by Tahir Shah
In the three quarters of an hour we spent together, chatting about the situation in Tibet, and our shared affection for yaks, he struck me as someone utterly at peace with the world around him. Unlike anyone else robbed of their country, his pacifist approach was astonishing. But it isn’t to say he was ready to give up the fight for his homeland.
As a writer, he asked me several times, to do all I could to draw attention to the plight of Tibet, and to remind the world of the situation for his people.
On the evening of my audience, I was sitting on a low wall in McLeod Ganj, thinking about it all, when an old Tibetan woman staggered up, and rested herself there. She had plaits, was dressed in the traditional apron, and looked about eighty-five. I asked her if she had lived there long. She looked at me hard, her eyes watery with age.
‘I came here across the mountains with his Holiness,’ she said. ‘That was fifty summers ago. I was young then, and strong.’
I asked if she had ever returned back to Tibet. She shook her head slowly, left then right.
‘The soul has left our country, and who can live in a place without a soul?’
TWENTY-SEVEN
Love in the Desert
NESTLING AMONGST THE HILLS of Samburuland, in central Kenya, the tiny village of Bawaa goes about its daily life.
Women fetch water on their heads; young boys tend the herds of cattle; and a group of warriors preen themselves, as the sun blazes down from the expansive African sky. It seems as though nothing in this tranquil setting has changed in centuries. But then, without warning, a shrill cockney voice – radiating from a square-shaped hut – shatters the afternoon calm.
‘Dikola! Come ’ere and tell me what the ’ell’s goin’ on!’
A slender, lean Samburu warrior, with a rather downcast expression, moves nervously over to the hut. Inside, encased by windowless cow-dung walls, a handful of Samburu women are seated. Each is bedecked with a great collar of traditional bead-work. At the centre of the group crouches a chubby, blonde woman with an East End accent and a sun-roasted complexion.
Meet Cheryl Mason-Lekimenju, the newest member of the fearless Samburu warrior clan.
Cheryl hit the British headlines when she left her three young children to marry Dikola Lekimenju, a Samburu warrior and part time tribal dancer. The couple had met while Cheryl was on a package holiday to the Kenyan coast. After being granted a visa, Dikola – who’s ten years Cheryl’s junior – was forced to leave the UK by the Home Office. It suspected that the Samburu had married merely to qualify for a British passport. Determined not to be parted from this, her third husband, Cheryl accompanied Dikola to his tribal village. The unlikely couple now lives within the remote Samburu community of Dikola’s birth – encircled as it is by a rugged thorn stockade to ward off lions.
As Dikola takes his place on the floor beside his bride, his mother begins the lengthy business of making tea. Her shaven head, its face creased with age, melt into the darkness of the one-roomed hut. With care, she pours a precious calabash of cloudy brown water into an aluminium pot. The vessel is placed on a makeshift hearth in the middle of the room. Then, with the strike of a match, the neat bundle of kindling catches. The flames illuminate other life forms hiding within the room. Three little children are playing in the shadows, along with a nest of new-born puppies, and a clutch of hungry pecking chickens.
But the pride of place belongs to Cheryl Mason-Lekimenju who, squatting uneasily, rubs her hands with an unending supply of Superdrug wet-wipes. As she does so, her aged Samburu mother-inlaw looks on in bewilderment. One senses that, in these conditions, no amount of wet-wiping could bring true hygiene.
A few drops of milk are squeezed into the cooking pot straight from the cow’s udder. Then a handful of tea leaves are sprinkled into the bubbling brown water. And, as the dense blue smoke begins to billow sideways from the fire, Cheryl drops her beloved wet-wipes and begins to choke. No one takes any notice, except for Dikola’s elderly one-eyed father, Loperecho.
Grasping a spear in his right hand, he pierces a hole in the dung wall. Fresh air wafts in through the instant window. Moments later, Cheryl is sipping her tea, trying as best she can to settle back into her new lifestyle.
The Samburu village which Cheryl now calls home, is a million miles from the respectable middle class existence that she left behind. Surrounded by customs, climate, and dangers, that are all unfamiliar, she’s trying her level best to adapt. But the transition has not been an easy one.
