As it’s the beginning of the month we want to have the disco as soon as possible. For one last time we drive down to Maralal to fetch beer and other drinks. While we’re there my husband insists that I phone Switzerland to make sure we’ll have money in Mombasa. I fake the phone call and tell him everything’s fixed up and as soon as we’re in Mombasa I’m to get in touch again.
Once again the disco is a huge success. I’ve agreed with Lketinga that at midnight we’ll make a short speech to say goodbye, as nobody has any idea we’re leaving. But after a while my husband disappears and by midnight I’m on my own, so I ask the vet to translate the speech – which I’ve written down in English – into Swahili for the workers and Masai for the locals.
James turns the music off and everybody stops what they’re doing to see what’s happening. Nervously I walk into the middle of the room and ask for their attention. First of all I apologize for my husband’s absence, then I announce that this will be our last disco and that in two weeks’ time we’ll be leaving Barsaloi to start up a new business in Mombasa. It just hasn’t been possible for us to keep going up here with the high running costs of the car and also the constant risks to my own and my daughter’s health. I thank everybody for their loyal custom in the shop and wish them the best of luck with the new school.
No sooner have I finished than a great commotion breaks out with everybody talking at once. Even the little local boss man is depressed and tells me that I can’t just up sticks and leave when everybody has accepted me. A couple of others stand up and say nice things about us and how much everyone will miss us, how we’ve provided so much quality of life and entertainment not to mention the good turns we’ve done for people with the car. Everybody applauds. I’m deeply moved and ask for the music to be turned on to get the atmosphere going again.
In the midst of all this the young Somali comes up to me and says he’s sorry to hear we’re going too. He says he’s always been amazed by what I’ve achieved. I’m touched and buy him a soft drink and suggest he might like to buy the rest of our stock. He agrees immediately. He says I should just make an inventory and we’ll settle a price, even to buying our expensive weighing scales. I have a long chat with the vet, who didn’t know our departure plans either. But after everything that’s happened he can understand and he just hopes that in Mombasa my husband will come back to his senses. He’s probably the only one who understands the real reason we’re leaving.
We close the doors at two a.m., and Lketinga still isn’t back. I hurry down to the manyatta to fetch Napirai. My husband is sitting in the hut talking to Mama. When I ask him why he wasn’t there he says it was my party because I’m the one who wants to leave. This time I don’t get involved in an argument but simply stay with him in the manyatta. Who knows, I’m thinking, maybe this is the last time I’ll spend the night in one?
When the opportunity arises I tell Lketinga about my deal with the Somali. At first he’s cross and doesn’t want to talk about it. He won’t bargain with the likes of them, he says arrogantly. So instead I work out the inventory with James. The Somali asks us to bring the stuff down to him in two days’ time and he’ll have the money ready. The scales alone come to a third of the total.
People keep turning up at our house wanting to buy things; and everything, down to the last cup, is reserved for someone. I’ve asked everyone to bring their money on the twentieth and they can pick up their goods on the twenty-first. When we go to take all our stock down to the Somali my husband comes along after all, to give his agreement on the price of every last item. When I include the scales he takes them out and insists we should bring them with us to Mombasa. He simply can’t see that we don’t need them anymore and will get much more for them here. No, he insists, we have to take them, even though it infuriates me to have to give so much money back to the Somali, but I say nothing. Let’s not have another argument before we leave! There’s a whole week to go before the twenty-first of May.
The days before we go simply crawl by, and I get more and more tense inside as the day of our departure approaches. I don’t want to spend an hour longer here than we need to. Suddenly it’s our final night. Almost everybody has brought their money, and anything we no longer need we’ve simply given away. The car is packed full, and the only things left in the house are the bed with the mosquito net, the table and chairs. Mama spent the whole day with us looking after Napirai. She’s upset about us leaving.
That evening a car stops in the village at the Somali’s, and my husband goes down to see if there’s any miraa to buy. In the meantime James and I are working out our itinerary, both of us excited at the prospect of such a long journey. It’s over nine hundred miles to the south coast.
