by Frank Coates
‘As for the car—a few bumps and bends, apparently. I found your passport and called the Australian High Commission in Nairobi. I was trying to find a next of kin,’ the doctor explained. ‘Someone to notify of your predicament.’
‘I see,’ Riley said.
‘The gentleman I spoke to said you were to contact the High Commission as a matter of urgency.’
‘Why?’
‘He didn’t say. I hope it wasn’t inappropriate for me to contact them?’
‘No probs,’ Riley said. How the hell am I going to get to Nairobi? he wondered.
‘They took the car to Voi,’ Dass said, inadvertently answering the question. ‘By the time you’re ready to travel, it will have been repaired.’
‘Look, Doc, I appreciate the house call and all,’ Riley said, ‘but I need to get on the road again.’ He raised himself from the pillow to find his cigarettes, but the thumping in his head caused him to lower it again.
‘Mr Riley, you have an MTBI. It’s not to be ignored.’
Riley gave him a quizzical look.
‘Mild traumatic brain injury. A concussion, if you prefer. You ignore it at your peril.’
‘Well, I’ll get a bus, or find someone to drive me. It’s no big deal. Can you pass me my cigarettes, they’re on—’
‘I’m sorry, Mr Riley. I believe it is a big deal. In this matter I’m afraid I have the last word. And I would give up the cigarettes if I were you. They’re not good for you in your condition. In fact, they’re not good for you in any condition. You should quit.’
Riley didn’t attempt to hide his pained expression.
‘I will inform the management you are under doctor’s orders and are on no account allowed to leave before I see you again,’ Dass finished.
Riley could see determination in the medico’s eyes. ‘How long?’ he groaned.
‘Let’s give it a week and we’ll see how you’re progressing.’
‘A week! What the hell am I going to do for a week?’
Dass was packing his instruments into his small leather case. ‘Take it easy. Put your feet up. Take a break.’
Riley shook his head in dismay.
‘Or find a good book,’ the doctor added as he and the Maasai left the banda.
Riley wanted nothing to do with books. They were a big reason he’d run away to Africa in the first place. Books, and his need to fill the places in his brain with something less painful than the memories that had taken residence there.
It was the time between the late breakfast served after the dawn game drive and lunch that Riley found most difficult to fill. Twiga Lodge’s pool was warm and gave little relief from the mid-morning heat. He swam a few laps until his headache returned and then retired to the poolside shade, but a couple of noisy, freckled children jumped and ran and splashed each other, all the time emitting high-pitched, nerve-jangling squeals. The occasional ‘Now, now, boys’ from their mother was ignored.
He decided to go for a walk around the grounds, and eventually arrived at the lodge’s gift shop. In despair of ever relieving his boredom, he perused the library—a collection of dog-eared paperbacks dominated by Ruark, Hemingway and Wilbur Smith. He thought a biography would be safe, but there was none to be found. A book called The Maasai—Their Land and Customs caught his eye. The tall, colourfully dressed young Maasai guys who worked as doormen and safari guides at the lodge seemed to have an irresistible appeal for the women guests, who tended to gush when conversing with any one of them.
The summary on the back told him it was an account of the Maasai’s battle against the British to retain their traditional land. Riley was a great fan of the historical novel, and hoped that Manning’s Maasai history would be interesting. He signed for the book and took it to his banda.
Settling himself on a lounge chair in the tepid warmth outside his five-star tent, with the paradise flycatchers flitting among the acacia tree branches, he flicked open the cover. The first page held a biography and a picture of the author, Charlotte Manning. Short light-coloured hair hugged the nape of her neck and her full mouth was curled into a quietly confident smile that somehow said, Yes, I know stuff.
Charlotte Manning was an anthropologist, but Riley soon discovered she had a fiction writer’s ability to draw her reader into the series of escalating ordeals, disasters and triumphs that made up recent Maasai history.
