All That Is Bitter and Sweet (23 page)

Upon my return, PSI invited me to join its board of directors, an honor I was overjoyed to accept. I would now have a seat at the table among highly qualified public health and technical experts such as Professor Malcolm Potts, a world-renowned reproductive health specialist. I would learn about problems and solutions in greater detail, provide my board cohort with detailed information about our programs on the ground based on ever-increasing personal experience, and help shape the organization’s future. My first order of business was to earnestly advocate diversifying the board in terms of gender, age, race, and geography. Perhaps my proudest moment thus far has been helping to secure an enormous, anonymous donation to provide long-lasting, reversible contraceptives to women in fourteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa. (The program became an unqualified success by 2010, helping to avert three million unintended pregnancies among poor women every year.)

We began planning my trip to Africa as soon as I returned from the Bangkok AIDS conference. We decided to focus on PSI partners in Kenya, Madagascar, and South Africa and the distinct challenges each faced in the fight against HIV/AIDS and other preventable diseases. Because I would be on camera so often on this trip filming a VH1 AIDS documentary and I would also be doing a cover shoot for
Condé Nast Traveler
in South Africa (another way to promote grassroots work), I decided to invite my longtime friend, gifted painter and makeup artist Moyra Mulholland, to come along. Moyra grew up on a farm in South Africa during apartheid and studied fine arts at the University of Cape Town before moving to the States, so she was already familiar with some of the grimmer realities of life in Africa. Over the years we’ve grown very close, and I couldn’t think of a better companion for what I knew would be another emotionally grueling journey.

But before we embarked, Moyra and I had one piece of business to finish: the 2005 Golden Globe Awards, which were held the night before I was scheduled to depart for Kenya. The Golden Globes are the season’s first display of Hollywood opulence and glamour, and they have always been special to me because of my best actress nomination for
Ruby in Paradise
, which auspiciously launched my career in films. This time I was up for best actress in a musical or comedy for my role as Cole Porter’s wife, Linda, in
De-Lovely
. My costar and screen husband, Kevin Kline, was nominated for best actor, so it was going to be a fun night.

On the day of the show, our suite was bustling with activity. The best part of events like the Golden Globes is the chance for me to visit with some of our far-flung friends and people in the film business who share that part of my life but whom I don’t often get to see. Salma Hayek popped by with her dog, Blue, whom she’d been inspired to adopt because of Buttermilk and Shug, and we compared stories about our passion for roses. Salma and I are like sisters and have been even before I played Tina Modotti in
Frida
, which this amazing woman both starred in and produced. I had been telling her all about my work with PSI, and I had already convinced her to come with me on one of my trips.

By midafternoon it was time to pile into the limo and head to the Beverly Hilton. Dario looked so handsome in his tuxedo. He is always a good sport about dressing up for these events and facing the banks of cameras with me, and we always take our own pictures before we leave the hotel—the Mamaw and Papaw, I call it, because my grandparents took great snaps on occasions when they dressed up. Awards shows are merely a part of what I do—they certainly don’t represent who I am—but I really enjoy making movies, and red carpet events are now inseparable from the creative part of acting that I love.

De-Lovely
had been released by MGM, which also had a hand in distributing
Hotel Rwanda
that year, and we were all seated together at the Globes: I was able to spend more time with the terrific Irish director Terry George and with Don Cheadle, who played the hotel manager who sheltered and saved hundreds of Tutsis from the genocide-sweeping Rwanda in 1994. Terry and Don had invited the real manager, Paul Rusesabagina, who was seated at our table, and we visited all evening, mostly about his trip to the States and what an amazing movie had been made from such a painful story. I couldn’t fathom what he had been through during the slaughter, although I could clearly see the weight of it in his eyes and in his posture. He told me that he now lived with his family in Belgium. I wanted to learn more about his life but felt it wasn’t an appropriate setting to ask, so I simply offered him my friendship and told him I hoped I could visit Rwanda someday.

Wherever I am, I hope to focus completely on the task at hand, banishing any thoughts of the past or the future, engaging fully in the moment. But I was very aware that night that I had a foot in two worlds. Not many of my colleagues knew the first thing about my international work (most still do not!), and it wasn’t something I could casually share with people in that setting: “Hey, tomorrow I’m going to Africa to visit some slums and brothels. Would you please pass the champagne?” I was caught up in the paradox of my life, feeling neither here nor there—which is generally a tricky place for me to be.

