Authors: Corinne Hofmann
O
n our way we notice that someone else has been this way recently. Lketinga examines the tyre tracks and says they’re strangers’. We get down the ‘death drop’ without difficulty, and I try to suppress my memories of the horrible experience of the stillbirth.
As we come round the last bend before the big rocks, I brake sharply. In the middle of the road are two old military Land Rovers with a group of white people running around excitedly between them. There’s no way we can get past so we get out to see what’s going on. From what I can make out it’s a group of young Italians with one black native.
One of the young men is sitting sobbing in the heat with two young women talking to him, both of them crying too. Lketinga talks to the Kenyan, and I summon up a few Italian phrases from memory.
Despite the 40-degree heat, their story brings me out in goose bumps. The girlfriend of the man who’s crying went into the jungle to answer a call of nature some two hours ago. They had stopped because they thought they had reached the end of the road. The woman had barely gone two yards before she went over the edge of the hidden precipice. They all heard a sudden cry and then an impact and since then, for all their shouts and efforts to climb down the steep drop, there’s been no sign of life.
My blood runs cold because I know there’s no chance for her. The man keeps shouting out his girlfriend’s name. I go back to my husband in a state of shock. He’s upset too and tells me this woman is certainly dead because the cliff wall here drops three hundred feet to an old dried up stony riverbed. Nobody has ever climbed down. The Italians seem to have
tried, however, because there are several ropes tied end to end. The two girls are hugging the man, who’s completely at the end of his tether:
red-faced
, soaked in sweat, crouching in the searing heat, shaking his head. I go over to them and suggest they move under the trees, but the man opens his mouth wide and screams.
I look back at Lketinga and see he’s thinking of something, so I run over and ask him what he has in mind. He says he and his friend could get down there somehow and bring the woman back up. Filled with panic I grab him and cry, ‘No darling, that’s crazy, don’t go, it is very dangerous.’ But Lketinga pushes my hand away.
All of a sudden the sobbing man is standing next to me swearing at me for trying to stop someone helping. Furiously I reply that I live here and this is my husband and in three months’ time he’s going to be a father and I don’t intend to bring up my child without a father.
But already Lketinga and the other warrior have begun the dangerous descent some one hundred and fifty feet back up the track. The last thing I see is their completely expressionless faces. Samburus avoid the dead; they don’t even speak of them. I sit down in the shade and sob quietly to myself.
After half an hour we’ve heard nothing, and my anxiety is becoming unbearable. One of the Italians looks down from where they started their descent then comes back excitedly and says he caught sight of them both on the other side of the ravine, carrying a sort of stretcher.
The reaction is near hysteria, but another twenty minutes pass before the pair of them emerge from the forest completely exhausted. Immediately people rush towards them to take the stretcher made out of Lketinga’s kanga and two branches.
From the Masais’ faces I can tell that the woman is dead. I glance at the body and am surprised at how young she is and how peacefully she’s lying there. If it weren’t for the sweet smell that bodies in this heat exude after only three hours, she might merely have been sleeping.
My husband has a brief chat with the group’s black tour leader, and then they move their Land Rovers to one side. Lketinga takes the ignition key because he wants to drive, and in my shocked state there’s no point in arguing. Promising to inform the Mission, we drive down the scree slope in absolute silence. When we come to the first river the pair of them get out and wash for nearly an hour. It is a sort of ritual.
At last we drive on, and the men exchange a few words timidly. It’s nearly six p.m. when we reach Barsaloi. Outside the shop nearly half of our goods have already been unloaded. Lketinga’s brother and the warrior who went with the lorry are keeping an eye on the labourers. I open the shop and find myself in a filthy room with maize meal and empty boxes everywhere. While Lketinga cleans up I go to the missionary. He’s astounded by the accident even though he had heard something or other over the radio. He jumps into his Land Cruiser and roars off.
I go back home; after such an emotional upheaval I can’t take all the fuss in the shop. Mama obviously wants to know why the lorry got back before us, but I can only give the barest details. I make
chai
and lie down. I make up my mind never to use that road again. In my condition it’s ever more dangerous. Lketinga comes home around ten p.m. with two warriors, and together they cook up a pot of maize porridge. They talk of nothing but the terrible accident. Eventually I fall asleep.
The next morning our first customers fetch us to open the shop. I go early, as I’m keen to see our new assistant who’s replaced Anna. My husband introduces me to the boy. From the very first I take against him not just because he looks a mess but because he also gives the impression of being lazy. But I force myself not to let his appearance prejudice me because I really ought to be doing less work if I’m not to lose my baby. He works at only half the speed of Anna, and everyone asks where she is.
