Reunion in Barsaloi

by Corinne Hofmann

As it’s quiet at the moment, however, the AMREF women ask one of the policemen standing nearby if we can go over and take pictures next to the aircraft for five minutes. Normally you need official authorization, which has to be applied for in writing and can take two or three days to be granted, but the policeman just laughs and eventually says: ‘Okay, you can go there.’

  So we stroll over to the little rescue plane and while Klaus takes pictures the woman in charge of the air service explains the improvements they’ve made to their fleet. Nearby a couple of mechanics are lying in the shade of another small aircraft, having a midday nap. All of a sudden the deceptive calm is disrupted by a self-important man storming up to us in a rage. One of the AMREF women whispers, ‘Uh-oh, now we’re in for it. That’s the security chief.’

  He orders us to stop taking photographs immediately and explain ourselves. The two women explain the situation and show him their identity papers and business cards. But he is totally unimpressed by the business cards of a couple of women and insists that the tarmac is off-limits and that photographs can only be taken with written authority. The fact that there’s nothing going on and that the photographs are being taken in a good cause doesn’t impress him at all. He refuses even to listen to a word we say and instead insists on telling us he has the power to lock us all up in jail for years.

  I can hardly believe my ears. There’s not another aircraft to be seen anywhere and we’re only twenty paces from the hangar. Rules are rules but we’re hardly talking about an offence that merits a long jail sentence. The two women try to keep calm and make him see reason. But even the policeman who gave us permission gets put through the mill and told he’s incompetent. By now we’ve been standing out on the tarmac in the scorching heat for at least half an hour and have run out of arguments. We’re simply not sure what he wants: whether he’s looking for a bribe or just trying to demonstrate his power. He’s clearly every upset, however. By now a few other men have come over to join the discussion. Everybody’s now staring at us and we’re starting to feel like serious criminals. It’s absolutely ironic: here we are trying to do something that could gain them useful publicity and a jumped-up little local official is trying to make his mind up whether or not to have us arrested.

  Suddenly one of the AMREF women has a brainwave. She announces she has to be back in town for lunch with an ambassador and she’s not going to be able to make it now. She has to let him know, as he is an ambassador after all. She’s allowed to make the call but in fact uses the opportunity to call her boss and tell him we need someone in authority to come here and sort things out! He turns up in next to no time and asks what’s going on. The security chief starts explaining our ‘conduct’ to him at length. There’s some more discussion but before long his tone changes and we’re simply told we can go – just like that! We have no idea what was said to change his mind and we’re not about to ask; the main thing is that we’re not about to end up in an African jail.

  After that nasty experience we take ourselves off out of the building as quickly as possible and find a restaurant where we can have a drink. We’ve got enough to talk about now for the rest of the day.

  The Kibera Slum

  Next morning we meet up as arranged outside the AMREF offices. Everything is ready and we set off straight away. Before long we’re approaching the sea of corrugated iron roofs that marks the beginning of the slum. Our guide tells us this is the biggest slum district in Nairobi. Some sixty percent of the city’s population live in conditions like these. There are some 700,000 people squeezed into Kibera alone. The AIDS rate is sky-high and diseases such as tuberculosis spread like wildfire, particularly because the public hygiene is catastrophic. There is an average of only one toilet for every four hundred people! AMREF has built a substantial number of public sanitary facilities that charge only a small fee to cover the costs of cleaning them. That has done something to improve the situation. Before, you didn’t dare even walk through this part of town without a protective cover on your head because people just did what they had to in plastic bottles or bags and hurled them out of the windows. They called these bags of excrement sailing through the air ‘flying toilets’. Klaus and I exchange looks of disgust and horror.

  We drive slowly along a track between makeshift market stalls selling huge quantities of clothing, bags, household goods and even brand new radios. It seems everybody has something to hawk. On either side our car is squeezed in by thickly pressed crowds of people. I feel uneasy, sitting here as a white person in a car pushing its way through this mob. But our driver tries to reassure me: ‘This car is marked so that people can tell it belongs to aid workers whom they can rely on for help.’

