On 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.