For those not used to the hardy routine of Samburu life, the discomfort, boredom, and constant bouts of illness, can easily be too much to bear. The stress on Dikola, the swarthy warrior – ever present at Cheryl’s side – has been equally great. Once the favourite son, his family are confused as to what exactly’s going on. They wonder what the future with his cockney bride will hold. A man of few words at the best of times, Dikola mopes about with his head hung low, perhaps pondering how he got into such a peculiar situation in the first place.
Cheryl’s is the tale of a woman who, trapped in her second loveless marriage, traded in her young children, husband, belongings and home, for the tall dark warrior of her fantasy. Vilified in the tabloid press for abandoning her two sons – Stevie, thirteen; Tommie, eleven – and her angelic daughter, Chloe, four – Cheryl maintains that her own traumatic childhood explains all the irrational behaviour.
In a book, entitled White Mischief, she reveals the intimate account of her journey from a high-rise in Bromley, to a manyatta, (group of cow-dung huts), in Samburuland.
White Mischief, a cross between a Mills & Boon romance and a psychologist’s casebook, is peppered with italicized flashbacks to Cheryl’s abusive childhood. The text paints a picture of abuse that was by any standards severe. Cheryl claims to have been molested by not only her natural father, step-father and mother, but by her sister and first husband as well.
For Cheryl’s three kids, the separation from their mother has been filled with anxiety.
‘The children have lost faith in me,’ she says in a rather surprised tone, ‘especially the middle one, Tommie. He’s suffering from chronic depression. The boys have told me that there have been periods when Chloe’s cried solidly for three weeks, calling out my name. And, there have been times when she sees a woman in the street who looks similar to me and she’s clung onto her, screaming “Mummy! Mummy!”‘
The fact that their mother is six thousand miles away from home, living with a semi-nomadic blood-drinking tribe, has brought raillery from the boys’ classmates.
‘My children have been ridiculed at school,’ continues Cheryl as she lists all the damage that the relationship has done. ‘They’re told, “Oh, your mum’s got a Masaai warrior in a tent in the garden”; or, “Your mum’s gone off with a black man.” But they never complain to me. They’ve been absolute gems.’
Communication with the children, who are living with Cheryl’s second husband, Mike, is all but non-existent.
‘I’m waiting for them to contact me,’ she gasps, cleansing her hands with another wet-wipe. ‘I used to phone them regular, by reversing the charges once a month or so. But now I’m leaving it to them. I left them some aerogrammes but, as yet, they haven’t written.’
Throughout her life Cheryl has yearned to escape.
That escape finally came in the form of a package tour, on which she was accompanied by an elderly friend. The journey, to Mombasa, on the Kenyan coast, was blissful. And, it was there, while staying at a beach hotel, that Cheryl first set eyes on the timid tribal dancer Dikola Lekimenju.
The mother-of-three was captivated from the outset by the warrior’s sleek form, his enormous brown eyes and amiable character. They spent every waking moment together, as Cheryl slowly entered the warrior’s world. She learned that he had six siblings, that he belonged to one of Africa’s most fearless tribes, and that he had killed his first lion at seventeen – but that he hated killing.
‘Dikola is very gentle,’ says Cheryl defe
nsively, ‘imagine what it’s like to be told to kill animals if you don’t want to. And Dikola didn’t want to.’ Performing in traditional tribal dances at tourist hotels, or selling trinkets on the beach, gave Dikola a break from the slaughter – which accompanies a warrior’s life, and a profession he so despised. Every few months he would return home to his village to give his earnings as a dancer to his family.
On one such journey northward, Dikola asked Cheryl to accompany him. Her first impression of his humble cow-dung hut – one step below a mud hut – was that it resembled ‘a hollowed out Oxo cube’.
