The White Masai (28 page)

When the doctor makes his afternoon rounds he assures me that I should be able to leave the hospital in a week as long as I don’t go back to work and stick to my diet. In three or four months’ time I can start trying to eat a little bit of fat again. I can’t believe what I’m hearing: I’ve got to make do with this diet of rice or potatoes boiled in water for another three to four months. My craving for milk and meat is already ravenous. That evening Lketinga and James turn up and bring me some lean cooked meat. I can’t resist and eat a few tiny pieces, slowly and chewing thoroughly. Reluctantly I tell them to take the rest away, and we agree that they’ll come back to fetch me in a week’s time.

That night I have fearful stomach ache. My insides are on fire as if the wall of my stomach is burning up. After half an hour I can’t bear it anymore and call for the nurse. When she sees me curled up in bed she fetches the doctor. He gives me a stern look and asks what I’ve been eating. In deep embarrassment, I’m forced to admit to eating five pieces of lean meat. That sends him into a temper and he starts calling me a stupid cow. Why on earth did I come here if I’m not going to do what I’m told? He’s played saviour too long, I’m not his responsibility.

If the woman doctor hadn’t come into the room, no doubt I’d have got worse. Even so I’m taken aback by his attack on me when up until now he’d always been so nice. Napirai starts crying, and I join in. The male doctor leaves, and his Swiss female colleague calms me down, apologizing on his behalf, saying he’s overworked, hasn’t had any holidays for years and spends every single day battling to save lives, usually in vain. Still bent over with pain, I apologize too; I feel like a criminal. She goes too, and I’m left to suffer for the rest of the night.

I long to be out now. Eventually the big day comes. Napirai and I have already said our goodbyes to most of the nurses and are waiting for
Lketinga. He doesn’t turn up until after midday, in the company of James, but his beaming smile is everything I hoped for. They had problems with the car on the way, he explains. The gearbox still isn’t working properly. Several times he couldn’t get into gear, and now the car is in the missionary workshop in Wamba.

J
ames carries Napirai, and Lketinga takes my bag. Freedom at last! I pay for my stay at reception, and we go over to the Mission building. There’s a mechanic lying under the Land Rover fiddling with various bits. He crawls out, covered in oil, and tells us that the gearbox has nearly had it and we can’t use second gear anymore.

That’s it, I tell myself. Now that I’ve got my health back and my baby, I’m not taking any more risks. I suggest to my husband we go back to Maralal today and on to Nairobi tomorrow to buy a new car. James is immediately thrilled at the idea of going to Nairobi. We get to Maralal before dusk. The gears crunched all the way, but we made it safely to the boarding house. We’ll leave the car here.

Five of us set off for Nairobi – James insisted on bringing a friend along so that he wouldn’t have to spend the night in a room on his own. We’re carrying the equivalent of twelve thousand Swiss francs, everything that we could muster from the shop and my account at present. How we’re going to find a new car, I don’t know yet as Kenya doesn’t have any second-hand car dealers where you can just go and pick one up. Cars are hard to come by.

We get to the city around four p.m., and all we plan for the day is to find somewhere for us all to stay. The Igbol is full so we try some of the cheaper places because I reckon it’s only for a night or two. We’re in luck and find two rooms. First I have to wash and change Napirai. A basin serves to get the dust and dirt off my little girl. Of course, half the nappies are used up already, and there’s no way of washing them. We grab something to eat and have an early night.

Next morning the question is: where do we start? I try the telephone book in the vain hope of finding a second-hand car dealer, but with no luck. Then I stop a taxi and ask the driver. He immediately wants to know if we’ve got the money on us. Sensibly I say no, because I want to find a suitable car first. He promises he’ll ask around for us, and we agree to meet at the same place tomorrow. Even so I don’t want to sit around doing nothing, so I ask three more taxi drivers who just give us funny looks. There’s nothing for it but to go back to the taxi stand as agreed the next day.