When my husband still hasn’t come back an hour later, I start to get worried. Eventually he turns up, and I can tell at once that there’s something wrong. ‘We cannot go tomorrow,’ he announces. He’s chewing miraa of course, but the look on his face is extremely serious. I’m starting to simmer and demand to know where he’s been such long time and why we can’t set off tomorrow. With wild eyes he tells us the elders aren’t happy that we should set off without their blessing. And in those circumstances it’s impossible for him to leave.
I get worked up and ask why they can’t give us their blessing first thing in the morning, but James tells me for a ceremony like that we need to slaughter at least two goats and brew beer. Only when they’re in a good mood will they pronounce the will of Enkai. He can understand why Lketinga won’t go without this blessing.
At that point my nerves give in and I shout at Lketinga, asking why this didn’t occur to the elders before. They’ve all known for three weeks now when we were due to leave: we had a party, sold everything we didn’t need and packed up the rest. I refuse to stay one day longer. I’m going even if I have to drive all the way with Napirai on my own. I sob and rage because I know that this so-called ‘surprise’ will delay us for at least another week because that’s how long it takes to brew their beer.
Lketinga simply says that he’s not going and chews his weed, while James goes off to ask for advice from Mama. I throw myself on the bed and wish I were dead. There’s just one thought going round in my head: I’m leaving tomorrow, I’m leaving tomorrow. As a result I’ve hardly had any sleep when James turns up at dawn with Mama. There’s more palaver, but I pay not the slightest bit of attention, blindly continuing to pack up our stuff. I barely notice what’s going on through my puffy eyes. James is talking to Mama, and lots of other people keep turning up to collect things or say goodbye. I ignore them all.
Then James comes up to me and asks on Mama’s behalf if I’m determined to leave. ‘Yes,’ I reply and grab Napirai by my side. Mama stares silently at me and her grandchild. Then she says something to James that makes his face light up. He turns to me happily and says Mama will go off and fetch four Barsaloi elders who’ll give us the blessing then and there. She doesn’t want us to leave without it, because she’s convinced she’ll never see us again. Thankfully I ask James to translate for her that wherever I am I will always see that she is all right.
Mud In Your Eye!
We hang around for an hour with ever more people turning up. I hide myself back in the house until eventually Mama turns up with three elderly men. The three of us go and stand in front of the car, and Mama gives a little speech during which the others repeat ‘Enkai’ in chorus. It takes about ten minutes before we get a gob of spittle pressed against our forehead as a good luck charm. With that, to my relief, the ceremony is over. I press some utensil or other into the hand of each of the elders, although Mama just points at Napirai and says all she wants is our baby.
But thanks to her help I’ve won the day, and she’s the only one I embrace again before I climb behind the steering wheel. Lketinga hesitates until I start up the engine, and then he gets in sulkily. I drive off immediately without once looking back; it’s a long journey but it leads to freedom.
With every mile I put behind
me I feel strength returning. I intend to drive all the way to Nyahururu and only then will I breathe freely. But an hour before we even get to Maralal we have to stop because of a puncture. We’re laden to the roof, and the spare wheel is underneath everything, but I don’t let myself get flustered: this will be the last time we change a wheel in Samburu country.
Our next stop is just outside Nyahururu, at Rumurutti, where the tarmac road begins. A police checkpoint stops us demanding to see my logbook and my international driving licence. The licence expired long ago, but they don’t notice and instead tell me I’ll have to get a new sticker with our address for the windscreen because that’s the regulation. I’m amazed; in Maralal nobody’s heard of such a sticker.