  He stops the car and we climb out. A boy from the crowd with gaps in his teeth is told to look after the car and he’ll earn a few shillings. For a minute or two I feel almost suffocated by the stench. It’s incredibly hot and wherever I look I see men, women, children and mountains of rubbish. This whole ‘city’ is made up of shacks knocked together out of wood and corrugated iron. We hop and jump over piles of waste and find ourselves crossing a railway line that runs barely two yards away from the market stalls but is barely visible beneath the children and goats cluttering the tracks. Every few steps we come across pools of stinking water. Our guide tells us we’re lucky with the weather. As soon as the rains start the mud and excrement mix together into an ankle-deep sludge and the stink becomes unbearable. There are chickens pecking about in the dirty damp ruts, and it occurs to me that I wouldn’t like to eat their eggs. Music belts out from behind each and every thin wooden wall.

  People watch us suspiciously with blank faces. Only the children seem to have any curiosity and before long there’s a merry gang of them tagging along behind us. I’m astonished to see some of them wearing pretty blue dresses. These are their school uniforms, I’m told. AMREF has even built a school here. Others, though, wear only tattered T-shirts and stand there barefoot in the dust and dirt. Many of them are covered in spots and scabs, but they beam smiles at us and say, ‘Hello Mzungu, how are you?’ I take a few of them by their little hands and ask them their names. But then they just turn shy.

  We plod past the newly built toilets to make our way to a water standpipe. The water here is filtered and almost totally free of bacteria, so everyone has access to clean drinking water from the tap. Since this standpipe was installed there has been a dramatic drop in illnesses, particularly those that cause diarrhoea. On the corner of a big, empty square we come to the AMREF hospital. In the entrance hall queues of the sick wait their turn to be seen.

  We’re taken upstairs and introduced to several of the staff. A gaunt, elderly man starts by explaining to us how difficult it was to get the hospital up and running. Even the aid organizations find it hard to make any headway in the slum districts. People are mistrustful because they’ve been let down by empty promises so many times before. Over time, however, the hospital has come to be well used, and one big advance has been that more and more women are now registering to have their babies there. AMREF is also engaged in providing medical training for local people, particularly from the slum district itself, which is one more step to improving things. After an hour we leave the building with a greatly increased respect for the incredible job the people here do to help the weak and the sick.

  Outside we come across a group of young people who work for AMREF after school every day. They tell us their job is a sort of reconnaissance task: they wander around the area, which they all know like the back of their hand, and keep an eye on what’s going on. If they come across someone seriously ill or wounded they inform the hospital immediately so they can get help. As a rule of thumb, people here don’t place too much value on human life.

  On the way back to the car I spot a mother pig with her piglets rummaging in the dross around a rubbish heap. Just two yards away from me a man stands urinating on some planks. A few feet further away an old woman is crouching in a shelter grilling fish in a pan over an open fire. Ne
xt to her about fifty raw fish lie on a makeshift table swarming with flies. I’ve never seen so many flies before, not even at the worst of times living in a manyatta. It makes me sick to even think that these fish are going to be sold and eaten. The temperature is thirty-five degrees and the stink is something rotten. The toothless old woman laughs when she sees how disgusted I look and waves a piece of cardboard to fan the flames. A few paces on a man is selling five corn cobs he’s grilled. I’m horrified but at the same time fascinated to see how much energy these people put into just surviving. Nobody complains; everybody just tries to muddle through as best they can.

