Walking Home (3 page)

“Not all,” said the first man. “It is not done until we return to our stores and our homes.”

“There are no homes to return to. They have been burned to the ground.”

Is that what happened to my home? I’d heard rumors that our store was torched, and I knew what had happened to the church. Still, I wanted to believe our house continued to stand.

“We can rebuild,” insisted the first man. “They can burn a house to the ground, but they cannot take away the ground it stands on.”

“I have been driven out before—four times,” the older man said. “Why return to be driven out again?”

“I will return and plant my crops.”

“If you go back, the only act you will perform with a shovel or hoe is to dig your own grave. Do you think it is safe to bring your family home now?”

The man shook his head, and I could see the sadness in his face in the growing light. “Not now. Later.”

The man who had been arguing so fiercely with the first reached over and placed a comforting hand on his shoulder. “Someday we will return. I will go with you. But not now … not yet.”

“In the meantime, we are here,” the old man said. “And we will do the best we can with the little we’ve been given. At least we are safe.”

“I wish I felt so sure,” the second man said. “Those guards are few. Do you think they could stop a mob if it attacked us? Would they even try? Maybe they would just run away to save their own lives.”

“We are not helpless,” the first man said. “We will not be driven and slaughtered like sheep. If they come, they will meet men who are prepared to fight.”

He pushed back the blanket over his shoulder to reveal a large machete dangling from his belt. The second man did the same, and another pulled out a club. I wished that I had a machete or a club. All we had was a small knife for cooking, and it was back in our tent.

“We are Kikuyu and we will fight if we need to fight.”

There was a low rumbling sound—an engine—and then two headlights came into view and marked the path in front of the truck coming slowly toward us. It was the water truck. There soon would be water to replenish the tanks and fill my container.

T
he camp was coming to life: tent flaps open, bedding lying on top of the canvas to dry and breathe and catch the fresh air; little fires going and pots of water bubbling away; children laughing and playing. It hadn’t taken long for that to happen. The smaller the child, the sooner he or she acted as if nothing had happened. I wished I were young enough to forget. I felt so old. I couldn’t even remember what thirteen felt like. Did I used to laugh? Did I used to play football with the other children at the school? I remembered, but I didn’t believe it.

My mother squatted beside the fire, our little pot held in place over the flames by a wooden spit. She smiled at me as she stirred the porridge. I smiled back, but I knew neither of us was truly smiling. In her eyes was sadness, worry, a weariness that extended throughout her
whole body. She seemed so much older, as if she had aged before my very eyes. I felt the same sadness and worry. I wondered if she could see those things in my eyes too.

Her clothing was as worn and dusty as her face. It was all she owned, the clothes she was wearing when we had to flee. I wished I’d known then what was going to happen. At least I would have put on warmer clothes or better shoes. I looked down now at the little hole in the toe of my shoe.

I set the water container next to my mother with a loud thud. “I went for water.”

“I saw that the container was gone,” she said. “You couldn’t sleep?”

“I slept fine. I just wanted to get the water before there was a line. How are you feeling?”

“Much better every day.”

I didn’t know why I asked. She would never tell me the truth about how she was feeling. She wasn’t shaking or sweating, I noticed, but her eyes were cloudy and yellow. That she couldn’t hide. Anymore than she could hide the fact that she was thinner, her shoulders more hunched, the lines on her face more deeply etched. I knew it was more than just the malaria flaring up again.

“Where is Jata?” I asked.

“Still sleeping.”

“I am not sleeping,” she called out from inside the tent. “I was waiting for breakfast in bed.” She giggled.

“You will be waiting for a long time,” I suggested.

“Come, little one. It is ready,” our mother said.

She giggled again and came out of the tent. Our mother took the wooden spoon and portioned out the porridge onto three plastic plates. One serving was big—that one she would give to me—and the other two were much smaller. She scraped the spoon against the pot until the last little bit of porridge was taken. She handed us both our plates and returned the spoon to the empty pot. I picked up my own spoon, took some food from my plate and transferred it to hers.

“You need the extra food!” she protested. She tried to take the spoon from me, but I held it away from her.

“You need more than a child’s serving,” I argued.

“I am not growing,” my mother said.

“I
am
growing,” Jata said.

“You are.” With her fingers, my mother took the spoonful I’d put on her plate and plopped it onto my sister’s.

Before my sister could react, I reached out, grabbed it and popped it into my mouth.

“Hey!” she protested.

“You may be growing, but you are not working,” I said. “You will be sitting in a classroom and I will be doing chores.”

“I could work too!”

“You need to go to school,” I said.

“Why don’t you need to go to school?” Jata demanded.

“They have only set up school for nursery and standard one and two,” I said.

“That isn’t fair!” Jata protested.

“It is not only fair but fortunate. You should thank your teachers for setting up the school at all,” my mother said. “Now finish your meal and your brother will walk you to class.”

“I can walk myself.”

“No,” I said. “I will walk you. I will be going out to search for firewood, and it is on my way.” I gestured toward the dwindling pile of twigs just inside the flap of the tent. Like everything else of value, our fuel was stashed away inside the tent.

“I could go for firewood,” my mother offered.

“No, I will. I have nothing else to do.” I had no school or studies, no games or friends to play with, no chores to do on the homestead. “You can stay here and watch our tent.”

What she could do was lie down and rest. I knew from the doctor that when the malaria flared up, rest and sleep were the best medicine. My mother didn’t argue, which worried me even more. She had to be more tired and sick than I thought if she was letting me go off by myself without a fight.

The flaps were up on the big tent that had been made into the school. Crates that had once held supplies had been made into desks, and someone had found a few chalkboards. There wasn’t much more—no books or writing paper, pencils or pens—but they did have teachers. Within this camp there were teachers, drivers, shoemakers, seamstresses … well, everybody except for the rich. They had been forced to flee as well—if you were Kikuyu in our area, you ran or were killed. But those with relatives or money or connections were able to go elsewhere. They didn’t need to be in the camp. Here were the people who either had nothing to start with or had to flee with nothing, leaving behind their homes, possessions and money.

My family wasn’t poor. Before coming here, I’d never known what it was like to go hungry. There were always crops growing—the land was good—and we had our store and home and cattle. We
had
all of those. Now we had a cooking pot, a knife, two blankets, a cot, the clothes on our backs and one extra week’s worth of food stuffed under the mattress.