The next day we take a taxi to the bus station. Lketinga is worried that we’re leaving Jomo behind, but after waiting two days we have every right to leave, not least because Lketinga’s festival is getting closer.
The journey to Isiolo takes forever. Lketinga has to support me to stop me falling out of my seat when we turn corners. When we get there Lketinga suggests we spend the night, but I want to get home. At least as far as Maralal where I might see Jutta or Sophia. I drag myself to the Mission and crawl into the car while Lketinga says goodbye to the missionaries for us. He wants to drive but I can’t let him; this is a small town with traffic police everywhere.
I set off but can hardly manage to press the clutch down. The first few miles are metalled road, but after that it’s a dirt track. We stop en route and pick up three Samburus who want to get to Wamba. I concentrate on driving and shut out everything else. I can see the potholes from miles away. I’m paying no attention to what’s going on in the car until someone lights a cigarette and I ask them to put it out or I’ll throw up. I can feel my stomach rebelling. But to stop now and start vomiting would rob me of what strength I have. The sweat is pouring off me, and I have to keep wiping my forehead with the back of my hand to stop it getting into my eyes; I just keep straight ahead and daren’t lift them from the road for a second.
It starts to get dark, and lights are coming on; we’ve got to Maralal. I can hardly believe it – I’d been driving with no sense of time. I park straight away in front of our boarding house, turn off the motor and turn to Lketinga. Then I notice how light my body feels and suddenly everything goes dark.
In Hospital
I open my eyes and think I’m awakening from a nightmare. But a glance around me shows that the crying and moaning are real. I’m in hospital, in a huge room with beds packed together. On my left is an old, emaciated Samburu woman and on my right a pink child’s cot with a railing. Something inside it keeps hitting the woodwork and crying out. Everywhere I look there’s nothing but misery. What am I doing in hospital? I don’t know how I got here. Where is Lketinga? I start to panic. How long have I been here? Outside the sun is shining. My bed is made of iron with a thin mattress and a dirty grey sheet.
Two young doctors in white coats pass by. ‘Hello!’ I wave to them, but my voice isn’t loud enough to compete with the groaning, and I can’t sit up. My head is too heavy. Tears gather in my eyes. What’s going on? Where’s Lketinga?
The Samburu woman says something to me, but I don’t understand, and then at last I see Lketinga coming towards me. The sight of him calms me down and almost makes me happy. ‘Hello, Corinne, how you feel now?’ I try to smile and say ‘not bad’. He tells me that as soon as we arrived I fell unconscious. Our landlady called the ambulance immediately, and I’ve been here since yesterday evening. He was by my side all night, but I didn’t come to. I can hardly believe that I didn’t know what was going on. The doctor had given me a sedative.
After a while the two medics come over to the bed. I have acute malaria, but there’s not much they can do because they don’t have the drugs. All they can do is give me pills. I should eat and sleep as much as possible, but just the word ‘eat’ makes me feel ill, and I can hardly imagine sleeping amidst all this crying and groaning. Lketinga sits on the edge of the bed and looks at me helplessly.
Suddenly I detect the strong smell of cabbage, and my stomach turns over. I need a container of some sort. In despair I grab the water jug and throw up into it. Lketinga holds the jug and supports me; I could hardly manage on my own. Immediately a dark nurse appears, grabs the jug and replaces it with a bucket. ‘Why you make this? This is for drinking water,’ she snaps at me. I feel miserable. The smell is coming from the food trolley. There are tin bowls on it filled with a mound of rice and cabbage; one is delivered to each bed.
Totally exhausted from the effort of vomiting, I lie on the bed and hold my arm in front of my nose. There’s no way I can eat. It’s an hour since I swallowed the first tablets, and my whole body is starting to itch. I start scratching like mad all over. Lketinga notices spots and pimples on my face. I lift up my skirt, and we find my legs are also covered with little lumps. He calls the doctor. It seems I have an allergic reaction to the medicine, but there’s nothing else he can give me because everything else has been used and they’ve been waiting for days for supplies from Nairobi.
