Africa, My Passion

by Corinne Hofmann

  Napirai writes: I always wanted our meeting with the relatives to be happy and friendly. But I had never expected our arrival to be met with such emotion. I’m completely overwhelmed and our reception in Barsaloi is one of those things that will remain with me all my life.

  I immediately get on well with Stefania and the rest of the family. I can speak to her in English and tell her how exciting it all is for me. I get on particularly well with James’s children, who are all very good-natured and jolly. His youngest son Diego seems to get on with me straight away. Every chance he can, he climbs on to my lap. I’ve even taken to heart my three little half-brothers and -sisters. It’s great that there are so many children because they’re so easy to get on with.

  So many children follow us around all the time that we have to close the door to James’s house in their faces so we can look round without being surrounded by them. It’s not very large inside, but it’s been well decorated and I feel quite at home. I’m sitting on the couch with my mother and father, James, his older brother and a couple of the kids. Stefania has made chai for us all, so we just sit there chatting together drinking our tea. My mother starts telling stories about the old days again and Lketinga and James laugh. I think they all remember her stories too.

  After tea with James we all go back out to the village square where our cars are parked. We want to fetch the rice and the rest of the food we bought in Maralal for Stefania.

  By now even more people have gathered to say hello to us. Some of the women have tears in their eyes when they see us. They all keep repeating the same phrase, which I don’t understand. There are crowds of men and women around my mother, greeting her and asking her questions. This goes on for some time and I’m glad James can at least translate some of it for me so I can get a grip on a few sentences and even answer a few questions myself.

  After we’ve put away all the food we brought, James takes us quietly over to Mama’s manyatta. I just hope I don’t blub when I see her again. The corral has changed a lot since my last visit. Mama’s manyatta used to be right next to James’s stone-built house, but now instead James leads us across the sandy soil of the central part of the corral to a square, red, simple clay-built house. James leads our little party with some twenty kids trailing in our wake and before long I spot Mama, sitting upright and elegantly as always on the ground outside her house. She has a brightly coloured shawl around her neck, as always decorated with the traditional ornaments, but hardly covering her large naked bosom. She spots me too and begins clapping her hands, smiling and chanting, ‘Supa, Corinne. Corinen garai, my child.’ I kneel down in front of her and we put our arms around one another and touch our foreheads together. Just the smell of the manyatta emanating from her comforts me. All the time she keeps saying, ‘Corinne, asche oleng, Enkai, thank you, dear God.’ She pulls my head down towards her, looks me in the face and kisses me on both cheeks. I’m amazed how strong she still is. She still looks great and hardly changed at all since last time I was here. Mama is one of those people who just doesn’t get any older. She takes a good look at me again, laughs and asks me again how I am. Then comes the question I’ve been waiting for, ‘Core Napirai? Where’s Napirai?’

  I stand up and let my daughter take my place. She was standing a bit back with her father and the children, watching Mama and me. Now she bows down to Mama and immediately those strong dark hands take hold of her and pull her down to be kissed over and over again. For minutes on end Mama holds my daughter’s head in her hands as she beams at her granddaughter. We can tell just how happy she is by all her clapping and laughing. I’ve never seen her so happy.

  She asks James something and listens attentively to his answer before welcoming Lketinga with a slap on the back and exchanging a few sentences with him in maa. Then she looks up at us again and says, ‘Corinne, Corinne, Napirai, Napirai’, and holds out her hands towards us. We kneel down in front of her again and share her pleasure as she holds on to me with one hand and her granddaughter with the other. This time her happiness spills over and I can’t hold back the tears any more. Napirai looks over at me and says with a laugh, ‘Mama, she’s way cool!’

  Napirai writes: I’ve only been in Barsaloi a little time but already I’ve seen and experienced so many new things that I’ve hardly had time to take it all in, sit down and think about it. But maybe that’s for the best. To be honest, I can’t think about anything other than just making the most of every moment we’re here. The trouble is that I can’t stay that long and I think it’ll all really only sink in when I’m back home.

