One Day I Will Write About This Place (20 page)

I like this job.

A few minutes ago, I was sleeping comfortably in the front of a Land Rover Discovery. Now, I am standing outside in the cold, next to my bags, as the agricultural extension officer who gave me a lift here makes a mad dash for the night comforts of Narok town. Driving at night in this area is not a bright idea. We have been growing leased wheat and barley here for years. My father farms here to help pay our school fees. It is hard work, but I have always liked the adventure of Maasailand. There is a lot of time to read, too. My bags are full of library books.

When you are traveling in an unfamiliar landscape, for the first few moments, your eyes cannot concentrate on the particular. I am overwhelmed by the glare of dusk, by the shiver of wind on undulating acres of wheat and barley, by the vision of mile upon mile of space free of power lines. My focus is so derailed that when I return to myself, I find, to my surprise, that my feet are not off the ground. The landscape had grabbed me with such force that for a moment it sucked up my awareness of myself. It occurs to me that there is no clearer proof of the subjectivity (or selectivity) of our senses than moments like this.

Seeing is almost always only noticing.

Rotor blades of cold are chopping away in my nostrils. The silence, after the nonstop drone of the car, is as clingy as cobwebs, as intrusive as the loudest of noises. I have an urge to claw it away from my eardrums.

I am in Maasailand.

Not television Maasailand. We are high up in the Mau Hills. There are no rolling grasslands, lions, or acacia trees here; there are forests, impenetrable woven highland forests, dominated by bamboo. Inside, there are elephants, which come out at night and leave enormous pancakes of shit on the road. When I was a kid, I used to think that elephants, like cats, used dusty roads as toilet paper, sitting their haunches on the ground and levering themselves forward with their forelegs.

The cold air is irritating. I want to breathe in, suck up the moist mountain­ness of the air, the smell of fever tree and dung—­but the process is just too painful. What do people do in really wintry places? Do they have some sort of nasal Sensodyne?

I can see our ancient Massey Ferguson tractor wheezing up a distant hill. They are headed this way to pick me up.

Relief. They got my message.

A week later, I am on a tractor, freezing, as we make our way back to camp from the wheat fields. We have been supervising the spraying of wheat and barley in the scattered fields my father leases.

There isn’t much to look forward to at night here, no pubs hidden in the bamboo jungle. You can’t even walk about freely at night because outside is full of stinging nettles. We will be in bed by seven to beat the cold. I will hear stories about frogs that sneak under your bed and turn into beautiful women, who entrap you. I will hear stories about legendary tractor drivers—­people who could turn the jagged roof of Mount Kilimanjaro into Lauryn Hill’s Afro.

I will hear about Maasai outside our camp, so near and so far from us. I will hear about so-­and-­so, who got two hundred thousand shillings for barley grown on his land, and how he took off to the Majengo slums in Nairobi, leaving his wife and children behind, to live with a prostitute for a year.

When the money ran out, he discarded his suit, pots and pans, and furniture. He wrapped a blanket around himself and walked home, whistling happily all the way.

Most of all, I will hear stories about Ole Kamaro, our landlord, and his wife Milka.

Baba has been growing wheat and barley in this area since I was a child. All this time, we have been leasing a portion of Ole Kamaro’s land to keep our tractors and to make camp. I met Milka when she had just married Ole Kamaro. She was his fifth wife, thirteen years old. He was very proud of her. She was the daughter of a big-time chief from near Mau Narok. Most important, she could read and write. Ole Kamaro bought her a pocket radio and made her follow him with a pen and pencil everywhere he went, taking notes.

I remember being horrified by the marriage. She was so young! My sister Ciru was eight, and they played together one day. That night, Ciru had a nightmare that Baba had sold her to Ole Kamaro in exchange for fifty acres of land.

A few years of schooling were enough to give Milka a clear idea of the basic tenets of empowerment. By the time she was eighteen, Ole Kamaro had dumped the rest of his wives.

Milka leased out his land to Kenya Breweries and opened a bank account where all the money went. Occasionally, she gave her husband pocket money. Whenever he was away, she took up with her lover, a wealthy young Gikuyu shopkeeper from the other side of the hill who kept her supplied with essentials like soap, matches, and paraffin.