The next morning I kissed Dario goodbye and started packing for the trip. Not unexpectedly, some of my old coping behaviors started welling up in the stress and excitement of leaving. I wandered around the large suite in a daze all day, knots of anxiety and jubilation warring in my stomach. I’d cross the room, then retrace my steps because I had “destinesia” (heading somewhere, then forgetting why I’d set out in the first place), or hid some necessary thing from myself, or packed away something I still needed.

I decided to do myself a favor and attend Seane Corn’s late afternoon yoga class on my way to the airport. I floated through my practice, hearing nothing. I occasionally noticed I was out of sync with the class but kept on following my own breath and trying to open as much as I could, especially my heart. In my back bends, I prayed. Seane likes to walk around the room, softly speaking encouragement or instructions to her students. When I started my finishing poses, Seane sat next to me, and we whispered a little. I told her about my chaotic, weepy day and about how preparing for this trip was different from the time I’d prepared to travel to Cambodia and Thailand. Then I was
willing
, incredibly willing, but now I was willing
and prepared
, which brought a prescience of grief.

In my closing prayer, I asked to remember that I already possessed in great abundance all that I needed to make it through a trip like this and to be able to tap into the Source that would sustain me and enable me to be of service.

Bobby Shriver was in class that day, and we sat down to talk afterward. It was he who had introduced me to Seane’s yoga class back in the mid-1990s, when we first became friends.

Bobby’s life is anchored in spiritual practice. His words that day, as always, touched my soul. He reminded me that there was so much love and sweetness in life that you could hardly bear it. And when you remembered that we all die, it didn’t seem like any of it was possible: the loving, the ultimate leaving. That was where my mind was—in the dichotomy. The incredible love I had for my husband, and leaving, traveling to Africa for adventure and pain. Kate had warned me that the brothels of Africa were even a little worse than those of Southeast Asia, where at least there was liquor and music and makeup and dressing up, a veneer over the ugliness. But they say everything is more vivid in Africa: sunsets, foliage, landscapes, vistas, the human dilemma.

Certainly the HIV/AIDS pandemic was more florid and brutal than anywhere else on the planet. And in Kenya, my first stop, the virus was already entrenched in the adult population, with 1.4 million infected. The challenge was to keep it from spreading into the next generation.

It was early morning when the jet touched down at Jomo Kenyatta International Airport on the outskirts of Nairobi. The approach took us low over plains dotted with flat-topped acacia trees, their feathery green limbs casting long shadows on the bright orange soil. The sight moved me enormously. I had always harbored the most romantic notions of Africa: the wild golden landscapes Isak Dinesen and Beryl Markham described and, even more enthralling, the idea of “Afrika”—a cauldron of liberation struggles that forged great political and moral leaders like Nkrumah, Mandela, and Tutu. But as is often the case, my idealistic visions quickly dissolved in the face of reality.

Once again, Papa Jack was waiting at the gate to whisk me through the airport. We were hitting the ground running. After a quick stop at our local PSI office in a modern, disheveled office park, we headed straight to the Huruma estate, a crowded slum of one hundred thousand souls squeezed improbably into two square miles. A blazing sun glinted off the tin roofs of shanties that flowed into the arid plains, literally as far as the eye could see. It took my breath away. The enormity of the poverty was blowing my mind while the glare was killing my eyes. I took advantage of a slowdown in traffic at a congested roundabout to buy a pair of knockoff Ray-Bans from a street vendor just before we left the pavement behind.

Our wheels kicked up clouds of hot dust as we rolled through a maze of makeshift shacks and crumbling apartment buildings. Kenya has the largest economy in Africa, but about half of the people live in poverty. The government owns the land in Huruma, but the squatter landlords charge exorbitant rents to the migrants who settle here from the countryside in search of a better life. I heard of one housing complex where fifteen hundred people shared a single toilet. Open sewers ran along the rutted roads past pockets of rubble and trash. The air stank of human waste mixed with the sickly sweet smell of vegetables and meat left out in the heat. I tried to imagine all this in the rainy season and shuddered.

We pulled up in front of a wooden church to meet a group of HIV-positive peer educators and youth outreach workers. After the usual howdy-dos, we followed on foot behind the YouthAIDS team as they set out to show me their stuff in very dramatic fashion. They use ingenious ploys to attract a crowd, pretending someone is being chased or beaten in an act of mob justice, or in this case carrying a colleague on a stretcher, shouting that someone had tried to kill himself. Word spread quickly, and within minutes hundreds of barefoot kids were sprinting toward the action.