We spend the night in Nyahururu and next day ask where we have to get the sticker from. Once again the stress of Kenyan bureaucracy kicks in. First of all we have to take the car to a garage to get all its faults fixed, then we have to pay for a technical test. The car is in the garage all day, which costs even more money. On the second day it’s ready, and I’m convinced it’ll all work out but when we get to the test, the inspector immediately fails us for the bodged battery and the lack of a sticker. I explain to him that we’re in the process of moving and don’t yet have an address in Mombasa, but he’s not interested: without an address, we can’t have a sticker. I drive off, astounded by the stupidity of it all. We’ve spent two days hanging around spending money, all for nothing. But I’m determined to get to Mombasa, and we drive for several more hours until we find a place to stay in a village the other side of Nairobi. I’m tired out with so much driving, especially as I have to concentrate on driving on the left, but I still have to wash nappies and feed Napirai. Happily with the level roads we’re not used to, she’s slept a lot.
The next day we reach Mombasa after another seven hours on the road. The climate down here is tropical heat, and we’re exhausted as we join the queue of cars waiting for the ferry to the south bank. I fish out the letter I received a couple of months ago from Sophia shortly after she arrived in Mombasa. Her address is near Ukunda, and I hope she’ll provide us with a roof over our heads for the night.
It takes us another hour to find the new building where Sophia lives, but nobody seems to be home at this grand address. I knock next door, and a white woman opens the door and tells me Sophia’s gone to Italy for two weeks. I’m hugely disappointed and can’t think where we’ll find a place to stay until I remember Priscilla, but my husband’s not keen and says he’d rather stay on the north bank. I’m not happy with that as I had such bad experiences over there. We’re starting to get tetchy, and so I decide just to drive to our own village. But when we get there only one of the five houses is still in a habitable condition. At least we find out, however, that Priscilla has moved to the next village just five minutes’ drive away.
In next to no time we’re in Kamau village which is laid out in the shape of a horseshoe with the buildings all a series of joined together rooms like the boarding houses in Maralal, but with a big shop in the middle. I’m immediately taken with this village. The minute we stop the car children come out to look, and the shop owner’s peering from his window. All of a sudden Priscilla appears, hardly able to believe her eyes. She’s delighted, particularly when she sees Napirai. In the meantime she’s had another boy too, a little older than Napirai. Straight away she takes us into her room, makes tea and demands that we tell her everything. When she hears that we’re planning to stay in Mombasa she’s thrilled, and for the first time since we left Barsaloi even Lketinga seems to cheer up. She offers to let us stay in her room and use her water, which even here has to be fetched in canisters from a spring. She can spend the night with a friend, and tomorrow she’ll fix up somewhere of our own for us. Yet again I’m overwhelmed by her simple friendliness and hospitality.
After such a tiring day we go to bed early. Next morning, Priscilla has already found us a room at the end of the row, so that we can park the car beside it. The room is just ten feet square, and everything is made of concrete except for the straw roof. During the day we see some of the other inhabitants, all of them Samburu warriors, some of whom we recognize. Before long Lketinga is sitting talking and laughing with them, showing Napirai off proudly.
Fresh Hope
When I go into the shop for the first time I feel as if I’m in paradise. There’s everything here, even bread, milk, butter, eggs, fruit, and just two hundred yards from our door. My hope of starting again in Mombasa begins to grow.
James wants to see the sea at last, and so we set off together on foot. It’s barely half an hour to the beach. The sight of the ocean fills me with happiness and a feeling of freedom. The only thing I can’t get used to again is the sight of white tourists in swimming costumes. James, who’s never seen anything of the sort, looks away in embarrassment and instead stares at the sea in astonishment. Just like his older brother, he finds it hard to deal with. Napirai, on the other hand, plays happily in the sand in the shadow of the palm trees. Here I can start to imagine my life in Kenya starting anew.
We go into one of the beach bars designed for the Europeans to quench our thirst. Everybody stares at us, and I don’t know where to look standing there in my patched-up skirt, even though it’s clean. When a German woman speaks to me, asking if Napirai is my baby, I can’t even find the words to reply. It’s been so long since I’ve spoken German, let alone Swiss German, that I feel like an idiot having to answer her in English.