Milka is the local chairwoman of the KANU Women’s League and so remains invulnerable to censure from the conservative element in the area. She also has a thriving business, curing hides and beading them elaborately for the tourist market at the Mara. Unlike most Maasai women, who disdain growing crops, she has a thriving market garden with maize, beans, and other vegetables. She does not lift a finger to take care of this garden. Part of the cooperation we expect from her as landlady depends on our staff taking care of her garden.

…

Something interesting is going on today, and the drivers are nervous. Sang tells me about a tradition among the Maasai: women are released from all domestic duties for a few months after giving birth. They are allowed to take over the land and claim any lovers that they choose. For some reason I don’t quite understand, this all happens at a particular season, and this season begins today. I have been warned to keep away from any bands of women wandering about.

We are heading back from work. I am sitting with the rest of the team in the trailer behind the old Massey Ferguson tractor we use to carry supplies and workers. We get to the top, turn to make our way down, and there they are, led by Milka, a troop of about forty women marching toward us dressed in their best traditional clothing.

Milka looks imperious and beautiful in her beaded leather cloak, red
khanga
around her waist. The
khanga
features a giant cockerel, in the president’s party colors. Milka is, after all, the leader of the KANU Women’s League. This is her cultural dress: the party colors on twin rectangular cloths that were once Swahili traditional dress and have now entered all of Kenya. Around all this are rings, necklaces, and earrings. Because Milka is in charge of the party women’s league, she is the leader of all local women. She is, too, a cultural leader. There is an old woman among them; she must be seventy, and she is cackling with glee. She takes off her wrap and displays her breasts, which resemble old socks.

Mwangi, who is driving, stops and tries to turn back, but the road is too narrow: on one side there is the mountain, and on the other, a yawning valley. Kipsang, who is sitting in the trailer with me, shouts, “Aiiii. Mwangi bwana! DO NOT STOP!”

It seems that the 1990s tradition involves men making donations to the KANU Women’s League. Innocent enough, you’d think, but the amount of these donations must satisfy them or they will strip you naked and do unspeakable things to your body.

So we take off at full speed. The women stand firm in the middle of the road. We can’t swerve. We stop.

Then Kipsang saves our skins by throwing a bunch of coins onto the road. I throw down some notes, and Mwangi (renowned across Maasailand for his stinginess) empties his pockets, throwing down notes and coins. The women start to gather the money, the tractor roars back into action, and we drive right through them.

I am left with the picture of a toothless old lady diving to avoid the tractor. Then she stands up and looks back at us, laughing, her breasts flapping like a flag of victory.

…

I am in bed, still in Maasailand.

I pick up my father’s
World Almanac and Book of Facts 1992.
The language section has new words, confirmed from sources as impeccable as the
Columbia Encyclopedia
and the
Oxford English Dictionary.
The list reads like an American infomercial: jazzercise, assertiveness training, bulimia, anorexic, microwavable, fast-­tracker.

The words soak into me. America is the cheerleader. They twirl the baton, and we follow. There is a word there,
skanking,
described as “a style of West Indian dancing to reggae music, in which the body bends forward at the waist and the knees are raised and the hands claw the air in time to the beat; dancing in this style.”

I have a brief flash of us in forty years’ time, in some generic dance studio. We are practicing for the senior championships, in a Kenya that is formatted and large, where work has digested us all, wearing plastic smiles on our faces as we skank across the room, counting each step like good students. The tutor checks the movement: shoulders up, arms down, move this way, move that: Claw, baby. Claw! In time to the beat, dancing in this style.

…

Langat and Kariuki have lost their self-­consciousness around me and are chatting away about Milka.

“Eh! She had ten thousand shillings and they went and stayed in a hotel in Narok for a week. Ole Kamaro had to bring in another woman to look after the children!”

“Hai! But she sits on him!”

Their talk meanders slowly, with no direction—­just talk, just connecting, and I feel that tight wrap of time loosen, the anxiety of losing time fades, and I am a glorious vacuum for a while, just letting what strikes my mind, strike my mind, then sleep strikes my opening mind.

…

Ole Kamaro is slaughtering a sheep today.

