My sister has been back home for a month now. Edy turns up now and again to ask if there have been any letters from her, but Lketinga starts to see even that in a different light. He’s convinced Edy’s coming to see me and when one day he catches me buying marijuana from him he starts to go on at me like I’m a major criminal and threatens to report me to the police.
My own husband – threatening to have me thrown in jail, even though he knows how awful conditions are! The laws against drugs in Kenya are very strict, and Edy has to work hard to persuade him not to go to the police in Ukunda. I’m standing there speechless, not even able to cry: at the end of the day I need the drugs to put up with him. Instead he makes me promise never to smoke marijuana again, saying he doesn’t want to live with someone who breaks Kenyan law. Miraa, according to him, is legal so it’s not the same thing.
Then my husband goes through all my pockets and sniffs every cigarette I light up. Back home he tells the whole story to Priscilla and anyone else who’s listening. They all act shocked and make me feel rotten. Every time I go to the toilet Lketinga comes with me. He won’t even let me go to the shop in the village. All I do now is go to our shop, come home and sit on the bed. The only thing that matters to me is my baby. Napirai seems to sense that I’m not happy. She won’t leave my side and keeps saying ‘Mama, Mama’ and a few other words I can’t make out. Priscilla now keeps her distance from us; she doesn’t want any trouble.
I don’t even get any joy out of work anymore. Lketinga is there the whole time. He keeps an eye on me either in the shop or from the bar of the Chinese restaurant and empties my bag out up to three times a day. Once some Swiss tourists turn up, but I don’t feel much like talking to them and say I’m not feeling well and have a stomach ache. My husband turns up just as one of the Swiss women picks up Napirai and says how much she looks like the child minder. Once again I’m telling her she’s made a mistake when Lketinga butts in and says: ‘Corinne, why all people know, this child is not yours?’ With that one sentence he wipes out my last hope and my final ounce of respect for him.
I stand up and, without answering any of the questions the others are putting to me, walk out as if in a trance and cross the road to the Chinese restaurant. I ask the owner if I can use his phone, ring the Swissair office in Nairobi and book the next available flight to Zürich for myself and my sixteen-month old child. It takes a while before they can tell me there are seats available in four days’ time. I know that they don’t take telephone bookings from individuals but I beg the woman to keep the seats for me, telling her I can only pay and pick up the tickets the day before departure, but it’s extremely important and I will definitely be there. My heart skips a beat when she says the word ‘okay’.
I walk back to the shop slowly and announce straight out that I’m going to Switzerland on holiday. At first Lketinga gives an uneasy laugh, then says I can go but without Napirai so he can be sure I’ll come back. I answer in a tired voice that my baby is coming with me. As always I’ll be back but after all the stress with the shop I need a break before the high season starts in December. Lketinga doesn’t agree and refuses to sign a piece of paper allowing me to leave. Nonetheless two days later I pack my bags. Priscilla and Sophia talk to him. They’re all convinced I’ll be back.
The Final Flight
On our last day I leave everything behind. My husband insists that I pack just a few things for Napirai. I hand over all the bank account cards to him to prove that I’ll be back. Who would give away so much money, a car and a fully stocked shop?
Torn this way and that and not knowing whether to believe me, he comes with Napirai and me as far as Mombasa. Right up until we’re about to set off for Nairobi he still hasn’t signed the piece of paper. I ask him one last time and tell him I’m going anyway. I’m so burned out internally, so emptied of all emotion, that there are no more tears left.
The driver starts up the engine. Lketinga is standing next to us in the bus and once again has one of the other passengers translate the letter I’ve written out which says that I have the permission of my husband Lketinga Leparmorijo to leave Kenya with our daughter Napirai for three weeks’ holiday in Switzerland.
The bus driver parps his horn for the third time. Lketinga scribbles his mark on the piece of paper and says: ‘I don’t know if I see you and Napirai again!’ and then he jumps off the bus, and we set off. It’s only now that I burst into tears and I look through the window as we rush past the scenes I know and have loved and say goodbye to them.
Dear Lketinga,
I hope you can forgive what I am about to tell you: I am not coming back to Kenya.
I have been thinking a lot about us. For more than three and a half years I loved you so much that I was prepared to live with you in Barsaloi. I presented you with a daughter but ever since the day you alleged that child was someone else’s I could no longer think of you in the same way. You realized this too.