  I’d looked forward so long to meeting my grandmother and it’s really great that she has regained sight in one eye. I would have loved to spend time with her, just me and my mother and her, but that isn’t possible. It seems people here do everything all together and so even the first time I go to meet my ‘Gogo’, my grandmother, there’s a whole troop following me.

  As we approach her hut I spot her sitting on the ground outside the door. I can see my mother is getting very emotional because for a moment everything goes quiet. My mother is first to greet her and I can tell how pleased they are to see one another. I suddenly understand how strong my mother’s emotional tie to this woman is.

  Then suddenly I hear my name being called out. I’m not really sure what I’m supposed to do or say so I just wait there. Then she takes my hands and says something to me. I don’t understand but I get the gist. I can tell she’s very moved to see me after such a long time. It’s very emotional for me too and I really have to pull myself together as I don’t want to break into tears.

  My grandmother is very old and nobody knew if she would live long enough for us to meet. Now I am really pleased that we have done.

  Looking closely at her face, she doesn’t really seem as old as she is. The main impression she makes on me is of being strong and very aware, and what is most impressive is the feeling of calm and contentment she radiates, which is just incredible.

  I notice the stick by Mama’s side and realise she must have trouble walking. James confirms this. ‘She can’t really get up or walk any more, so she just sits here. But she’s been better since her eye operation last year. They were able to save the eye that had gone almost totally blind and now at least she can see again with one eye. We were going to repeat the operation on the other eye, but she says one is enough.’

  Lketinga hands us an empty carrier bag so we can sit down on it next to Mama. His sister plonks herself down on the greyish-reddish dirt next to me. She still has a sad look on her face and is starting to sob again, but Mama turns a stern gaze on her and says, ‘What are you crying for? Pull yourself together. It’s really nice that she’s here, not something to cry about!’ Lketinga laughs as James translates for us. It’s always the same here: the only time you’re supposed to cry is for the dead. It’s not acceptable at any other time. I put my arm around her sympathetically and try to calm her down. Eventually the sobbing dies down, and Mama and I can have a conversation, thanks to James patiently translating for us.

  All the children clustered round us are eventually too much for Mama and she starts asking them all what they think they’re doing here. James and Lketinga shoo some of the ones that don’t belong to the family away, and they do as they’re told and hurry off. But it’s time now for us to set up our camp for the night before it gets dark, so we take our leave and promise to come back tomorrow for tea. I need Napirai to spend some time inside a manyatta-style dwelling so she can know what it’s like and understand how she spent her first year of life with me here. Mama says thanks to us again with another ‘Asche oleng, asante sana,’ as we take our leave for the day.

  We leave the corral and it quickly fills with goats returning from pasture. That’s always the best part of the day. But today we don’t have time to sit back and enjoy it. We have to get on with setting up our own camp. In an hour’s time it’ll be pitch black as there’s still no electricity in Barsaloi. Looking at the hordes of children still cl
ustered around us I ask James if now would be a good time to hand out the sweets we’ve brought. ‘Yes,’ he says, ‘that’s a good idea. That’ll make them happy and they’ll all go home.’ I give Lketinga and James a handful of sweets each and hand out some myself. Immediately it’s chaotic as other kids rush over from their own huts as nobody wants to end up empty-handed. James the schoolteacher intervenes and gets them all to line up or else there won’t be any more. That works fine until they start to notice that the bags are nearly empty. Then the little hands all reach out towards us and before long the queue has collapsed. Despite the huge number of sweets we brought there aren’t enough for all. Some of the littlest kids can’t believe they didn’t get any and I’m trying to work out where on earth we can get more from, but James just laughs and says, ‘No problem, Corinne. You could never have enough for all of them. You’ve no idea how many kids there are in Barsaloi nowadays.’

  James takes us over to the mission while Lketinga and Papa Saguna, who has joined our little group unobtrusively, wait for the rest of the goats. One of them is going to end up as our evening meal and the two of them want to choose which. We would have been fine with spaghetti but tradition dictates that honoured guests have to be served a slaughtered goat as a sign of welcome.