We all settle on the patch of grass between the two compounds. Ole Kamaro makes quick work of the sheep and I am offered the fresh kidney to eat. It tastes surprisingly good: slippery warmth, an organic cleanliness.

Ole Kamaro introduces me to his sister-­in-­law Suzannah, and tells me proudly that she is in form four. Milka’s sister. I spotted her this morning staring at me from the tiny window in their
manyatta.
It was disconcerting at first, a typically Maasai stare, unembarrassed, not afraid to be vulnerable. Then she noticed that I had seen her, and her eyes narrowed and became sassy—­street-­sassy, like a girl from Eastlands in Nairobi.

Her breasts are sharp and bounce around under a T-­shirt, quite indifferent to their effect.

So I am now confused how to approach her. Should my approach be one of exaggerated politeness, as is traditional, or casual cool, as her second demeanor requested? I would have opted for the latter, but her uncle is standing eagerly next to us.

She responds by lowering her head and looking away. I am painfully embarrassed. I ask her to show me where they tan their hides.

We escape with some relief.

“So where do you go to school?”

“Oh! At St. Teresa’s Girls in Nairobi.”

“Milka is your sister?”

“Yes.”

We are quiet for a while. English was a mistake. Where I am fluent, she is stilted. I switch to Swahili, and she pours herself into another person, talkative, aggressive. A person who must have a Tupac T-­shirt stashed away somewhere.

“Arhh! It’s so boring here! Nobody to talk to! I hope Milka comes home early.”

I am still stunned. How bold and animated she is, speaking Sheng, a very hip street language that mixes Swahili and English and other languages. Here, so far from road and railway Kenya.

“Why didn’t you go with the women today?”

She laughs. “I am not married. Ho! I’m sure they had fun! They are drinking
muratina
somewhere, I am sure. I can’t wait to get married.”

“So, do you use Suzannah pomade?”

She blushes and laughs.

“
Kwani?
You don’t want to go to university and all that?”

“Maybe, but if I’m married to the right guy, life is good. Look at Milka. She is free, she does anything she wants. Old men are good. If you feed them, and give them a son, they leave you alone.”

“Won’t it be difficult to do this if you are not circumcised?”

“
Kwani,
who told you I’m not circumcised? I went last year.”

I am shocked, and it shows. She laughs.

“He! I nearly shat myself! But I didn’t cry!”

“Why? Si, you could have refused.”

“Ai! If I had refused, it would mean that my life here was finished. There is no place here for someone like that.”

“But…”

I cut myself short. I am sensing that this is her compromise—­to live two lives fluently. As it generally is with people’s reasons for their faiths and choices, trying to disprove her is silly. As a Maasai, she would see my statement as ridiculous.

In Sheng, there is no way for me to bring it up that would be diplomatic; in Sheng she can only present this with a hard-­edged bravado, because it is humiliating. I do not know of any way we can discuss this successfully in English. If there is a courtesy every Kenyan practices, it is that we don’t question each other’s contradictions; we all have them, and destroying someone’s face is sacrilege. If South Africans seek to fill the holes in their reality through building a strong political foundation, we spend a lot of time pretending our contradictions do not exist. To be a new thing in South Africa is normal. We know we sit on top of a rotting edifice; we are terrified of questioning anything deeply. There is nothing wrong with being what you are not in Kenya; just be it successfully. Almost all Kenyan jokes are about people who thought they had mastered a new persona and ended up ridiculous. Suzannah knows her faces well. We chat the whole lazy afternoon.

…

I spend whole days watching the combine harvester roll, acres and acres of dry wheat sucked in,
crutch,
and shat out as grain. Weetabix is unbeatabix. I read books out in the sun, now at the top of the familiar escarpment, looking down on Nakuru’s flamingos, Amigos Disco, dreams, and distant chatter. I help bag the grain and sew it, following the lead of the workers.

I am starting to scribble my thoughts, to write these moments. It is when this is all done that I do what I do best. I look up, confused and fearful, all accordion with
kimay
; then soak in the safe patterns of other people, and live my life borrowing from them; then retreat—­for reasons I don’t know—­to look down, inside the safety of novels; and then I lift my eyes again to people, and make them my own sort of confused pattern.