Reunion in Barsaloi Read online

  My eyes take all this in even as I’m walking towards him, and at the same time I hear his slightly hoarse, soft, laughing voice call out to me: ‘Hey, you are looking big, very big, like an old Mama.’ With a welcome like that, all my shy embarrassment evaporates and I give as good back: ‘And you look like an old man!’

  And then I’m right up close to him, looking into his eyes, when everything happens of its own accord. We throw our arms around one another, and hold each other tight. Neither of us cares that the locals don’t do things like that. We hadn’t planned it; all of a sudden it just seems the right thing to do. After a few seconds I let go of Lketinga and look him in the face. We run our eyes over one another. He looks much better than he did six years ago when Albert met him in Maralal to give him a copy of The White Masai. The picture he brought back with him had shocked me. Today, however, I can see in his face much of his old good looks. He still has his magnificent profile, fine features, not too big a nose and full, attractive lips. When he smiles his white teeth – with the gap in the middle – sparkle. His cheek bones stand out more strongly than ever, which creates the slight suggestion that his cheeks have sunken somewhat. There are a few wrinkles now on his high forehead but his crinkly hair is as almost as black as ever. In his ear lobes – stretched long, Samburu-style – are little silver metal rings.

  As we’re talking relaxedly to one another he suddenly grabs my right arm with its silver bangle holds it up and asks me in some confusion: ‘What is this? Why are you not still wearing the bangle I gave you at our wedding? What sort of a bracelet is this and what does it mean?’ A bit taken aback, I answer him slightly embarrassedly but with a laugh: ‘You said yourself I’d got fatter. I had to have our bracelet cut off because it had got too tight for my arm.’ But he doesn’t understand and stands there shaking his head.

  It’s been an emotional few minutes and I realize tears are welling up in my eyes. Oh God, not now! I turn my face away from Lketinga to hide my emotion, but he grabs my arm again: ‘Don’t cry! Why are you crying? That’s no good!’ I take a deep breath, bite my lips and try to get a grip on myself. I can’t collapse in floods of tears in front of all these people. Grown women don’t cry here. To change the subject I ask after Mama. Lketinga nods and says: ‘Okay, okay, I’ll take you to Mama later. Pole, pole – slowly, slowly.’

  It’s only now that I notice Klaus, who’s been filming everything all along. Albert comes across slowly and Lketinga greets him with a handshake and friendly smile. You can see how proud he is to have all these visitors. As ever he carries himself graciously, calmly and without rush. The only one who’s in a dither is me. Even so, I’m amazed how simply and naturally I’m getting on with Lketinga, even playfully. It’s as if all those years have rolled away. We’ve straight away gone back to using ‘our’ special language, a blend of simplistic English mixed with Masai words. Right from the start we’ve been teasing one another: ‘Why have you dyed your hair red like a warrior?’ he says. ‘You really are an old Mama.’ And he laughs and shakes his head.

  Then all of a sudden his eyes go dark and I notice that threatening furrow between his eyebrows that always presaged something unpleasant. In a serious voice he asks: ‘Where is my child? Why has my child not come with you?’ My heart skips a beat and then starts pounding. I look him straight in the eyes and tell him Napirai has a lot of schoolwork to do at the moment. Later, when she’s got all of that behind her, she’ll almost certainly come to Barsaloi. He’s watching me closely but then his face relaxes and he says: ‘Okay, it’s okay. I wait for my child. I really hope that she will come.’

  Looking over towards a long building on one side, I notice Lketinga’s older brother Papa Saguna sitting in the shade with the other men watching us. Glad to see him, I wave him over and he gets up and comes across. He is effectively head of the family as their father is dead, and as the eldest his word is usually taken as law. He speaks only Maa, which makes it difficult for me to communicate with him. But I’m relieved to see him smiling. In the old days I was never sure whether or not he liked me. In some ways he always seemed the wildest of the family to me. Whenever he spoke in his rough, coarse voice it always sounded as if he was looking for an argument. He came with us on our wedding trip to Mombasa to act as a witness and I will never forget his childlike amazement at life in the city. Here in the bush he’s the toughest member of the family, but he was terrified by the sight of the ocean and the half-naked tourists in Mombasa. I’m really pleased he’s here. Later on James tells me that despite having had a fever he walked for four hours from his village to be here when I arrived.