  The new Colombian missionary gives us a hearty greeting and offers us rooms for the night in the mission house. Napirai and I are glad to accept. We have tents with us but it’s bound to be quieter and more comfortable in a house with showers and proper toilets. Albert is the only one determined to put up his tent roof over the Land Rover. The drivers in any case sleep in the open to guard the vehicles. We sit in the mission, which I know from the old days, and drink a cup of coffee while they set up the tent. The Colombia missionary is very different to old Father Giuliani. He’s very chatty and ready to help, but not exactly the blue sky thinker and tireless old warrior that Giuliani is. I look forward to seeing him tomorrow.

  By now it has got completely dark. All of a sudden Lketinga is standing there in the doorway. He nods coolly to the missionary and then invites us over to James’s house, where dinner is served. We haven’t had to watch the ceremony of slaughtering the goat, which both Napirai and my publisher Albert are relieved to hear. We take out our torches and follow Lketinga, who skips light-footedly on ahead of us.

  James’s house is still the same one he lived in six years ago, but he has changed it inside. It is a simple concrete structure with a corrugated iron roof and looks a bit like a barracks. There are three rooms: a kitchen with pots and pans and plates and a gas cooker, a bedroom, which he shares with Stefania and the two youngest children, and a large living room. The older children sleep in a separate ‘kids’ house’ just next to the main one. Later on they proudly show us round their own little domain, which I can tell is pretty lively at times.

  Now here we are all sitting around the living room, which has two sofas, some bookshelves, a few chairs and a little table. One of the walls has an artistic mural showing landscape scenes and animals. James tells us proudly it’s the work of one of his former pupils.

  Our two drivers are invited in to share dinner. They know nothing of my story or why we’re even here. Stefania serves up wonderful rice with goat meat, vegetables and a separate plate with pieces of grilled meat. All the others eat more than we four Europeans, who find freshly slaughtered goat meat a bit tough, but I save our honour by taking second helpings. After dinner, Martin, our driver, asks how we know this family in Barsaloi. Everybody bursts out laughing. I start to tell him my White Masai story, with James butting in from time to time to explain something. Lketinga just sits there listening carefully. Only now and again does he nod his head or smile or confirm our version of events with a simple ‘Yes.’ The drivers, however, are dumbstruck. They thought we had just booked a private safari through the Samburu country and had dropped in to visit a family we knew. They can hardly believe that Lketinga was my husband and that I lived here for several years cut off from civilisation. They thought Klaus and I were a couple, that we had adopted Napirai and had just discovered the identity of her real father, and that Albert was her father-in-law. We all fall about laughing at how wrong they’d got it. It takes a while for me to tell the rest of my story, though I leave out some of the more difficult bits for the sake of not damaging the good mood.

  Eventually it’s time for us to go. It’s been a long, tiring and emotional day. Lketinga accompanies us to the mission door.

  Shortly after I find myself lying there in bed, listening to the distant murmurings of the villagers in their manyattas. All of them can hear every word their neighbours say. I can hear the laughing voices of children telling one another stories. Now and then I hear the sound of bells around the necks of the goats, or a dog barking. Napirai is dead to all of it. She fell fast asleep straight away. I wonder about how the day has been for her. At least none of it seems to have stopped her getting a sound night’s sleep. I give thanks for a happy reunion, and most of all for the fact that, despite her advanced age, we were able to share it with Mama too.

  The next day we’re about to set off for a walk round Barsaloi when a car dashes past us, then abruptly comes to a halt, and with a big grin on his face, out jumps Father Giuliani. Just as twenty years ago, he’s wearing shorts, a striped T-shirt and his legendary flip-flops. He immediately starts out talking Italian as he throws his arms around me and Albert as if we were old, long-lost friends. Straight away he asks me about Napirai, who’s still sleeping off the experiences of the day before. He’s only just arrived but already he suggests that we go for a picnic on the dried-up Barsaloi riverbed. He has three guests from Italy with him and they’ve brought some food. Lketinga and James are happy to agree, as long as they can bring some food along too. Stefania has cooked two big pots full of rice and goat meat in a tasty sauce and has baked some chapattis to go with it. Meanwhile we go back to the mission and have a cup of coffee while we wait for Napirai to get ready.

