No Hurry in Africa (2 page)

Any seasoned traveller will tell you that the real characters and the friendlier locals tend to be found in poorer regions not yet in the viewfinders of coach loads of Japanese tourists. There is an appealing innocence and spontaneity amongst people unused to tourists. I like that, though it is not to everyone’s taste. Most of those who travel after leaving college in Ireland spend a year working in bars in Australia and socialising most nights with other Irish, maybe having spent a while in Thailand or South America beforehand. They all have a fantastic time on Bondi Beach or in Byron Bay.

But Australia just did not appeal to me. Everyone comes back with much the same stories. I wanted more of an adventure, to go somewhere that entailed some risk, to experience places that did not have McDonalds and Irish bars, places where few of my generation had ventured before. It would have to be somewhere in the Developing World. The idea of voluntary work was taking shape in my head. I really wanted to live the life of the place, not just observe it. That might prove to be adventure enough. A bit of sun would be a bonus!

However, I was contracted to train as a tax advisor with Deloitte & Touche for three years immediately after college; they were sponsoring the Masters in Accounting that I was studying at Dublin City University. So, with some trepidation, I rang them up in late 2004 and told them of my desire to volunteer for a year in Africa. They got back to me a few days later.

‘No problem,’ they said, to my great delight and gratitude.

The next decision was what exactly I would do for the year. One by one, those friends who had expressed an interest in joining me pulled out. One spent all his ‘Africa’ savings during rag week in Galway! It became clear I would be going on my own. Then there was the problem of expense. Some voluntary organisations were asking for thousands of euro for me to volunteer with them for a couple of months. I drew up a tentative plan to volunteer in Ghana, travel on to East Africa, then the Middle East, and catch the Trans-Siberian railway from Moscow to Beijing. Well, things fall apart.

One particular day in college, still pondering what to do, I remembered being at a Mass in DCU a few months previously, where the chaplain gave a sermon about a recent visit of his to a friend who was a Kiltegan missionary in Kenya. It had struck a chord with me at the time because some of my relatives had worked in Africa. I went to talk to the chaplain about it. Through him, I contacted a missionary in Kenya called Fr. Paul. He suggested that I work at a project in his Diocese, in a region called Kitui. They could use someone with accountancy skills. And that was it; Kenya it would be …

… Which is how I found myself on a plane bound for Nairobi in September 2005. I was leaving behind a family deeply concerned about my safety. I was leaving behind the hustle and bustle of city life in Dublin; leaving behind life in Celtic Tiger Ireland and one of its ideological bastions, DCU. I was taking time out from all that. Time for possibly the last great adventure of my youth. Time, perhaps, to ‘give something back’ and, however briefly, to ‘do some good in the world,’ as the volunteer literature puts it. Time would tell.

And there was a further complication. Some time before the end of college, but after I had made my plans, I had fallen in love with a girl on my course. It tore me to leave Brid behind for a whole year. Looking ahead, it seemed like a very long time. But maybe I could learn patience, like the Africans in the Kenyan proverb: ‘Whites have watches, blacks have time.’

P
EOPLE WORRY ABOUT YOU WHEN
you tell them you are going to Africa. For a start, they worry about all those nasty tropical diseases. They have seen films and documentaries on television in which the intrepid travellers and explorers were laid low by something viral, horrible and occasionally fatal. Mothers, understandably, worry more than most.

‘Look, Mammy,’ I explained again, ‘I’ve had all the injections: yellow fever, tetanus, diphtheria, rabies, cholera, typhoid, hepatitis A, B, C, and probably X, Y, and Z as well. I have arms like a junkie!’

‘They say malaria is the worst,’ she observed nervously.

‘I promise to keep taking the tablets.’

‘And there are all those wild animals. I read somewhere that buffalo are the most dangerous, worse than the lions, the hippos, the crocodiles …’

‘I’m told hyenas are fairly treacherous!’ my father interjected.

Yes, they were all rather worried. Nobody, including me, was worried about ladybirds, though. I should have been.

I spent my first night off the plane as a guest of the Kiltegan Fathers in Nairobi. I had been met at the airport by a member of Fr. Paul’s lay staff named Stephen, who explained that Fr. Paul had recently left on a fund-raising trip to Ireland. Fr. Paul was the administrator of the Kitui Diocese, in effect the acting Bishop. It was through him that I had been assigned to a role as an accountant on the Nyumbani Village Project. Before I retired for the night, Stephen, a middle-aged man from the Akamba tribe, told me to get a good sleep because we would be up early to travel to ‘base camp’ in Kitui village the next day. Kitui District is in the Akamba heartlands, about three or four hours from Nairobi.

There is nothing quite like a nine hours plane journey to ensure a sound night’s sleep. I regained consciousness around 8am, quite late by African standards, and within half an hour, we were on the road. It was to be my first sight of Kenya in daylight. I remember being overwhelmed by the scenes that morning as we made our way to Kitui. From the front seat of the battered old jeep, I tried to take in the endless straggle of the Nairobi suburbs, the crazy kamikaze drivers, the corrugated iron shacks, and the deteriorating roads, rutted and pot-holed. Beyond the city, the road traverses the Nairobi National Park, and I had my first excited sightings in the wild of ostriches, gazelles and warthogs.