The driver is waiting there for us and says he knows a man who might have a Land Rover. We drive halfway across Nairobi and stop outside a little shop. I talk to the African who indeed has three cars for sale, but unfortunately none with four-wheel drive. We can’t see the cars either because he’ll only ring the current owner when he’s found a potential buyer. He says there’s no way we’re going to find a second-hand car that isn’t still being used. Disappointedly I turn him down, as we absolutely need a four-by-four. I ask him with little hope if he knows someone else. He makes a couple of phone calls and gives the taxi driver an address.

We drive to another district and stop in the city centre near a shop. An Indian in a turban comes out to greet us in amazement, asking if we’re the people who want to buy a car. ‘Yes’ is my short answer. He asks us in to his office where tea is served and he tells us he has two on offer.

The first, a Land Rover, is far too expensive and I start to lose hope again. Then he tells us about a five-year old Datsun with twin seating areas, which we could have for fourteen thousand Swiss francs. But even that’s way more than I’ve got, and in any case I’ve no idea what the car even looks like. He keeps on telling us how hard it is to find cars, but nonetheless we leave.

When we’re out on the street he comes after us, telling us to call by again tomorrow and he’ll show us the car with no obligation. We agree, even though I’ve no intention of spending that much.

Once again we’ve nothing to do for the rest of the day. I buy some more nappies as all the ones we brought have been used. The dirty ones are piling up in the hotel room, which isn’t exactly doing wonders for the atmosphere.

We go back to the Indian, even though I’ve no intention of buying from him. He greets us jovially and shows us the Datsun. There on the
spot I’m suddenly ready to buy it as long as it goes. It looks comfortable and well looked after. The Indian suggests we take it for a test drive, but I decline in horror at the idea of losing my concentration in three-lane traffic driving on the left. So we just try the engine. Everyone is in love with the car, but I’m worried about the price. We go into his office. When I tell him I have a Land Rover in Maralal, he’s prepared to buy that off me for the equivalent of two thousand francs, which is a good deal. Even so I’m reluctant to hand over twelve thousand francs, which is all the money we have and we still have to get home. We’re thinking it all over again when he offers to send a driver with us, who’ll come as far as Maralal and drive our Land Rover back. All I have to do is give him the ten thousand francs and then hand his driver a cheque for the rest. At this point I’m surprised how trusting he is and impressed by the generous offer, given that Maralal is two hundred and eighty miles away.

On the spur of the moment I accept, particularly as it solves the problem of driving out of Nairobi. My husband and the lads are delighted when they hear that I’ve decided to buy the car. I pay up, and we write out a proper contract. The Indian tells us we’re very brave to drive around Nairobi with so much cash. By tomorrow evening he’ll have the car ready along with its logbook, which will have to be transferred into my name. That means spending another two nights in Nairobi! But the thought of having such a nice car leaves me in no doubt. We’ve done it and can return home with a magnificent vehicle.

The driver turns up as agreed at our hotel early on the morning of the second day. I check the papers and find my name really is on them. We load up with our bags including God knows how many pounds of unwashed nappies. In our good-looking quiet car with a driver we feel like kings, even Napirai seems to enjoy the ride. By evening we reach Maralal. The driver is taken aback by where he’s ended up. Everyone in Maralal notices the arrival of a new car. We park outside the boarding house right behind the Land Rover. I explain the problem with the car to the driver who’s also a mechanic. ‘It’s okay,’ he says and goes off to bed. The next day I hand him his cheque and off he goes.

We spend another night in Maralal and drop in on Sophia. She and her daughter Anika are well. She wondered why she hadn’t seen me for so long and is shocked when I tell her about my hepatitis. I admire her cat and its three kittens, tell her to keep one for me, and then we set off.

We go via Baragoi and get to Barsaloi almost an hour earlier than we would have done in the old Land Rover. Mama beams when she sees us; she had been getting worried, as she didn’t know we had gone to Nairobi. We’ve barely arrived before there’s a crowd gathered to admire the car. I’d sent a letter to my mother from Maralal asking her to send more money from my Swiss bank account.