  Back at the railway tracks I decide to buy a bag for my journey from one of the women there. She’s delighted to show me her selection. Naturally they’re all covered with dust having been hung out all day on her wooden stall. While I’m deciding which to buy a goods train hurtles past. People leap off the tracks, and I squeeze up against the stall as hard as I can. A cloud of dust sent up by the passing train covers all the goods and flies into my face. But within a few seconds it’s all over, as if it was just a fleeting phantom, and the women are shaking their goods free of the dust. To think they do this all day long, every day of their lives! Once again it brings home to me how privileged our lives are in Europe. I pay for the bag and we walk slowly back to the car. From every corner we hear the cacophony of music and voices as we drive off, slowly squeezing our way down the narrow alleyways, watched all the way by countless pairs of eyes. I feel anything but comfortable.

  As we drive back I mentally compare the life of the slum-dwellers with that of my family in Barsaloi. Obviously they don’t know the meaning of being ‘comfortable’ in our European sense, but they live in wide-open spaces with blue sky above them. Their way of life is simple and tough, but it is anything but impoverished. Here in the slum, on the other hand, these people are really the poorest of the poor. Most of them originally came from a rural environment in the hope that life in the city would be easier. But those who end up in the slum find it almost impossible to get out.

  When we get back to Klaus and Irene’s place I find I need to take a long, long shower. But even after that I can’t get the mental images of the Kibera slum out of my head for hours. That evening I refuse to go to one of the expensive restaurants where we’d pay as much for a meal as countless people earn in a month. So instead Klaus and Irene take me to a simple Somali restaurant that’s mostly used by local people. It turns out to be a much pleasanter, quiet and convivial evening, if only perhaps because the impressions of the day have at least slightly begun to fade.

  Mzungu Masai

  The next day we set off for the famous River Road to take another look at the Igbol, the very basic hotel in which I mostly stayed when I had to come to Nairobi. The friendly staff here always called me ‘Mzungu Masai’, a nickname that gave me the title for my first book. But even in my wildest dreams back then I never imagined that millions of people would later find inspiration in my White Masai life. On the way to the Igbol we have to pass the Nyayo Building, which I came to hate so much. How many times was I forced to come here and stand around filled with prayers, hopes and often despair? I’ve almost forgotten now what I needed such and such a stamp for. All I know is I expended huge amounts of nervous energy and adrenalin dealing with the bureaucrats who inhabit this building.

  We find a parking space and a boy who offers to watch the car for us. First of all we take a stroll past the Stanley Hotel, a well-known spot that in the old days was patronized almost exclusively by white people sitting out on the terrace. Today it’s much more mixed, and Kenyans are in the majority. I let myself swim in the sea of people, taking in every impression. The news-stand is still on the corner where it always was, but now there are five times as many different papers on display. We walk down a couple of side streets until I find the Odeon cinema, the landmark that tells me the Igbol can’t be far. Even the telephone box that I used to use to call home to Switzerland is still there. The only difference is that nowadays there is no longer a queue outside it as even in Nairobi people all have mobile phones.

  But I search in vain for the entrance to the restaurant that I remember used to adjoin the hotel, and where the reception and cash desk used to be there is now only a fast-food counter. The big communal dining room where backpackers from all over the planet used to meet up is gone, and with it the charm that used to make this place special.

  My curiosity both satisfied and disappointed, we walk on. The streets are chaotic and noisy with matatus honking their horns continually as their drivers tout for custom. There’s music coming from almost every bar or shop, and neon advertisements in the most garish colours on every wall. Here and there people in rags or with disabilities hold their hands out to beg for money. This is Nairobi at its most hectic, noisy, shrill and in your face. I remember dragging my heavy bags around here with a baby on my back and realize I can no longer imagine it.

  Klaus suggests we go and take a look at the Masai market. I agree with delight, realizing that when I fled the country fourteen years ago I didn’t even have a chance to take any souvenirs with me. Now I have a chance to make it up. It doesn’t take long to get there by car, and the expansive market with all the colourful goods and attractive Masai people immediately exerts its old fascination on me. There’s everything under the sun on sale: calabash gourds in every shape and size, masks, carved figurines, paintings and brightly coloured Masai jewellery of every sort. I have no trouble whatsoever getting rid of my money.

