Reunion in Barsaloi (10 page)

I
n the meantime James has washed his hands, and now he and I crawl into Mama’s
manyatta
and sit down on the cowhide. He’s going to translate so it’s best if he sits next to me. Klaus follows and sits himself down on the little stool next to the hearth. Lketinga sits down near the entrance, whereas Albert contents himself with saying hello but staying outside in the shade. He can hear everything just as well from out there; a
manyatta
’s walls may protect against prying eyes but they are far from soundproof.

As ever Mama is cradling James’s baby as she welcomes us. Today she’s wearing one of the new skirts. James starts by telling her I’ve a few questions for her. She looks at me and nods her agreement. The first thing I want to know is what she felt when James told her I was planning to visit. ‘
Ke supati pi
– wonderful,’ she says, ‘I was very pleased, but I couldn’t believe it anymore than anyone else could. Nobody here in the village thought you’d come back after such a long time. But next time bring Napirai, my little Napirai.’

I have to laugh at this because by now my daughter is already taller than I am. But for Mama she remains a little girl, like she was the last time she saw her. Then she adds that it’s been good for everyone to see me again after such a long time. Lketinga nods in agreement and says: ‘Really, this is very good! But nobody believed it. Even when the first car arrived, all the women said: ‘There’s something not right here, Mama Napirai’s not coming after all, we knew it.’ Then James repeats what some of them said: ‘Only a Queen is moving in this way!’ and all of us, including Mama, break into laughter.

Klaus asks what she thought way back the first time I came to Barsaloi and she saw me here. Mama’s face grows serious as she thinks for a moment and then says: ‘I was just afraid.’ I ask her what she was afraid of, and James does his best to translate: ‘Because a white woman was something I’d never come across before. I wondered how I was supposed to talk to her if she didn’t understand me. She was bound to be used to a very different way of life and yet here she was coming to live with us in a smoky hut. We had almost nothing to eat and survived mainly by drinking milk mixed with blood. There were so many thoughts filling my head that I was simply terrified. I was also thinking what use is this white woman going to be to me? All my sons’ wives are like children to me. Their problems are my problems and vice versa. But in your case I was worried there would be even more problems. You wouldn’t be able to fetch firewood, water or food for me because you were a white woman. Who was going to wash my clothes and do chores for me – not this
mzungu
! It would all be the other way round: we’d have to do everything for you. At first I could see nothing but problems. On the other hand, Lketinga had told me you’d come all the way from Mombasa to see him. So I had to give you a chance, and you stayed. And you worked hard. You looked after me and fetched water and firewood better than any of the others before you. You brought me food whenever you could and everything worked well, and so I came to love you.’

I’m listening to this with tears running down my cheeks. I had no idea how much worry I’d caused her back then. She continues, telling us that the village people had all come to her hut wanting to know what sort of
mzungu
I was. Why did she let me sleep in her hut when she didn’t know me? How we could have any sort of conversation when we couldn’t speak to each other? ‘In time I replied to all of them: ‘I get on with her well and she does her work. She doesn’t cause any problems and doesn’t start any arguments.’ After a few months I couldn’t see any difference between you and the other children, our own ones. You became my child. From that moment on I became responsible for you and your problems became my problems.’

Through all of this I’m having to wipe away tears and am deeply embarrassed at the same time because I know I shouldn’t cry. Mama looks at James and asks him what’s the matter with me. Quickly I ask him to explain to her that this is a
mzungu
way of expressing strong emotions and
feelings and she shouldn’t worry or think there’s anything wrong. James translates and suddenly she’s smiling again.

Lketinga finishes Mama’s account for her: ‘Yes, it was very difficult at the start. The other warriors came to me too and asked why I’d brought a white woman back. I was the first warrior to bring a
mzungu
woman to Barsaloi and marry her. Everybody came out and looked at us suspiciously, and some of them said bad things about white people. Even the little local government boss-man came and asked why I hadn’t requested his permission to marry you. I am a man and he expects me to ask another man who I’m allowed to marry. Crazy!’ And we all break into laughter again.