After
chai
we go down to our house. That afternoon I pay a visit to Father Giuliani and proudly tell him about my new car. He congratulates me on the purchases and offers to reimburse me generously if I use it to take schoolchildren to Maralal or transport the sick. At least that’s some income.

We get back to enjoying life; things are good. The only problem is sticking to my diet, which is not easy out here. The schoolchildren have a few more days before the end of the holidays. Then I take them to Maralal, leaving Napirai with ‘Gogo’, her grandmother! On the way James and I discuss opening the shop again but only in three months’ time when school is over and then he’ll be keen to work there.

In town I go to see Sophia again who tells me she’s going to Italy in two weeks to show her daughter to her parents. I’m pleased for her and at the same time feel a little homesick for Switzerland. I’d like to show off my daughter too! Even the first photographs were spoiled because someone opened the camera. I pick out a little orange and white
tiger-striped
kitten and take it with me in a box. The journey back home is wonderfully easy, and despite going the long way I’m back before dark. Napirai has been drinking cow’s milk all day off a teaspoon, but when she hears me she won’t stop crying until she’s back at my breast.

My husband has been out all day with the cattle. There’s a cattle sickness going around in Sitedi, and valuable animals are dying daily. He comes home late thoroughly depressed: two of our cows have died and another three can’t stand up. I ask if there’s no cure. He says there are only preventive measures for healthy animals; the infected ones just die. The medicine is expensive, and you’re lucky to find any in Maralal. He goes to talk it over with the vet. The next day we set out again for Maralal, taking Napirai and the vet along, and at a high price get hold of the medicine and a syringe. We have to inoculate all the healthy animals in the next five days. Lketinga reckons he’ll have to spend the whole time in Sitedi.

A
fter three days I start to feel lonely, even though each day we go to see Mama or my new friend. But it’s very monotonous. I don’t enjoy eating on my own and miss my family and decide to take a month in Switzerland. At least there it’ll be easier to stick to my diet. The thought cheers me up more and more, and I wait impatiently for my husband to return.

I’m in the kitchen cooking on the floor under the open window when the door opens and Lketinga comes in. He doesn’t say a word to us but stares at the open window and asks sarcastically who’s just climbed out. After five lonely days waiting for him it feels like I’ve been punched by a fist, but I try to control myself because I want to discuss my travel plans with him. So all I say is: ‘Nobody, why do you ask me this?’ Instead of answering he goes into the bedroom and examines the mattress and sheets. I’m embarrassed by his lack of trust in me, and my joy at seeing him again vanishes. All the time he keeps asking who I’ve been seeing. Of course warriors came by a couple of times, but I let nobody in.

Finally he manages to say a couple of words to his daughter and takes her out of the wicker-basket cot I bought on our last visit to Maralal. She spends most of the day in this carrycot outside under the tree while I’m washing her nappies and our clothes. He takes her in his arms and heads off to the
manyattas
. I assume he’s going to Mama. My dinner’s ready but I just poke at it, asking myself all the time why he trusts me so little.

When he hasn’t come back two hours later I go down to Mama too. She’s sitting with the other women under their tree with Napirai sleeping on the cowhide next to her. Lketinga is lying in the
manyatta
. I sit down
next to Mama, and she asks me something but I only understand half of it. It appears she too thinks I have a boyfriend. Obviously Lketinga’s been making things up and telling her. She laughs conspiratorially but warns me it’s dangerous. Disappointed by her, I insist there’s only Lketinga, take my daughter and go home.

In these circumstances it’s hard to bring up my plan to go to Switzerland, but it’s clearer than ever to me that I need a holiday. Still, for the moment I keep it to myself and wait until things quieten down.

From time to time I try to eat a little bit of meat but pay for it immediately in stomach cramps. I’m better sticking to maize, rice or potatoes. But because I’m not eating any fat and still breastfeeding every day, I’m losing more and more weight. I have to use belts, or my skirts would fall off me. Napirai is three months old now and we have to take her to the hospital in Wamba for a check-up and inoculations. In the new car this is an enjoyable break. Lketinga comes along but now he reckons it’s time for him to drive the new car too.

I’m less than enthusiastic about this, but as I can’t go on my own with Napirai I need him and reluctantly hand him the keys. Every time he crunches the gears I wince. He drives slowly, almost too slowly. When I hear a strange noise I notice that he’s been driving with the handbrake on. He’s extremely embarrassed because now it doesn’t work properly anymore, and I’m cross because the faulty handbrake on the Land Rover caused us enough problems. Now he doesn’t want to drive anymore and sits sulking beside me holding Napirai. I feel sorry for him and assure him we can get the handbrake fixed.

At the hospital we have to wait nearly two hours before we’re called. The Swiss doctor examines me and says I’m far too thin and don’t have enough body weight. Unless I want to be readmitted as a patient I need to spend two months back home in Switzerland. I tell her that I’ve been planning such a trip but don’t know how to tell my husband. She fetches the male doctor who also tells me to go to Europe immediately, I’m totally undernourished and Napirai is sucking the last strength from me. She, however, is the picture of health.

I ask the doctor if he’ll speak to Lketinga. My husband looks like he’s been hit by a thunderbolt when he hears that I’m planning to go away for such a long time. After a lot of discussion he agrees to five weeks. The doctor gives me a letter to speed up the travel permission for Napirai. She gets her
injections, and we drive back to Barsaloi. Lketinga is upset and keeps asking: ‘Corinne, why you are always sick? Why you go with my baby so far? I don’t know, where is Switzerland. What shall I make without you such a long time?’ My heart almost breaks when I realize how hard it is for him. Mama’s sad too when we tell her I’m off to Switzerland. But I promise them all I’ll come back fit and well and we can open up the shop again.

Just two days later we set off. Father Giuliani takes us to Maralal, and I leave my car with him. Lketinga comes with Napirai and me as far as Nairobi, another long journey during which the baby’s nappy has to be changed again and again. I don’t have much luggage.

In Nairobi we find a place to stay and go first of all to the German Embassy to get a children’s passport. Our problems begin at the gate. First of all they don’t want to let Lketinga in wearing his Samburu clothing, until I prove to them that he’s my husband. Immediately he gets nervous and suspicious.

There are lots of people waiting in the embassy. I start filling in the form and realize straight away with the surname that there are going to be problems. I write down ‘Leparmorijo-Hofmann, Napirai’, but my husband will not have the ‘Hofmann’ – his daughter is a Leparmorijo. I try to explain as calmly as I can that we’re only doing it to get a passport and otherwise Napirai can’t go with me. We get into an endless debate with people staring at us in curiosity until at last he agrees to sign the form.

We still have to wait. At last I’m called up and asked into a back room. My husband wants to come too but is stopped. My heart’s pounding because I’m waiting for him to explode again; I can see Lketinga pushing his way to the counter and starting to argue violently with the man.

I’m called in by the ambassador who tells me in a friendly manner that they are happy to issue a child’s passport but only in the name of Hofmann because our marriage certificate has not been legalized and although I’m married in Kenyan law, I’m not according to German law. When he tells me my husband will have to sign a new form I tell him he won’t do it. I show him the letter from the doctor, but he says there’s nothing he can do.

When I come back Lketinga’s sitting there angrily on his chair holding a crying Napirai: ‘What is wrong with you? Why you go there without me? I’m your husband.’ I feel terrible as I fill in the form again without Leparmorijo on it; he stands up and says he’s not signing anything anymore.

I give him an angry look and tell him that if he doesn’t sign here and now one of these days I’ll take Napirai to Switzerland anyhow and never come back. He ought to get it into his head that my health is at stake! Only when the man at the counter repeatedly reassures him that Napirai will still be his daughter does he sign. I go back in to the ambassador. When he asks me uncertainly if everything is okay I tell him that it’s hard for a warrior to understand bureaucracy.

He hands over the child’s passport and wishes me all the best. When I ask him if I can now leave the country, he points out to me that the Kenyan authorities have to give us an exit and re-entry stamp and for that I also need the child’s father’s permission. I’m already imagining the next altercation. We leave the embassy in hardly the best of moods and go to the Nyayo Building where once again it’s a case of filling in forms and waiting.

Napirai’s crying and even the breast won’t stop her. Once again people are looking at us. Eventually we’re called up, and the woman behind the glass window asks my husband disparagingly why Napirai has a German passport when she was born in Kenya. It all starts again, and I have to hold back the tears. I tell this arrogant woman that my husband doesn’t have a passport despite having applied for one two years ago and so our daughter can’t be put on it and that I have to go to Switzerland because of my bad health. The next question nearly knocks me over: why don’t I leave the baby with its father? I tell her indignantly that it’s normal for a mother to take a three-month old child with her, apart from which my mother has the right to see her granddaughter. Eventually she stamps the passport and mine too. Relieved but exhausted, I collect the passports together and leave the office. Now I have to book a ticket. This time I can prove where the money came from. I present the passports, and we book a flight that leaves in two days’ time. Before long the booking clerk comes back with the tickets, shows them to me and reads aloud: ‘Hofmann, Corinne,’ and ‘Hofmann, Napirai’. Lketinga breaks into a temper and wants to know why we bothered getting married at all if I’m still not his wife. Even his baby apparently isn’t his. It’s the last straw for my nerves, and I burst into tears again. I shove the tickets in my bag, and we leave the office to go back to the hotel.

Eventually my husband calms down but sits there on the bed upset and unhappy, and I sort of understand. In his world the family name is the
most valuable present a man can bestow on his wife and children, and I reject it. For him, it as good as means that I don’t want to belong to him. I take him by the hand and tell him earnestly that he really doesn’t need to worry, that we’ll be back. I’ll send a telegram to the Mission so that he’ll know which day. He explains to me that he feels lonely without us but that he really would like to have a healthy wife again. When we come back he wants to come and meet us at the airport. That pleases me enormously because I know what an effort a journey like that is for him. Then he tells me that he’s leaving Nairobi now to go home. I understand and accompany him to the bus station. Standing there, waiting for the bus to depart he asks me once again worriedly: ‘Corinne, my wife, you are sure, you and Napirai come back to Kenya?’ I answer with a smile, ‘Yes, darling, I’m sure.’ Then the bus leaves.

I’d only managed to ring my mother the day before to tell her we are coming. She was obviously surprised but delighted that she was going to see her grandchild at last, so I want to make both of us pretty. But it’s hard to leave such a tiny impetuous baby alone. The shower and toilets in the hotel are at the end of the corridor, and when I want to use the toilet I’ve no alternative but to take her with me. I go to the receptionist and ask her if she’d look after the baby for fifteen minutes while I take a shower. She says she’d be glad to but right now half of Nairobi has no water because of a burst pipe. She says maybe the shower will be working better this evening.

I wait until six, but nothing happens. On the contrary everything’s started to stink. I decide not to wait any longer because I have to be at the airport by ten and go to a shop where I buy a bottle of mineral water with which I wash Napirai first, then my hair and then what I can of the rest of me.

We take a taxi to the airport. We don’t have much baggage even though the temperatures in Europe at the end of November are going to be wintry. The stewardesses look after us well and keep stopping to admire the baby and exchange a few words. After we’ve eaten I get a baby bed for her, and she falls asleep. Tiredness overcomes me too and when I’m woken again it’s for breakfast. The thought of being on Swiss soil again fills me with apprehension.