The White Masai Read online

  Lketinga falls asleep again and has weird dreams about lions attacking him. He throws his arms about wildly, and the two warriors have to hold him down. It breaks my heart to look at him. What has happened to my brave, good-humoured Masai? I can’t stop myself crying, which annoys Priscilla: ‘That’s no good. You only cry when someone dies.’

  It’s the middle of the afternoon before Lketinga comes to and stares at me, befuddled. I smile happily at him and say: ‘Hello, darling, you remember me?’ ‘Why not, Corinne?’ he answers weakly then looks over at Priscilla and asks what’s going on. They talk to one another, and he shakes his head and can hardly believe his ears. I stay with him while the others all go off to work. He’s hungry and has a stomach ache. When I ask if I should get some meat he says: ‘Oh yes, it’s okay.’ I hurry to the meat-stand and back. Lketinga’s still in bed, asleep again. An hour later, when the food is ready, I try to wake him. He opens his eyes and stares at me in confusion again. Who am I, what do I want with him? ‘I’m Corinne, your girlfriend,’ I reply. But he keeps asking me who I am. I don’t know what to do, and Priscilla hasn’t returned from selling her kangas on the beach. I tell him he should eat something, but he laughs scornfully. He’s not going to touch any of this so-called ‘food’; I’m obviously trying to poison him.

  Now I can no longer hold back the tears. He looks at me and asks who’s died. To keep myself in check, I pray aloud. At last Priscilla comes back, and I bring her in straight away. She tries to talk to him too but doesn’t get any further. After a while she says: ‘He’s crazy!’ A lot of the morans, the warriors who come along the coast get Mombasa-madness, she says, and his is a bad case: maybe someone made him crazy. ‘What, how and who?’ I stammer, adding that I don’t believe in superstitious things. But Priscilla tells me that I’ve a lot to learn in Africa. ‘We have to help him,’ I implore her. ‘Okay!’ she says, she’ll send someone up to the north bank to get help. That’s the big centre for the coastal Masai, and their chief is acknowledged as the leader of all the warriors. He will have to decide what is to be done.

  Around nine o’clock in the evening two warriors from the north bank come to see us. Although they aren’t very pleasant towards me, I’m pleased that something’s being done. They talk to Lketinga and massage his forehead with a pungent flower. When they talk to him he gives completely normal answers. I can hardly believe it. Before he was so confused, and now he’s talking calmly. I can’t understand a word and feel helpless and redundant. So to have something to do I make chai for everyone.

  There is such trust between the three men that they are barely aware of my presence. Nonetheless they accept the tea gladly and I ask what the matter is. One of them speaks some English and tells me Lketinga is not well: he is sick in the head. He needs rest and space, which is why the three of them are going to go off and sleep out in the bush. Tomorrow they will take him to the north bank to see to things. ‘But why can’t he sleep here with me?’ I ask, flustered and unwilling to believe anybody anymore, even though he’s obviously feeling better. No, they say, my proximity now would be bad for his blood. Even Lketinga apparently agrees that, as he’s never been ill like this before, it must be to do with me. I’m shocked, but I’ve no choice other than to let him go with them.

  The next morning they do indeed come back and have tea. Lketinga seems well, almost his old self, but the other two insist that he must come with them to the north bank. He laughs and agrees: ‘Now I’m okay!’ When I mention that tonight I have to go to Nairobi to get my visa extension he says ‘No problem. We’ll go to the north bank and then on together to Nairobi.’

  When we get to the north bank there’s a lot of chattering and gossiping before we’re brought to the ‘Chief’s’ hut. He’s not as old as I had anticipated and greets us warmly, although he can’t see us because he’s blind. He talks patiently with Lketinga. I sit there and watch, not understanding a word. In any case I wouldn’t dare to interrupt the conversation. Time is getting short, however, and although I’m getting the night bus I need to get the ticket about three or four hours earlier if I want to get a place.

