Walking Home (19 page)

“Come on, come on,” I begged the flame.

It listened to my desperate plea. The cloth caught first and the foam quickly followed. Soon the flames licked against the wood. I just hoped the pieces I’d placed weren’t too big to be ignited by the kindling. I looked around the little floor. It was the only place where dry existed in my world. There, against the wall,
were a few plastic bags and a scrap of paper. I gathered them up. They were damp but not wet. They would smoke, but they would also burn. I went back and tossed them on the fire. The flame got brighter and bigger, and the wood started to bubble as it got hotter. The flames licked around the wood until it charred and then began to be consumed. The fire had caught, and now it would last until the fuel was all used.

“Do you want your supper hot or cold?” I asked Jata.

“I am not hungry.” Her arms were wrapped around her legs and her face was buried. That was not a good sign.

“Since you are not hungry, it is my choice and I say it will be warm.” I hoped that the warmth of the food in her stomach would spread through her body and chase away her tiredness and despair.

I opened up our bundle and removed the pot. Throughout the day we had been nibbling its contents, but it was still half full. I was tired of porridge but more tired of being hungry. Besides, I couldn’t cook anything else in the pot until the porridge was finished, and worse than that, it would spoil before long. It needed to be finished.

I placed the pot beside the fire, where it could start to heat without burning. I’d just have to stir it about and maybe add a little water to make it moist. At least water wasn’t going to be a problem. I poured a cup
from the container into the pot and then went to the doorway. There was a stream of water coming off the roof and onto the ground. I reached out and cupped a handful of rain and drank down what didn’t escape through my fingers. It was cold and clean. Whatever sand and dirt had collected on the roof had already been washed away. I placed the water container outside and positioned it so the stream of rain danced around the opening. Soon—within minutes—it would be full.

Jata was stirring the porridge when I turned back. “I didn’t want it to burn. It started to smell good.”

“That’s because it will taste good! You are so lucky to spend the entire day walking across the savannah with a Maasai and eating his food. Wait until you tell your friends. They will hardly believe you!”

“I do not know where my friends are,” she said. “I do not have any friends anymore.”

What had I said?

“You will make new friends when we arrive, and they will become your best friends, you mark my words. But for now, would you do me a favor?”

She nodded. There was sadness in her eyes.

“Could you tell me all about today? So many things happened that I don’t even believe it! I need to hear it from you to believe it was real!”

Her smile lit the small building even more than the fire.

W
e were awakened early by the cold and the sound of trucks rushing past on the road. We got up, said our thanks to the little building that had sheltered us and joined the trucks on the journey to Nairobi. The air was cool and the road was downhill. I was grateful for both, for I knew the sun would soon be blazing hot and the road could turn up at any time.

We walked on the right side of the road, facing the vehicles as they came toward us. Sometimes the path shifted away from the road, and sometimes it was so narrow that rather than hold Jata’s hand, I had her walk behind me. Deliberately I walked closer to the traffic to try to shield her—as if a vehicle hitting me would stop and go no farther. And there was one other constant for the trip this morning: the mud.

The heavy rain had gone, but it had left much behind. Dirt had turned into mud and large puddles blocked the way; water ran from the hills and into the ditches beside the road, turning them into small streams. In places that were lower, those streams and puddles came together to create ponds, and goats and cows were wading through them, eating. They seemed not to even notice their early morning bath as they continued to graze. Life had to go on for them as well.

“Wait!” Jata called out.

I turned. She was much farther behind than I would have liked. I had got so caught up in my head that I hadn’t been exercising enough care. As she tried to catch up, she slipped and slid toward me. Her shoes wore a thick sole of mud that made walking difficult.

“Here, do this.” I rubbed the bottom of my shoe against the edge of the tarmac until a layer of mud peeled away. I did the same with the second shoe as she copied me.

“I do not like the lorries,” she said. “Those trucks are so big and loud and scary.”

“Their numbers will increase as the day fully dawns.”

“Do you think it will rain more?” she asked.

I shook my head. “There is not enough water left in the skies because it all fell last night. Besides, if somehow it does start again then we will walk between the drops.”

“At least we know how far we have to go,” she said.

“We do?”

She pointed beyond me. There was a large green sign in the distance, close enough that it could be read:
NAIROBI
45
KM
.

“We are almost there,” she said.

“If we walk strong today and tomorrow we will be on the other side of the city by the second night.” My hope was not to have to sleep within the city itself. I remembered what the sergeant had said—that I should treat the city as a dangerous animal, best approached in the light of day, when it could be watched.

“Are you ready to continue?” I asked.

“I am not ready, but we will continue.”

