Africa, My Passion

by Corinne Hofmann

  We are now getting closer to the area I still call ‘mine’. As we pass the Africana Sea Lodge, I tell Klaus, ‘Slow down, please. I want to remember it all the way it used to be. I have a gut feeling that we can’t be too far from Kamau village, which was my last home here before returning to Switzerland. Priscilla was my neighbour here.’

  There’s excitement in my voice and Klaus turns to me expectantly and says, ‘So where exactly is it then?’

  All I can do is shrug my shoulders and say, ‘Somewhere around here, there’s a track that leads into the bush, but I can’t be sure which because there used to be just one and now there are lots. But we just have to pick one at random and then ask people.’

  Klaus isn’t exactly impressed by this but he agrees to give it a go. Our hire car isn’t exactly designed for tracks like this either. But there’s no way I’m going to be deflected from following my intuition.

  Just like in the old days, there are baboons all over the place, but now there are lots of new buildings in between the old-style shacks. In fact, it has all changed so much that my memory is little help. We stop by the side of the street and I ask some men standing there, ‘Do you know where is Kamau village?’ But they just repeat ‘Kamau village’ to one another and shake their heads. We stop and ask a hotel concierge but get no more joy. That leaves us no option but to try something different.

  The first track we take leads us to a luxurious villa hurriedly thrown up behind a barbed wire fence. A few locals watch suspiciously as Klaus tries to do a U-turn. But I’m not going to give up so easily. I’m determined to find my old friend Priscilla, if she’s still here to be found. We drive back to the asphalt road, go on a few hundred metres and then take the next turning into the bush. We spot a couple standing outside a little shop and stop while I ask them if they know Kamau village. They answer with silence and shaking heads. But somehow or other I have the feeling this is the right way. Then a woman in a coloured headdress standing behind two newly slaughtered goats hanging from hooks calls out to me, ‘Go ahead and later left side,’ waving a huge knife in the air to indicate the direction she means.

  I give Klaus a big smile and ask him to drive on. He looks at me sceptically but I no longer have any doubt. We bump along over ruts and clumps of grass and just as we reach a crossroads, beyond which the bush is thicker than ever, we meet a woman coming towards us with a water canister on her head. I ask her if she knows Kamau village and she tells us to keep going until we reach a stone wall, and the entrance is just past it. But that only makes me doubt we’re on the right track as there certainly didn’t used to be a stone wall. When we reach it Klaus drives along its length slowly, and then all of a sudden we find ourselves in the middle of Kamau village.

  The settlement is bigger than it used to be. My eyes are drawn to a big tree in the middle with lots of lads sitting chatting around it, who immediately start staring at us. But just behind them I spot my former home. I’m overcome by emotion and call out, ‘Klaus, look, Napirai and I used to live on the other side of that tin door. She used to climb up this tree. I could cry with joy.’

  I leap out of the car and can hear Klaus behind me calling out, ‘Be careful, Corinne.’ But I pay no heed. It feels as if I’ve come home, for ‘home’ was what this little hut used to be for seven months, my last refuge before I fled Kenya. I left behind everything but the clothes on my back on the other side of this tin door: all my photos, all my personal stuff, even my white wedding dress.

  I walk up to the doubtful-looking lads around the tree and ask them if they know a Masai woman called Priscilla who sells kangas on the beach. I can hardly believe their answer: ‘Yes, we know her!’ How can I possibly have found her so easily? One of the lads jumps up and runs ahead of me, but stops at a door and says, ‘This house belongs to the lady you are looking for.’ The door is open. Klaus has parked the car and is busy trying to keep the assembled horde of kids away from it, as well as stopping them from tugging on his trouser legs. He’s really not happy at all.

  I stand by the door and shout aloud, ‘Hello!’ Immediately two girls appear, each holding a child by the hand. I ask them if they know Priscilla and they nod, but they speak little English. They gesture to me to come in and sit down on one of the sofas. I sit down, realising that they have sent word to Priscilla but that it might take some time. Klaus is waiting outside with the car, so I take in the room in a bit more detail. Clearly things have got better for my old friend. Her house has at least two or three rooms, though clearly several people live here. There’s a mobile phone on the table in front of the sofa and there’s even a little fridge in the corner. That means they must have electricity now. There are a few paintings, calendars and some Masai art hanging on the walls.

  I sit there waiting, trying to talk to the girls while the whole time tiny children try to climb into my lap. But after waiting some time with no sign of Priscilla, and spending most of it looking round the room, it dawns on me that this just doesn’t look like her sort of place. I ask them if they have a photo of her. One of the girls disappears and comes back with a photo, but one glance at it makes me realise that this is clearly a different Priscilla. The woman in the photo is obviously a Masai, but a lot younger and slimmer than the Masai woman I’m looking for. Disappointed, I hand the photo back to them and explain there’s been a misunderstanding.