‘At first I kicked up a right stink,’ remembers Cheryl, ‘shouting ‘I’m not going into no bush!’ But the more I didn’t want to go, the more he asked me to. We finally arrived at the manyatta in the late afternoon, having walked the twenty-six kilometres from Maralal, the nearest small town. The family were very hospitable though. They were lovely – gathering around to kiss my hands. I don’t think they really understood what I meant to Dikola, or how far our relationship would go. The first night was so uncomfortable and really cold.’
Sleeping on the hut’s main bed – a rough, hide-covered platform, without blankets – the couple huddled to keep warm.
The passages of Cheryl’s book, describing her interminable abuse as a child and adolescent, are suddenly replaced by romantic texts of the steamiest variety. ‘For the first time in my life’, she writes, ‘ the desire to make love came with animal passion… I was a woman with sexual feelings and carnal desires… we made love five times in those first three hours. Making love in the African bush stripped away all inhibitions, made it the most basic and essential of all functions… I had asked God not to allow me to be pregnant and we would make love for hours on the floor of Dikola’s hut.’
The passion, it seems, only ended when Cheryl’s digestive tract became infected from the local Samburu cuisine.
‘When I first became very ill with streptococci,’ she whispers softly, hinting that sickness has been frequent, ‘Dikola’s mother gave me a potion made from some sort of tree bark and roots, with a bit of honey in it to cut some of the bitterness. When they had boiled it up, it was put in the ground. Dikola fed it to me a spoon at a time. The Samburu don’t like letting out their secrets, so I don’t know quite what it was, except that it made my urine go red.’
Now certain that this was no mere holiday fling, Cheryl was ready to put her infatuation for Dikola before all else. In the months that followed, she returned to Kenya twice, to the dismay of her husband and deep sadness of her children. Then, having broken it to the kids that she was in love with an African warrior, Cheryl asked Mike for a divorce, and set about getting Dikola to emigrate to England. A tabloid newspaper helped financially in getting the young Samburu a passport and ticket. A few weeks later – when Dikola slipped into Britain on a tourist visa – the media frenzy began.
The first days in Europe together were spent locked in a hotel room in the custody of the tabloid. The pair were hounded by the paparazzi wherever they went. Dikola was encouraged to pose in full tribal dress beside London’s famous landmarks. He might have wondered why, but there was no time to answer questions.
As soon as one photo session ended, another began. One fashion shoot, held at a prominent studio, had the warrior dressing up in couture tuxedos. Another had him posing in full tribal regalia and war-paint with Cheryl’s children, at their Isle of Wight semi.
Fleet Street’s finest had a field day. Cheryl’s second husband, Mike, strained to protect the children from the media glare. After being introduced to Dikola for the first time, he was reported as saying, ‘it is odd meeting someone who is sleeping with your wife. But what do you say to a man who has killed a lion with his bare hands?’
The first thing Cheryl’s mother knew of the relationship was when she saw her daughter’s face splashed across the tabloids’ front pages. The two had not communicated for over three years.
‘My mother kept saying, “there’s no way my daughter would get involved with a black man”,’ recalls Cheryl, ‘she was sure that the whole story had been made up. When she found out that it was not, she called me up and said sarcastically, “Well, aren’t you a clever girl then?!” Later, I took Dikola to see my grandmother – just before she died. She told me that I was sordid and awful for leaving my kids and such a sweet man like Mike.’
When Cheryl was sixteen, she had a tattoo ‘shaved’ from her shoulder in an excruciating operation. The motif of a swallow, bearing the word ‘Mum’, was designed two years earlier – before Cheryl’s long-running feud with her mother had begun. Aware that his new bride would not be tattooed again with readiness, Dikola requested they both have their right breasts tattooed with each other’s name.
Meanwhile, newspaper hacks and film crews from across Europe – and beyond – devoured the story. They couldn’t believe their luck. But little did they know… the best was still to come.
Cheryl and Dikola suddenly revealed to the world their intentions to marry. And, on fourteenth February, St. Valentine’s Day, the couple rolled up to Newport’s registrar’s office in a borrowed 1927 Bentley. Standing tall in his traditional Samburu finery, Dikola braced himself against the cold. Beside him Cheryl posed for photographs, wrapped in a simple knotted red cloth, her body adorned with exquisite African jewellery. The media rubbed their hands with glee. It was as if Crocodile Dundee was marrying Shirley Valentine.