Now it’s time to find out from Lketinga why we didn’t have more money in Maralal because it only took one glance to see that what was left behind did not make up the difference. Proudly he goes and fetches an exercise book and shows me the credit accounts opened for various people. Some of them I know, but I can’t even read the names of others and I get cross because when we opened the shop I told him, ‘No credit!’
The boy butts in and says he knows these people and he’s sure it won’t be a problem. Even so I object. He listens to my arguments almost dismissively as if he’s bored. My husband says that after all it’s a Samburu shop and he has to help his own people. Once again I’m left there like the evil greedy white woman when all I’m doing is struggling to make a living. My money from Switzerland will last another two years at most, and then what? Lketinga walks out of the shop because he can’t bear it when I start getting worked up. And of course everyone stares at me when I, as a woman, dare to raise my voice.
All day there are endless arguments with customers who were reckoning on getting credit. A few of the hardest-nosed decide simply to wait for my husband. Working with the boy is a lot less fun than with Anna. I scarcely dare go to the toilet because I don’t trust him. Because my husband doesn’t turn up again until the evening I’ve already worked more on the first day than I’m supposed to. My legs ache, and I’ve hardly eaten anything all day. Back home there’s no water or wood for the fire. I think almost nostalgically how good the service was in the hospital: three meals a day without having to cook!
My legs get tired far more quickly now, and something is going to have to be done. One cup of
chai
in the morning and one in the evening are simply not enough to build up my strength. Mama agrees that I need to eat a lot more or the child won’t be healthy. We decide to move into the back room of the shop as soon as possible. So after just four months we have to leave our lovely
manyatta
, but Mama will get it and she’s very pleased about that.
When we order our next lorry-load we’ll order a bed, a table and chairs so we can move in properly. The thought of a bed cheers me up a lot because sleeping on the ground is gradually giving me backache, although for the past year it didn’t bother me.
For the past few days, clouds have started to appear in the otherwise perpetually blue sky, and everybody is expecting rain. The land is totally dry, the ground cracked and as hard as stone. More and more frequently we hear stories of lions attacking the animal herds in broad daylight. The children who look after them panic when they have to run home without the goats to fetch help. So my husband now regularly spends days out wandering with the herds, and there’s nothing I can do but spend all my time in the shop, working alongside the boy and keeping tabs on him.
O
n the fifth overcast day the first raindrops began to fall. A Sunday, our day off, and we rush to spread plastic sheeting over the
manyatta
, not an easy task in the rapidly rising wind. Mama is struggling with her hut just like we are with ours. Then the rain pours down, a rainstorm the like of which I have never experienced before. Before long everything is under water, the wind blows damp into every crack, and we have to extinguish the fire to stop sparks from being blown everywhere. I put on every warm piece of clothing I have. Within an hour the first drops of water are already falling inside our hut, despite the plastic sheeting. I can only imagine what it must be like for Mama and Saguna!
The water is creeping in the door towards our sleeping space, and I use a cup to scoop the earth into a dam. The wind is tugging the plastic sheeting, and I imagine it being ripped off at any moment. It sounds as if there’s a river raging outside. The water’s coming in through the sides of the hut now, and I do my best to get things off the ground. I stuff our blankets into my travel bag so that at least they will remain dry.
Suddenly, after two hours, the torrent ceases. We crawl out of the hut, but I no longer recognize the landscape. A few huts have been all but swept away. The goats are running around in confusion. Mama is standing, soaked to the skin, outside her hut, which looks flooded with Saguna standing in one corner shivering and crying. I bring her over and put one of my dry sweaters on her; at least she can wrap herself up in it. Everyone is coming out now to see the streams the water has carved rushing down towards the river. Suddenly we hear a loud bang. I turn to Lketinga in shock to ask what it is. Wrapped in his red blanket, he just laughs and says
the floodwater in the river will have reached the edge of the cliffs, and indeed there’s a roaring as if from a giant waterfall.
Lketinga and I are keen to go down to the big river, but Mama says no; it’s far too dangerous, she insists. So we go down to the other side where the lorry became stuck in the sand. This river is some seventy-five feet across; the other one maybe three times that. Lketinga has pulled his woollen blanket up to cover his head, and for the first time up here I’ve got my jeans, a pullover and jacket on. The few people we bump into stare at my appearance. They’ve never seen a woman in trousers before. I have to watch that they don’t fall down, as I can no longer do them up across my stomach.
