It Happened on the Way to War (23 page)

Kash was nervous. Salim had traveled to the United States on multiple occasions, including a trip as a teenager with Mary Ann and the Ford Foundation. This was Kash's first trip. Nate had helped him adjust to the culture shock, but the whole experience was overwhelming. Now Kash was about to be paraded in front of a group of people as a final act.

He stepped into the center of the room and stood still. There was a long pause. I took a deep breath. As I exhaled, Kash began speaking, and as he spoke, he became animated. Kash enraptured the audience with stories about his life and the power of soccer to provide hope and unity. He spoke about the lack of decent educational opportunities for his brothers and sisters, and he told us about his dream of attending college. As the energy in the room neared a climax, Kash declared, “We aren't looking for handouts in Kibera. It's not up to you. You can't solve these things. You can help, but we must do it ourselves.”

I didn't see it coming. Kash was often as stoic and tough as Tabitha. All of a sudden, tears fell from his face. “Thank you,” he mumbled. The room rose in a standing ovation.

Alston Gardner and another donor, Thomas S. Kenan III, approached me at the end of the evening. Deeply moved by what they had heard, they each offered to cover half of the cost of Kash's college expenses if he got into UNC. It took months of preparation, but in two minutes we had received pledges for $100,000.

Everyone was deeply impressed by Kash, especially my parents. Mom reminisced about her overnights in Tabitha's clinic and falling asleep to the sound of Kash studying French while listening to Edith Piaf in the adjacent room. My parents were delighted when I told them about the pledges.

“Oh my!” Mom exclaimed. “He will thrive at UNC. What a great, tremendous thing.”

It was a great, tremendous thing. It was a long-term investment in Kibera. Kash at UNC would further deepen the continuity Colonel Greenwood had spoken about. Kash would be the ultimate ambassador for CFK on campus, and a role model for youth in Kibera and beyond. He embodied the vision.

Only one person appeared to have a different perspective. “I don't know,” Jennifer Coffman said to me afterward. She was looking at Kash, who was talking confidently to another donor. “There's just something about him that I don't trust.”

*
  United Nations, IRIN Report, “KENYA: Focus on clashes in Kibera slum, Nairobi,” December 13, 2001, http://www.irinnews.org/report.aspx?reportid=29122.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Spyderco

Quantico, Virginia

SUMMER 2002

MY STRESS FRACTURE HEALED AND I STARTED the Basic School course for a second time. The days were long and intense, and I needed to finish at the top of my two-hundred-lieutenant class to secure the one human intelligence billet. I wanted HUMINT too badly not to aim for it, but I also didn't want to let go of CFK. I convinced myself that I could do both if I worked harder and smarter. CFK would make me a better Marine, and the Marines would help me improve my leadership with CFK. Nevertheless, this decision came with a cost. There was no downtime. The only books I owned pertained to war and economic development, and I rarely had time to read them.

Tracy thought I was nuts. When I saw her on the weekends I couldn't keep my eyes open past ten P.M. But she was also tired from her research and clinical work helping children with developmental and psychological disorders. We spent our weekends together exploring Washington, D.C. Sometimes we were so tired on Sunday afternoons that we pulled the Green Bean over into parking lots, reclined the bucket seats, and took naps. “We're like eighty-year-olds in twenty-three-year-old bodies,” Tracy observed, giggling as she reclined her bucket seat in a parking lot somewhere around Georgetown.

Things were going well for CFK since our fund-raiser with the Peacocks in Chapel Hill. I had reduced the amount of time I poured into the organization from more than sixty hours a week to about twenty. I kept out of the operational decisions on the ground, although Salim and I still e-mailed daily to work through plans and donor relations. Our biggest news was that UNC admissions had accepted Kash to the undergraduate class of 2007. He would be the first Tar Heel from Kibera, one of just 53 international students in the incoming freshman class of 3,460. We were thrilled, and Nate spent countless hours coaching him in preparation for his arrival at the end of August.

By the time Kash was about to fly to the United States, I was four months into the six-month Basic School course and facing final practical-application exams that would determine a large part of our class standing. Ranked among the top five lieutenants, I couldn't afford to slip on any of the exams. The exam that concerned me the most was land navigation, a seven-hour test that 20 percent of every class typically failed.

