Beverly Hills Maasai by Eric Walters

of scared me a little.
    “I can write,” Nebala said, “but I do not understand what all these things mean.”
    “Forms can be difficult,” I agreed. “Which part is confusing?”
    He put his finger against the form—what looked like the very first line. “What does this mean?”
    I turned my head so I could see where he was pointing. “Name,” I read out loud. “You don’t know what to put down for your name?” That wasn’t the part I’d expected to confuse anybody.
    “What does this mean?” he asked.
    “Surname. That means your last name.”
    “I am Nebala.”
    “Yes, and I’m Alexandria … Alexandria
Hyatt.
Hyatt is my
surname.”
He didn’t reply. I wondered. “Do you have a last name?”
    “I am
Nebala.”
    “But there must be more than one Nebala at home. How do they know it’s you and not another Nebala?”
    “I am Nebala, oldest son of
King
Nebala.”
    I looked at the form. There were a dozen or so little spaces. Certainly not enough to put down all of that. Wait! I filled in “Nebala” for first name and then simply put in one word for his surname: “King.”
    I ran my finger down the form. If surname was a problem, I couldn’t imagine how much more difficult the rest of it was going to be. All the usual stuff—address, zip code, and phone number—were not going to be that usual. I had a feeling that it was going to take me almost as long to complete these forms as it was going to take them to actually run the marathon.
    We worked away at if for a while, and when Olivia and I had finally filled in all the blanks we could, we handed the forms back. There were a few missing sections, but we’d done our best.
    “Fine,” said the man behind the desk “Three entries. That will be six hundred dollars.”
    “Six hundred dollars!” I exclaimed.
    “Two hundred per entry.”
    I turned to Nebala. He pulled out a little bag that was hanging from his neck. It wasn’t Coach or Chanel, but it did look like a purse … sort of like the little change purse my grandmother used to carry in her handbag. He opened the drawstring and started to remove a stack of bills. But they didn’t look right. They looked more like Monopoly money. No, they were Kenyan shillings.
    I did a quick calculation—I was very good at mental math. The current exchange rate was 61 Kenyan shillings to one U.S. dollar. So $600 worked out to 36,600 shillings. I watched as Nebala counted out the bills and placed them on the table—40,000 shillings. That emptied out his little purse. When he got his change he’d have only 3,400 shillings left, or $55.73. Not verymuch. I guessed he had other money somewhere else. I hoped.
    “What are these?” the man behind the table asked.
    “Money,” Nebala said.
    The man picked up one of the bills and looked at it quizzically, then laughed. “This isn’t
real
money.”
    Nebala scowled. “This is good money.” He pushed the stack toward the man.
    “I mean we don’t take foreign money. Only U.S. currency or credit cards. Do you have any credit cards?”
    I almost laughed.
    “Here, put it on this,” Olivia said. She snapped down a gold American Express card.
    “Do you have enough room on your card for this?” I asked.
    “I have all the room I want. Divorcing-parent guilt goes a long way.”
    The man reached for the card, but before he could take it Nebala put his hand down, pinning the card and the man’s hand. He tried to remove his hand, but Nebala held it firmly in place.
    “What are you doing?” the man squeaked.
    “Take the money … Our money is
good.”
Both Samuel and Koyati moved closer.
    The man now looked confused. What he should have looked was scared. He had insulted a Maasai warrior—no,
three
warriors. He didn’t know how quickly this could turn ugly.
    He struggled to move his hand again, but Nebala reached over with his other hand and grabbed him bythe wrist, stopping him. The man now had the good sense to look scared.
    “But you
are
paying,” I said