  Lketinga leads us off to a well-kept corral, and once again I can’t help being fascinated at the way this man moves. We walk towards a long, thin wooden house with a tin roof, which I discover to be the home of James and his family. From all around I hear people call: ‘Supa, Mama Napirai. Serian a ge? – Hello, Mama Napirai, how are you?’

  We pass through the six-foot high thorn thicket that starts just outside the house and surrounds the whole family area like a fence, protecting them from wild animals. During the day they leave a narrow opening in it, which is closed up at night when they’ve brought the animals in.

  Every few feet I have to shake hands and smile into different faces. Most of them are women. They all give me beaming smiles and apart from greeting me with the usual ‘Supa’, ask if I remember them. I recognize a few straight away but there are others whom I can hardly recall at first. One old woman with only a couple of teeth left in her mouth comes up with a big smile and spits in my hands, as a way of giving me her blessing. She is the mother of a girl I visited in her hut just after she’d undergone so-called female circumcision. She was a neighbour of ours who was married at the age of twelve and, according to Samburu tradition, had to undergo this horrific ritual on the morning of her marriage. I want to ask the old woman how her daughter is because I remember her really well as a happy, laughing child, but I can’t because the oldest people here understand only Maa and, apart from a few set phrases, I don’t speak any. All of a sudden I feel really useless; there’s so much I want to say and so little I can. It will be the same with Mama.

  James urges me on. Within the corral there are three larger manyattas for living in and two little ones where the kid goats are kept during the day when their mothers are taken out to pasture. The newborns, however, are kept in the big manyattas with the humans. Manyatta walls are made of thin planks of wood placed tightly together and plastered with dried cow dung. The roof is made of goatskins, hand-woven sisal matting, old sacks and pieces of cardboard, all somehow interleaved to provide protection from the rain. Outside the door there’s usually a rolled-up cowhide, a pile of firewood and oval willow wickerwork baskets which, if they need to up sticks and move, can be strapped on the back of a donkey and used to carry everything. Everything they have has to fit in there.

  A few chickens are pecking in the red-brown sandy earth around the manyattas. I’m astonished to see all these birds because the Samburu have absolutely no tradition of keeping poultry. When I arrived with a chicken for the first time it caused a great stir. Nobody had a clue what to do with something that to them was a useless animal. They ate neither eggs nor chicken meat and the only thing Mama could see was the problem of preventing the wild animals getting it. She was also worried that it would attract birds of prey that would be a threat to the baby goats. And yet now there were at least ten chickens running around. When I expressed my astonishment to James, he grins and says: ‘You showed us what could be done with these animals. My wife cooks with eggs every now and then and what we don’t eat we sell in our little shop to the nuns from the Mission.’ There’s another piece of news: in Father Giuliani’s day there were no nuns at the Mission.

  Mama

  James disturbs my train of thought to say: ‘I’ll show you around later. Right now let’s go and say hello to Mama. This is her hut.’ He’s pointing to a hut about the height of an average person. I’m a
bout to bend down and crawl through the little opening when James stops me and whispers: ‘No, no, let Mama come out or else you won’t be able to say hello properly with all that smoke in the little hut. And it’s an excuse to get Mama to come out for once.’

  He says a few words in Maa at the door and I hear her rattling around inside, bending down to crawl out of the manyatta. And then suddenly after fourteen years, she’s standing there in front of me again. To my complete astonishment I realize that in all this time she’s hardly changed at all. I had imagined her much older and weaker. Instead the Mama standing in front of me is a dignified and still imposing woman. We each reach out a hand and as they meet we look each other in the eyes silently, trying to say as much as we can without speaking.