Cheryl regrets the way that she and Dikola have been treated by the press.
‘I blame the media a lot,’ she says in a bitter voice. ‘We have been severely abused. The worst is that everyone’s always saying we must have made a fortune out of all the publicity – I wish!’
Public ridicule, unpleasant as it was, may have been the more palatable consequence, from all the international attention. Anxious to show that permanent residency isn’t automatic when one weds a British citizen, the Home Office ruled that Dikola would have to return immediately to Kenya.
‘Dikola is my husband!’ Cheryl exclaims in an impassioned cry, ‘I’m English and have English children: the Home Office just can’t do what they’re doing. Of course we will win!’
Her anger at the Home Office and the press is largely rooted in the way her latest husband has been portrayed as a simpleton.
‘Dikola isn’t a primitive – he’s got a brain! I want him to have a chance in life… I’d like him to have the opportunity of doing a few open day training schemes in England, to see what he likes best.’
In the meantime, Dikola is practising the 3Rs with a view to securing a good job in Britain when (and if) he gets residency. A brief education from missionaries as a child complemented his tribal training in hunting wild animals and herding the family flocks.
Since fleeing back to Kenya from Britain, immigration troubles have continued to torment the Lekimenjus. Incensed that a Kenyan citizen has been expelled from the United Kingdom, some politicians in Kenya are pressing for Cheryl to now be thrown out of the country, in a tit-for-tat expulsion.
‘If London’s immigration officials found the couple’s behaviour unacceptable in that country, who are we to give them sanctuary here?’ Mr. Mbugua, a prominent Kenyan politician, was reported as saying. The political calls for Cheryl to be banished back to England, have reverberated through East Africa’s press. While numerous editorials have demanded justice and revenge. The ‘Lekimenju Affair’ – which has been simmering away – is escalating into what may become a full-blown diplomatic fracas.
Seemingly oblivious of the international furore they have stirred up, Cheryl and her warrior sit on a hillside just outside Bawaa village. As mosquitoes buzz about in the cool evening air, the couple watch the sun go down.
‘I can’t live without Dikola,’ says Cheryl suddenly, brimming with romantic verve. ‘I’ve never felt that about a single person in my life. I can even live without my children – I know they’ll survive – but I can’t live without Dikola!’
At her side as
always, Dikola rolls his eyes as Cheryl continues another exuberant declaration of her love. ‘He may not be romantic in the English sense of the word,’ she says, ‘I’ve never had a gift from Dikola – except for a few warrior beads – but he shows his love in other ways. And he’s proved to me that he doesn’t just see me as a ticket out of Kenya. He only wants to be in England because I want to be there.’
The couple would have liked to have had children. But, after going through three caesarean births, Cheryl says that another pregnancy would be life-threatening. It’s a point that irks her, as she believes Dikola would have been a better father than her previous husbands.
‘I don’t regret the kids I’ve got,’ she says, ‘but I do regret the husbands I chose. I wasn’t ready to have kids – I was blackmailed into having children by my first husband. Then the second marriage happened because Mike came along and the children needed a father, more than I needed a husband. Shortly afterwards, Chloe was born.’
Cheryl is thought to be the first white woman ever to have married a Samburu. She says that she’s the only one in history to be honoured by being given a Samburu name. It is ‘Nicmarie’, meaning ‘good woman’. A few other European women have taken morans, warriors, as lovers. But, in most cases, the liaisons were short-lived.
‘All the white women I’ve met who have tried to make lives here have failed,’ says Cheryl. ‘Most of them meet, as we did, at the coast. Me and Dikola are the only ones who’re still together. The other women see the relationship as an escape. It usually ends with the European thinking that the warrior was making use of her.’
One of Cheryl’s acquaintances – an English woman in her sixties – had a twenty-year-old Samburu boyfriend. She bought him expensive gifts, and built him a fine concrete house over the hill from Bawaa village. When she left, the young warrior was scorned by the close-knit society.