to me and dashed toward the door. The two Kenyans exchange smiles and a few words, perfectly natural in that context.
I held back, wary of arousing suspicion with any familiarity. Instead, I tried to make my eyes speak across the chasm of the kitchen the thanks I longed to say, even as I blinked back tears of gratitude and wonder.
Through multiple closed doors, present and future, Alisha found a way in— just when I needed it most.
When they finally let us out of the kitchen hours later, I carried not the weight of “not alloweds” nor the fears of isolation. Anna and I would return to our bunks, shake our heads, and laugh. Wonder working power.
I know One who will make His way to me.
Photo credit: David Clode (Unsplash)
*Names have been changed to fictional names