  We’re just about to set off when the little girl runs out with the mobile, talking into it all the while. All I can make out is that she’s telling somebody there’s two white people here looking for a Priscilla. I give her my name and she passes it on. There follows a bit of an interchange, then suddenly she hands me the phone. ‘Hello?’ I say, and immediately from the other end comes a torrent of laughter and talk. ‘Corinne, it’s me. Eddy. I can’t believe you’re in my house. Stay where you are, Corinne, I’ll be there shortly. I’m down on the beach but I’ll be back as soon as I can, my friend!’

  I’m totally amazed and promise to wait. By some strange miracle my search for Priscilla has led me to Eddy!

  Eddy was a friend of Lketinga’s when I first met him. He was the one who helped me find my way around all the jails along the coast after Lketinga was locked up for being involved in a fight. Later on he was also a real help to me in all sorts of difficult situations. And now, all of a sudden, just when I least expected it, I’m about to see him again.

  Before long a dented white car drives up and Eddy leaps out. He charges over to me with such force that he nearly knocks me over, throws his arms around me and starts babbling away. There are tears in the corners of his eyes as he thanks God for bringing us together again. I recognise him straight away, even if he has aged. He still wears Masai jewellery round his neck and keeps his dyed red hair under a headscarf. He hasn’t lost his mischievous look as he invites me into his house and offers me a cool cola. That’s luxury out here! Then he tells me just how weird the coincidence is that I’ve ended up in his house. He moved here from Ukunda a couple of years ago with a Samburu woman and her three children. It just so happens that her name is also Priscilla. We both fall about laughing.

  He wants to know everything, particularly about Napirai, whom he last saw when she was a tiny child. I tell him we’ve just been to see Lketinga, which makes him really happy. We chat about the old days, with him beaming at me. He asks after my brother and sister, both of whom he remembers, my sister in particular. He introduces me to his three daughters and proudly shows me their school reports. His only problem is paying the school fees.

  After a while I ask him about ‘my’ Priscilla and he says, ‘Yes, she’s still working on the beach, selling her stuff.’

  I can hardly wait to see her when he tells me this. We all set off in the car down to the beach, Eddy saying all the time how happy he is to see me again. I have to admit I’m pretty emotional too. The coast is so vast that it is almost impossible that I should have found the two people who meant so much to me twenty years ago.

  We turn in next to the Ro
binson Hotel and park the car in a dead-end street next to the beach, where there are lots of stalls. Eddy dashes off towards the sea, only to stop by one of the stalls where he starts chatting away and waving his hands. Within moments a plump woman in a white headdress and flowery blouse appears: unmistakably ‘my’ Priscilla!

  She stands there staring at me, wide-eyed, throw her hands to her face and says, ‘It’s you, Corinne! I don’t believe it! My sister!’

  I rush up to her in delight and hug her. She seems overwhelmed by the surprise and has tears in her eyes. All this time there’s an Italian woman waiting impatiently at her stall trying to pay. Priscilla says, ‘Corinne, one minute while I deal with this customer, then I’m yours!’ All the time she is packing up the goods for her customer, she is shaking her head in disbelief, repeating over and over, ‘Thank you, God, for bringing my sister back to me.’ Meanwhile. I’m fighting back the tears too and saying a little prayer of my own.

  I can see that she is now running a really first-class souvenir stall. Eddy tells me she has another one too, selling kangas right on the beachfront. Meanwhile Priscilla deals with her remaining customers and comes over and hugs me. She tells me she has asked lots of tourists if they know me and even given them letters to send to me. But obviously none of them got to me. I tell her I’ve moved house frequently and finding the right address would not have been easy.

  She introduces me to her two sons, who both also run stalls. She has worked hard and even been able to build a small house for herself in the Masai country, and regularly goes back there to see her grandchildren. She only came back to Mombasa a week ago as the tourist trade is just picking up again. I can’t believe how lucky I’ve been.

  Priscilla can hardly believe that I’ve popped up from nowhere like this. Eddy tells her how we bumped into one another. The story amuses her and she gives a broad smile, revealing the same old gap in her front teeth. She asks one of her sons to fetch us a cold drink, then asks me about Napirai. I tell her about our visit to Barsaloi and she can hardly believe it. I show her photos of the trip on my camera’s screen. Obviously, she’s disappointed that Napirai didn’t come down here to the coast with me. But she understands the demands of education: she has brought up four children of her own.

  As we have lunch together I tell her that I came back to Diani Beach six years previously and tried to find her. But it took my determination – and a lot of luck – to pull it off this time so that we can sit here together.

  We share a few memories of the old days and she tells me how terribly sad she was when I left. She couldn’t understand why I hadn’t said anything to her, until she got the letter I sent her from Switzerland. For a moment I feel a lump in my throat.

  Eddy tells us lots of tourists ask him if he’s the Eddy in my book and whether he knows me. Being able to say ‘yes’ has done him no harm at all in helping to sell his Masai stuff. Priscilla can tell a similar story: most people now call her Mama Masai and hardly ever use her real name. But how lucky were we to end up by accident in Eddy’s house; otherwise we would certainly never have found her!