  My God, what an aura this woman projects! I do my best to read her emotions in her faintly clouded eyes. It’s not the done thing in Samburu culture to throw your arms around each other and give vent to emotional outpourings. People try to suppress their strongest feelings and look as serious and unmoved as possible. We remain there clutching each other’s hands for what seems like an eternity.

  I’d love so much to be able to tell her how important it is to me to see her again, that for all these years I have lived in the hope of being able to come face to face with her again, that she has been in all my prayers, that she has been one of the most important figures in my emotional life. Instead, all I can do is stand there mute and do my best to convey what I feel with my eyes and my heart.

  Suddenly she reaches out her right hand and touches my face, squeezes my chin tenderly and, smiling happily, whispers: ‘Corinne, Corinne, Corinne!’ Now the taboo has gone and I put my arms around her and can’t stop myself planting a kiss on her grey head. At this moment I’m overwhelmed with happiness that I managed to find the courage to come back, and I get the impression that for her too it’s a very emotional experience.

  For a fleeting second my thoughts flash back to the first time we met, when I had finally found Lketinga after a long and adventurous search and the two of us were sitting on a cowhide in the manyatta talking merrily when the crouched form of Mama had appeared in her hut, sat down opposite us and stared at me in what seemed like stony disapproving silence, with the smoke from the fire rising between us. Just like today we probed one another with our eyes and tried to read the other’s soul in her face. Back then she broke the ice by reaching out a hand to take mine, just as today she reached out to stroke my face.

  Now all the pent-up tension and emotion of the two meetings subside and I simply start talking to hold back the tears. I compliment her on her appearance. She still has a full face with scarcely a wrinkle. At most she has simply become a little bit smaller and thinner. Her hair is cropped close and has gone grey, which only has the effect of making her eyebrows look darker. Many Samburu have problems with their eyes because of the open fire in their manyattas and the smoke from them. She is wearing several layers of coloured bead necklaces around her neck and earrings of glass beads and brass. On her arms and feet I recognize the narrow silver bands she always wore, now digging deep into her flesh. They are like the jewellery Lketinga gave me at our wedding and I wore them until I began to get painful cuts on my ankles that wouldn’t heal for months at a time. The scars are still there.

  Mama’s clothing is an old blue kanga thrown over her shoulders and a brown skirt stained in several places. I’m glad I have three new skirts for her in my luggage. James might have bought her a skirt from time to time from the money we sent him. But here they will wear a piece of clothing until it falls apart and the old people at least are of the opinion that you can only wear one at a time.

  I move aside to let Albert pay his respects to Mama too. She remembers his last visit and is pleased to see him. Klaus, on the other hand, she regards with some suspicion. She doesn’t know him and with his camera he looks potentially dangerous to her. James and Lketinga act as interpreters so we can have a conversation. I fetch the new blanket and hand it to her but instead of being pleased, a frown passes over her face. Somewhat disconcerted, I wonder what it is she doesn’t like. Only later do I discover that she doesn’t approve of other people seeing what presents she gets, because it can cause envy and suchlike problems.

  To put her in a better mood I rummage in my rucksack and produce the little album of photos of Napirai that I’ve put together for Lketinga and her. I’ve arranged them with the most recent photos at the front, so that the further back it goes, the younger Napirai gets. Immediately Mama and Lketinga sit down together and start looking at the pictures. Her father is amazed to see how big his daughter is and laughs: ‘She’s nearly as tall as I am.’ Mama asks of every photo if it’s still Napirai. Somehow all the different scenes, which I deliberately picked out, confuse her. But as we get to the younger photos of Napirai, she perks up more. By now there are nearly a dozen heads gathered around the little album. Everybody wants to see Napirai. Even Papa Saguna, Lketinga’s big brother, is interested and now and then breaks out in a laugh displaying his faultless white teeth. When we get to the picture in which Napirai is photographed next to some of the family goats, quite a discussion breaks out. Then when we reach the very last pictures Mama reaches out her hand to stroke the photographs and says, ‘Yes, now I recognize the little girl, my little Napirai,’ and smiles happily at me. When we get to the final picture, she claps the album closed, shoves it under her kanga and thanks me with the words: ‘Asche oleng’.