The Park eventually surrenders to a parched barren landscape, sparsely populated, studded here and there with isolated round, thatched mud-huts. After Machakos, a disorderly tangle of a town, the road twists and clambers up a terraced mountain. The countryside is more fertile now, with lots of tiny villages and scores of pedestrians strolling or striding along under a sweltering sun. Across the mountain, the brown barren bush returns, with an occasional acacia tree or tiny roadside hamlet. Classic African landscape. Near the village of Kwa Vonza, the soil becomes noticeably redder in colour and tiny fields show traces of valiant attempts at cultivation.

Several more kilometres further on lies the decent-sized village of Kitui—my destination and my base for the foreseeable future. The capital of Kitui District, it consists of three or four interwoven streets and is home to a few thousand people. The village appears a bit anarchic, and at first glance has very little of note to distinguish it. In the months ahead, I would get to know it well, and to appreciate its intriguing people.

Apart from the sensory overload along the way and a slight headache (which I attributed to jet lag and to altitude), I had enjoyed the dusty, bumpy, shake-rattle-and-roll of the journey to Kitui with Stephen. He had answered patiently my endless questions. My first impression of Kenya was that it was a bit like the down-at-heel Ireland of the 1920’s newsreels—though obviously a lot hotter. I knew it would take me some time to process all of these new sensations.

‘The Akamba are the fifth largest tribe in Kenya,’ Stephen told me with discernible pride.

However, they inhabit a very arid region; Kenyans take pity on you, as I discovered later, when you tell them you live there. It is an undeveloped backward area even for Kenya, and populated by a very traditional community. The people of Kitui are cut off by the mountains on the western side, and wedged in by the desert to the east.

Seven kilometres further up a dirt track into the hills above the village, our jeep pulled up outside a modest cream-coloured bungalow opposite what was obviously a school. A woman of about sixty years of age dressed in a bright blouse and long skirt emerged to meet us.

‘Karibu sana,’
she said in very proper tones as she grabbed my hand.

‘Huh?’ I replied, confused.

‘Oh … yes … welcome, come in. I’m here since the 1970s. Swahili becomes a habit. You must be starving, will you eat?’

This was Sr. Margaret Mary, an impressive-looking Irish Ursuline nun. She had rosy cheeks set in a face that suggested a jolly disposition; it was lightly tanned by decades spent in the African sun. She came from Thurles in Tipperary originally, and still retained something of the accent. I would discover later that she also retained the selfless generosity of spirit that had brought her to Africa as a teacher all those years ago. During my time in Kenya, she would become like an aunt to me.

She summoned her cook in Swahili, an Akamba man of indeterminate vintage, who brought in some rice and a small bit of chicken on a bone. I was famished and I tucked in with relish after the long journey. As I gnawed on the bone, I resolved that I must make learning Swahili a priority. Sr. MM (Margaret Mary), with the curiosity of the exile, proceeded to quiz me for ages about recent events in Ireland.

‘I go home as often as I can, Brendan, but I hardly recognise the place anymore. I suppose this is home now.’

That evening, Sr. MM told me about the Akamba people to whose welfare she had devoted her life. As she did so, the cook listened and nodded regularly as if to confirm her story.

‘It used to be the Maasai people who held sway here in this part of eastern Kenya,’ she began. ‘The Maasai were pastoralists. Their neighbours to the south, living around Mount Kilimanjaro and the Taita Hills, were the Akamba tribe. They are one of the many Bantu tribes in this part of Africa. Kitui was endowed with an abundance of wild animals such as lions and elephants, far more than there are now. The Akamba were hunters, experts at using bows and arrows. Later they became successful traders, selling ivory to the Arabs who sailed along the coast.

Anyway, when the elephants around Mount Kilimanjaro were becoming scarcer, the Akamba coveted the land around Kitui where the Maasai lived. As the Akamba hunted the dwindling elephants stocks, they edged ever closer to Maasai territory. Eventually the two tribes clashed in a ferocious battle. The Maasai warriors relied on the spear to defend their lands; the Akamba easily overwhelmed them with their bows and arrows. The Maasai migrated south to where they live today along the Kenyan/Tanzanian border. The Akamba moved north.’

I was getting my first lesson in the complex patterns of tribal conquest, settlement and rivalry that bedevil African affairs to this day.

‘There’s another darker side to the Akamba story,’ Sr. MM continued. ‘They sold ivory to the Arabs and grew prosperous while elephants were in plentiful supply. However, when the elephants in Kitui became scarcer as well, a number of the Akamba collaborated with the Swahili traders and found something else to sell to the Arabs apparently—slaves. Most of the Akamba tribe fiercely resisted those people. But that was a long time ago. Anyway, you must be tired after your travels, Brendan. You could do with a good sleep and a bit of rest before you start work at Nyumbani.’

I slept late the next morning and woke up with a slight headache. To shake it off, I went for a long exploratory stroll in the afternoon. It had rained for the first time in months in Kitui during the night. The rich earthy smell of parched soil disturbed by rain after prolonged drought is powerful and unforgettable. I breathed it in deeply as I strode along. I met people walking in groups—or was it gangs?—with axes and machetes, and I wondered were they about to murder me. I had been listening to the horror stories people told me in Ireland before I came out to Africa. I need not have worried; the axes and
pangas
were for nothing more sinister than clearing scrub. I greeted them, and told those who understood English that I had come to Kenya to volunteer on the Nyumbani project. I told them I came from a place where it rains all the time. They could not have been more welcoming.