The White Masai (15 page)

At least he will look into the identity card problem. The next day he comes with us to the government office. There’s a lot of discussion, forms filled out and various names mentioned. If he knows everything about Lketinga’s family the card can be issued in Maralal within two to three weeks. We fill in the wedding pre-registration document at the same time. If no one objects, we can get married in three weeks, but we have to have two literate witnesses. I don’t know how to thank the man enough, I’m so happy. There’s money to be handed over for this and that, but within a couple of hours everything has been put in motion. We have to drop in again in two weeks and bring all our documents. In good humour, I invite the government man to join us for dinner. He’s the first person who’s helped us out of the goodness of his heart. Even Lketinga generously pushes some money in his direction.

After the one night in Maralal we set off home again. Just before we leave the town I bump into Jutta. Obviously we have to have
chai
together and swap news. She wants to come to our wedding. She’s currently living with Sophia, another white woman who’s recently moved to Maralal with her Rasta boyfriend. She tells me to call in. We whites need to stick together, she says jokingly. Lketinga’s in a bad mood because we’re laughing a lot and he doesn’t understand anything as we’re speaking German. He wants to go home so we say goodbye. This time I risk the jungle track, but the surface is appalling and when we get to the steep – and now slippery – slope, I scarcely dare breathe. But this time my prayers are heeded, and we get to Barsaloi without incident.

The next few days pass quietly in measured routine. People have enough milk, and there’s cornflower and rice to be had in the run-down shops. Mama is busy with preparations for the big Samburu festival. They will celebrate the end of the warrior stage for my darling’s age group; after the festival – in a month’s time – the warriors will officially be able to look for wives and marry. One year later, the next generation – today’s boys – will be officially elevated to ‘warriors’ in a big festival marked by circumcision.

The coming festival, which happens at a particular place attended by all the mothers with warrior sons, is very important for Lketinga. In two or three weeks Mama and we will leave the
manyatta
and move to the
festival site where the women will build new huts just for the event. The exact date for the commencement of the three-day festival we’ll only find out closer to the time because the phase of the moon plays an important part. I reckon that we should contact the government office about a fortnight before because if anything should go wrong, I won’t have much time left before my visa runs out.

Lketinga is on the road a lot now because he has to find a black bull of a specific size. That means visiting lots of relations and doing barter deals. Sometimes I go with him, but I sleep at home under my mosquito net, which protects me well. During the day I do the usual chores. Each morning, with or without Lketinga, I go down to the river. Sometimes I take Saguna along who thinks it’s great fun to bathe; it’s her first time! While we’re there I wash our smoky clothes, which once again hurts my knuckles. Then we drag our water containers back home and go and look for firewood.

T
ime passes quickly, and soon we must go to Maralal to get married. Mama is unhappy about Lketinga going away so soon before the ceremony, but we think that a week should really be more than enough. Mama herself leaves the same day, heading off with all the other mothers and some heavily laden donkeys. There’s no way she wants to come with us: she’s never been in a car and has no intention of trying the experience. So I just pack my things into the car and leave the rest to Mama.

Lketinga brings Jomo along, an older man who speaks some English. I don’t particularly like him, and he keeps pestering us to be a witness to the wedding or help in some way. Then they talk about the upcoming festival. Mothers are coming from all over to be there, between forty and fifty
manyattas
will be built, and there’ll be lots of dancing. I’m looking forward immensely to this big festival which I’m allowed to attend. Looking at the moon, our passenger reckons it’ll be in two weeks’ time.

In Maralal we first of all go to the identity card office, but the official on duty isn’t there, and we’re told to come back tomorrow morning. Without the card we can’t set a date for the wedding. We search Maralal for two potential witnesses, but it’s not that easy; the people Lketinga knows either can’t write or don’t understand English or Swahili. His brother is too young, and some people are in any case afraid to go near the government office because they don’t understand what it’s all about. Only on the second day do we run into two
morans
who’ve lived in Mombasa and also have identity cards. They promise to stay in Maralal for a couple of days.

When we turn up in the office that afternoon Lketinga’s identity card really is there, all he has to do is add his fingerprint. Then it’s off to the civil registration office. The official there examines my passport and the certificate that I am single. From time to time he uses Swahili to ask Lketinga questions that he obviously doesn’t understand. This makes him nervous. I dare to ask when we can now get married and give the names of the two witnesses. The official says we’ll have to speak directly to the District Officer because he’s the only man who can carry out the ceremony.