I have never wanted anyone else, and I never lied to you but in all these years you never understood me, perhaps because I’m a mzungu. My world and yours are very different, but I thought that one day we could live together in the same world.
Now, however, after the last chance we had in Mombasa, I realize that you are unhappy and I certainly am. We are both still young and can’t go on living the way we are. Right now you won’t understand me, but in time you’ll see that you will be happier with someone else. It’s easy for you to find a new wife who lives in your world, but find a Samburu woman this time and not another white woman. We’re too different. One day you’ll have lots of children.
I have taken Napirai with me because she’s all I have left. I also know that I will never have any other children. Without Napirai I couldn’t survive. She is my life! Please, Lketinga, forgive me! I’m simply not strong enough anymore to continue living in Kenya. I always felt very alone there, had no friends and you treated me like a criminal. You didn’t even know you were doing it, that’s just Africa. But I tell you once again: I never did anything wrong.
Now you have to make up your mind what to do with the shop. I’m writing to Sophia too. She can help you. I’m giving you the whole business but if you want to sell it, you’ll have to deal with Anil, the Indian.
I will help you from here as much as I can and I won’t leave you in the lurch. If you have problems, tell Sophia. The rent for the shop is paid up until the middle of December, and even if you don’t want to work there anymore you must talk to Anil. I’m giving you the car too and am enclosing the signed paperwork for you. If you want to sell the car you should get at least 80,000 shillings. You will have to find someone reliable to help you. Then you will be a rich man.
Please don’t be sad, Lketinga. You’re young and good-looking and you’ll find a better wife. Napirai will always remind me happily of you. Please try to understand me! I would have died in Kenya, and I don’t think that’s what you wanted. My family don’t think ill of you, they still like you but we are just too different.
Best wishes from Corinne and family.
Dear James,
I hope you are okay. I am in Switzerland and very sad. I realize now that I can never come back to Kenya. I have written to Lketinga today to tell him. I no longer have the strength to live with your brother. I felt very alone there, just because I was white. You saw how things were with us. I gave him another chance in Mombasa but things got worse instead of better. I loved him very much, you know. But the row over Napirai ripped a huge hole in that love, and from that day on we only argued from morning to night. Every thought he had was negative. I don’t think he really knows what love is, because if you love someone, you can’t say things like that to them.
Mombasa was my final hope, but he didn’t change. It was like a prison. We opened a good shop but I don’t think he’s capable of working there on his own. Please go to Mombasa as soon as possible and talk to him! He has nobody left now and is all on his own. If he wants to sell the shop I can talk to Anil on the p
hone but I have to know what he wants to do. He can keep the car too. Please, James, go to Mombasa as soon as you can because Lketinga will need you very much when he gets my letter.
I will help as much as I can from Switzerland. If he sells everything he will be rich but he’ll have to be careful or else your large family will simply use up all the money fast. I don’t know how the shop is doing in my absence but business has been good up to now. Please go and see because there is a lot of money tied up in the shop in the form of gold jewellery and other things. I don’t want people ripping Lketinga off. I hope he will be able to forgive me for everything I’ve had to do. If I came back to Kenya I would soon die.
Please explain everything to Mama. I love her and will never forget her. Unfortunately I can’t speak to her. Tell her I tried everything to live with Lketinga but his head was in another world. Please write back soon when you get this letter. I have a lot of problems myself and don’t know if I can stay in Switzerland. If not, I will move to Germany. For the next three months I shall be living with my mother.
Best wishes and love,
Corinne.
Dear Father Giuliani,
Since October 6 1990 I have been back in Switzerland. I won’t be coming back to Kenya. I no longer have the strength to live with my husband. I wrote to him two weeks ago to tell him this and I’m now waiting for a reply. It will be a hard blow to him because I left him thinking I was only going to Switzerland on holiday. Otherwise he would never have allowed me to leave the country with Napirai.
As you know, we opened up a great shop on the south coast and did good business from the very first day. But relations between me and my husband did not improve. He was so jealous, even when I just talked to the tourists. In all those years he never trusted me. In Mombasa it was like living in prison. We spent the whole time arguing, which was no good for Napirai either.