Throughout the saga, she painted a picture of the Maasai as a people proudly aware of their culture through their legends, or ‘oral history’ as she labelled it. They had been for centuries the dominant power in the region, but the white invaders brought with them diseases that decimated their numbers. Smallpox killed more than half of the Maasai people and bovine diseases killed most of their cattle—their livelihood. The ascendancy the Maasai had enjoyed for centuries evaporated in a mere handful of years.
From this devastation arose a charismatic Maasai moran—Parsaloi Ole Gilisho—a warrior who took up the battle for his people. Because the Maasai’s military power had been wiped out, he could not challenge the British as his predecessors would have done. Instead, he studied them closely and attempted to defeat them at their own game.
As he read, Riley’s excitement soared. His novelist’s imagination took him way beyond Charlotte Manning’s historical text to the drama inherent in such a powerful story with a ready-made hero. He was convinced that he’d found his next novel—a historical blockbuster. And the most exciting aspect of this discovery was that he had come upon the idea exactly as he’d found the thread of his first novel—by accident.
Just at the time Riley had graduated from Sydney University and was trying to convert his BA Lit (Hons) into something that could earn him a living, Eddie Mabo had begun his battle to claim ownership of his ancestral land. Riley had followed the native title court case with enthusiasm and it had led him to write his first novel—another story of the importance of the land to its indigenous owners.
Over the next few days Riley found he could not put Charlotte Manning’s book down for long. The clash of cultures, the covert and overt pressure exerted on the indigenous Africans, was a very familiar story. Parsaloi Ole Gilisho was the African equivalent of Eddie Mabo; Manning had cast him as a fighter, possibly the last Maasai warrior to make a spirited stand against the all-conquering British. He was a perfect protagonist. And the story Charlotte Manning’s book revealed—an amazing battle between ancient culture and modern power—shouted to be told.
Riley took a deep breath. Whether he was ready to write another book or not, here was a story he couldn’t ignore. A story that would redeem his faltering writing career.
CHAPTER 4
Flight BA65 crept along the Heathrow access runway, throwing a long shadow across the grass-covered verge. It rumbled over a patch of worn tarmac and came to a shuddering halt. From her window seat, Charlotte Manning could see a queue of monoliths preparing to depart to all parts of the world. Ahead was the golden lion of Singapore Airlines, Qantas’s flying kangaroo and another she couldn’t recognise.
An American Airlines plane dropped to the runway with a roar and a loud screech as smoke puffed from the landing gear. The navigation lights disappeared from her field of vision long before the blast of its jets receded.
Charlotte tried to concentrate on the in-flight magazine, but the words were muddled and made no sense. She would have argued with anyone who’d dared to suggest it, but the fact was that at twenty-eight years of age, she was still as nervous about flying as she had been as a child.
Today, she felt even more nervous than usual because she’d lied to her tutor about her travel arrangements. Her strict upbringing had taught her to be truthful in all situations, no matter the cost, but getting her professor’s approval for her first visit to Kenya had put the price of truthfulness too high. Regrettably, she had lied through her teeth to Professor Hornsby. The field visit in Kenya and the PhD thesis that relied upon it were too important to her, and she’d feared that if he learnt she’d chan
ged her plans and intended to travel alone, he wouldn’t have approved the funding for her trip. She needed first-hand information from leaders of the Luo community, otherwise her thesis would simply comprise a desk study and would do nothing to convince a leading research organisation that she had the stuff required for a position in field anthropology—her great obsession since childhood.
An African man occupied the seat beside her, reading a magazine under the beam of his personal reading light. His rather large wife sat in the aisle seat. Charlotte felt a familiar claustrophobia rising. What if there were an emergency and all passengers were told to vacate the plane immediately?
A ding sounded and a flight attendant began to demonstrate the safety drill. Charlotte dwelt on every word. The method of inflating the life vest, the implausible whistle. She wished she could check for the row of little lights that would guide her to the nearest exit, but her neighbour and his oversized wife blocked her view.
Her palms began to sweat. Oh, gross! she thought. She fumbled for a tissue, trying to calm herself as she calculated how long it would take to reach her nearest escape exit.