We sit down in the queue of people waiting to talk to this important man. It’s two hours before we get to see him: an enormous man seated at a stylish modern table. I put out papers on the table and tell him we want a date for our wedding. He leafs through my passport and asks me why I want to marry a Masai and where we’re going to live. I’m so nervous that I find it hard to speak in proper sentences. ‘Because I love him and we’re going to build a house in Barsaloi’. His gaze wanders back and forth between Lketinga and me, and eventually he tells us to come back in two days’ time at two p.m. with the witnesses. We thank him happily and leave.

All of a sudden everything seems to be happening more normally than I could ever have dreamed. Lketinga buys
miraa
and settles down with a beer in the boarding house. I advise him against it, but he reckons he needs it. At about nine o’clock there’s a knock on the door, and our companion is standing there, chewing
miraa
also. We talk over everything again but the longer the evening goes on the more Lketinga gets restless. He’s not sure if this is the right thing to do. He doesn’t know anybody who’s got married in a registry office. This time I’m glad that the other bloke can explain it all to him. Lketinga just nods. Here’s hoping he sticks it out for the next two days. Visits to government offices don’t agree with him.

The next day I go looking for Jutta and Sophia. Sophia lives in the grand style in a two-storey house with electric lighting, running water and even a fridge. They’re both delighted about the wedding and promise to turn up at the registry office the next day at two. Sophia lends me a pretty hairclip and a smart blouse. We buy two nice new kangas for Lketinga. Everything is ready.

On the morning of our wedding, however, I start getting nervous. By midday our witnesses still haven’t turned up and don’t even know that their presence is needed in two hours’ time. We have to find two others. There’s always Jomo, and under the circumstances I don’t mind as long as
we can find a second. In despair I ask the boarding house landlady, who’s delighted to agree. At two o’clock we’re standing in front of the office. Sophia and Jutta are there, with cameras even. We sit on the bench and wait with everyone else. The mood is somewhat tense, and Jutta keeps teasing me. Truth to tell I had imagined the minutes leading up to my wedding as somewhat jollier.

After half an hour we still haven’t been called. People go in and out, and one of them in particular strikes me because I notice he has been in three times. Time’s getting on, and Lketinga’s getting worried. He’s afraid there’ll be something wrong with his papers and he’ll be put in jail. I try my best to reassure him, but because of the
miraa
he hasn’t slept. ‘
Hakuna
matata
, we’re in Africa,
pole, pole
,’ says Jutta, as the door suddenly opens, and Lketinga and I are called in. The witnesses have to wait outside. Now even I’m getting butterflies.

The District Officer is once again behind his great baronial desk, and sitting at the long table in front of him are two other men, one of them the one I had noticed going in and out. They introduce themselves as plainclothes police and demand to see my passport and Lketinga’s identity card.

My heart is beating like thunder. What is going on? They inundate me with questions, and I’m terrified that I’m not understanding their bureaucratic English properly. How long have I been living in the Samburu District? How did I get to know Lketinga? And when? What are we doing for a living? What is my profession? How do we communicate? And so on, and so on. Endless questions.

Lketinga keeps asking what we’re talking about, but I can’t explain that to him here: not in the way we’re used to communicating. At the question whether of not I’ve been married before I finally erupt. Angrily I tell them that my birth certificate and my passport both show the same name and that I even have a certificate from the local authority in Switzerland written in English. One of them says this cannot be accepted unless it is confirmed by the embassy in Nairobi. ‘But there’s my passport!’ I insist furiously. But it doesn’t do any good. The officer says that might be a forgery too. Now I’m beyond myself with anger. The District Officer asks Lketinga if he already has a Samburu wife, and he answers truthfully, ‘No.’ But the Officer wants to know how he can prove it. Everybody in Barsaloi knows it, he says; ‘But we’re in Maralal,’ comes the answer. In
which language do we think we can get married, then? I suggest in English with translation into Masai. The Officer gives a snide laugh and says he doesn’t have the time for special cases like that and in any case he doesn’t speak Masai. We should come back when we can both speak the same language, either English or Swahili, when I’ve had my papers stamped in Nairobi and Lketinga can bring a paper signed by the local chief to say he is unmarried.

I flip my lid completely at this pantomime and scream at the Officer, why didn’t he tell us all this in the first place? Spiffily he declares that here he can decide when he tells people anything and if I don’t like it he can have me thrown out of the country tomorrow. That does it! ‘Come, darling,’ I say. ‘We go. They don’t want give the marriage.’ Furious and in tears, I storm out of the office with Lketinga behind me. Outside Jutta and Sophia are clicking with their cameras: they think it’s all over!

