Reunion in Barsaloi

  I’m very moved by his words but at the same time I feel he’s asking too much and trying to place restrictions on me. As gently as possible I try to explain to him that, after such a long separation, it’s normal that I might not want to be on my own forever. After all, he’s got married again, twice over! I say this with a little laugh to try to defuse the tension. He replies: ‘Yes, it’s okay, but let’s just not talk anymore about it.’ It’s a good thing that I didn’t mention in any of my letters to James that I’m no longer together with my partner back in Switzerland.

  James says it’s hard to find the right words at times like this and gets us away from such a sticky subject by telling us his own hopes for the future: ‘I would like to extend my house so I have more room for visitors. My guests should have somewhere comfortable to stay. Apart from that I’d also like a mobile telephone so that from Maralal at least – where you can actually get a signal – I could communicate more quickly and easily with other people. There’s no network yet in Barsaloi and won’t be for some time. I would also like a television to find out what’s going on in the country and the rest of the world, to find out what’s happening in Germany even or Switzerland.’ With a laugh he says that’s the end of his wish list. ‘I don’t need anything more, for the moment.’

  Saguna

  Outside the manyatta we hear voices now and Lketinga says it must be Saguna. I’m pleased and curious to see her. We bring our conversation to an end after nearly three hours and crawl out of the hut. The bright sunlight blinds me. Albert sits down on the stool again and is immediately surrounded by children drawing in the dirt. A little further off I spot Lketinga’s wife building a new manyatta. The young girl is already weaving the willow branches into the framework of the walls.

  Stefania appears and tells us Saguna is waiting for us in her house. The first thing I notice on entering is Lketinga’s sister sitting on the green sideboard with a serious look on her face. Saguna is hiding behind her, done up from top to toe in traditional dress and looking simply radiant. When I left the village for the last time she was just four years old. And now here she is standing in front of me as a well-built, good-looking girl of about eighteen. I tell her how delighted I am to see her. She’s a bit shy but I tell her that in all these years I’ve never forgotten her. I had asked after her in my letters and been told she was almost a fully-grown woman and no longer living with Mama in her hut.

  Saguna is wearing a red skirt with two kangas, one blue and one yellow, slung around her shoulders, covering her naked breasts. Yellow kangas are worn only by girls of marriageable age who have not yet been ‘circumcised’. Around her neck and lying on her breasts are row upon row of beads. On top of these red rows of beads she’s wearing an unusual, brightly coloured piece of flat jewellery almost like a plate. Taken altogether, she must be wearing some five pounds of jewellery. Around her head she has a headband of closely set beads with a little cross attached, also made of beads, with lots of little metal strips hanging from it. On her forehead is a button made of mother-of-pearl with a metal cross hanging from it down to almost cover her nose. Attached to this are two fine metal chains that stretch left and right across her cheeks to link up again with the headband. Behind all of this, Saguna’s features appear soft and dainty. It suddenly hits me that she looks incredibly like her late mother, who sadly died in childbirth when Saguna was barely eleven years old. Luckily at that time she was still living with Mama.

  It’s obvious she’s not used to being the centre of attention. Girls are only the focus of things at their wedding and at the ‘circumcision’ that accompanies it. The birth of a girl is normally no big thing for a father. He would try not to be present at the birth. But if the newly born should turn out to be a boy, there are lots more rituals to be carried out than if it’s a girl. The neighbours, therefore, soon know the sex of the new baby, even if because of fears of witchcraft they don’t actually see it until weeks later.

  Saguna sits there with her hands in her lap, looking at me shyly but with curiosity. I pay her compliments that she accepts with some embarrassment. Given that I know she’s had to walk for four hours in the heat to get here and must be hungry and thirsty, I ask James to offer her something, but he simply says she’ll get something in Mama’s manyatta. I gather that there is some form of social taboo at work here. Saguna is a young, ‘uncircumcised’ woman and therefore can’t be served food or drink in James’s house, as he was, until recently, a warrior.