My husband has a good heart, but there’s something wrong with his head. It’s hard for me to say that but I’m not the only one who thinks so. All our friends abandoned us, and even some of the tourists were scared of him. It wasn’t bad every day, but by the end it was almost every day. I have left him with everything: the shop, the car etc. He can sell it all and go back to Barsaloi as a rich man. I would be happy if he were to find a good wife and have lots of children.
I am enclosing a few Kenyan shillings with this letter, which you might give to my husband’s mother. I still have money in Barclay’s Bank, and perhaps you could see to it that this goes to Mama? I would be very grateful to you. Please let me know.
I have written this letter to you so that you will understand my side of the story if you hear what has happened from other people. You must believe I did my best and I hope God will forgive me.
Best wishes,
Corinne and Napirai.
Hi, Sophia!
I’ve just put the phone down after speaking to you and Lketinga. I’m really sad and can’t stop crying. I’ve just told you that I’m not coming back and it’s true. I knew that even before I got here. You know my husband a little. I loved him as I’ve never loved anyone in my life. I was prepared to live a proper Samburu life for him. I was ill so often in Barsaloi but I stayed there because I loved him. But a lot of things changed after Napirai was born. One day he alleged she wasn’t even his child. After that, my love for him was jaded. Our time together turned into an emotional roller coaster and he regularly treated me badly.
Sophia, I swear to you on the Bible that I never had another man, not once! But I had to live with accusations from morning to night. I gave my husband one last chance in Mombasa but I can’t go on living like that. He didn’t even notice he was doing it. I gave up everything for him, even my native country. Of course, I changed too but under the circumstances I think that’s not surprising. I feel really sorry for him and for myself. I still don’t know where I’m going to live now.
My biggest problem is Lketinga. He doesn’t have anybody for the shop and can’t run it himself. Please let me know if he intends to keep it. I would be happy if he could manage, but if not he should sell everything. The same goes for the car. Napirai is staying with me. I know she will be happier like that. Please, Sophia, look after Lketinga for a bit. He’s going to have so many problems, and I’m afraid I can’t help him much. If I came back to Kenya he would never let me return to Switzerland.
I hope his brother James will be coming down to Mombasa. I’ve written to him. Help him deal with the business. I know you have problems of your own and I hope for your sake that they sort themselves out. I wish you all the best and that you find another white girl friend. Napirai and I will never forget you.
All my very best,
Corinne
About the Author
Corinne Hofmann, 46, lives in a villa on Lake Lugano with her teenage daughter. Back from Africa, the sequel to The White Masai, and Reunion in Barsaloi, about her return to Kenya where husband and wife are reunited after 14 years, are still riding high on the bestseller lists and the film, The White Masai, was seen by more than one million people when first screened in Germany last September. For more information please visit www.massai.ch
Also published by Bliss Books
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Carla Grissmann
This travelogue is based on the author’s remarkable experiences in remote Anatolia in the 1960s, when she spent the better part of a year living with a local peasant family. Grissmann depicts a people on the cusp of change – with an outsider’s eye and an insider’s sympathy and compassion, whether she is present at the birth of a child, attending a local festival or describing the lives and timeless rituals, the foods and smells of a rural community about to be altered forever.
‘It is a measure of her skills as a writer that she captures the year with such remarkable clarity, in a narrative packed with detail of place and insights… she has created a rare and touching view of Turkey that seems now to have disappeared’ – Anthony Sattin, Sunday Times
‘More than anything I have read, it captures the hum of everyday life in an Anatolian village, the almost tangible good cheer that rises out of their community. It is no longer possible to travel as she did in those years, never planning, just letting things unfold, and so often discovering little paradises no foreigner had ever seen before’ – Maureen Freely, Cornucopia
‘Extremely moving. Grissmann captures life in Anatolia with stark honesty and compassion’ – Paul Bowles
Copyright
First published in the United Kingdon in 2005
by Arcadia Books, 15–16 Nassau Street, London, W1W 7AB
This ebook edition first published in 2011
All rights reserved
Originally published in German by A1 Verlag, Munich as Die Weiße Massai
Copyright © Corinne Hofmann 1999
English language translation copyright © Peter Millar 2005
The right of Corinne Hofmann to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
This ebook is copyright ma
terial and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights, and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly
ISBN 978–1–90812–919–2
The White Masai Page 35
