Reunion in Barsaloi (4 page)

A
t last we’re on the road. James is leading the way on his motorbike. There’s a new road because the old one is now definitively impassable. It’s a pity as I’d like to have shown it to my companions. The new one was just finished a few months ago and makes for a relatively easy ride. For the past few years they’ve had to put up with a five-hour detour by way of Baragoi.

Soon we leave the last few mud holes and puddles of rainwater behind us as the road starts to climb mercilessly. James’s motorbike kicks out a thick cloud of black smoke. A few people on foot pass us coming the other way towards town, the woman carrying calabash gourds filled with milk to sell. Every day they walk hours in each direction in order to make a small profit.

The hollowed-out calabash gourds are light and have been used as containers since prehistoric times. The Masai and Samburu use strips of leather decorated with coloured beads or little shells to strengthen them. To keep them reusable the women scour the interior every night with a red-hot firebrand that sterilizes them. That’s why the milk usually smells a bit smoky, but back in Mama’s hut it always tasted wonderful to me.

The men are usually pulling one or more goats behind them, sometimes even a cow, taking them to market in Maralal. They only part with animals when they urgently need money for ritual celebrations, weddings or hospital bills.

Even when our driver has to engage the four-wheel drive this is a much more comfortable way to travel than the old bush road. There are no elephants or buffalo breaking suddenly out of the jungle to bar our
path. After an hour or so of driving up hill and down dale we get to a small
manyatta
village called Opiroi. A few women sitting outside the huts with their children look at our cars while the little kids, either naked or wearing just T-shirts, wave from the side of the road. The little square is dominated by a half-finished church. We press on, however, because we want to get to Barsaloi as quickly as possible. Every now and then we drive across the dried-up beds of little streams; water is still scarce here.

To my astonishment we come across a herd of camels, frightened by the noise of our engines, charging off as if in slow motion into the bush. It would appear the Samburu have taken to keeping more of these animals.

At last we reach a high pass between two rocky hills and know that from here on the cloud of dust we kick up will be visible in Barsaloi, even though the village is still half an hour’s drive away. No doubt today the whole village is out waiting for us.

When we pause briefly Klaus suggests he goes ahead with one of the drivers in order to get good footage of my arrival and reunion. James agrees and says he’ll try to explain this to Lketinga. In the meantime Albert and I can take a look at the school down by the Barsaloi River. It was just being built when I left the village and there was nothing more than a few walls to see. Even today, we are soon to discover, there’s an awful lot lacking, but at least the local children have their own school.

Just as Klaus is leaving, however, my old uneasy feeling comes creeping back. What will Lketinga say when the first person he sees is someone he doesn’t know carrying a video camera? And what about the other people in the village? What will they make of it? Most of them have never even seen a film and don’t understand the concept. And Klaus wants to erect a tripod!

Despite my dreadful unease about the whole business, the thought of Napirai calms me down. After all, I want to capture as much as I can of the trip for her sake. This is the first time her parents have met in years. She has no memory of her time in Kenya and it all seems a bit strange to her. She’s caught between two cultures but actually only lives in one. My heart hankers more after Africa than hers does. She thinks like a white European but isn’t seen as one. It’s not easy for her and that’s why I want to bring back as much as possible in pictures and video so she can get an idea of her African family.

Even so, the nervous tension and feeling of uneasy anticipation has built up to almost unbearable levels by the time I make out in the distance
the first houses of Barsaloi. It looks as if the village has grown a bit, but the sight is still so familiar that I feel I could have been here the day before yesterday.

The long low building of the school peeks out behind the shrubs and thorn trees. We drive slowly up to a gate where the head teacher is waiting to welcome us. The wall behind him is decorated with various murals, one showing a judge in his robes, another two children playing football while a third depicts a well-dressed man working at a computer on a desk. Above them is the inscription: ‘Walk out productive’. Out here so far from anywhere the image of the computer still comes across as comic, especially when we know from James that there’s often a shortage of paper and pens. Even he has no idea about computers.

The headmaster takes us around the school and I’m quite amazed how much they’ve achieved with the few means at their disposal. The classrooms are simple but well fitted out. The windows have wire grilles rather than glass. The headmaster’s pride and joy is the library with a few books. The children can come and fetch a book, which they can read in the rather spartan reading room. They aren’t allowed to take them home, however, because the smoke in the
manyattas
would damage them.

A few children are looking curiously through the grilles at their white visitors. In one corner of the playground others are lined up to have
ugali
, a sort of maize porridge, served on aluminium trays. I’m sure they’re all proud that their parents even send them to school, and I can’t help wondering what my daughter would think if she had to go to school here.