In the meantime a crowd of about twenty people has gathered. I wish the earth would swallow me. ‘What’s wrong, Corinne? Lketinga, what’s the problem?’ ‘I don’t know,’ he says in confusion. I storm over to my Land Rover and race at full speed to the boarding house. I want to be alone. I throw myself on to the bed and burst into sobs that shake my whole body. ‘These goddamn pigs!’

Sometime later Lketinga is sitting next to me, trying to calm me down. I know he can’t cope with tears, but I can’t help myself. Jutta pops her head in and brings me a local brandy. Reluctantly I force it down, and gradually the crying fit subsides. I feel exhausted and insensible. At some stage Jutta leaves. Lketinga drinks beer and chews his
miraa
.

Later still, there’s a knock at the door. I’m lying in bed staring at the ceiling. Lketinga opens the door, and the two plainclothes policemen come in. They apologize politely and offer their assistance. When I ignore them one, a Samburu, talks to Lketinga. When eventually I realize that all these bastards want is a load of money to let us get married I lose my rag again and shout at them to get out of the room: I will marry this man in Nairobi or wherever I have to and without any of their grubby help. They leave the room in embarrassment.

Tomorrow we’ll go to Nairobi to get my form stamped and have my visa extended just in case. Now that I have my wedding application forms, that ought not to be a problem. Then we’ll have another three months in which to get the relevant paper from the local chief. It would be absurd
that we can’t do it without bribery! Just as I’m getting ready to go to sleep the unlovable Jomo sticks his head in. Lketinga tells him our plan, and he says he should come with us because he assures us he knows Nairobi like the back of his hand. Because the road via Nyahururu is still in a bad state we decide to go via Wamba and Isiolo and take the public buses from there. But because of the upcoming festival we’ve only four or five days.

It’s a new route for me, but everything goes to plan. It takes us five hours to get to Isiolo. I ask my way to the local Mission in the hope of being allowed to park the car there, which I am. If the car were just left on the street it wouldn’t be there long.

As it’s another three to four hours to Nairobi we decide to spend the night here and set off first thing in the morning in order to get to the office in the afternoon. But now Jomo tells me he has no money left, leaving me no option but to pay for his room, food and drink. I do it with ill grace because I still can’t like him. In our room I fall into bed and am asleep before nightfall. The other two are drinking beer and nattering. I wake up with a thirst, and we have breakfast before boarding the bus for Nairobi. It takes an hour until it fills up, and we finally set off, arriving in Nairobi just before noon.

First of all we track down the Swiss Embassy to get them to certify my certificate from the local council, but they say they don’t do that sort of thing and in any case, although I was born in Switzerland and have always considered the country home, because my father was German I have a German passport. Therefore, they say, I need to go to the German Embassy.

I have my doubts that the Germans will deal with a Swiss document, but they insist that’s my only option. The German Embassy is in a different part of town, and we drag ourselves across bustling sticky Nairobi. The German Embassy is busy, and we have to queue. When I finally get to the front the official on duty shakes his head and tries to send me to the Swiss Embassy. When I tell him exasperatedly that we’ve just come from there, he lifts the telephone and calls them up. Shaking his head, he comes back and says he can’t see the point in any of it, but it will satisfy them in Maralal if there are as many stamps and signatures as possible on the piece of paper. I thank him and leave.

Lketinga wants to know why nobody likes my papers. I can’t answer him, and he looks at me doubtfully. Now we head off to another part of town where the Nyayo Building is to renew my visa which runs out in
ten days. My legs are like lead, but I am determined to get the visa in the one and a half hours we have left. In the Nyayo Building there are more forms to fill out. Now I’m actually grateful for our companion because my head’s spinning and I only understand every other question. Everyone stares at Lketinga so he has pulled his kanga down over his head. We wait until I am called. Time is ticking on, and we’ve already been sitting for more than an hour in this stifling hall. I can barely stand the stink of sweat from the crowds. The office will be closing in fifteen minutes, and coming back tomorrow means starting all over again.

At long last my passport is held up. ‘Miss Hofmann!’ a stern woman’s voice calls out. I push my way to the counter. The woman looks at me and asks me if I want to marry an African. ‘Yes,’ I answer abruptly. ‘Where is your husband?’ I point towards Lketinga. The woman asks with amusement if I really want to marry a Masai? ‘Yes,’ I say. ‘Why not?’ She disappears and comes back with two colleagues who also take a look at me and then at Lketinga, and all three of them laugh. I stand there proudly and refuse to let their disgusting attitude annoy me. Eventually the rubber stamp comes down on a page of my passport, and I have my visa. I say thank you and leave the building.