  One Big Family

  Now it’s James’s turn to invite us into his home to introduce us to his family. His wife has made chai, the traditional very sweet tea with goat’s milk. It’s just twenty yards from Mama’s manyata to his modest little house. A few children playing outside fall in behind us. At the doorway a pretty, plump young woman appears and he introduces her as his wife, Mama Saruni. Saruni, a hyperactive three-year-old, is their eldest daughter.

  Married people amongst the Samburu are never referred to by their first names. If anyone does so by mistake they have to hand over a goat by way of recompense. First names are considered very personal. While a couple are still without children they call themselves ‘mparatut’ – wife – and ‘lepayian’ – husband. But as soon as a child is born everybody refers to them as Mama or Papa and then the name of the child. It’s only considered acceptable to use someone’s name when they aren’t physically present. Strangers are addressed by their family name and the names of their father and mother.

  All these complicated customs with names cause me some embarrassment as to what I should call Lketinga. In the old days I always called him ‘darling’ which would be more than a little out of place now. But nor do I want to call him ‘lepayian’ – husband – as I’ve divorced him and I don’t want to give him false expectations. ‘Papa Napirai’ is a possibility but I can’t bring myself to say it. It’s going to be hard to start a conversation with him from two or three yards’ distance. One way or another we’re going to have to either go over to one another, catch each other’s eye or prod one another on the arm to get their attention to speak to them.

  My first impression of James’s wife is rather good. Superficially I wouldn’t have taken her for a Samburu. Like James she’s been to school, and instead of traditional tribal jewellery she’s wearing a fashionable fine necklace of black and gold beads. Also she hasn’t shaved her head as most women here do but has covered it with a rather original and fashionably arranged headscarf. She’s dressed in modern style with a knitted twin-set and a dark red skirt. It’s as if James and she live in a different century to the rest of the family. She’s carrying her youngest baby on one arm and shakes hands with the other. But despite her modern appearance she seems shy, speaking softly and only meeting our eyes briefly.

  We go in to the living room, which is spacious and furnished with simple wooden chairs, tables and stools. The wall decoration, however, is to say the least, eclectic. Next to two wedding photos in which James is dressed as a traditional warrior is a pictu
re of him in a dark suit and tie. What a contrast! A picture of some Kenyan ministers, a giant poster of the Brazilian football team and a teddy bear hanging on a nail next to a Christian cross create a collage of contrasts that makes me smile to myself. Seen from a central European point of view it all seems rather spartan and yet slightly comic, yet when I recall our life in the manyatta it has to be seen as baronial.

  I sit down on one of the stools with Lketinga on the other side of the table. He crosses his long legs and wraps one of his hands around the thin stick he never goes anywhere without. It is sort of a substitute spear. His whole bearing is at once dignified and yet somehow feminine. I’m delighted to see him in such good shape because, after all, he’s still the father of my daughter and I want her to be proud of him. He watches me constantly.

  I let my eyes wander around the room while James’s wife fetches enamel teacups and Thermos flasks from the kitchen. I can hardly believe my eyes. Thermos flasks! That’s how she could keep the tea she’d made in advance hot. Here’s one example where plastic has actually been a good thing. Progress indeed. Firewood is hard to come by and now when they’ve got a fire burning they can make tea for the whole day without wasting more wood.

  While I’m talking to Lketinga, James carries on a conversation with Albert, Klaus and our bemused drivers. Lketinga’s older brother is crouched down by the wall next to him, listening to this unaccustomed torrent of English. I ask Lketinga to translate for me that I would like to see Saguna again to give her my present in person. Papa Saguna says his daughter is out with the cows every day but tomorrow he’ll go back and take her place so she can come here the day after.