At last we drive gently down the steep bank of the Barsaloi River and cross the five hundred feet of dried-up river bed. A few yards more and we’ll be there. Already I can see the first huts on either side of the road.

My heart is pounding as I try to take in as much as possible at once. Where will Lketinga be? Where will he greet me? Is he going to be in the middle of the village or in one of the huts, away from all the inquisitive eyes? There are so many new wooden huts that I don’t know where I should be looking. There are people everywhere. Ahead on the left I spot the Mission building. It looks smaller than it used to. The green banana trees are gone too. The church is finished, however. Children jump out of the road as our car passes by.

There they are! At last I spot our other vehicle and James’s motorbike. Our driver stops next to them. As I rather uncertainly go to get out
suddenly two arms shoot through the open car window and grab me by the neck and I feel kisses all over my face and hear over and over again: ‘Oh, Corinne, oh, Corinne!’ I have no idea what’s going on, let alone who it is that’s hanging round my neck. James hurries up and guides the obviously emotional man away. One thing’s for sure: it certainly wasn’t Lketinga!

A
t last I manage to get out and can see around me. There, some sixty feet away, in the shade of a leafy thorn tree, I spot Lketinga. Tall and proud, he’s standing with one leg elegantly crossed over the other, the typical pose of the Masai.

I know there’s no way he’ll move an inch. It is simply not done for a traditional Samburu to come to a woman. So, with the eager eyes of the surrounding crowd watching, I walk up to him. There isn’t a thought in my head. I can’t think anymore. The only thing I’m aware of is the throbbing beat of my heart. Each step seems like a hundred.

Lketinga is every bit as tall and slim as ever. He has one hand on his hip, while he leans elegantly with the other on a tall stick. He is wearing a red loincloth with a yellow T-shirt and a white shawl with blue spots across his shoulders. As ever, his feet are clad in sandals made of old car tyres. In the hand resting on the stick he also carries his
rungu
, while from beneath his T-shirt on his right side protrudes the red leather sheath of his bush knife.

My eyes take all this in even as I’m walking towards him, and at the same time I hear his slightly hoarse, soft, laughing voice call out to me: ‘Hey, you are looking big, very big, like an old Mama.’ With a welcome like that, all my shy embarrassment evaporates and I give as good back: ‘And you look like an old man!’

And then I’m right up close to him, looking into his eyes, when everything happens of its own accord. We throw our arms around one another, and hold each other tight. Neither of us cares that the locals don’t do things like that. We hadn’t planned it; all of a sudden it just seems the
right thing to do. After a few seconds I let go of Lketinga and look him in the face. We run our eyes over one another. He looks much better than he did six years ago when Albert met him in Maralal to give him a copy of
The White Masai
. The picture he brought back with him had shocked me. Today, however, I can see in his face much of his old good looks. He still has his magnificent profile, fine features, not too big a nose and full, attractive lips. When he smiles his white teeth – with the gap in the middle – sparkle. His cheek bones stand out more strongly than ever, which creates the slight suggestion that his cheeks have sunken somewhat. There are a few wrinkles now on his high forehead but his crinkly hair is as almost as black as ever. In his ear lobes – stretched long, Samburu-style – are little silver metal rings.

As we’re talking relaxedly to one another he suddenly grabs my right arm with its silver bangle holds it up and asks me in some confusion: ‘What is this? Why are you not still wearing the bangle I gave you at our wedding? What sort of a bracelet is this and what does it mean?’ A bit taken aback, I answer him slightly embarrassedly but with a laugh: ‘You said yourself I’d got fatter. I had to have our bracelet cut off because it had got too tight for my arm.’ But he doesn’t understand and stands there shaking his head.

It’s been an emotional few minutes and I realize tears are welling up in my eyes. Oh God, not now! I turn my face away from Lketinga to hide my emotion, but he grabs my arm again: ‘Don’t cry! Why are you crying? That’s no good!’ I take a deep breath, bite my lips and try to get a grip on myself. I can’t collapse in floods of tears in front of all these people. Grown women don’t cry here. To change the subject I ask after Mama. Lketinga nods and says: ‘Okay, okay, I’ll take you to Mama later.
Pole, pole
– slowly, slowly.’

