Walking Home (33 page)

All along throughout the whole journey I’d only thought of reaching Kikima but not the difficulty of finding my mother’s family when we did arrive. It was so much bigger, more confusing than I had imagined. My head felt like it was spinning, my legs were shaky. All I wanted was to find an empty spot and quietly think, but there was no empty and no quiet.

I led Jata through the market, being bumped from behind, people and produce crowded in all around us, never allowing her hand to slip from mine. Finally in what seemed like the very center I stopped and put my water container down. It felt like we were in a small island of calm within the middle of a sea of chaos. I looked all around, trying to see an answer that wasn’t visible in my eye or clear in my mind.

“Do you see our grandparents?” Jata asked.

I answered with only a shrug. What else could I say?

“I do not know where they live,” I said to her. “I only know they are the Kyathas.”

“Did you say Kyatha?” a man passing by asked.

“Yes, do you know them?”

“I
am
Kyatha,” he said.

“You are?” I gasped, unable to believe my ears or my luck.

“Yes. Why do you ask for the Kyatha family?” he questioned.

“We are looking for
our
family. Our mother was a Kyatha.”

“
Was
? Has she passed?”

“Last week. Her name was Mutanu.”

The man’s eyes got wide in shock. “You need to wait right here. Do you understand?”

“Yes, we will wait.”

“Right here—do not move … understand?”

“Yes, sir. But who are you?” I asked.

He didn’t answer. Instead he stared directly at us, as if questioning whether we would wait. Finally he said, “Your mother was my sister.”

“Your sister!” I exclaimed. “Then that makes you—”

“Your uncle. Now wait. Do not move.”

He rushed off. I had to fight the urge to run away, as well as the urge to run after him, not to allow him to leave my sight in case he vanished. That option was quickly removed, though, as he was almost instantly swallowed up by the crowd and disappeared. Where was he going and why did I let him leave?

“Is he really our uncle?” Jata asked.

“I do not know why he would lie to us.”

I tried to calm myself. I felt afraid, but I couldn’t allow Jata to sense my fear.

She took my hand and I looked down. “It will be fine.” She smiled. She didn’t need my comfort—she was comforting me.

Within minutes the man reappeared, and he was not alone. There were others moving with him, pushing through the crowd. I tightened my grip on Jata’s hand to check my rising fears. Six men and three women stopped in front of us, and behind them were some children and finally an old man and old woman, walking slowly. The crowd parted to allow the old couple to come to the front.

“I am Kyatha, the father of Mutanu,” the old man said. “And this is her mother. Who are you?”

“We are her children,” I said. “I am Muchoki and this is Jata.”

“And where is my daughter?”

I took a deep breath. “Our mother—your daughter—she is dead.”

He staggered slightly, and the man who had spoken to us first offered a hand to steady him.

“How? When?” the old man asked.

“Only a week ago. It was malaria that took her,” I said.

The old woman—our mother’s mother—began to cry.

“And what of your father?” he asked.

“He was killed. In Eldoret, in the violence. We have no parents.”

“And how did you get here?”

“Mostly we walked.”

“From Eldoret?” the old man asked in disbelief.

I shook my head. “From the camp. From the place they put us in the Rift Valley, near Maai Mahiu.”

“That is over two hundred kilometers! You walked from there?”

“Yes … almost all the way.”

“Do you expect me to believe that?”

“Yes, sir. We walked because there was no other way.”

“You have come so far to bring me such terrible news. I always dreamed that one day she would return, and now you have told me she never will. You have taken away the last thing of her I held—the hope that she would come back.”

Without thinking, I smiled.

“You think this is funny?” the old man demanded. “No. It is just that our mother always said that. She did not wish to return because she feared she would be turned away, and she said she wanted to live with the hope.”

“We would never have turned her away.
Never
.” The man reached out and took his wife’s hand. “You say that you are my grandchildren and that my beloved daughter is dead, but I do not know either of you. How do I know that what you are saying is true?”

“Can you not see?” his wife asked. “Look in their eyes.”

He looked at my sister, hard, like he was studying her, and then turned and stared at me too.

“I do not see my daughter when I look at you,” he said to me. “But there is something in the girl.”

“My father always said she was like my mother, and that was why he loved her so much.”

Tears were starting to form in the old man’s eyes.

“And you say you walked that far, not knowing where you were going, and still you found us here, in Kikima. How is that possible? Did you have a map?”

“No map.”

“Then how?”

“Our mother told us the way to travel. Before she died, she had decided to return.”

“If only she could have. There is so much I wanted to say.” He choked back a sob. “It is hard to believe you could come all that way on your own and find us.”

“We just followed the string,” Jata said.

He turned to her. “What did you say?”

“The string. We followed the string to find our way home.”

“It is nothing,” I explained. “She is telling you a story.”

“I
know
the story,” he said. “It was told to me by my father, as it was told to him by his.” He paused. “As I told it to
all
of my children.”

“And our mother told it to us,” I said. “It is just a story.”

“But it is a
true
story!” Jata protested. “Muchoki
saw the string and we followed it here. Sometimes it was so thin that I had to squint to see it, and mostly I could not see it at all. But my brother could
always
see it.”

In my mind, I realized, I
had
always been able to see it.

The old man looked at me. “Do you see the string now?”

I shook my head. This was the end. It led me no farther. We’d always been moved forward by the vision in my head and the hope in my heart. Now there seemed to be neither.

“Do you have any money?” he asked me.

“We have none.”

“And the water container?”

“It is half empty and half full.”

“And food? Do you have any food?”

“Some beans and maize for a few days.”

“And nothing else?”

“One orange.”

He shook his head and smiled. “You
had
an orange.”

I turned to follow his gaze. Jata was sitting on the ground in a little circle with some other girls. She had peeled the orange and was giving out the pieces!

“You have come with empty pockets, empty stomachs and only enough water to last a day. Both of you wait here!” he ordered. With that, he turned and walked away, leaving us with the others.

“My sister,” the first man—our uncle—said, “was always so kind and gentle.” He pointed down to Jata in the dirt, talking and laughing with the other little girls. “My sister would have done that. Two of those little girls she has given that orange to are my daughters—your cousins.”

Suddenly the old man returned. He opened his hands and revealed a ball of string. He unraveled it until it dangled to the ground. Then he turned and started walking away, the string dragging behind him in the dirt. After a few steps, he stopped and turned back around. “Do you see the string?” he asked.

“Of course,” I said.

“Then why are you not following?”

“Are we going … going to your home?” I asked.

He shook his head. “No, we are not going to
my
home.” A smile came to his face. “We are going to
our
home. Together, we are walking home.”

In the summer of 2011—accompanied by four children from the Creation of Hope Orphanage, four young Canadians, and my good friend Henry Kyatha—we walked the route traveled by my characters Muchoki and Jata. From an internal displacement camp on the Mara, up the Rift Valley, down to Nairobi, through Kibera, along the Mombasa highway, to the mountains of Kikima, we walked home. As you’ll know if you’ve visited
www.ericwalterswalkinghome.com
, along the way we talked, filmed, interviewed, experienced, made notes and wrote as I tried to put myself in the shoes of my protagonists. They say if you wish to know a man, walk a mile in his shoes. Over six days we walked more than 150 kilometres so I could know Muchoki and Jata. I hope you got to know them as well as you followed along on our journey.