The Gap Year

This story contains swearing.

One day Wendy, the woman from the Human Resources department (whom I loathed), leaned over me while I worked through the hundreds of emails pinging into my Inbox, all demanding immediate answers. 

‘Have you heard the news? she asked.

‘No’, trying to keep the dislike and coldness off my face.

‘I’m going to Namibia to dig toilets’.

Horror struck; I stopped typing and looked at her full in the face.

‘What d’ya mean? Going to dig toilets?’

‘I’m taking a senior gap year.’

A year off to dig toilets? Honestly, I thought I would hit her. How could she take a year off when I was trapped here? Why can’t I dig a toilet (though I could think of nothing worse)?

‘Yep, you can ask for a year off too. The company thinks it's great PR. Why don’t you ask?’’

I gave her a withering look, and off she went.  

After a gruelling but monotonous day’s work in an office in the City, I fell through the door of my flat. I got my usual favourite weekday dinner sorted - morning breakfast cereal and a punnet of fresh fruit - and sat there crunching nonchalantly through crispy oak flakes and strawberries. I switched the TV on, and with the remote control next to my non-eating hand for the rest of the evening, I flicked from channel to channel - flick, flick. 

I eventually came across a documentary about people my age or older taking an extended break from their regular jobs, travelling to exotic areas, and doing extraordinary things. As I shovelled in my oak flakes, milk dripping down my chin, I was entranced. So this was a ‘Senior Gap Year’ that bloody Wendy was talking about. One episode concentrated on a particularly silly older woman who ended up in a jungle looking after very young orphaned orangutans. I found the babies addictive - the foolish woman less so. Well, if she could look after the babies, surely I could.

It turned out that bloody Wendy was right. I asked about a Gap Year, and permission was granted. Now all I had to do was research and sort everything out.

From the day permission was granted, I put my every waking hour into researching on Google or hanging around bookstores and trying to devise a plan to get to a jungle somewhere in the world and find unsuspecting baby orangutans to look after.  I told my friends what I wanted to do, and they indulged me and allowed me to bore them.  

At the beginning of the 21st century, the ‘Retirement Murk’ was starting to lift. When older people retired, they used to work until they dropped.  One day, they took their final familiar shitty journey home from the office, clutching a carriage clock and a Happy Retirement card signed indecipherably by all their workmates. The retiree arrived home feeling lost and lonely and patiently waited for the Grim Reaper to come and put them out of their misery.  But it seemed that once Planet Earth hit the millennium, many folks approaching retirement suddenly started living like young people - off on world cruises, dumping grumpy spouses and learning to date again, or joining Line-dancing classes. The ‘senior gap year’ took off, and retirees now journeyed to foreign lands to build hospitals, teach English in educational establishments, or, like me, ended up in zoos or lived with tribes in the jungle.  

In London, a Senior Gap Year Exhibition called ‘Get a Life!’ was to be held, and friends who had heard nothing but ‘orangutans’ from me bought me a ticket. Arriving, I stood confused and uncertain, but my heart leapt when I finally saw a stand with huge photos of orangutans.  A young woman smiled at me and said, ‘Interested? Come in. Let’s deal with any questions you might have.’  

I couldn’t believe how easy it was. Their company would set everything up - travel, accommodation, a zoo to work in, a jungle to live in, and people to mentor me, Couldn’t be easier. 

I was advised to visit Monkey World in Dorset to learn about orangutans. Once there, I rushed to a cage and saw a large, ugly, hairy animal with velvety cheek flanges, signifying it was an adult male orangutan. Oh, dear! Perhaps not. It became obvious how little I knew about orangutans. Surely I’d do better with the babies? Searching around the ape park, I found the baby orangutans. Ooooh, too cute - huge eyes in little faces, orange, wispy hair stuck straight up on their little heads, little hands and round pot bellies. I longed to kiss and cuddle them. Yep, I was going to Borneo to work with the babies in the jungle; I couldn’t wait. First, however, I would have to find Borneo on the map; I honestly wasn’t sure where it was!

Six months later, research was carried out to my limited satisfaction, and bookings finalised, off I went. My first trip to the Orient. Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, who’d have thought I would ever be here? I arrived three days before starting my job as a volunteer Zoo Keeper.  I had decided to treat myself. I was initially staying for four nights in a 5-star hotel close to the Petronas Twin Towers, set in a beautifully-planted park with a fabulously posh shopping mall.  

I was nervous in my first hours, jet-lagged and overwhelmed with being in the East. I was a woman not used to travelling alone to any area - exotic or otherwise. The belief that I would be ace at looking after wild animals kept me going. I conveniently forgot that I had only acknowledged orangutans’ existence a comparatively short time ago. 