I didn't need distractions. But when Kash landed at John F. Kennedy Airport in New York, armed immigration officials detained him. Kash was sobbing when my father answered his collect call. He told Dad that the immigration officer made a mistake and wanted to send him back to Kenya. My father dove full bore to Kash's defense, slicing through the bureaucracy with his deep, authoritative voice. I could hear his introduction: “This is Dr. Schwartz calling on behalf of John Kanyua. With whom am I speaking?”

My father soon reached a senior immigration official and received the full story. U.S. immigration had increased its security protocol substantially after September 11. Something in Kash's file triggered additional screening, which included a check of his SAT scores. The SAT check did him in. Evidently, Kash had falsified his scores and forged his high school transcript. UNC Admissions had assumed that the copies of his SAT scores and transcript were accurate. This oversight was attributable in part to CFK's credibility within the university and the excitement that we had generated around Kash's application.

He was deported back to Kenya the following day.

My head spun with questions.
How could we not have seen it all along? We had introduced Kash to two of the university's most generous donors. How would they respond? What else had Kash not told us?

When we first began the process of bringing Kash to UNC we had to identify an American sponsor in Kenya. Chris Tomlinson, the Associated Press correspondent on our Kenyan board, was traveling at the time. However, his boss, Susan Linnee, had agreed to help Kash after holding a conversation with him in fluent French.

I thought Susan would be outraged by the news. Over the past three months, she had invested a lot of time helping to prepare Kash. She had put her own name on the line.

“Listen, don't beat yourself up. These things happen,” she responded to my phone call, “He had an opportunity to study in the U.S. coming from Kibera. If you were Kash, would you've done anything differently?”

“But he compromised his integrity,” I replied, surprised by her response.

“I know, but what does integrity mean in such a place?”

Kash didn't have much to say when I finally reached him. Groveling would have been out of character, but I expected to hear an apology. Kash made it sound as if nothing had happened. He said he intended to move back into Tabitha's clinic and continue working for CFK. I hung up before I said something I would regret.

My worlds were merging. The Marine Corps emphasized integrity as the paramount principle of leaders. If we accepted Kash back, we'd send a signal that we tolerated deception. I appreciated that desperate conditions often led to desperate measures. If ever given access to such a great opportunity, the average person in Kibera may have taken the same actions as Kash. Yet as an organization we could only do so much. We needed to be led by the exceptional young people in Kibera, not the average ones. The most difficult test of that type of rare leader was if he or she could live with dignity and morality in conditions that tested core values every day. That's what attracted me to Salim and Tabitha, and what we had missed with Kash.

On the surface, the decision was clear. Kash needed to go. Yet it was complicated because he was a friend. I still cared about him and wanted him to succeed. As a group, we were torn. Salim took a strong stance. “Man, he really messed it,” Salim said, sounding exasperated, “and I don't think Kash can stay in CFK. We need to think about what this means to others.”

Tabitha was more lenient. She suggested we suspend Kash temporarily but eventually let him return as a volunteer. After almost a year living at her clinic and providing security, she trusted him. Nate also wanted to give Kash a second chance. As shocked as he was by the deception, he was tolerant in a way that I struggled to comprehend, and he knew Kash best. He believed Kash could have succeeded at UNC.

I expressed my own view in an e-mail to the donors who had offered to cover Kash's $100,000 of educational expenses. “In the end I don't think Kash could have succeeded at UNC,” I wrote. “Perhaps it's best that this happened now instead of later, but it should have never gotten to this point. I'm sorry it happened, though I remain grateful to you for your support and advice.”

Salim and I agreed that Kash needed to leave CFK. Tabitha held firm to her position that with time we should consider inviting him back. My mother shared Tabitha's viewpoint, which wasn't a surprise because Mom often sought the middle ground. I was most concerned about how Nate would react. When I called and spoke frankly with him about my feelings and the trade-offs we had to weigh in our decision, Nate eventually told me that he was cool with it, though I sensed from the tone of his voice that our friendship was wounded.

What I didn't expect was that Kash's situation would also strain my relationship with my father. Dad thought we should “cut him some slack.” My father's position, which he took with a characteristic hard-line, angered me. He was a Marine. He should've understood my position and supported me with it. I was too emotional to realize and appreciate that my father's protective instincts were far more important to him than his judgments on effective leadership. Kash was becoming a second son to my father, and therefore he deserved a second chance.

Too stressed-out to think clearly, I consulted with Tracy. Although she hadn't yet been to Kibera, she had met all of the key CFK people with the exception of Tabitha. Tracy told me that she knew it was a tough decision. She thought I should trust my judgment and speak with Kash directly about our decision.