In the evening Lketinga leaves: he wants to get something to eat and see if he can find someone from home to tell him when the big festival is due. I’m dead tired and just want to sleep. My whole body is bathed in sweat, and the thermometer says I have a temperature of 105.8. After drinking so much water I need the toilet, but how am I to get there? The toilet cubicles are some ninety feet from the ward entrance. How can I get that far? I slowly lower my feet to the floor and step into my plastic sandals. Then, holding on to the bed frame, I stand up, but my legs are trembling and I can hardly stand. I pull myself together. The last thing I want to do is collapse. Feeling my way from bed to bed, I get as far as the door. But the ninety feet seems an impossible distance, and I end up crawling the last few with nothing to hold on to for support. I grind my teeth together and with the last of my strength reach the toilet. But there’s nowhere to sit down: I have to squat. Holding on to the stone walls, I do the best I can.
Just how bad this malaria is comes home to me as I realize that, despite never having been really sick in my life, I am incredibly weak. There’s a heavily pregnant Masai woman outside the door, but when she notices that I can’t let go of it without falling backwards, she helps me silently back to the ward entrance. I’m so thankful that I cry tears of gratitude. With enormous effort I drag myself back into bed and sob. The sister comes to ask if I’m in pain, but I shake my head and feel even more miserable. At some stage I fall asleep.
I wake up in the middle of the night. The child in the cot is screaming appallingly and banging its head against the railing. Nobody comes, and it’s driving me mad. I’ve been here for four days now and am feeling really sorry for myself. Lketinga comes often, but he doesn’t look well either; he wants to go home but not without me because he’s afraid I’ll die. The nurses curse me because every time I eat something I throw up. My stomach aches terribly. One time Lketinga brings me a whole leg of kid, already roasted, and pleads with me to eat it and it’ll make me better. But I can’t, and he leaves disappointed.
On the fifth day Jutta comes. She’d heard there is a white woman in the hospital. She’s horrified when she sees me. She says I have to get out of here straight away and get into the missionary hospital in Wamba. But I don’t understand why I should move to another hospital; they’re all the same. And in any case I wouldn’t survive a four-and-a-half-hour trip in a car. ‘If you could see yourself, you’d understand that you have to get out of here. Five days and they haven’t given you anything? You’re worth less than a goat out there. Maybe they don’t want to help you,’ she says. ‘Jutta,’ I say, ‘please take me to the boarding house. I don’t want to die here, and on these roads I wouldn’t make it to Wamba. I can’t even sit up!’ Jutta talks to the doctors. They don’t want to let me leave and only prepare my discharge papers when I sign a form absolving them of all responsibility.
In the meantime Jutta fetches Lketinga to help bring me to the boarding house. They take me between them, and we make it slowly into the village. Everywhere people stand and stare at us. I’m ashamed to have to be dragged so helplessly through the village.
But I want to fight and survive. So I ask the pair of them to take me to the Somali restaurant, where I’ll try to eat a piece of liver. The restaurant is at least two hundred yards away, and my legs are folding under me. I keep telling myself: ‘Corinne, you can do it! You have to get there!’ Exhausted but proud, I sit down at the table. The Somali is horrified too when he sees me. We order the liver. My stomach rebels as soon as I see the plate, and I summon up all my strength and slowly begin eating. By the end of two hours I’ve nearly cleaned my
plate and convince myself I feel fantastic. The three of us go to the boarding house where Jutta leaves us. She’ll drop by again tomorrow or the day after. I spend the rest of the afternoon sitting in front of the boarding house in the sun. It’s wonderful to feel the warmth.
That evening I lie in bed, slowly eating a carrot and proud of my achievements. My stomach has calmed down, and I can keep it all down. ‘Corinne, onwards and upwards,’ I think to myself as I fall asleep.