Now it’s my turn, and I tell them that when we were living in a village in Switzerland shortly after we arrived all the other children ran away from Napirai because she was the first mixed race child in the village and they weren’t used to seeing a baby with a dark-coloured skin. But now there are lots of dark-skinned people even in the smallest villages and over time people have got used to it. Mama nods and says, ‘There we are then, and it’s just like here!’

James tells us that over the past few years there have been more white women turning up in the area around Maralal and living with Samburus, even though they haven’t gone as far as living in a
manyatta
like this one. Lketinga gets a laugh again by saying in his rough voice: ‘But these are mostly old ladies and not as good as you. I wouldn’t have married one of them.’ James has to agree and says: ‘It’s true, Corinne went everywhere with you. She went with my brother to visit relatives who live in places with no water or where the cattle live inside the corral, like in Sitedi, and she had no problems.’ Well, I think to myself, it’s not exactly true that I had
no
problems.

Mama is still cradling the little baby and says: ‘I was so happy that you gave me a grandchild, and I was proud that you trusted me with Napirai when you had to go away for a bit. That was the greatest proof of your love. After that I had no problem accepting you and couldn’t see any difference between black and white. We were all the same.’

Suddenly Mama’s face stiffens and becomes expressionless and I realize that what she’s doing is concealing her emotions. Then she quickly brushes her free hand across her eyes. I had always felt there was a deep bond between us, but it’s only now, fourteen years later, that I have the proof.

For a few seconds we all go silent, the only sound the buzzing of flies around our head, and outside the cackling of hens and bleating of a few goats. Then we hear Albert talking to the children outside the hut; it seems he’s drawing something for them in the dirt.

James turns the conversation back to the little boss-man, the ‘Mini-Chief’ who’s a sort of village policeman: ‘All he wanted from you was almost certainly money. People here think all
mzungus
have loads of money, live in big houses, have cars, lots to eat all the time and nothing to worry about. They think they all live like presidents. I keep trying to explain to them that white people have worries too but just don’t tell everyone else about them. It’s a Samburu tradition to spend a couple of hours talking to everybody you meet. The older person always begins by saying where he comes from, who he is, how his family and his animals are, who’s sick, what’s wrong with them and what’s been going on in the corral or village where he lives. And then he’ll finish up by saying where he’s going and why. The one who’s doing the talking goes into every detail and it can easily last an hour. Then it’s the turn of the other one and it all starts over again.’

James acts out one of these meetings with an imaginary dialogue and has us all in tears of laughter with an act worthy of a cabaret. ‘It’s perfectly normal here,’ he goes on, when we’ve all recovered from laughing, ‘because sometimes people walk for hours on end and see nobody. So they’re happy when they run into someone to talk to, even if it’s someone they don’t know. When they get to their destination, they tell people there who they met on the way and what he had to say. And so the conversations get longer and longer but in a few hours news can spread like wildfire over great distances. And then they see white people who chat to one another for only a couple of seconds before going on and think these people obviously have no problems as they’ve got nothing to talk about. The thing is the whites just don’t talk about all their problems.’

It just goes to show how differently people see things. Our society is losing the art of talking to one another because there is increasingly little direct communication between us. It’s something that’s harming our society but these people here, on the contrary, see our inability to talk to one another as proof we don’t have any problems.

But James is talking again: ‘I almost live like a
mzungu
now. I work very hard and have so much to do that I only ever travel by motorbike. When
I come across people on the road, they stop me. At first I used to think it was something important and stopped the bike. But usually they only want to know where I’m coming from and where I’m going. Or they want to look at the bike and have me tell them all about it. But I don’t have the time. I just answer their questions with ‘yes’ or ‘no’. Sometimes I don’t even mention that someone at home might be sick because it would take too long. But then if they find out I haven’t mentioned something like that I get it thrown back at me next time I see them. People just don’t understand that I have a timetable to stick to because I have obligations. It doesn’t matter to them if they stand around for an hour or not’.