Initiating that second conversation with Kash was, at that point, one of the toughest moments of my life. The friend in me didn't want to make the call. I wrote down some notes and thought about Kash throughout a long night of little sleep. In the morning, I searched for excuses to delay the call until I heard a Marine voice in my head saying something about the burdens of leadership. I picked up the phone and punched in the numbers before I could change my mind.

Kash was subdued. He knew what was going on as I read from my notes, my voice sounding scripted and stiff. I couldn't bring myself to break the barrier between leader and friend. It was a defense mechanism. Kash didn't say much of anything, even when I asked him direct questions. His silence wore on me. By the time I had made it through my notes and had nothing else prepared to say, though so much more to talk about, I was angry with Kash for not apologizing. Somehow it wouldn't have felt like such a betrayal if he had just said he screwed up and was sorry. Yet there was nothing on the other end of the phone. “Kash, integrity is everything,” I offered as a parting shot, “I hope you can restore yours.”

DAYS LATER I was on the land-navigation course trying to keep Kash out of my mind as I scoured the forests for my targets. One might think a bright red can the size of a shoebox on top of a three-foot pole would stand out. I backtracked twice, paced out the distance, and conducted a careful terrain analysis. I was certain from the map's contour lines that I was on the right hill. Where the hell was the red can?

Time was running out. I needed to find ten cans and was stuck on the eighth. I had been alone in the woods for six hours, beating back brush on a scorching summer day. My canteens were empty. Less than an hour was left.

The final land-navigation exercise counted for a substantial part of our grade at the Basic School. If I failed it, I wouldn't get the HUMINT billet. I recalled the words from my platoon commander that morning. He had warned us not to self-destruct on the exercise.

Something grumbled. It sounded like my father clearing his throat. I turned and a black bear was standing on all fours a short ways off. He stared at me curiously. With my unloaded M16 at the ready, I froze for what felt like a long time. The bear grumbled again and began to paw the ground. I moved my hand toward the Spyderco knife clipped to my pocket, stepping back gingerly. Slow, steady steps. When the bear's attention shifted to some brush at its feet, I sprinted down a draw and up the adjacent hill.

Lo and behold, the red can was there. I checked it off, found the last two cans, and completed the exercise with minutes to spare. An instructor graded my sheet at the finish line. I had hit all ten cans correctly. I was going to be a Marine Corps HUMINT officer.

MY BALANCING ACT seemed to be working. With the exception of the incident with Kash, CFK was on the right track. Our sports program grew to two thousand participants; Tabitha's clinic was on target to treat five thousand patients by the year's end; and our new Binti Pamoja Girls' Center was establishing roots in the community by engaging young women in health and rights training. The Marine Corps assigned me to the East Coast at Camp Lejeune, North Carolina, where I would see Tracy on the weekends. The last major hurdle I faced before reporting to Camp Lejeune was to receive a Top Secret/Sensitive Compartmentalized Information clearance. I didn't understand what the Sensitive Compartmentalized Information part of the clearance meant, and neither did any of my instructors. Most of them only had Secret-level clearances.

The security clearance application included a notoriously lengthy background investigation. In my case, this was complicated by my having daily contact with foreign nationals. I was particularly concerned about how the government review agencies would perceive my relationship with Salim. If any names triggered special screening, I assumed
Salim Mohamed
would be one of them.

The only way to deal with the concerns was to address them head-on and hope that my disclosure would give peace of mind to the intelligence agents determining my fate. Without a Top Secret clearance, I wouldn't be eligible for HUMINT. I prepared a twenty-page addendum detailing CFK in addition to the normal book-length paperwork. When an agent came to interview me a week later, she seemed to be impressed by CFK's work. Before she left, I thanked her and gave her a CFK brochure. Weeks later, the government granted me an “interim” Top Secret clearance while the rest of my background investigation was completed. With it, I packed up and prepared to report to my company in Camp Lejeune and begin my advanced training.

“HERE YA GO, sir.” Mo, a bull-necked sergeant, handed me a Kevlar helmet and a Vietnam-era flak jacket.

“What's this for?”

“The game” He grinned. “Football for morning PT [physical training], sir. Outside on the field there.” Sergeant Mo pointed to a wide patch of grass.

“Good to go, Sergeant.”

Having just received the Iron Mike Award for the highest physical-fitness score in my Basic School class, I figured the PT session would be no problem. I took the flak jacket from Sergeant Mo. Sweat-stained with salt lines and spotted with dried blood, it smelled like Kibera.