I walked through a large green park lined with Embassies and 5-star hotels, searching for the Shopping Mall. Before setting off for Malaysia, I had emptied a savings account, so for the first time in years, I had spare spending money for this ‘trip of a lifetime’. The Shopping Mall was posh—high-end retail covering all you could wish for, a fabulous mixture of Eastern delights and Western living. I wandered happily about, popping into Dior or Channel for a quick browse as the mood took me. I could buy anything I wanted if I had the money - even a car. My hotel was fabulous, the shopping mall great, and I had my initial job in the zoo all set up. I felt relaxed and ready to bore anyone I could about orangutans and my Gap Year - when I was kidnapped.  

After all that Mall grazing, I was dangling my bare feet in the large fountain lake, surrounded by numerous cafes and bars attached to the Mall. What could possibly go wrong? The sun was shining, my tummy was full, and the excitement of just being here was fabulous when two casually-dressed Malaysian women came and sat on either side of me.  

The women, speaking English, asked: ’On holiday?’

I smiled, fairly bursting to tell them about orangutans. I’d gone about eight hours without the word ‘orangutans’ coming out of my mouth.

’Yes, no, not a holiday; I’ve come here to work in the zoo initially … blah blah, blah.’

‘On your own?’, finally managing to get a word in edgeways.

They continued asking me questions (when they could). I was not remotely bothered by their questions.  I was foreign, so I found it hardly surprising that I intrigued them - sitting with my feet in the lake. 

‘Surprised I’m working in a zoo? It’s a dream come true.’ I wittered endlessly on.

The women cosied up even closer to me, and it became apparent they weren’t going anywhere. I had never met non-British Asians before and didn’t think it strange that they were determined to be very friendly. They seemed as enchanted as I was that I would work with orangutans.  I had been worried about loneliness before flying over, But I was wrong - two friends already.

‘Me! me! who’d have thought it?’ I asked them. They smiled and nodded at my excitement and joy about being in KL.  I couldn’t stop talking - I had an audience that seemed impressed.

By the time they skilfully changed conversation topics, I failed to notice. They were both so charming and funny.

‘My mother is ill in hospital; she would love to meet you. Can you come to the hospital and visit her? She’d be amazed that you are going to work with orangutans.’

I kept trying to say no, but they kept telling me how much it would mean to their mother if they could bring a ‘beautiful’ English woman to visit her.   

The image of a mother, a hospitalised hostage, held ransom to my captivating orangutan story materialised in my head. At that particular stage, I had never been near an orangutan and had only visited Monkey World once, so I was rapidly running out of things to say. The Malaysian women repeatedly encouraged me to tell my story and assured me their mother would be fascinated.  

I feel ashamed to admit it, but I allowed them to put me in a taxi and let it whisk me through Kuala Lumpur. I willingly entered the taxi and am sure I even paid for my kidnap journey. So within four hours of arriving in KL, I was in a taxi with two Malaysian women who had pinned me in on either side.

We eventually got to a small, perfectly ordinary house in an area of KL that I was never likely to find again.  There was a hell of a to-do when the girls presented me as their prize! I seriously couldn’t determine why everyone was so excited to see me standing in their sitting room. Was it my English accent? I decided it was simply because I was foreign and wasn’t a boring tourist - No! I was a zoo keeper!

‘I thought we were going to the hospital to meet your mum?’ I asked eagerly.

‘No, not yet. Later. My dad wants to meet you.’

‘OK’. Yippee, another person to hear my orangutan story. Imagine if we’d gone straight to the hospital? Possibly I would only have seen the mother and missed the father.  

‘Gosh, this zoo keeper story has made me very special,’ my jet-lagged head told me. 

The father walked into the sitting room where I stood. No point in me sitting down; we were going to the hospital soon. The father’s eyes initially lit up when he saw me. Petite, blonde and pale-skinned. As far as a kidnappers’ shopping list in KL went - precisely the right look that the kidnappers were interested in.  

The father looked like a father, nothing sinister.

’So you’re here on your own? First time to Malaysia?’

‘First time to Asia,’ I said excitedly.  

‘So how ….. 

“Who would have thought? Blah, blah, blah.’

‘…long are you on holiday for?’, he said, finally finishing his sentence.

‘No, not on holiday. Working in Kuala Lumpur zoo with orangutans’. Yep, working,….orangutans…… blah, blah, blah.

I did notice his face had changed, and he glared at his ‘daughters.’, but it still didn’t alert me to any problem.

‘Working in the zoo? How are you working in the zoo?’

‘Well, I really work for a London company’. (I spoke to my ‘abductor’ as if he was my close friend, and I was prepared to let him into my secret that I wasn’t a Zoo Keeper). ‘Been with them for……

“Who are you working for?

