Walking Home

DOUBLEDAY CANADA BOOKS BY ERIC WALTERS

We All Fall Down

United We Stand

Safe As Houses

Wave

Alexandria of Africa

Tell Me Why

Beverly Hills Maasai

Shaken

End of Days

The Taming
(with Teresa Toten)

For my good friend Henry Kyatha—we walked the same route for years. Now you’ve simply gone ahead again and I’ll meet you on the other side.

This book is the fictional story of Muchoki and Jata, a brother and sister, and their long, incredible journey across Kenya. But everything in this story—the characters, the backdrop, even their walk itself—is based on real life.

At
www.ericwalterswalkinghome.com
you will find an amazing digital companion to this novel, which will fully immerse you in Muchoki and Jata’s world. Pictures, video and audio clips, maps, mini-articles, and notes from the author are told side-by-side with the story found in this book!

When you see an icon in the margin of any of the pages that follow, that means you’ll find material at
www.ericwalterswalkinghome.com
relating to a character or event or passage of text that’s being described. These are the following symbols you’ll see and here is what they mean:

And the website has tons of other additional material, too: Find out how a manuscript becomes a finished book; how a book’s cover design gets created; learn about what kind of connections you or your class can make with young people in Kenya; and discover more about the sights and sounds and traditions of this part of Africa. We’re glad you’ve joined our journey!

M
y father led the way through the dark, my mother behind him, my sister in her arms, and I was just behind them. I kept looking over my shoulder, terrified that I’d see what I could hear in the distance, that they were closing in on us. We were surrounded by people—some relatives, some neighbors, some strangers—all of us bound together in our efforts to flee. Their looks of fear and confusion mirrored the expression that I knew was on my face. Others joined in while some scattered away, melting into the darkness, all looking for a way out, an escape. At least the night offered cover, but wouldn’t the daylight offer protection? Evil was most at home in the dead of night—and evil was all around us.

My father came to a stop and he and his brothers and uncles all came together, gesturing wildly, yelling.
They were acting as afraid as I felt which only made it so much worse. There was a loud scream, followed closely by a second and a third and out of the darkness they came … there were so many of them and they all seemed to be carrying weapons and torches. We ran, trying to escape, but our way was stopped by more of them. Forced back. Each route blocked until we were funneled into the only shelter we could find, huddled together, hoping that our numbers would protect us, that the sanctuary of the building would be honored. And then the flames came—

I sat bolt upright, terrified. My heart and head were racing until I realized it was only in my dreams. That they couldn’t get me, not here and not now. The flames, heat and blazing light of my sleep were replaced by the dark and cold of the night. I was bathed in sweat and started to shake—partly from the chill of the night air, and partly from what I’d seen in my head before I’d started awake.

I lay back down and pulled up the thin blanket, trying hard to get some protection, to generate some warmth. I took a deep breath and tried to calm my head. There was one thing I needed to do to make my mind slow down.

Quietly I got up off the ground and went to the cot where my mother and sister were sleeping. In the dark it was hard to make out their entwined forms,
my sister in my mother’s arms—sleeping, safe and protected. At least she was as protected as she could ever be. Would
I
ever feel safe again? Would
I
ever feel protected again? Even sleep wasn’t an escape for me.

I heard a slight moan and moved closer. My mother was sleeping but her teeth were chattering. It was more than the cold—her fever was coming back again. I reached around and took my blanket from the ground, carefully draping it over both of them. The one blanket they shared wasn’t enough. Gently, so as to not wake them, I tucked it in at the bottom and then at the sides. It wasn’t much, but there was nothing else I could do. My father would have known what to do—or his parents, or my uncles or aunts, or—but there was nobody left to help. My whole body shuddered. The chill in the air hadn’t caused that.

There was no point in even trying to go back to sleep.

I groped around on the ground for my shoes, slipped them on and then quietly lifted the flap of the tent. I stepped out and let the flap fall back down to seal them inside. That flimsy piece of canvas, with the blanket, was a second layer to guard them.

It was still dark, still night, but not pitch black. The sun wasn’t up yet but there was a hint of light just below the horizon. In the distance a rooster crowed. Then a second rooster called out from the other direction, joined by a third and fourth.

As I stood there, my eyes started to adjust. Our little tent was one of hundreds and hundreds, side by side, as far as the eye could see. There was tent after tent, row after row—a field of white canvas stretching across what had once been an open dusty expanse. The dust was still there beneath and between the tents, and when it rained, it turned into a sea of mud churned by the thousands of people moving through it. Today it was just dust and tents, however—lots and lots of tents. If I’d spent all morning trying, I wouldn’t have been able to count them all. And in each tent was a family—two, three, sometimes seven or eight people. That would have been much more crowded, but much better. They were the lucky ones. They
had
more family. We were only three now.