  We go back down to the beach, because she still has to do business. There are new tourists arriving today, Priscilla says. I take a look at what she has to offer on her stall and can’t help casting my mind back to the things we had for sale in our shop. A few tourists stop to look and I find myself chatting to them, just to help her sell a few more things. Most of them are astounded to find that they’ve just landed and already bumped into the ‘White Masai’. A lot of them had been talking about me on the plane, they say! How about that!

  The next day, Sunday, we’re still delighted that we’ve found one another again, and in the meantime, word has got around that I’m in town. Lots of Samburu warriors keep coming up from the beach, talking to me and asking about Napirai. It would seem a lot of them have heard of my girl.

  Priscilla is wearing her Sunday best and has calmed down a bit. She tells me, ‘I could hardly sleep all night. I kept thanking God that he brought you back here. I kept thinking of the great adventure we had together. I could see it all as if it were yesterday, and yet in reality it was twenty years ago!’

  We sit there together on a tree stump on the idyllic beach, eating wonderful tropical fruit and listening to the sound of the sea, just happy to enjoy the magical moment.

  Later that afternoon Eddy takes his leave: he has to perform in a Masai dance at one of the hotels and needs to sort out things for the other participants. I promise to send him photos and find some sponsors for his gifted children’s school fees. We hug and say goodbye.

  When it comes time to say goodbye to Priscilla too, she gets rather melancholy and says, ‘It would have been so nice if you could have stayed a bit longer, sister.’ She takes a little hand-painted picture of an African round hut with a couple standing in front of it and says, ‘Give this to Napirai, so maybe she might remember the time she spent with me. Tell her, that that’s the way her mummy and I used to live. Tell her that if she ever comes to Mombasa, I’ll always be here.’

  I have to choke back a sob. We hug one another and with our final handshake I pass her some money to tide her over for a few weeks.

  I say farewell to my newly rediscovered friend there on Diani Beach, where she stands quietly and modestly as I listen to the sea until finally it is time for me to climb into the car and leave my tempestuous past behind me.

  After my return to Switzerland I get the following letter from Priscilla:

  How are you, sister? I hope you had a good journey home. I can still hardly believe you were here. I’m so happy we managed to meet up again and believe God placed only a few hills between us. I wish you could have stayed here for a year. Please come back soon. I am intending to buy something to keep with the money you gave me, something that will always remind me of you every time I look at it. God bless you so much. May God protect you, my dear friend.

  AFTERWORD

  Even though my initial plan was to shake off the ‘White Masai’ tag, the visit Napirai and I paid to Barsaloi made clear to me that I will never lose my links to my African family. On the contrary, they have become more important to me than ever. The warm reception and hospitality they showed us proved to me that they still consider us part of them and are endlessly grateful for all our support. The fact that Lketinga and I have a daughter together links us for life.

  But it is not just the family and cultural links that tie me to Africa. The past two years have proved to me that I love this continent like my own child. If I stand on my lawn, with the grass between my toes, and let my thoughts wander where they will, it is always to my experiences in Africa that they return. That is what makes my pulse race, that is what inspires my dreams. The energy, the happiness, the sheer love of life, combined with their simple lifestyle, will always work their magic on me. Sometimes it gives me strength, but sometimes it also makes me feel small and humble.

  I have come to realise how well we live back in Europe. Most people have a roof over their heads, running water, toilets, electricity, televisions, fridges, a bed and heating when they need it. We have everything we need to get us through life.

  But in the eyes of Africans what makes us poor is the loneliness that comes with our ‘luxury’. We have left our family and community life behind us in favour of unbridled egoism. Loneliness thrives in our society and many people only communicate via the Internet. Our apartments keep getting bigger but the number of family members living in them shrinks. It gets easier to avoid other people, to be trapped within our own four walls.

  Obviously, wealthy people in Africa also enjoy modern luxury, but they remain a tiny minority.

  What a lot of Africans don’t understand when they look at ‘white’ society is the stress we live with, the hard, serious look on our faces all the time. In their eyes, we have everything to live an easy, relaxed life. We just don’t know it.

  Much of what attracts me to Africa, of course, is the intangible, the immovable, the unpredic
table, the chaos, the animals, the sheer wildness that is Africa’s alone.

  And then what would Africa be without the warm hearts, love of life and fun demonstrated by its inhabitants. Whether in east Africa or southwest Africa, it is this mixture of faith in God, love of live and laid-back attitude to life, despite the tough conditions they live under, that will forever fascinate me. They have a life that money cannot buy. We can only try to absorb a little of it, to keep it in our hearts.

  For me, Africa is a passion – a lifelong love story.

  Dear readers

  Thank you for your interest in my new book. Given that I contribute from my income, by buying this book you have already contributed a little to my ‘White Masai’ Kenya foundation.

  If you should be inspired to give further support to any of the projects, you can do so directly. For my part I guarantee that the money will be used well and that you will be told what it is used for.

  Perhaps you too could help us build the school in Barsaloi.

  Many thanks, and lots of love,

  Corinne and Napirai.

  THE ‘WHITE MASAI’ KENYA FOUNDATION

  We are a charitable foundation based in Switzerland. Our main purpose is to support the health and education projects described in this book and also to provide self-help aid by cooperating with local institutions.