“First you need to take a drink. It is better that you carry some of this water in your stomach than I continue to dangle all of it from my arm.”

“There is so much water all around. Do you need to carry so much?”

“I’d rather carry water that we don’t need than not have water that we do need. I will carry it.”

I couldn’t help admiring the land we were passing. The crops were thick and lush and green. It looked as if the rain was a blessing to them on an ongoing basis. I thought about how my father would have envied these fields. If his family had possessed such land here, they would never have moved to Eldoret and then
none of—I stopped myself. No point in thinking that through. As constant as the movement of our feet was the need for me to put those thoughts away. They would weigh me down even more than the load on my back and the thick mud under my feet.

More and more traffic—both driving on the road and walking beside it—was flowing by. We exchanged greetings with people. At first I used Swahili, but the greetings repeatedly came back to me in Kikuyu. The people were Kikuyu. That made me feel much safer. The homes here were many, and none seemed to have suffered damage. There were so many Kikuyu here that no one had been forced from their dwellings.

I slowed and came to a stop. Ahead of us the road was pressed against the cliff on one side and a drop on the other. There was barely space for a person to pass, and certainly not enough to pass with confidence of not being hit. Yet a steady stream of people had come toward us. They had to be coming from somewhere. I waited for somebody else to come into view.

Jata came up behind me. “Why are we stopping?”

“I’m not sure of the way.”

“Can’t you see the string?”

“Of course I can. It leads along the road. It is just that the way is only wide enough to allow two trucks and one strand of string. We have to find a way around this section of the road.”

“And walk without the string?” She sounded worried.

“Yesterday, with Wilson, we walked without the string. When we went back to the road, it was waiting for us.”

“Ah, yes, yes. So if we leave for a little bit, we can find it again,” she said.

“Most certainly. I’m waiting for a guide to appear.”

A woman was coming up behind us. She was about the age of our mother, and she was bent under the weight she carried on her back.

“Excuse me,” I said. “We are looking for a way to Nairobi.”

She stopped and straightened to look at us. “A
matatu
will come by soon.” I was relieved to hear her speak in Kikuyu.

“We do not have the fare for a
matatu.
We are walking.”

“All the way to Nairobi?” She sounded surprised.

“Yes, but we think better of following this road. Is there another way?”

“There is always another way.” She hefted her bundle again. “I will lead you. This is a shorter way by foot. Come.”

We waited for a big truck to pass and then crossed the road.

“Why are you going to Nairobi?” the woman asked.

“We are going farther—to Kikima,” my sister said.

“That place is not known to me. Are you sure you are saying it correctly?”

I hadn’t even thought of that. I was positive that was how to pronounce it. I thought back to the way my mother said it and realized I had to strain to hear her voice. It saddened me to think it could fade that quickly, but I could still hear it saying the name.

“It is very small and very far,” I said in explanation.

“And you are going by yourselves? Have you no one with you?”

“There is no one to be with us. We are going to find our family.”

“And how did you lose them to begin with?”

“In the violence,” I said.

“Where are you from?”

“Eldoret. We lost our home and we lost our parents.”

“Poor babies. Such evil … such evil has been done to you.” She stopped. “This is my home. I go no farther. You need to continue on this road until you come to a large crossroads, not small. You will cross over many that are small, as you will go many kilometers.”

“And at the big crossroads?” I asked.

“You will turn right.”

“And that will lead us back to the tarmac?”

“Oh no! There are many, many twists and turns over many, many roads and paths.”

“But how will we find our way back?” I gasped.

“At each step, there will be people close by. Ask them and they will direct you. You are Kikuyu and you will be helped by your people. There is no need to fear. It is even safer here since the political problems.”

“How can that be?” I asked. “How can it be safer than before?”

“People are pulling together, for one thing, and those who were the cause of trouble—the small-scale thugs—have all left.”

“Left to go where?”

“To wherever they could be involved in the most trouble. Like moths to a flame, they are attracted to violence. Some of them will get burned. Now, travel safely.” She turned up a path to a house, leaving us alone, but not too alone. We would meet others along the route, and those people would be our guides, one after the other. If we were helped, I had to expect it would be by other Kikuyu.

At each crossroads, I stopped and asked questions about our route. Sometimes we were ignored, but most gave us answers. If I was not confident in the answer or the person who gave it, I waited and asked another passerby to confirm. We were walking too far to travel even a step in the wrong direction.

Two little black sheep nuzzled against their mother at the side of the road. She was trying to graze and they
were trying to nurse. They were frolicking and jumping and bumping into each other. It made me smile.

“Look at those babies,” Jata said.

“Those two little ones are like me and you,” I joked.