  That evening I’m suddenly seized by the desire to cook for my hosts. Nice as it is not to have to cook every day, it dawns on me that back home in Switzerland I enjoy making dinner for my daughter and me. And so Klaus, Irene and I spend a pleasant evening in, chatting about the next day’s trip to Mombasa before we go to bed, last stop on my sentimental journey.

  Mombasa

  As we get off the plane in Mombasa we’re met by the same warm humid tropical air that I first fell in love with, the same scent of the sea. It’s only been a short internal flight but even so the impression is of being in a completely different country. Klaus has done the groundwork in advance and so we have a well-respected local taxi driver waiting for us. He’ll be at our disposal for the next day and a half, which is all the time I have left to revisit my memories.

  First of all we head for the old part of town where all the fruit and vegetable markets are. Kenya’s second biggest city has a Muslim feel to it: alongside African women dressed in European clothes are veiled women in black. The pace of life here is less hectic than in Nairobi, however, and at last I feel happy getting about on foot. I wander through the old part of town breathing in the exotic air, with its rich mix of sea salt, fruit, vegetables and spices. The huge sacks of red, orange, yellow and black ground spices are a feast for both eyes and nose. Fruit here has a rich intense smell that we never experience in a supermarket back in Europe. People keep asking me to taste some. Women sit under an umbrella to shade them from the scorching sun and offer their vegetables for sale. What would Mama say if she could see all this?

  I stroll down to Fort Jesus, a fortress built by the Portuguese in 1593, enjoying the light breeze that blows through my clothing. In the distance I can make out the Likoni ferry where my African fate first took its course. Tomorrow I will board it once again. For today it’s too late and we make our way to a hotel on the outskirts of the city.

  The Likoni Ferry

  Our driver picks us up after breakfast. Unfortunately it’s been raining a little and the sky is overcast. We drive along the northern coast towards the city and then head directly for the ferry. A long queue of cars and lorries and hundreds of people are already waiting for the ferry to dock. It’s always a frantic business, even though the crossing itself only takes a few minutes. Watching the ferry go through its docking manoeuvres, I realize that this one is slightly larger than the one on which my fate was decided. And then the horde piles on board, carrying me with them.

 
; Klaus and I are the only white people among the more than five hundred on the ferry – just like it was eighteen years ago when my boyfriend Marco and I were the only tourists on board. I climb up to the upper deck and let my gaze sweep out over the heads of the heaving masses towards the open sea, lost in contemplation of all the events my first journey on this ferry unleashed. Who would have thought back then that this one fateful event would not only set my life on a completely different course but also come to move many others all over the world? Standing there by the railing, I’m lost in amazement at the turns my life has taken. I turn around and – irony of ironies – find myself staring into the eyes of a young Masai warrior barely fifteen feet away. He is neither as tall nor as handsome as Lketinga was back then, but even so this one moment brings all my old feelings and all my memories rushing back. My heart starts beating faster once more and I close my eyes and see myself as I was back then, a pretty 26-year-old woman turning her head at my then boyfriend’s suggestion and looking into the proud eyes of the man who would become my husband. I can see Lketinga standing there: tall, gracious, exotic and unbelievably beautiful, his face painted, his long red hair plaited finely and his naked torso adorned with necklaces of beads. Just the sight of him took my breath away and swept me off my feet.

  Klaus brings me back from my dreams to ask if I’ve noticed the Masai standing behind me. ‘Of course,’ I tell him with a laugh, ‘but I’m pleased to say you’re not Marco and our young warrior here isn’t Lketinga.’

  Before long the ferry docks and we walk across to the taxi that will take us to the Diani coast. Along the route I try to make out where our old souvenir shop would have been, but it’s not easy – so much has changed. Everywhere I look there’s new building going on. Where there was once empty bush country, there are now golf courses, hotels and apartment complexes.