  So I suggest the she goes to see Mama first and we can talk later. When she’s left the house I ask James when she’ll get married. He doesn’t know and even Lketinga, when I ask him later, can’t tell me. It strikes me that at eighteen she’s on the old side for an unmarried girl. But she must have a boyfriend among the warriors or she wouldn’t have so much jewellery, which counts as a sort of status symbol for girls. The more jewellery she has, the more sought-after she’s considered, and her marriage price can rise as high as seven cows or more. The sad thing is that the girls are never allowed to marry their boyfriends. All he gets to do is prepare the fat and red ochre that the bride rubs into her body.

  Marriages are mostly arranged by the father. He makes sure the wedding has nothing to do with looks or sexual desire. What counts is the reputation of the girl’s family. The wife-to-be will have to produce children, run the household and look after her husband’s animal herd until the children are old enough to take over the task. Sometimes the bride even has no idea who her husband is going to be. Those most sought-after are the ones who have just finished their time as warriors, as men are not allowed to marry earlier. If a girl is unlucky she can be married off to an older man or even some geriatric as his third or fourth wife, and then she has to do what his first wife says.

  I’m upset and worried by the idea Saguna might face such a fate. I ask James if there isn’t some way of preventing anything like that happening to her. ‘No, Saguna only knows our traditional way of life and you can’t change things. Everything has to take its course. She will go through her ceremony and then have a new home with her new husband.’ He says this so matter-of-factly and with such self-confidence that I can see it’s going to be a very long time before women here have any right to a life of their own.

  Then all of a sudden I realize how absurd and hypocritical my attitude is: on the one hand, I’m lost in rapture at how colourful and beautiful the traditional clothing of the young girls and warriors is and wish Samburu traditions could be preserved as long as possible, while on the other, I’d like to see those customs and rituals which offend my European sensibility changed. It’s a painful insight to live with and at the same time I’m glad my own daughter Napirai has grown up in Switzerland. She’s about two years younger than Saguna and if she were living here, she’d have no chance of leading her own life, no matter how hard I might have fought for her right.

  When we leave the house a little later I spot Saguna sitting on a stone under the thorn tree, playing with Shankayon and two other girls. I sit down next to them and wait and watch. She’s taken off her pretty headdress because it’s too hot, and from time to time she has to put her hands under her necklaces to lift them up and let the air at her skin. Suddenly she asks me about Napirai. I try to tell her what I can, which because of the linguistic problem isn’t much. Instead I ask Shankayon to go and fetch the little red photo album from Mama. Meanwhile Lketinga has turned up to translate a bit for me.

  I ask her if she remembers me, if she recalls the brown doll I brought her and the way we used to go down to the river together. She nods earnestly in response to everything. Then Shankayon comes back with the album in her hands and gives it to Saguna. She flicks through it, beginning obviously with the most recent pictures of Napirai. She stares at them in amazement and asks if it’s really Napirai. Lketinga explains in details to her the pictures of Napirai in the snow, on the ice or swimming in a lake. She takes them all in with enormous interest and something akin to astonishment. It must be something extr
aordinary for her to see a girl just a few years younger than herself who was born in the same place but now lives in such a radically different world. For a start she must find if strange to see Napirai with long hair. Her own head is shaved because people here don’t find girls or women with long hair attractive. She lets her gaze linger long on the pictures of my daughter in jeans. I would give anything to be able to read her mind right now.

  By now there are lots of people gathered around looking at the album, and Shankayon more than anyone seems delighted by the pictures of her half-sister Napirai. Saguna keeps flicking through the book from front to back and giggling and whispering to the other girls. I move a little closer to her, admiring her slender arms and her rows of different coloured bangles. After a while she turns to me and asks: ‘Why didn’t you bring Napirai with you? Where is she now and who is she with?’ I tell her that she’s in school and while I’m away she’s staying with the family of a girlfriend. Lketinga translates this for her and says that perhaps she’ll come when she’s finished school.

