The White Masai (9 page)

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 and 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.

Back next to the
manyatta
the thorn bush is moved into place again, and we sit back on the cowhide. Washing here is not on because there's only enough water for the
chai
. When I ask Lketinga how we're to keep ourselves clean, he says: ‘Tomorrow, at the river, no problem!' Inside the hut it is warm now, but outside it is cold. The little girl is already sound asleep naked next to her grandmother, and the three of us attempt a conversation. People here go to bed around eight or nine p.m., and we too snuggle down as the fire is gradually fading and it's getting hard to see one another. Lketinga and I cuddle together. Although we'd both like to do more, obviously nothing can happen in the presence of his mother and in this total silence.

The first night, unused to the hard earth, I sleep badly, tossing and turning from one side to the other and listening to every little sound. Now and then a goat's bell tinkles, ringing, it seems to me, like church bells in the silence. Some animal howls in the distance. Then there's a rustling at the thorn fence – quite clearly – someone's trying to come into the corral. My heart's pounding, and I'm straining to listen. Someone's coming. I crawl flat on my stomach to the entrance and look out at two black girders – no, they're legs – and the tips of two spears. At that moment a man's voice rings out: ‘
Supa moran
!' I prod Lketinga in the side and whisper: ‘Darling, somebody is here.' He makes strange noises, more like grunts, and for a split second stares at me almost angrily. ‘Somebody is outside,' I tell him pointedly. Then there's the voice again: ‘
Moran supa
!' Then there's an exchange of words, and the legs suddenly move and disappear. ‘What's the problem?' I ask. The man, another warrior, wanted to spend the night with us, which normally wouldn't have been a problem, but because I'm here it isn't possible. He will try to find room in another
manyatta
. I should go back to sleep.

The sun rises at around six a.m., and men and animals rise with it. The goats bray loudly, wanting out from their pen. There are voices everywhere, and already Mama's place is empty. We get up an hour later
and drink
chai
. This is almost torture because the flies wake up too with the morning sun, and if I put the cup on the ground dozens immediately cluster around it. They buzz continuously around my head. Saguna seems not to notice them, even though they settle around her eyes and in the corners of her mouth. I ask Lketinga where they all come from. He points to the pile of goat dung that's built up overnight. In the course of the day the dung dries out, and there are fewer flies. That was why I hadn't found them so persistent the night before. He laughs and says wait until the cows come back, then it'll be much worse; their milk attracts thousands of flies. The mosquitoes that appear after it rains are even nicer! After
chai
, I want to go down to the river to wash at last. We head off, me armed with soap, towels and clean clothes, while all Lketinga carries is a yellow canister to fetch water for Mama's
chai
. We walk about a mile down a narrow path to the wide riverbed we crossed the day before in the Land Rover. Big, luxuriant trees border the river on both sides, but there's no sign of water. We wander along the dry riverbed until rocks appear round a bend, and here indeed a little stream emerges from the sand.

We aren't the only ones here. Next to the little stream a few girls have dug a hole in the sand and are patiently using beakers to fill their water canisters. When they see my warrior they drop their heads in embarrassment and giggle amongst themselves. Twenty yards further along a group of warriors are standing next to the stream washing each other. Their loincloths are laid out on the warm stone to dry. They fall silent at the sight of me, although they are not obviously embarrassed by their nakedness. Lketinga stops and talks to a few of them. Some of them stare at me openly, and I don't know where to look. I've never seen so many naked men who don't seem to realize they are. Their slim elegant bodies shine magnificently in the morning sun.