The roaring keeps getting louder to the point where we can hardly hear each other speak. Then all of a sudden I see the rolling river. It’s impossible to believe how much it’s changed! A brown mass of water carrying all before it, including bushes and stones. I’m left speechless by this demonstration of the power of nature. Then I think I hear a cry and ask Lketinga if he heard it too. He says no, but I can hear it quite clearly now, someone shouting out, and now he hears it too. Where can it be coming from? We run along the upper riverbank, taking care not to slip.
After just a few yards we see a terrible sight – two children up to their necks in water hanging on to a few rocks in the middle of the raging river. Lketinga doesn’t waste a second: he shouts something to them as he clambers down the bank. It looks terrifying. Every other second their heads are submerged by the onrushing torrent, but their hands cling tightly to the rocks. I know my husband can’t swim and is afraid of deep water. If he loses his footing in the rushing torrent, he’s done for. Even so I can understand why he’s trying to save these children, and I’m proud of him.
He grabs a long stick and uses it to fight his way through the river to the rocks, all the time shouting to the children. I’m just standing there, praying to my guardian angel. He reaches the rocks, throws the girl across his back and fights his way back. I watch in spellbound horror as the boy clings on, his head barely visible now. I rush down into the water to meet my husband and take the girl off him so he can go back straight away. The child is heavy, and it’s a real effort to carry her the seven feet back to the riverbank. I lay her down and immediately throw my jacket over her. She’s cold as ice. My darling has saved the little boy too who’s now spitting out water as Lketinga massages him. I do the same for the girl, and slowly her
stiff limbs begin to regain warmth. But the boy’s gone listless and can’t walk. Lketinga carries him home while I let the girl lean on me. I’m horrified to think how close both children came to dying.
Mama frowns when she hears the story and tells the children off. Apparently they were out with the goats and were crossing the riverbed when the flood struck. Many of the goats were washed away, although a few made it to the bank. My husband tells me the first wave’s always taller than a man and comes over the cliff edge so suddenly and quickly that nobody who’s at the river stands a chance. Every year several animals and people are drowned. The children stay with us awhile but we’ve no hot tea, because all the firewood is soaked.
We go to take a look at the shop. The veranda is covered in a thick layer of sludge; inside is dry except for a couple of puddles. Then we go down to the
chai
-house, but there’s no tea to be had there either. The roaring of the big river is really loud, and we go to take a look. It’s frightening to see. Fathers Roberto and Giuliani are there too, staring at the power of the water. I mention what happened at the other river, and Giuliani for the first time comes up to my husband and takes him by the hand in thanks.
On the way back we fetch the little stove and charcoal to bring home so that at least we can make hot tea for everybody. It’s an uncomfortable night because everything is so damp, but in the morning the sun’s out again, and we spread our clothes and blankets to dry on the thorn bushes in the heat.
A day later the landscape changes once again, but this time it’s soft and gentle: grass sprouting everywhere and flowers here and there springing up from the earth so quickly we can almost watch them grow. Thousands of tiny white butterflies cover the ground like snowflakes. It’s a magnificent site to watch life suddenly bloom in this harsh landscape. Within a week all of Barsaloi has become a sea of little purple flowers.
But there’s a downside too. There are awful numbers of mosquitoes swarming around in the evening. Not only do we sleep under the mosquito net, but it’s so bad I even light one of the repellent coils in the
manyatta
.
Ten days after the rains we’re still cut off from the outside world by the two rivers in flood. It’s already possible in some places to get across on foot, but it would be unwise to risk it in a car. Giuliani expressly warned me: several vehicles have already been caught in the river and you could watch the quicksand swallow them up.
A few days later we risk a journey to Maralal, taking the long route because the jungle route is wet and slippery. This time there isn’t a lorry available straight away, and we have to hang around for four days. We drop in on Sophia, who’s well. She’s already so fat she can hardly bend over. She hasn’t heard from Jutta.
My husband and I spend a lot of time in the Tourist Lodge because, as we have the time, it’s absolutely fascinating to watch the wild animals’ watering hole. On the last day we buy a bed with a mattress, a table with four chairs and a little cupboard. The furniture isn’t as nice as the stuff in Mombasa, and it’s dearer. The lorry driver is unimpressed when he hears he’s supposed to pick this lot up too, but I’m paying the bill! We drive behind him, and this time the trip back to Barsaloi takes almost six hours but with no problems: not even a flat tyre to change. First of all we put the furniture out in the back room then get on with the usual unloading.