The cabin hummed with air-conditioning sounds and the whir of invisible equipment. Somewhere behind her a baby howled.
The British Airway’s jumbo lurched forward, rumbled, and again came to a halt, this time with a faint screech that sounded like bad brakes. The thought sent a flutter through her midriff. She tried to dismiss her fear and looked out the window again. The jumbo she didn’t recognise roared down the tarmac, leaving a heat mirage in its wake that caused the distant terminal buildings to shimmer.
Her plane lurched forward again, creaking as it wheeled towards the main runway, pitching her gently onto the black man’s shoulder.
‘Sorry,’ she said.
He nodded and smiled.
The four jet engines screamed, but the plane continued to amble along. Beneath her feet she could feel vibrations, slow at first, then increasing in periodicity. It felt like a galloping horse—or, she thought with some alarm, a flat tyre! The plane gathered speed and the sound level rose, but it appeared to Charlotte they were travelling no faster than a suburban bus. She closed her eyes and, after an interminable period, the rumbling ceased, the engines whined rather than screamed, and, after a final bump as the landing gear was stowed, the cabin became relatively quiet.
Charlotte took a long breath and relaxed, opening her eyes. The plane had levelled out and below them the French shoreline came into view. She leant back, suddenly feeling very tired from the expended emotional energy.
Even the check-in and departure process had been emotional. She had expected her mother and father to be there, but she hadn’t expected to see Bradley. He hadn’t changed one iota: hair immaculately in place, well-dressed, smiling as if they had been separated for only a week rather than three months.
Had she missed him during those three months? She wasn’t sure. Their relationship had fallen into a pattern, one of friendship more than anything else. Their love-making—when it happened at all—had become perfunctory and predictable.
‘So you’re actually leaving,’ he’d said.
She wasn’t sure if he’d meant leaving their relationship or leaving the country. ‘I am,’ she’d replied. It was the correct answer to both possibilities.
‘Going to Kenya. Alone. You surprise me, Charlotte.’
‘There are a number of things about me that would surprise you, Bradley. Unfortunately, you’ve never tried to discover them.’
He’d given her his usual smile, partly condescending, partly amused, and then stood with her parents to wave her off. He was so unaware of her passions, her fears, so oblivious to her true personality, that it made her feel sad for him. Bradley the corporate lawyer, the indifferent lover, had no idea what had gone wrong with their relationship.
Inside the departure lounge, out of sight of Bradley and her family, she’d wept, not knowing why.
Now, looking out the window, her sadness was replaced by a flutter of excitement. Below and to the left of the plane, the Mediterranean glistened like mercury on a platter. In spite of her apprehensions, she couldn’t wait to see Kenya for the first time. Ahead, the rugged Atlas Mountains were visible—the gateway to an adventure that made her spine tingle with anticipation.
An elderly man with closely cut speckled black and grey hair came smiling from his office to introduce himself to Charlotte. ‘I’m Paul Gilanga,’ he said.
‘Dr Gilanga,’ she replied, taking his hand. ‘Charlotte Manning. Pleased to meet you.’
She meant it. She and the director of the Institute of Primate Research had only been in contact by email so far, but even through that most impersonal of media she had felt his warmth. In person, he confirmed it.
‘Please, come in,’ he extended a hand towards his office, ‘I have the kettle on. It’s time for tea, don’t you think?’
His office was cluttered with books, stacks of papers and magazines. On top of a four-drawer filing cabinet was a skull—a primate of some kind. He cleared a pile of papers from a chair and invited her to sit.
‘Tea or coffee?’ he asked.
‘Black tea, please.’
‘And how is my good friend Professor Hornsby?’ he said as he fussed with the crockery.
She brought him up to date with her tutor’s activities and news of the department in Oxford where Gilanga had studied. He and Professor Hornsby had been friends ever since, and now Dr Gilanga was going to manage Charlotte’s bursary, which was funded by Professor Hornsby’s department.
‘How is your accommodation situation, my dear?’ Dr Gilanga asked her when she had finished her update.
