With my heart hammering, I follow the direction he’s pointing and peer around the corner of the houses. And there he is! My Masai! Standing there next to Tom and laughing at me. I’m speechless. Still laughing, he holds out his arms and says: ‘Hey, Corinne, no kiss for me?’ Only then do I shake myself out of a stupor and rush towards him. We fall into each other’s arms, and it is as if the world stops turning. Then he holds me at arm’s length and says: ‘No problem, Corinne.’ The same old words that right now make me want to weep with happiness.
Then Jutta appears from behind me to share our delight. ‘There you are, then, together again! I recognized him straight away and brought him here so that the two of you could greet each other without the whole village looking on.’ I thank Tom with all my heart and tell him we’re all going for tea, and then the two men can eat as much meat as they want, all on my tab! We go into the room I’ve taken, sit on the bed and take a look at the menu. Jutta has spoken to Lketinga and told him that there’s no problem for him to eat with us because we’re not Samburu women. He consults with Tom and in the end agrees.
There he is at last! I can’t take my eyes off him, and he keeps his big beautiful eyes on me. I want to know why he didn’t come to Mombasa. It turns out he really didn’t get any of my letters. Twice he went to see about the passport, but the official just laughed at him and teased him. The other warriors took against him too and wouldn’t let him join in their dances for the tourists. If he couldn’t dance he couldn’t make any money and saw no reason to stay any longer down by the coast. So after about a month he decided to go home. He didn’t believe anymore that I was coming back. Once he tried to telephone me from the Africa Sea Lodge, but nobody would help him, and the manager told him the phone was for tourists only.
On the one hand I’m touched by all the effort he made: on the other, I’m absolutely furious at his so-called ‘friends’ who only caused problems instead of helping him. When I tell him that I want to stay in Kenya now and not go back to Switzerland, he says ‘It’s okay. You stay now with me!’ Jutta and Tom the messenger leave us to get on with our happy attempts at conversation. Lketinga says it’s a shame that we can’t go back to his home because there’s a drought and not enough food. Apart from milk there’s nothing to eat, and in any case there isn’t a spare house. I tell him I don’t mind as long as we’re together. So he suggests that first we go back to Mombasa. There will be time enough for me to get to know his home and his mother, but he wants to introduce me to his brother James, who goes to school in Maralal. James is the only one of the family to have been to school. He can tell James he’s gone back to Mombasa with me, and when he goes home in the school holidays he can tell their mother.
The school is about a mile from the village. They have strict rules. Boys and girls play in separate playgrounds. But they all dress alike: the girls in simple blue dresses, the boys in blue trousers and white shirts. I wait to one side while Lketinga goes over to the boys. Soon they’re all staring at him and then at me. He chats with them, and then one of them runs off and comes back with another boy, who goes up to Lketinga and greets him respectfully. They talk for a bit, and then both come over to me. James holds out his hand with a friendly smile and shakes mine. I put him at about sixteen. He speaks very good English and says he sorry he can’t come into the village with us because they just have a short break and they aren’t allowed out in the evenings. The headmaster is very strict, he says. Then the bell rings and in the blink of an eye they’ve all gone, including James.
We go back into the village, and I suggest we might retire to the room in the boarding house, but Lketinga laughs and says: ‘This is Maralal, not Mombasa!’ It seems that a man and woman don’t go into a room together until it’s dark and then as inconspicuously as possible. It’s not that I’m desperate for sex – after all, I know what it’s like – but after all these months I could do with some physical contact.
We stroll around Maralal, and I keep a respectable distance, as this seems the thing to do. Every now and then he talks to other warriors or a few girls. The girls are all young and with pretty jewellery and quickly cast a curious glance in my direction and then giggle, whereas the warriors look me over in more detail. I seem to be the subject of most of the conversations, which makes me uncomfortable because I don’t know what anyone’s saying. I can hardly wait for it to get dark.
At the market Lketinga buys a little plastic bag with red powder, pointing at his hair and his war paint. On one of the other stalls someone is selling little stalks with leaves, tied together in bundles about eight inches long. There’s a real argument going on between the five or six men examining them.
Lketinga heads for this stall too. The salesman takes some newspaper and wraps up two bundles. Lketinga pays a fat price for them and quickly sticks them under the kanga cloth wrapped around him. On the way back to the boarding house he buys at least ten sticks of chewing gum. When we get to the room I ask him about the plant. He beams at me and says: ‘Miraa, it’s very good. You eat this, no sleeping!’ He gets everything out, pops a bit of chewing gum in his mouth and separates the leaves from the stalks. He uses his teeth to strip the bark from the stalks and chews it along with the gum. I watch in fascination how elegantly his beautiful long thin hands move. I have a go, but it’s far too bitter for me, and I spit it out immediately. I lie down on the bed and feel happy just watching him and holding his hand. I feel as if I could hug the entire world. I’ve attained my goal. I’ve found my one great love again, and tomorrow we’ll go back to Mombasa and start our wonderful life together.