  After an hour, the chief tells me I have to go without Lketinga because Nairobi would not be good for his condition and his sensitive disposition. They will look after him and I should come back as soon as possible. I agree because I would be completely useless if the same thing were to happen again in Nairobi. So I promise Lketinga that I’ll catch the bus back tomorrow night as long as everything goes okay. He looks very sad as I climb on board the bus, holding my hand and asking me if I really will come back. I reassure him and tell him not to worry, I’ll be back and we’ll see what to do then. If he is still not well, we’d find a doctor. He promises me he’ll wait and do everything possible to avoid a reoccurrence. The matatu leaves, and my heart sinks. As long as everything goes okay!

  In Mombasa I get my ticket, but now have to wait five hours before the bus goes. Eight hours after that I arrive in Nairobi in the early morning. Once again I have to wait in the bus until just before seven, before getting out. I have a cup of tea and take a taxi to the Nyayo Building, the only way I know to find it. When I arrive the place is in chaos. Whites and blacks alike are pushing and shoving at the various windows. I suffer through all the forms that I have to fill in, all in English of course. Then I hand them all in and wait. Three whole hours pass before my name is called. I hope fervently that I get the necessary stamp. The woman at the window looks me up and down and asks why I want to stay another three months. As relaxed as I can, I answer: ‘Because I’ve seen nothing like enough of this magnificent country and I’ve got enough money to stay another three months.’ She opens my passport, flicks through it and then thumps down a huge stamp on the relevant page. I’ve got my visa: one step further! I pay the fee happily and leave the dreadful building. Right now I cannot imagine that I will eventually see so much of this building that I will hate it with a vengeance.

  With a ticket for that night’s bus securely in my pocket I head off for something to eat. It’s still early afternoon, and I wander around Nairobi to stop myself falling asleep. I haven’t slept properly in more than thirty hours. In order not to get lost I restrict my wanderings to two streets. By seven o’clock it’s dark, and as the shops close the nightlife slowly begins in the bars. The figures on the streets become more sinister with every passing minute, and I decide not to linger there any longer. A bar is out of the question so I opt to pass the next two hours in a nearby McDonald’s.

  Eventually I’m on the bus back to Mombasa. The driver is chewing miraa. He drives like a madman but gets us back in record time, arriving at just four in the morning. Once again I have to wait for the first matatu to the north bank. I can’t wait to see how Lketinga is.

  Just before seven I’m already back in the Masai village. Everyone’s still asleep, and the teahouse isn’t open yet, so I wait outside it, as I don’t know which hut Lketinga is staying in. Around seven-thirty the teahouse owner arrives and opens up. I go in, sit down and wait for the day’s first cup of chai. He brings it to me then disappears back into the kitchen. Soon after a few warriors come in and sit down at other tables. The atmosphere is very quiet, suppressed, but I put that down to the fact that it’s still early morning.

  After half an hour I can no longer contain myself and ask the owner if he knows where Lketinga is. He shakes his head and disappears again. But after another half hour he sits down at my table and tells me I should go back to the south bank and not wait around any longer. I stare at him in astonishment and ask: ‘Why?’ ‘He’s not here anymore,’ the man says. ‘He went home last night.’ My heart misses a beat. ‘Home to the south bank?’ I ask naively. ‘No, home to Samburu-Maralal.’

  ‘No, that’s not true!’ I shout, horrified. ‘He’s here. Tell me where!’ Two others come across from their table and try to calm me down. I beat back their hands, rage and shout at them in German: ‘You pack of lying pigs, you planned all this!’ Tears of anger run down my face,
but I couldn’t care less.

  I’m so furious that I’m ready to lay into any of them. They put him on the bus knowing that I’d be getting the very same bus in the opposite direction. We must have passed in the night. I can’t believe it. How mean could they get! As if these eight hours were all that mattered! More spectators have gathered, but I charge out of the place to get away from them. As far as I’m concerned they’re all the same. Sad and bitter, I set off back to the south bank.

  ‘You Come To My Home’

  I no longer know what to do. I’ve got my visa, but Lketinga’s gone. Priscilla and two warriors are sitting in her hut. I tell her what happened, and she translates for the others. Eventually Priscilla tells me that, although Lketinga is really nice, it’s better that I forget him. Either he really is sick or the others threatened him with something that made him go back to his mother because he couldn’t stay in Mombasa. He needed a medicine man. I couldn’t help him and in any case it would be dangerous for a white to set herself up against all the others.