It’s only now that I notice Klaus, who’s been filming everything all along. Albert comes across slowly and Lketinga greets him with a handshake and friendly smile. You can see how proud he is to have all these visitors. As ever he carries himself graciously, calmly and without rush. The only one who’s in a dither is me. Even so, I’m amazed how simply and naturally I’m getting on with Lketinga, even playfully. It’s as if all those years have rolled away. We’ve straight away gone back to using ‘our’ special language, a blend of simplistic English mixed with Masai words. Right from the start we’ve been teasing one another: ‘Why have you dyed your hair red like a warrior?’ he says. ‘You really are an old Mama.’ And he laughs and shakes his head.

Then all of a sudden his eyes go dark and I notice that threatening furrow between his eyebrows that always presaged something unpleasant. In a serious voice he asks: ‘Where is my child? Why has my child not come with you?’ My heart skips a beat and then starts pounding. I look him straight in the eyes and tell him Napirai has a lot of schoolwork to do at the moment. Later, when she’s got all of that behind her, she’ll almost certainly come to Barsaloi. He’s watching me closely but then his face relaxes and he says: ‘Okay, it’s okay. I wait for my child. I really hope that she will come.’

Looking over towards a long building on one side, I notice Lketinga’s older brother Papa Saguna sitting in the shade with the other men watching us. Glad to see him, I wave him over and he gets up and comes across. He is effectively head of the family as their father is dead, and as the eldest his word is usually taken as law. He speaks only Maa, which makes it difficult for me to communicate with him. But I’m relieved to see him smiling. In the old days I was never sure whether or not he liked me. In some ways he always seemed the wildest of the family to me. Whenever he spoke in his rough, coarse voice it always sounded as if he was looking for an argument. He came with us on our wedding trip to Mombasa to act as a witness and I will never forget his childlike amazement at life in the city. Here in the bush he’s the toughest member of the family, but he was terrified by the sight of the ocean and the
half-naked
tourists in Mombasa. I’m really pleased he’s here. Later on James tells me that despite having had a fever he walked for four hours from his village to be here when I arrived.

Lketinga leads us off to a well-kept corral, and once again I can’t help being fascinated at the way this man moves. We walk towards a long, thin wooden house with a tin roof, which I discover to be the home of James and his family. From all around I hear people call: ‘
Supa, Mama Napirai.
Serian a ge?
– Hello, Mama Napirai, how are you?’

We pass through the six-foot high thorn thicket that starts just outside the house and surrounds the whole family area like a fence, protecting them from wild animals. During the day they leave a narrow opening in it, which is closed up at night when they’ve brought the animals in.

Every few feet I have to shake hands and smile into different faces. Most of them are women. They all give me beaming smiles and apart from greeting me with the usual ‘
Supa
’, ask if I remember them. I recognize a
few straight away but there are others whom I can hardly recall at first. One old woman with only a couple of teeth left in her mouth comes up with a big smile and spits in my hands, as a way of giving me her blessing. She is the mother of a girl I visited in her hut just after she’d undergone so-called female circumcision. She was a neighbour of ours who was married at the age of twelve and, according to Samburu tradition, had to undergo this horrific ritual on the morning of her marriage. I want to ask the old woman how her daughter is because I remember her really well as a happy, laughing child, but I can’t because the oldest people here understand only Maa and, apart from a few set phrases, I don’t speak any. All of a sudden I feel really useless; there’s so much I want to say and so little I can. It will be the same with Mama.

James urges me on. Within the corral there are three larger
manyattas
for living in and two little ones where the kid goats are kept during the day when their mothers are taken out to pasture. The newborns, however, are kept in the big
manyattas
with the humans.
Manyatta
walls are made of thin planks of wood placed tightly together and plastered with dried cow dung. The roof is made of goatskins, hand-woven sisal matting, old sacks and pieces of cardboard, all somehow interleaved to provide protection from the rain. Outside the door there’s usually a rolled-up cowhide, a pile of firewood and oval willow wickerwork baskets which, if they need to up sticks and move, can be strapped on the back of a donkey and used to carry everything. Everything they have has to fit in there.

A few chickens are pecking in the red-brown sandy earth around the
manyattas
. I’m astonished to see all these birds because the Samburu have absolutely no tradition of keeping poultry. When I arrived with a chicken for the first time it caused a great stir. Nobody had a clue what to do with something that to them was a useless animal. They ate neither eggs nor chicken meat and the only thing Mama could see was the problem of preventing the wild animals getting it. She was also worried that it would attract birds of prey that would be a threat to the baby goats. And yet now there were at least ten chickens running around. When I expressed my astonishment to James, he grins and says: ‘You showed us what could be done with these animals. My wife cooks with eggs every now and then and what we don’t eat we sell in our little shop to the nuns from the Mission.’ There’s another piece of news: in Father Giuliani’s day there were no nuns at the Mission.