I must have fallen asleep only to wake up and find Lketinga still sitting there, chewing away. The floor looks like a bin or worse with leaves, stripped stalks and spat-out green lumps all over the place. He looks at me with a steady gaze, strokes my hair and says: ‘No problem, Corinne, you tired, you sleep, tomorrow safari.’ ‘And you?’ I ask him. ‘You not tired?’ No, he says, before a long journey he can’t sleep, that’s why he’s eating miraa.
The way he says it, I get the impression that this miraa is the equivalent of Dutch courage, for Masai warriors are not allowed to touch alcohol. I can understand that he needs courage because he doesn’t know what lies ahead of us, and his experience of Mombasa was not exactly the best. This is his world. Mombasa may be in Kenya, but it’s not where his tribe comes from. I’ll help him, I tell myself, and go back to sleep.
The next morning we have to get up early to get seats on the only bus that goes to Nyahururu. But as Lketinga hasn’t been to bed, that’s not a problem. I’m amazed by how fit he is and the way he can just set out on such a long journey spontaneously with no luggage, wearing just jewellery and some cloth and carrying his stick.
This is just the first stage. Lketinga has secreted the rest of the miraa somewhere and chews on the same piece. He’s quiet, and somehow there isn’t the same atmosphere as on the bus Jutta and I arrived on.
Once again the bus lurches through thousands of potholes. Lketinga has pulled his second kanga cloth over his head so that only his eyes can be seen, and his beautiful hair is protected from the dust. I hold a handkerchief against my nose and mouth so that I can halfway breathe. About half way Lketinga nudges me and points to a long grey hill. It’s only when I take a longer look that I realize that I’m looking at hundreds of elephants. It’s a phenomenal sight: these giant creatures as far as the eye can see with their little ones among them. The bus comes alive with chatter as everyone stares at the vast herd; from what I can gather, it’s a rare sight.
At last the first stage is behind us, and by midday we’re in Nyahururu. We go for tea, or ‘chai’, and a lump of bread. The next bus to Nairobi’s in just half an hour, and we’ll get there by nightfall. I suggest to Lketinga that we spend the night there and get the bus to Mombasa in the morning. He doesn’t want to stay in Nairobi because the boarding houses charge too much. Given that I’m paying for everything, I find that touching and reassure him, but he still reckons Nairobi is dangerous and there are too many police. Despite the fact that we’ve been on a bus since seven this morning, he wants to do the longest stretch of the journey all at once. And when I notice how unsure of himself he seems in Nairobi, I agree.
We get something to eat and drink quickly, and I’m happy that at least he’s eating with me, even if he pulls the kanga across his face so that no one will recognize him. The bus station isn’t far, and we walk the few hundred yards. Here in Nairobi even the natives give Lketinga strange looks: some laughing, some respectful. He doesn’t fit into this hectic modern city. When I realize that, I’m glad the passport didn’t work out.
Eventually we get ourselves onto one of the sought-after night buses and wait for it to set off. Lketinga gets more miraa out and starts chewing again. I try to relax but my whole body hurts. Only my heart is at peace. After four hours, during which I’ve dozed on and off, the bus stops in Voi. Most people, including me, climb out to answer the call of nature. But when I see the fouled state of the hole in the ground that serves as a toilet, I decide to hold on for another four hours. I get back on the bus with two bottles of Coke. Half an hour later we set off again. Now I can’t get back to sleep at all. We hurtle through the night on dead straight roads. Every now and then we pass a bus going the opposite way. There are almost no cars.
Twice we go through police checkpoints. The bus has to stop because they have laid wooden planks with long nails across the road. Then a policeman, armed with an automatic weapon, walks along each side of the bus and shines his torch in every face. After five minutes we’re allowed to continue again. I’m still trying to get comfortable when I see a sign that says ‘157 miles to Mombasa’. Thank God, not too far now to home. Lketinga still hasn’t slept a wink. This miraa obviously really does keep you awake. The only thing is that his eyes stare more than normal, and he doesn’t seem to want to talk. It disquiets me a bit. But then there’s the smell of salt in the air, and the temperature starts to rise. Nairobi’s cold and damp are just a memory.