  Saguna listens, stroking my arm gently. She’s obviously fascinated by the silver bracelet I’m wearing, in which she can see her reflection. Her tender gesture brings back to me how close we were when we lived together in Mama’s manyatta. In those days she was my little ray of sunshine who brightened up the day when I was feeling down. I feel helpless when I think of her possible fate and the fact that I can do nothing to protect her from it. On the other hand maybe she wouldn’t want me to, maybe she’d prefer to be accepted and respected by her tribe. I make a wish with all my heart that she finds a good young man.

  Klaus meanwhile has been taking more pictures, and it seems Shankayon has told Saguna they can see themselves on the monitor. She sits down beside Klaus now and he demonstrates the camera for her. At first she seems shocked and then amused to see the moving pictures. She’s never seen herself like this and is fascinated to watch every last bit. She gets Klaus to rewind and fast-forward and her childlike wonder gradually infects us all. Unfortunately it’s almost time for Saguna to set off on the long walk home. Tomorrow it’s back to life as normal out in the bush, minding the herd. I give her the things I’ve brought for her: a pretty frock, some nice-smelling soap and a body lotion. She’s delighted by her presents and packs them all up in her kanga. When we say goodbye I know I’ll never see her looking so natural or so colourfully dressed again.

  New Eating Habits

  James has invited us to dinner in his house. Stefania hands out aluminium plates and puts a big bowl of spaghetti on the table. We all tuck in heartily, even though it’s not exactly the way we normally eat it. Stefania has broken the spaghetti into little pieces and mixed in vegetables and lumps of goat meat.

  James tells us that some of the villagers, especially in families where the children have been to school, have changed their eating habits. He’s known spaghetti since his school days and so doesn’t find the dish unusual for him or his family. His children have grown up eating it. I want to know if Mama eats pasta nowadays. In the old days she would have refused to try anything she didn’t know. The only exception was pineapple. James laughs and says: ‘No, Mama won’t eat it but she still likes pineapples and whenever I bring one, she starts talking about you. You got her to like them.’ I remember it well and can still picture her slowly and cautiously biting into a piece of pineapple.

  When I ask James if the Somali shops are now selling these things too, he gets quite worked up: ‘There aren’t any Somalis here anymore. We got rid of them all. Do you know when you left Barsaloi and the only Samburu shop was closed, the price for maize meal and sugar soared? Instead of sticking to the official state prices, the way we did, they doubled them. Everybody in the village started complaining and bad-mouthing them. ‘Why isn’t Corinne here anymore?’ everyone kept asking. ‘Now we don’t have a shop or a car.’ The Somalis charged too much for the few things they had and didn’t pay people as much for the goatskins and cowhides as you did. Lots of village people kept coming up to me and asking: ‘What can we do to bring Corinne back? Only mzungus can run a shop like that, and there aren’t any others who want to come and live with us like she did.’ They even suggested I should offer to marry you to get you to come back! They were so worked up about it all, people were suggesting the craziest ideas.’

  I sit there quietly drinking my tea as if to help me digest all this – the idea of James and me getting married is a new one on me, and I have to laugh at the idea. James shares my amusement at the idea and goes on: ‘I told them we should work together to open our own Samburu shops so that we can keep a check on prices. Gradually one shop after another opened up till we reached the point where we are now, when there are too many, and business is not so good for any of them!’

  At this point Lketinga comes and in and sits down on the sofa beside me asking with a long face if we’ve been talking about him. For some reason or other he seems to be in a worse mood than he was an hour ago. Nobody seems to know where he’s been or what he’s been up to. For a brief moment it occurs to me that maybe he’s feeling left out, like he used to do fourteen years ago when James came home from school with his friends and we enjoyed ourselves playing cards together. In an attempt to cheer him up I ask if he can still remember the spaghetti dinner we had in Mombasa with my brother Eric and his wife Jelly. It was a mad occasion because all the locals thought we were eating white worms. In his rough voice he says, ‘Of course I remember. I thought it was plain crazy. And now we even have people here in the village who eat that stuff.’