‘Very comfortable, thank you.’
He handed her a cup of tea. ‘Excellent! Now, before we get into discussing your work, this is your first visit to our country. What are you planning to do about seeing Kenya?’
‘I…I hadn’t given it much thought. I suppose I’ll be seeing some of it on my field trips.’
‘Undoubtedly. But that’s not the best part. You and Mr Wainscote must spend some time in our national parks. There’s so much more to Kenya than the villages, towns and cities. Go to any one of our wildlife reserves and you’ll see the real Africa. Amboseli is quite close. Then there are places like the Masai Mara. Superb! You may even like to travel a little further into Tanzania. The Serengeti is simply magnificent.’
This was Charlotte’s chance to tell Dr Gilanga that she and Bradley were not travelling together, as had been the original plan, but she was embarrassed about the lie she’d told Professor Hornsby. Now she had to keep quiet and hope that the truth didn’t emerge.
‘If you do want to go to the Serengeti,’ Dr Gilanga went on, ‘I will call my son-in-law, who is the head game warden there. He will show you around.’
‘Thank you, Dr Gilanga, that’s very kind of you.’
‘And now, about your immediate tasks.’
Dr Gilanga had already sent her a list of resources, which they discussed. They agreed that the National Archives should be her first priority for contemporary history.
‘Here are some Luo people I’ve arranged for you to meet,’ he said, passing a typed sheet to her. ‘They will be able to give you a good introduction to Luo oral literature—a very important part of your understanding of the culture, I’m sure.’
Charlotte ran her eye down the list. They were all Nairobi-based academics and businessmen. She asked if he also thought she should meet some more typical Luos, out in the Luo homeland around Kisumu.
Dr Gilanga adjusted his spectacles before replying. ‘Hmm,’ he said. ‘Ordinarily, I’d agree. But travel can be so dangerous for foreigners.’ He frowned in concern. ‘I suggest we keep your interviews more structured, my dear. The people I have listed there are known to me personally. They’re all very well acquainted with Luo culture and history. Let’s keep it on the safe side, shall we?’
Charlotte thanked him and, shortly after, bade him goodbye, agreeing to me
et again soon to plan the next phase of her study.
In the taxi on her way back to the hotel, she looked down the list of names again. In consideration of Dr Gilanga’s efforts to help her, she would speak to these people, but she hadn’t come all the way to Kenya to work in the constrained atmosphere of a cultural laboratory. She’d find a way to speak to the average Luo too.
Kwazi loaded his wheelchair with newspapers while Joshua sat on a nearby stack of them, reading. Beyond the lights of the distributor’s storeroom, the compound was quite dark, but in the east there was a hint of pink. Kwazi knew they needed to hurry if they were to make Kenyatta Avenue by dawn.
‘Let’s go,’ he said brusquely.
‘We must register to vote, Kwazi,’ Joshua said, his head buried in the newspaper.
‘Why?’
‘It says only registered voters can vote in the elections.’
‘So what?’
‘So what! So we can vote for Raila, of course.’
‘Who says I am voting for Raila? Or anyone else?’
Joshua looked up from the page. ‘You are joking.’
Kwazi busied himself with the newspapers, making them into a tidier stack on the seat of his wheelchair. ‘Maybe I am, maybe I’m not,’ he said.
He was annoyed with Joshua for not helping him load the chair, and was in no mood for one of his election rants. Since Joshua had become involved with Koske and his campaign to promote Raila Odinga for president, he’d seen little of his younger friend. When they did get together, Joshua was a bore, bragging about how he and his Siafu friends would harass Kikuyu stall-owners, painting slogans on their duka walls and threatening anyone who dared to protest.
Joshua scoffed. ‘Of course you are. You’re a Kisii. You couldn’t vote for a Kikuyu.’
‘Who says I’m a Kisii?’
‘You do!’
It suited Kwazi to be contrary at that moment. ‘Well, what difference does it make if I’m Kisii or Kikuyu or Luhya or what? I care nothing about the elections. Now let’s go—it’s getting light.’