The next day Lketinga goes off to the north bank to buy some trinkets so that he can join in the Masai dances where they sell them afterwards. I’m pleased to see he’s interested in earning money. Back home I’m washing nappies while James plays with Napirai and Priscilla and I make plans for the future. She’s thrilled when I tell her I want to find a shop to sell things to the tourists. As James can only stay for a month before he has to go home for his big circumcision ceremony, I decide to go round the hotels with Priscilla to see if there’s a shop available.
In the grandiose hotels the managers look at us sceptically before quickly sending us away. By the fifth hotel my minimal self-confidence has evaporated, and I feel like a beggar. Obviously I don’t look like the average businesswoman with my red checked skirt and baby on my back. By chance an Indian at the reception overhears us talking and gives me the telephone number of his brother. The next day James, Lketinga and I drive into Mombasa to meet him. He has something available next to a supermarket in a newly built residence, but it costs seven hundred Swiss francs a month. My first reaction is to turn it down because the rent seems far too expensive, but then I agree to let him show us the building.
The shop has a regal position just off the main road to Diani Beach, only fifteen minutes’ drive from us. The building already contains a huge Indian souvenir shop, and there’s a newly opened Chinese restaurant opposite, but everything else is vacant. Because the whole building is stepped the shop wouldn’t be immediately visible from the street, but even so, and despite the fact that it’s just two hundred feet square, I decide to take it. The room is completely bare, and Lketinga doesn’t understand why I want to spend so much on a completely empty shop. He goes off to the tourist shows but spends the money he makes on beer or miraa, which causes a few more arguments.
While local workers assemble the wooden shelving to my instructions, James and I get wooden beams in Ukunda and transport them to the shop in the car. We work like lunatics all day while my husband hangs around with the other warriors in Ukunda.
I spend the evenings mostly washing and cooking and then, when Napirai is asleep, chatting to Priscilla. In early evening Lketinga uses the car to transport groups of warriors to their dance shows. I’m not happy about it because he doesn’t have a driver’s licence and then drinks beer. When he turns up late at night he wakes me up to ask me who I’ve been talking to. If any of the warriors living nearby are already home he’s convinced I’ve been talking to them. I warn him in no uncertain terms that he’s go
ing to ruin everything again with his jealousy. James tries to tell him the same thing.
At last Sophia has returned, and we’re delighted to see one another. She can hardly believe that we’re already working on a shop. She’s been here for five months and still hasn’t opened her café. But she soon puts the dampers on my enthusiasm when she tells me how much bureaucracy I’m going to have to deal with. Unlike us she has a comfortable home. We see each other almost every day, which eventually starts to annoy my husband who doesn’t understand what we have to talk about and assumes it must be him. Sophia tries to calm him down and tells him he shouldn’t drink so much beer.
It’s just two weeks since I signed the rental agreement and already the shop is fitted out. I want to open at the end of the month, but we need to get a licence for the shop and a work permit for me. Sophia tells me we can get the licence in Kwale, and she and her boyfriend come with us. Once again we have to fill in forms and stand in queues. Sophia is called in first and disappears into the office with her companion. She comes out five minutes later to say it’s no good because they’re not married. We don’t seem to do any better, which I can hardly believe. The official says we can’t have the licence without a work permit unless I go to a lawyer and sign over everything to my husband. And in any case first of all the shop name has to be registered in Nairobi.
How I’ve come to hate that city! And now we have to go back again. As we’re plodding out to the car, disappointed and depressed, the official comes hurrying after us and says there might be a way to avoid Nairobi if he works on it. He’ll be in Ukunda at four p.m., and we could meet up at Sophia’s. Now of course we understand what it’s all about: bribery! My gall is rising, but Sophia immediately agrees. We sit at her house waiting and I’m furious that Lketinga and I didn’t go to Kwale alone. Then this character turns up and slimes his way into the house, comes straight out with it and says we can have the licences tomorrow if each of us brings five thousand shillings in an envelope. Sophia agrees straight away, and I have no alternative but to nod my agreement too.
The White Masai Page 32