  Road Maps

  Later on we sit down to work out our plans for the rest of the trip and decide to drive down to the film set tomorrow as agreed, spend two days there and then go off to find Father Giuliani before coming back to Barsaloi.

  That way the family can catch their breath and get back to normal a little before they have to prepare the big all-comers feast they’re planning before our departure. Unfortunately as we’re the guests we’re not allowed to contribute much, although as the family will be doing all the work we’d like to offer to cover their expenses. They’re going to slaughter four goats and cook up an enormous amount of rice and beans. But before they get that far they’re going to have to collect a vast amount of firewood and make several fires for cooking, all of which involves a huge amount of work with no car and not much time. James says he’ll sort out the food and asks Lketinga if he could buy a few goats, but he answers rather abruptly: ‘No, I won’t have time. I’m going with Corinne to see the film set. I’d like to know what they’re up to!’

  Oh God, I think, feeling suddenly quite ill at the thought! That’s the last thing I need! I know I’m going to find it difficult enough taking in the film set and understanding the movie-making process. I’ve only a very vague concept of what to expect and how I’m gong to cope with it. But the very idea of having to explain it all to Lketinga again is more than I can bear! He doesn’t have the first idea about what making a film involves.

  I suddenly vividly recall the scene we had when Lketinga and I went to see a film in the Mission in Barsaloi – the epic Ben-Hur, of all things. Lketinga got incredibly worked up over the whole thing and would not believe it had nothing to do with mzungus’ modern everyday life. He was absolutely convinced that the film represented modern life in Germany or Switzerland. Only twenty minutes into the film we had to walk out and the rest of the evening was spent in argument while he refused to believe that the film had nothing to do with real life.

  And now he wants to visit a film set where they’re making a movie about the Samburu and a part of his own life to boot! How on earth is he going to understand that he’s not going to see a finished film but a series of shots that are probably incomprehensible out of context? No! This is simply not something I can deal with, especially as I’m nervous about the whole thing myself.

  Thanks God James finally intervenes in the discussion on our side, telling Lketinga he’s going to be needed here. He can hardly be ab
sent, after all, when the entire village is getting ready to put on a party for his guests. He sees the point of that and promises he’ll wait here for us instead and deal with buying the goats.

  Glancing at the clock, I realize it’s time for me to be on my way to the Mission if I’m not to miss the chance of contacting Father Giuliani on the radio. When we get there the attendant welcomes us and shows us into the room where the transmitter is set up. It’s an ancient box of a thing and I can hear various voices in different languages – Italian, Swahili, English. Lketinga listens closely, obviously understanding more than I do, and after a minute or two he nudges me and says gently that I should say something.

  All of a sudden for the first time in more than fourteen years I hear once again the voice of Father Giuliani, just as strong as ever. He’s obviously delighted to hear we’re here and tries to give us instructions on how to get to him. But it all sounds so complicated that all of a sudden he says he’s prepared to come and pick us up from the Mission at midday in three days’ time. I’m just about to tell him how grateful we are when I realize the connection has already been lost.

  We stroll back to Albert and James in the corral where the animals have once again returned and it’s the usual colourful evening scene, with all the women milking the bleating goats. Lketinga’s sister takes me by the arm, presses a cup in my hand and urges me with a laugh to have a go at it myself. I pick out a big fat white goat and am delighted to get a thin little spurt of milk into the cup. It seems, however, I need a bit of practice and I have to admit that even a three-year-old child here is better at milking. Before long there’s a crowd of children gathered around me laughing. But it’s precisely this ‘joie de vivre’ that I love so much here. Despite the hard conditions they live under, people haven’t lost their sense of humour. The children chase the baby goats here and there, laughing and giggling like children at play anywhere in the world. As it gets dark, people begin to brew up maize porridge and tea and we retire to our camp. James and Lketinga are due to drop by in an hour’s time.