From the way he talks it’s obvious that he’s actually proud of being one of the first out here in the bush to lead a new, modern sort of life. But I regret the way he’s talking because it sounds like the beginning of the end of the natural way of communicating with one another. Eventually many people will end up lonely as is already the case in Europe. Klaus suggests that with James rushing all over the place on his motorbike he must miss out on the little things of life. James replies that times are changing fast. Lketinga doesn’t agree with him though: ‘I don’t like it. Nowadays the
moran
[warriors] don’t wear their hair long the way they used to. The girls don’t wear as much jewellery because the schoolboys don’t give them any. Schoolgirls like my daughter Shankayon have hardly any jewellery at all now because it’s banned in school. They don’t even want to rub red ochre into their skins. Even those who don’t go to school prefer to use face cream from Nairobi. None of the girls wear skirts of animal skin decorated with beads the way you remember my sister did. They only put these things on for ceremonial occasions.’ James adds: ‘And even that’ll be gone in five to ten years. Already you hardly see the traditional neck decorations made from giraffe hair or ivory earrings on warriors.’

I find all of this really depressing, although we’ve been partly responsible in bringing modern things here. Only now do I realize that I haven’t seen a single young girl or warrior adorned with the full glory of jewellery and paint that they used to wear fourteen years ago. And yet it was precisely the joyful intense colours of their jewellery and their kangas that expressed the vitality and intensity with which these people lived. If, over time, the beautiful red and the deep blues and yellows of the cloths and blankets should fade and give way to the drab uniformity of European clothing, then the optimism and sheer joy of these people would also ebb
away. More than a few of them already consume alcohol in considerable quantities. A lot of the young people now have a basic schooling but they don’t have the money to go on and learn a trade or go into further education. They end up living in their own society but with western attitudes and ideas and as a result they give up on their own traditional way of life. It seems to me that they’re losing their roots.

The longer we talk, the more relaxed everybody gets, and eventually I pluck up the courage to ask Lketinga how he felt when he realized I wasn’t coming back. He looks at me gravely and says: ‘At first I simply didn’t believe it because in the past you had always come back. I soon started having problems with the shop because trade fell off and so I got into difficulties over money. Everybody tried to cheat me. When the car caught fire, I had no money to repair it. So I sold the big car and bought a smaller one. I used it as a taxi until I had an accident and was put in jail. I ended up in a whole lot of problems and I’d really rather not think about it.’

James continued for him: ‘When I heard how things were – three years after you had gone back to Switzerland – I went back down to Mombasa to find him. Lketinga was in a bad way when I found him. I asked him to come home with me, which was what he wanted to do anyway. We agreed to meet up the next morning to get the bus to Maralal. But he didn’t turn up, so I went back on my own as I had to be back at school the next day. But a day later, when I was still waiting in Maralal for a lift to Barsaloi, Lketinga suddenly appeared on his own, and so we came back here together. Obviously he had nowhere to live and nothing else to his name except for a lot of animals. During the years when he hadn’t been here his herd of goats and cattle had grown substantially. Our older brother had looked after them for him. It’s the custom here that no one would sell or slaughter someone else’s animals.

‘So, despite everything, Lketinga was rich when he came home. We decided that the best thing would be for him to find another wife who’d build a house for him and have children. So one month later he married his second wife, Mama Shankayon. After her first child, however, she had a lot of problems: all their other pregnancies miscarried. Now she’s gone home to her parents and we don’t know when she’ll be back.’

Lketinga just nods absently while Mama listens in silence. I feel quite keenly that my ex-husband neither can nor will talk about his past
anymore. To change the subject he starts talking about the book and the film and gets James to tell us about the way the success of my book went down in Barsaloi: