Reunion in Barsaloi (11 page)

‘Well, as you know,’ says James, settling into his stride, ‘we’ve had lots of strangers coming here, mostly Kenyan journalists, asking if we know what’s in the book, that Corinne has written nasty things about the Samburu and got a lot of money for it. But each time we tell them that we know what the book says and we get money from it too and have no problems with it. It’s our family she’s written about and we’re the only ones who can judge whether what she says is right or wrong, true or false. We have even been in touch with a Kenyan ambassador who speaks German – and is a Samburu – and he has reassured us that it’s all okay. When they hear that, most of the journalists go away again, but there are always one or two who want us to say something bad about the book or the film. They’ve even offered us money. One of them even suggested to Lketinga he ought to go to the District Officer and demand that this Corinne woman be jailed in Switzerland. When he did that, Lketinga got really angry and told her to clear off and leave him alone. But she still kept pestering him.’

Here Lketinga joins in again: ‘Yes, they were really crazy. I kept telling them that I’m not going to do anything of the sort, that you’re my wife and it’s fine by me if you’re leading a good life in Switzerland. What matters to me is that my child is well looked after. I’m fine and I don’t need as much as you do in Switzerland. And you have no goats or cattle. But they didn’t give up until I threatened to give them a thrashing if they didn’t clear off. The things they were saying were getting to people here in Barsaloi.’

‘Even the priest,’ adds James, ‘who had read the book in Spanish spoke to people and told them there was nothing bad in it. But now everything is back to normal and everyone is really pleased that you and Albert, the publisher of the book, have come here.’

At that moment Albert himself crawls into the
manyatta
to say that he’s known me for a long time and knows how much my African family matter to me and how much I worried when things weren’t going well for them. He and his family have for years now felt tied up with our fate and as a result even he feels close the people of Barsaloi. He was always certain he wanted to make this journey to get to know this family and
particularly their magnificent Mama. He also regarded it as an obligation to offer what help he could. James translates all this for Mama, and she thanks Albert with a handshake and the familiar words, ‘
Ashe oleng
’.

Finally Albert asks Mama what she expects from her future or what she would wish for. She thinks for a moment and then says: ‘I’m okay actually. I hope my health will last and my eyes will still be able to see. But even if I should go blind, I’d like to think I could still lead as good a life as now, and I hope that’s the way it will be. I don’t need anything else.’ James confirms what she’s just said, telling us he offered to have a house built for her but she refused. She preferred to stay in her
manyatta
and is just happy that everyone’s together now. Sometimes she won’t leave the hut for up to three days on end but is happy because she always has visitors or children come to see her. It’s nice to see that at least the old people remain as fully integrated into communal life as ever.

Asked if he has any special wishes, Lketinga, to my amazement, says: ‘I would like you not to tell people that you are no longer my wife. We don’t do things like that. It doesn’t matter where you live: you are still my wife. I don’t want to hear of another man living with you. It’s okay, but I simply don’t want to hear about it. I will always consider you to be my wife and I hope that from now on you’ll come more often, because Samburu don’t drift apart.’

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.’

O
utside 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 extraordinary 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.