The White Masai (32 page)

W
e 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.

W
hen 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 going 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.

So we get the licences without further ado. That’s the first step. My husband can now sell, but I’m not allowed to be in the shop or even to discuss a purchase with a customer. I know that this isn’t going to work and persuade my husband to come with me to Nairobi to get me a work permit and register the shop name. We decide to call it ‘Sidai’s Masai Shop’, which leads to long arguments with Lketinga. Sidai is his middle name, but he doesn’t want to use the word ‘Masai’. But now that we’ve got the licence, there’s no going back.

When we get to the competent office in Nairobi we have to wait for several hours before we’re seen. I know how important this is and try to make sure my husband understands too. If they say ‘no’, there’s no changing it. They ask us why and for what reason I need to be able to work. I take pains to tell the woman in charge that we are a family and that as my husband has never been to school I have no choice but to work. She agrees on this, but to be certain of getting a permit, apart from the licence, I need to have brought some hundred thousand Swiss francs into the country and so far I’m still twenty thousand short. I promise to have the money sent from Switzerland and to come back and leave the office with high hopes. I’m going to need money anyhow to buy in stock. We set off home exhausted.

When we get back dog-tired there are already a few warriors waiting for us making spears for sale. Edy is one of them, and we’re delighted to see him again after such a long time. While we’re talking about old times, Napirai crawls over to him happily. As it’s late and I’m tired I invite Edy to come over for tea tomorrow. After all he was the one who helped me back when I had no idea how to find Lketinga.

No sooner have the warriors gone than my husband starts berating me with allegations about me and Edy. Now he knows why I spent three months in Mombasa on my own and didn’t come looking for him sooner. I can’t believe what he’s suggesting and simply want to get away from him so I don’t have to listen to his horrible allegations. I take Napirai, put her on my back and charge off into the night.

I’m wandering aimlessly around when all of a sudden I find myself in front of the Africa Sea Lodge. I’m immediately overcome by the need to phone my mother and tell her what’s happening to our marriage. I sob down the phone, telling my surprised mother how miserable I am. It’s hard for her to advise me just like that so I ask her to see if someone from our family could come out to Kenya. I need some sensible advice and moral support and perhaps it would help Lketinga to start trusting me. We agree to talk again the next day at the same time. I feel better after our conversation and make my way back to our little home.

My husband of course is readier for a fight than ever and demands to know where I’ve been. When I tell him I’ve been talking to my mother and that someone from my family is coming out, he immediately quietens down.

The next evening I’m relieved to hear that my older brother is prepared to come out and will be here in a week with the money I need. Lketinga is curious to meet someone new from my family, and as it’s my oldest brother he’s already respectful and in a better mood. He starts making him a Masai armband with his first name embroidered in glass beads. I’m impressed by how important James and he consider this visit.

My brother Marc checks in to the Two Fishes hotel. We’re all delighted, although he can only stay a week. He asks us over to the hotel for dinner often, and it’s wonderful although I don’t dare think about his bill. Of course he sees my husband at his best; the whole week long he touches neither beer nor
miraa
and never leaves my brother’s side. When Marc comes to see us he’s amazed to see where his sister, who was once so elegant, is living. But he’s impressed by the shop and gives me a few good tips. The week passes far too quickly, and on the last evening he has a long talk with Lketinga. James translates every word. When Lketinga promises earnestly and solemnly not to plague me with his jealousy again we’re convinced that the visit has been a complete success.

Two days later James has to leave too. So we take him as far as Nairobi and go back to the Nyayo Building to see about the work permit. The atmosphere between us is good, and I’m certain everything will work out. The name has been registered; we have all our paperwork. We find ourselves back in the same office with the same woman as two and a half weeks ago, and when she sees the money everything is fine. I get my work permit, and she absolves me from the need to renew it for the next two years. During that time I have to get my husband’s name on my passport and a Kenyan identity card for my daughter. I don’t mind. The main thing is that I have a work permit for two years, something that lots of people wait years for, but despite having now brought enough hard currency into the country we have to pay two thousand Swiss francs out of it as a fee.

In Nairobi we go down to the Masai market and buy lots of stuff. Now we can start up the business properly. In Mombasa I seek out factories where I can buy jewellery, masks, T-shirts, kangas, bags and other goods at decent prices. My husband mostly comes with me and looks after Napirai, but he rarely agrees with the prices. Sophia is surprised when she comes to see the shop. After just five weeks back at the coast we’ve got everything, including the work permit. She hasn’t got anywhere yet.

I get five thousand flysheets printed up, introducing the shop and showing how to get there. They’re aimed primarily at Germans and Swiss, and most hotels allow me to leave them in the reception. In two of the biggest hotels I rent window cases to display some of our goods and of course, display one of our unusual wedding photos. Now we’re ready.

The next morning at nine a.m. we open the shop. I take an omelette and bananas along for Napirai. It’s very quiet. Only two people show up briefly in the shop. By midday it’s very hot, and there are no tourists to be seen on the street. We go off to eat in Ukunda and open up again at two p.m. Every now and then a few tourists wander along the street to the supermarket, but they don’t notice our shop.

Eventually during the afternoon a group of Swiss turn up holding some of our flysheets. I chat to them happily, and they all want to hear my story. Almost all of them buy something. I’m pleased enough with our first day, although I realize we’re going to have to do something to make ourselves more noticeable. The next day I suggest to Lketinga that he goes out and stick a flysheet in the hand of every white person he comes across. He’s the sort of person people notice. It works. The Indian next door is mystified when he finds all the tourists going past his shop to get to ours.

Today, day two, business is good. That said: it’s been hard with Napirai sometimes when she’s not asleep. I’ve laid out a little mattress for her underneath the T-shirt rail. As I’m still breastfeeding it’s inevitable, of course, that that’s what I’m doing when tourists show up. Napirai doesn’t like being interrupted and makes it clear and loud. We decide, therefore, to get a child minder in to the shop. Lketinga finds a young girl of about seventeen, the wife of one of the warriors. I like her straight away, particularly as she turns up in traditional Masai clothing and pretty jewellery. She gets on with Napirai and fits in with the shop. We bring her with us in the car each morning and leave her off at her husband’s in the evening.

By now the shop’s been open for a week, and we’re making more money every day. But that means we’ll soon need to fetch more supplies from Mombasa. That’s a problem in itself because Lketinga can’t serve on his own all day – sometimes there are up to ten people in the shop at once – and that means we’ll need another shop assistant to fill in when either he or I aren’t there. It will have to be someone from our village because in three weeks’ time my husband is off home for James’s circumcision ceremony. As a member of the family I ought to go too, and I have great
difficulty convincing him that we shouldn’t shut the shop down so soon after opening it. He only accepts that I should stay when my younger sister Sabine announces she wants to come and visit at exactly the same time. I’m thoroughly relieved by the news of her visit because wild horses wouldn’t drag me back to Barsaloi.