Early next morning Lketinga finds out that his ceremony has already begun. He’s very worked up and wants to go home immediately, or rather to the site of the ceremony. But there’s no way I can go that far, and if he goes on foot it’ll take him more than a day.
He’s worried about his Mama, who’ll be waiting there in despair, not knowing what’s going on. I promise him we’ll go tomorrow, my darling. That way I have a whole day to build up at least enough strength to hold on to the steering wheel. When we get out of Maralal Lketinga can drive, but it’s too dangerous here with the police.
We go back to the Somali’s, and I order the same thing. Today I managed to get halfway there without assistance and find eating easier. I’m slowly beginning to feel life returning to my body. My stomach is flat, no longer concave. In the boarding house I take a look at myself in the mirror for the first time: my face has changed enormously. My eyes seem enormous, and my cheekbones protrude. Before we set off Lketinga buys a few pounds of chewing tobacco and sugar, and I get some fruit and rice. The first few miles exhaust me because I have to keep changing from first to second gear and need strength to work the clutch. Lketinga, sitting next to me, helps by using his arm to reinforce mine. Once again I’m driving as if in a dream, but after several hours we reach the ceremony site.
Rites Of Passage
Even totally exhausted, I’m overwhelmed by the site of the encampment. The women have built an entire village out of nothing: more than fifty manyattas. There’s life everywhere, smoke spiralling up from every hut. Lketinga goes to find Mama’s manyatta while I wait by the Land Rover. My legs are trembling, and my skinny arms ache. Before long a crowd of women, children and old people have gathered around me staring. I wish Lketinga would come back soon, and then here he comes with Mama. She frowns when he points to me and says, ‘Corinne, jambo…wewe malaria?’ I nod and suppress my welling tears.
We unload everything and leave the vehicle locked outside the encampment. We have to go past about fifteen manyattas before we reach Mama’s. The whole path is covered in cowpats. Everyone of course has brought all their animals with them, although at the moment they’re all out grazing and will only come home in the evening. We drink chai, and Mama has an animated conversation with Lketinga. I find out later that we’ve already missed two of the three days of the festival. My darling is disappointed and upset. I feel sorry. There will have to be a council of the elders in which the most important will decide if he is allowed to take part and what will happen next. Mama, who also belongs to this council, scuttles around trying to find the most important men.
The festivities only begin when it gets dark and the animals are back. Sitting in front of the manyatta, I watch all the comings and goings. Lketinga gets filled in by two other warriors who give him jewellery and decorate him artistically. There’s a huge feeling of anticipation in the encampment. I feel left out and forgotten. Nobody has spoken a word to me in hours. Soon the goats and cows will be home, and then it will be night. Mama comes back and talks over the situation with Lketinga. She seems a bit drunk. All the elders are drinking vast quantities of home-brewed beer.
Eventually I want to find out what’s going to happen. Lketinga tells me that he has to slaughter a big ox or five goats for the elders, and then they’ll allow him to take part in the ceremony. They will give their blessing in front of Mama’s manyatta this evening, and then he’ll be allowed to join the warriors’ dance. In that way everyone will know officially that this gross lateness, which would normally mean exclusion, has been forgiven. I’m relieved. But the problem is that right now he doesn’t have five goats. He has two at most, and one of them is pregnant and can’t be killed. I suggest he buys some from his relatives and bring out a big bundle of notes. He’s not sure because today every goat will cost double, but Mama has a serious talk with him and when the first bell rings to say the animals are coming back he takes the money and goes out.
Bit by bit our manyatta fills up with other women. Mama is cooking ugali, a sort of maize porridge, and everybody’s talking. The hut is barely illuminated by the fire. Every now and then one of the women tries to talk to me. A younger woman with a little child sits down next to me and first admires my arms, which are covered with Masai jewellery, and then plucks up the courage to run her fingers through my straight hair. Then there’s laughter again, and she points at her bald head, decorated only with a band of pearls. I shake my head; I can’t imagine myself bald.