  I’m completely at a loss and don’t know what or whom to believe anymore. Only my instinct tells me that Lketinga was sent off against his will before my return. That same evening the first warriors turn up to start paying court again. When the second one comes out with it and says I need him for a boyfriend because Lketinga was a ‘crazy’ and won’t be back their cheek angers me, and I throw them all out. When I tell Priscilla she just laughs and says that’s how it goes, I shouldn’t be so uptight. She obviously hasn’t grasped that I don’t want just anybody and only gave up my whole life back in Switzerland for Lketinga.

  The next day I write a letter to his brother James in Maralal. Maybe he’ll know more. But it’ll be two weeks before I get an answer. Two long weeks without knowing what’s going on. I’ll go mad. On the fourth day I can’t take it any longer. In all secrecy I plan to pack up and undertake the long route to Maralal alone. Then I’d see what I’d do, but I wasn’t giving up. I’d show them. I don’t tell even Priscilla what I’m planning because I no longer trust anybody. When she goes off to the beach to sell her kangas, I pack my bag and set off for Mombasa.

  Once again I put another eight hundred miles behind me before I’m back in Maralal. I take the same boarding-house room as last time, for four francs, though the landlady is astonished to see me again. I lie down on the cot in the spartanly furnished little room and think: what now? Tomorrow I will go and see Lketinga’s brother.

  First I have to persuade the headmaster to fetch James for me. I tell James everything that happened and he says that if he’s allowed he’ll take me to his mother. After a lot of persuasion the headmaster agrees, as long as I can find a car to take James and me to Barsaloi. Pleased at having got so far with my modest English, I ask around Maralal for someone who has a car. The few who do are almost all Somalis, but when I tell them where I want to go they just laugh at me or demand astronomical prices.

  On the second day I bump into my saviour from the time before, Tom, who went and found Lketinga. He too asks me where Lketinga is. When I explain he understands, with some astonishment, and says he’ll try to find a car, because my skin colour just puts the price up fivefold. And indeed, by lunchtime we’re both sitting in a Land Rover he has hired, including its driver, for five hundred Swiss francs. I let James stay behind, as Tom has agreed to come.

  The Land Rover takes us out of Maralal along a desolate red clay road. After a while it leads into thick forest of giant trees covered in tropical vines. We can’t see more than six or seven feet into the trees, and soon even our trail is only recognizable from car tracks. Everything else is overgrown. Sitting in the back of the Land Rover, I can hardly see anything. Only our shifting angle of incline hints that the path is steep and winding, When we emerge from the forest an hour later we’re faced with enormous lumps of rock. There’s no way to pass! Until my two companions get out and manage to move a couple of them! Then we set off again, slowly, over the debris and scree in our way. Now I appreciate the price I paid, and from what I feel rather than see, I’d be ready to pay more. It seems miraculous that the vehicle can get over it at all in one piece, but the driver is a genius and we do it.

  Now we pass occasional manyattas and see children with herds of goats or cattle. I’m getting excited. When will we be there? Is it somewhere out here where my darling lives? Or has the whole exercise been in vain? Is there still any hope? I say my prayers quietly. My saviour, however, is calm. Eventually we cross a wide riverbed, and a couple of bends away I spot a few blockhouses and above them, on a height, a huge building that rises out of the landscape like an oasis, green and welcoming. ‘Where are we?’ I ask my companions. ‘This is Barsaloi town, and up there is the new Mission building. First we’ll go to the manyattas and see if Lketinga is at his mother’s,’ he tells me. We drive past the Mission, and I’m amazed by the amount of greenery because it’s so dry, like a steppe or semi-desert.