….. years now.  I,,,,,,,, blah, blah, blah,

‘No here - in KL - who are you working for?’ the man said.

I continued to talk over him the whole time, almost not pausing for breath, and when he finished speaking, all you could hear was my voice saying ‘blah, blah, blah orangutans’, and clearly, his whole conversation had sailed over my head.  

‘WHO ARE YOU WORKING FOR?’ he bellowed.

‘The Malaysian Government works with numerous charities, and one of them, the WWF, has sent me to the KL zoo to train me to work with orangutans’. 

‘The Government!  Do they know you’ve arrived in KL?’

‘Yes, of course, they know I’m here’ (I mean, how would I have gotten into the country without my passport being stamped? Of course, the Government knew I was here.)

By now warming up on my theme, I had moved into the land of fantasy: ’Yep, when I finish in the zoo, before flying out to the jungle in Borneo, I’m writing my story about working in a zoo’. 

He looked in horror: ’Who’s reporting your story?’

‘No, I’m writing the story and have a publisher blah, blah, blah’ (not remotely true, but I thought it sounded good).

‘She’s a f…ing journalist - quick, get her out of here’, said ‘dad’.

Sensing this was my last chance to tell them my story again about how I’d got here and what I was doing, making sure they knew I was working with orangutans and working in the zoo, my mouth opened, ready for the last onslaught, but the father amazed me by covering his ears and throwing back his head in a theatrical manner and began to scream:

‘Shut her up, for fuck’s sake. If I hear orangutan one more bloody time …….’ and stormed out of the sitting room. The girls gave me a panicked look and ran after him. 

Despite being alone in their sitting room, I did not try to run for the door. I still thought I was with a Malaysian family whose mother was hospitalised and had failed to realise I had been abducted.

A short while later, one of the women who had picked me up at the Mall rushed in, grabbed my hand and dragged me out of the house. I swear I asked, ‘Are we going to the hospital?’ and even the woman began to look anxious to get rid of me. She tried ringing for a taxi, and, unbelievably, no taxi would come near their house to pick me up. To my untutored eyes, the area looked OK.

She finally took me to the railway station and, almost in tears, told me I must give her as much money as possible; otherwise, he’d kill her. I assumed she meant ‘dad’. The currency meant nothing to me - I’d always been innumerate - yep, if the poor sick mum and the family needed money, let them have it. I didn’t have that much money with me, but I emptied my purse, keeping enough to buy the train ticket, and when I got on the train - for the first time, I began to think how strange it had all been.  

I took a seat on the train and looked around. People were staring at me. None of the passengers looked like the well-dressed pleasant Malaysians at the shopping mall, and for the first time, without the sound of my incessant talking, I began to feel uncomfortable. A middle-aged woman dressed like an office worker came and sat next to me and whispered out of the corner of her mouth:

‘English?’

‘Yes’. 

‘What the hell are you doing on this train?’

I looked at her, confused. 

‘This is a very bad area of KL; no tourist would willingly come here and hope to come out alive.’

I looked in shock.

‘Sit close to me, hold tightly to your purse, and I’ll sit with you till we get you to a safe area in KL. Are you OK? Will you need help when we get off?’  What the hell was she talking about? 

We got off near the Shopping Mall where I’d started my journey.  

‘Why on earth were you in that area of KL?’ she asked.

‘Two women asked me to come and meet their mum in hospital, but instead, we went to their house’.

She looked distressed. ‘I can’t believe you went with them. Unfortunately, this is KL. You are in danger of getting robbed or kidnapped, depending on where you are in the City. It pains me to say this about my lovely city, but it's true.’ 

‘But I haven’t got much money, so why on earth would they have kidnapped me?  

‘You’ve got family? They would have paid, wouldn’t they?’

‘We never discussed my family.’

‘What the hell did you talk about?

I had a clear vision of my mouth constantly flapping about orangutans. My Malaysian hosts never really got a word in edgeways. The dad seemed to realise I had chronic verbal diarrhoea and was unlikely ever to shut me up. Imagine anyone being stupid enough to kidnap me!  

In answer to my train companion's questions, I assured her that I didn’t need my Embassy, the Police or a hospital. I thanked her profusely.

‘Do you know how lucky you have been?  Foreigners disappear in this City! Don’t go off with anyone else.’

I opened my mouth to tell her about the zoo but shut it quickly. This woman didn’t deserve the same treatment I’d meted out to my kidnappers. Instead, I silently waved her farewell.

Looking back at my first day in KL, I remembered happily dangling my feet in the lake and frankly, all would have remained fantastic except for that brief moment of being kidnapped. At times, you know, the Universe can really try my patience.