Outside it’s already pitch black when I become aware of a grunting sound, the typical sound of the men when they are excited, either by danger or sex. Immediately it falls quiet in the hut. My warrior sticks his head in the hut but at the sight of so many women disappears again. I hear voices rising steadily, and then suddenly there’s a shout, then a group of people start up a sort of humming or cooing. I creep out curiously and am amazed to see how many warriors and young girls have assembled in front of our hut for the dance. The warriors are exquisitely painted and wear red loincloths. Their chests are bare and crisscrossed with pearl chains. The red war paint stretches from their throat to a point in the middle of their chest. There are at least three dozen warriors moving to the same rhythm. The girls, some of them very young, from nine up to about fifteen years old, are dancing in a row, facing the men, moving their heads in time to the same rhythm. The tempo increases but only very slowly, and it’s an hour before the first warriors start to jump into the air in the typical Masai leap.
My warrior looks wonderful. He leaps high, floating ever higher like a feather, his long hair flowing behind with every leap. The naked bodies glisten with sweat. It’s hard to see everything clearly in the starry night, but it’s all too easy to feel the eroticism built up in these hours of dancing. The faces are serious, the eyes staring straight ahead. From time to time a wild scream erupts, or some leader starts to sing and everyone joins in. It is magnificent, and for hours on end I forget my sickness and exhaustion.
The girls choose one warrior after another bobbing up and down in front of them with their rows of necklaces and naked breasts. Looking at them depresses me as I realize that, at twenty-seven, I’m relatively old here and maybe later on Lketinga will take one of these young girls as his second wife. Plagued by jealousy, I feel out of place and excluded.
The whole group merges into a sort of conga with Lketinga at the head of the column. He looks wild, unapproachable. Gradually the dance comes to an end. The girls, giggling slightly, draw aside. The elders sit on the ground in a circle wrapped in their woollen blankets. The morans form themselves into a circle too. Now it is time for the elders to give their blessing. One of them utters a sentence, and all the others repeat ‘Enkai’: the Masai word for God. This goes on for half an hour, and then the whole festival is over for today. Lketinga comes over to me and says I ought to go and sleep now, with Mama. He and the other warriors are going out into the bush to slaughter a goat. None of them will sleep, they will talk about old times and things to come. I understand perfectly and wish him a wonderful night.
In the manyatta I make myself as comfortable as I can amongst the others. I lie awake for ages, there are voices to be heard coming from all over, and in the distance an occasional goat bleats or a lion roars. I pray that I will be fully well again soon.
The next morning, at six o’clock, the day begins in earnest. So many animals in one place create a tremendous noise. Mama goes out to milk our goats and cows. We make chai. I sit wrapped in my blanket because it’s cool, waiting impatiently for Lketinga. I’ve needed to go t
o the toilet for ages, but with so many people around I don’t dare leave the encampment. They’d all be watching me, especially the children who follow me everywhere when I go out without Lketinga.
At last he arrives and sticks his head into the hut beaming from ear to ear: ‘Hello Corinne, how are you?’ Then he unfolds his kanga and reaches out to give me a roasted leg of lamb wrapped in leaves. ‘Corinne, now you eat slowly. After malaria this is very good.’ It is nice that he thought of me, because it’s not normal here for a warrior to bring his wife already cooked meat. When he sees me holding the leg weakly he sits beside me and cuts bite-sized pieces off with his big bush knife. I have absolutely no desire for meat, but there isn’t anything else and I have to eat if I’m to regain my strength. I force myself to eat a couple of pieces, and Lketinga is happy. I ask him where we can wash, and he laughs and says it’s a long way to the river and you can’t get there by car. The women fetch just enough water to make chai, nothing else; we’ll have to wait a couple of days before we can wash. I find the thought unappealing. At least there are no mosquitoes but more than enough flies. When I clean my teeth outside the manyatta people gather to watch in curiosity, and when I spit out the froth they all get very excited. It’s my turn to laugh.
The White Masai Page 16