  After three hundred yards we turn off the road and rattle over the steppe. Two minutes later the car stops, Tom gets out and tells me to come with him. He tells the driver to wait. A few adults and several children are sitting under a big, flat-topped tree. My companion goes up to them while I wait a little way back. They all glance over at me. After a long chat with an old woman, he comes back and says to me: ‘Come, Corinne, his Mama tells me, Lketinga is here.’ We walk through tall, prickly plants until we come to three very simple manyatta houses set about sixteen feet apart. There are two long spears stuck in the ground before the middle one. Tom points to it and says: ‘Here he is inside.’ I don’t dare move, so he bends down and goes in. I’m so close to him, I can’t see past his back, but I hear Tom speak and then Lketinga’s voice. That’s enough for me, I squeeze in past him. The happy, surprised, almost incredulous look on Lketinga’s face when he sees me will remain with me all my life. Lying on a cowhide in a little room behind the fire in the smoky half-darkness, he suddenly erupts with laughter. Tom makes way for me as well as he can, and I crawl into Lketinga’s outstretched arms. We hold each other tight for ages, and he says: ‘I know always, if you love me, you come to my home.’

  Seeing each other again like this, this reunion is better than anything else so far. At this very moment I know that I will stay here even if we have nothing but each other. Lketinga speaks to me from his heart and says: ‘Now you are my wife, you stay with me like a Samburu-wife.’ I’m overjoyed.

  My travelling companion looks at me sceptically and asks if he should really go back to Maralal in the Land Rover alone. He says I’d find it hard here, there’s not much to eat and I’d have to sleep on the ground. And there’s no way I’d make it back to Maralal on foot. I couldn’t care less, and I tell him: ‘Wherever Lketinga lives, I can live too!’

  For a second it goes dark in the hut. Lketinga’s mother is pushing through the little entranceway. She sits down opposite the fire and looks at me gravely for a long time. I’m aware that this is a decisive moment, so I say nothing. We sit there, holding hands, our faces glowing. If we could radiate light the hut would be bright as day.

  Lketinga says only a couple of words to his mother, and I can make out ‘mzungu’ or ‘Mombasa’. His mother looks at me unblinkingly. She is very black. There is a pretty shape to her shaven head, and she wears coloured pearls for earrings and around her neck. She is plumpish with two long, enormous naked breasts and a dirty skirt covering her legs.

  Then all of a sudden she reaches out her hand and says: ‘Jambo’. Then she breaks into a torrent of speech. I look at Lketinga. ‘Mother has given her blessing. We can stay with her in the hut.’ Then Tom takes his leave, and I go to fetch my bag from the Land Rover. When I come back there is a whole crowd of people around the manyatta.

  Towards evening I hear a tinkling of bells. We go out, and I see a huge herd of goats. Most just pass by, but some are driven into our wicker corral. There are about thirty in the pen, which is reinforced with thorny branches. Then the mother takes a calabash gourd a
nd goes to milk the goats. There is just enough milk for the chai, I discover later. The herds are looked after by an eight-year old boy. He sits down outside the manyatta and looks at me apprehensively as he swallows a couple of cups of water thirstily. He is the son of Lketinga’s older brother.

  An hour later it’s dark. The four of us are sitting in the little manyatta, Mama in front near the entrance with Saguna, a frightened little girl of three who is the boy’s little sister, next to her. She cuddles timidly up to her grandmother who is now her mother. When the first girl of the eldest son is old enough, Lketinga explains, she will belong to his mother to help her in her old age with gathering wood and fetching water.

  The two of us sit on the cowhide. Mama pokes around amid the lumps of flint in the ash until she gets a glow, then she blows slowly but continuously on the sparks. For a few minutes there is acrid smoke, which brings tears to my eyes. Everybody laughs. I get a fit of coughing and have to push my way out into the open air. Air is the only thing I can think of.

  Outside the hut it’s as black as pitch. But the millions of stars look so close you might pluck them from the sky. I enjoy the sensation of peace. Everywhere there’s the glow of fires in the manyattas, including ours now, and Mama is cooking chai, our evening meal. After chai, my bladder begs for attention, but Lketinga laughs and says: ‘Here no toilet, only bush. Come with me, Corinne!’ Deftly he slips out, pushes a thorn bush aside and opens a way through. These thorn bushes are the only protection against wild animals. We go some three hundred yards away from the corral, and he points with his rungu club to a bush that from now on is to be my toilet. At night I can pee closer to the manyatta, because the sand soaks everything up but never the rest, or else we’d have to offer a goat to the neighbours and move away, which would bring great shame.