Free The Baby Agenda by Janice Kay Johnson

Africa is an enormous continent. I’m sure Zimbabwe is nothing like… I don’t know, the Ivory Coast or Kenya. See, I’ve revealed typical American ignorance about a huge swath of the world.
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    He assured her that, as a foreigner, he felt safe and that people were warm and friendly. He told her more about what he’d seen, about the astonishing sight of elephants ambling across the road in front of his Datsun, about seeing so many hippos in a river he could have walked across, stepping on their backs. About Victoria Falls where water plummeted into a canyon and raised a cloud of spray so vast, it created a rain forest for miles about. He told her that he hoped soon to go see the Great Zimbabwe, the granite ruins of the greatest city in ancient Africa. About the rock art, more faint traces of people long gone, that could be found everywhere.
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    For all my wonder, I feel an astonishing pang of homesickness every so often. I didn’t expect that. To miss my brothers and sister, yes, but not the mundane realities of everyday life at home. For all the beauty here, I sometimes feel a strange sense of not-belonging. As if I never could, even if I lived here for the rest of my life. It works both ways, though. I met a white couple a few weeks ago who fled the country some years back, when it was obvious what was happening, but after staying for two years in England—where their daughter and her family live—they came home even thoughthere was no way they could recover their farm. That was how they put it: they came home. It was too late for them to really belong anywhere else.
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    Four days later, without having heard from her again, he left Harare, this time for the eastern lowveld near the Sanyati River. He sent Moira a quick email before he left, telling her he’d be out of touch for two to three weeks.
    Then he worried. Had he said something wrong in his last, long email? Or did she not want to continue exchanging long, chatty communications with the man who’d fathered her baby but whose involvement in their child’s life she didn’t welcome? Was she not feeling good?
    God. Had she lost the baby? Will thought most miscarriages were earlier in the pregnancy, but he didn’t know. He was astonished at how sick he felt at the idea. Did women die when they miscarried? Surely not anymore, not at home, anyway, with modern medical care readily available.
    If anything was wrong, would she let him know? Would anyone else?
    Had she told anyone he was the father of her baby? He bounced irrationally from the cold sweat of fear at the idea of her sick or hurt or grieving to sharp anger because she might not want her mother or her friends to know who he was.
    Checking email wasn’t an option; he hadn’t even driven on this trip, but had been flown along with Chionesu, his translator, into a dusty bush airstrip in a thinly populated region where the roads, he’d been told, were abysmal.
    He evaluated, he met with local leaders, he chose a site. He slept in thatch-roofed huts and dined with host families, sitting cross-legged to eat sadza out of a communalpot. Will had become adept at molding the thick millet or corn cereal into a shape he could use to dip stew.
    And the whole damn time, all he could think about was Moira. By the time he was on a small bush plane taking off from the same dirt airstrip, he’d made up his mind he would take a trip home to the States. He had to see her.

CHAPTER FIVE
    â€œI’ M GOING TO GRAB some lunch on my way to city hall,” Gray said. “You want me to get you something and drop it off here?”
    Moira straightened on the tall stool in front of her drafting table and rolled her shoulders with a groan she hoped Gray didn’t hear.
    â€œThanks, but I brought a sandwich.” She smiled at him.
    â€œCome on, when have you ever known me to let myself go hungry?”
    He grinned. “Well…you were looking a