  As soon as she appears Giuliani starts telling her at length all her mother went through here and that she’s been here before to visit him when she was just a tiny baby. Clearly my daughter can hardly keep herself from laughing aloud at the pastor’s bubbly, effervescent personality. He’s a real live wire and as full of energy as ever, even though he must be over seventy years old now.

  Eventually everything is ready and we set off. Stefania has packed up our lunch in several pots which we have to position carefully in the car so they don’t all spill as we drive along the bumpy track. Napirai’s little half-brother Lodunu is determined to come with us, as is Diego, James’s younger son. Ever since we arrived the two of them have clung to Napirai and idolised her. I think all the children fussing around her has made it a lot easier for her to get comfortable with her African family.

  We’ve been driving for a fair bit along the dried-up riverbed when James asks just where exactly we’re headed for. It seems nobody knows exactly, except for Lketinga who’s sitting up front next to the driver. With that deep dark voice of his, he says simply, ‘I know. Go, go!’ pointing straight ahead. There’s a lot of activity as usual along the riverbed. A few women and one or two children are digging waterholes in the sand. Then they fill their cups with the precious water filtered by the sand and pour them into canisters. We come across several herds of goats being driven along the riverbed by children from the village. As soon as the goats smell the water, they’re unstoppable and charge past us bleating loudly. As most of the goats are white, I have no idea how the children manage to sort out whose are whose afterwards.

  By the river’s edge stand succulent green acacias, a clear indicator by their condition that it rained heavily last month. We drive on and on and gradually we start to wonder where on earth Lketinga is taking us. The riverbed here meanders broad and wide across the landscape, across stony reaches here and there or occasionally past some red shrub or other in blossom. From time to time we send tribes of apes leaping and screeching up into the trees, or
send camels scurrying away from the cars in that funny, awkward way they have of running.

  Suddenly, in the middle of nowhere, Lketinga points to a big tree on the bank and says we’ve arrived. It’s nice enough, I think to myself, but not exactly overwhelming. He opens the car door for Napirai and me. ‘Come,’ he says, ‘only one minute!’ He takes me by the hand and pulls me through the rough grass up a little hillock. And suddenly the view takes my breath away: we’re standing next to a little lake. I look at Lketinga in amazement. He laughs and says, ‘Yes, I know everything here.’

  By now the others have joined us and they’re all equally surprised, even Giuliani who’s lived around here for forty years but never come across this little lake. Even James didn’t know about it. ‘Yes, I know,’ says Lketinga. ‘The only people who know about this lake are those who’re out every day with the animals and have managed to walk this far. Boys who’ve only been to school don’t know anything about their own country,’ he says teasingly to James. He never brought me here before either. The little lake shines in the sun and on the opposite bank two naked warriors are bathing and washing their kangas. It could be a scene from the Bible.

  The pots full of food have been laid out on a flat-topped tree root and Giuliani is dragging a folding table and chairs over to lay out the bananas, papayas and mangos he’s grown himself. They’re delicious, the flavour is so much more intense than anything we can buy in a supermarket. We’ve also got salami, ham and cheese as well as the delicious dish made by Stefania. Back in the days when I lived here we didn’t dare dream of a treat like this.

  The two young boys are climbing around the trees like monkeys. Back in Switzerland people are always telling two-to three-year-olds to be careful and nobody would let them climb trees on their own. Lketina’s son Lodunu is particularly wild, extremely agile and good-looking. He has three strings of glass beads around his neck, the animal teeth hanging from them, and his stomach is covered with fine scars. He is incredibly proud of them and his equally proud father explains, ‘He was determined to have them, and didn’t even cry, even though they shed blood. One of these days he’ll be a great warrior.’ He pulls the kid over and hugs him. He also wants Napirai to sit next to him. Everything he does is so gentle, even when he removes a leaf from her hair. They are so trusting and natural together, it is hard to believe we only arrived yesterday.