After three days I start to feel lonely, even though each day we go to see Mama or my new friend. But it’s very monotonous. I don’t enjoy eating on my own and miss my family and decide to take a month in Switzerland. At least there it’ll be easier to stick to my diet. The thought cheers me up more and more, and I wait impatiently for my husband to return.
I’m in the kitchen cooking on the floor under the open window when the door opens and Lketinga comes in. He doesn’t say a word to us but stares at the open window and asks sarcastically who’s just climbed out. After five lonely days waiting for him it feels like I’ve been punched by a fist, but I try to control myself because I want to discuss my travel plans with him. So all I say is: ‘Nobody, why do you ask me this?’ Instead of answering he goes into the bedroom and examines the mattress and sheets. I’m embarrassed by his lack of trust in me, and my joy at seeing him again vanishes. All the time he keeps asking who I’ve been seeing. Of course warriors came by a couple of times, but I let nobody in.
Finally he manages to say a couple of words to his daughter and takes her out of the wicker-basket cot I bought on our last visit to Maralal. She spends most of the day in this carrycot outside under the tree while I’m washing her nappies and our clothes. He takes her in his arms and heads off to the manyattas. I assume he’s going to Mama. My dinner’s ready but I just poke at it, asking myself all the time why he trusts me so little.
When he hasn’t come back two hours later I go down to Mama too. She’s sitting with the other women under their tree with Napirai sleeping on the cowhide next to her. Lketinga is lying in the manyatta. I sit down next to Mama, and she asks me something but I only understand half of it. It appears she too thinks I have a boyfriend. Obviously Lketinga’s been making things up and telling her. She laughs conspiratorially but warns me it’s dangerous. Disappointed by her, I insist there’s only Lketinga, take my daughter and go home.
In these circumstances it’s hard to bring up my plan to go to Switzerland, but it’s clearer than ever to me that I need a holiday. Still, for the moment I keep it to myself and wait until things quieten down.
From time to time I try to eat a little bit of meat but pay for it immediately in stomach cramps. I’m better sticking to maize, rice or potatoes. But because I’m not eating any fat and still breastfeeding every day, I’m losing more and more weight. I have to use belts, or my skirts would fall off me. Napirai is three months old now and we have to take her to the hospital in Wamba for a check-up and inoculations. In the new car this is an enjoyable break. Lketinga comes along but now he reckons it’s time for him to drive the new car too.
I’m less than enthusiastic about this, but as I can’t go on my own with Napirai I need him and reluctantly hand him the keys. Every time he crunches the gears I wince. He drives slowly, almost too slowly. When I hear a strange noise I notice that he’s been driving with the handbrake on. He’s extremely embarrassed because now it doesn’t work properly anymore, and I’m cross because the faulty handbrake on the Land Rover caused us enough problems. Now he doesn’t want to drive anymore and sits sulking beside me holding Napirai. I feel sorry for him and assure him we can get the handbrake fixed.
At the hospital we have to wait nearly two hours before we’re called. The Swiss doctor examines me and says I’m far too thin and don’t have enough body weight. Unless I want to be readmitted as a patient I need to spend two months back home in Switzerland. I tell her that I’ve been planning such a trip but don’t know how to tell my husband. She fetches the male doctor who also tells me to go to Europe immediately, I’m totally undernourished and Napirai is sucking the last strength from me. She, however, is the picture of health.
I ask the doctor if he’ll speak to Lketinga. My husband looks like he’s been hit by a thunderbolt when he hears that I’m planning to go away for such a long time. After a lot of discussion he agrees to five weeks. The doctor gives me a letter to speed up the travel permission for Napirai. She gets her injections, and we drive back to Barsaloi. Lketinga is upset and keeps asking: ‘Corinne, why you are always sick? Why you go with my baby so far? I don’t know, where is Switzerland. What shall I make without you such a long time?’ My heart almost breaks when I realize how hard it is for him. Mama’s sad too when we tell her I’m off to Switzerland. But I promise them all I’ll come back fit and well and we can open up the shop again.
Just two days later we set off. Father Giuliani takes us to Maralal, and I leave my car with him. Lketinga comes with Napirai and me as far as Nairobi, another long journey during which the baby’s nappy has to be changed again and again. I don’t have much luggage.
In Nairobi we find a place to stay and go first of all to the German Embassy to get a children’s passport. Our problems begin at the gate. First of all they don’t want to let Lketinga in wearing his Samburu clothing, until I prove to them that he’s my husband. Immediately he gets nervous and suspicious.
There are lots of people waiting in the embassy. I start filling in the form and realize straight away with the surname that there are going to be problems. I write down ‘Leparmorijo-Hofmann, Napirai’, but my husband will not have the ‘Hofmann’ – his daughter is a Leparmorijo. I try to explain as calmly as I can that we’re only doing it to get a passport and otherwise Napirai can’t go with me. We get into an endless debate with people staring at us in curiosity until at last he agrees to sign the form.
We still have to wait. At last I’m called up and asked into a back room. My husband wants to come too but is stopped. My heart’s pounding because I’m waiting for him to explode again; I can see Lketinga pushing his way to the counter and starting to argue violently with the man.
I’m called in by the ambassador who tells me in a friendly manner that they are happy to issue a child’s passport but only in the name of Hofmann because our marriage certificate has not been legalized and although I’m married in Kenyan law, I’m not according to German law. When he tells me my husband will have to sign a new form I tell him he won’t do it. I show him the letter from the doctor, but he says there’s nothing he can do.
When I come back Lketinga’s sitting there angrily on his chair holding a crying Napirai: ‘What is wrong with you? Why you go there without me? I’m your husband.’ I feel terrible as I fill in the form again without Leparmorijo on it; he stands up and says he’s not signing anything anymore.
I give him an angry look and tell him that if he doesn’t sign here and now one of these days I’ll take Napirai to Switzerland anyhow and never come back. He ought to get it into his head that my health is at stake! Only when the man at the counter repeatedly reassures him that Napirai will still be his daughter does he sign. I go back in to the ambassador. When he asks me uncertainly if everything is okay I tell him that it’s hard for a warrior to understand bureaucracy.
He hands over the child’s passport and wishes me all the best. When I ask him if I can now leave the country, he points out to me that the Kenyan authorities have to give us an exit and re-entry stamp and for that I also need the child’s father’s permission. I’m already imagining the next altercation. We leave the embassy in hardly the best of moods and go to the Nyayo Building where once again it’s a case of filling in forms and waiting.
Napirai’s crying and even the breast won’t stop her. Once again people are looking at us. Eventually we’re called up, and the woman behind the glass window asks my husband disparagingly why Napirai has a German passport when she was born in Kenya. It all starts again, and I have to hold back the tears. I tell this arrogant woman that my husband doesn’t have a passport despite having applied for one two years ago and so our daughter can’t be put on it and that I have to go to Switzerland because of my bad health. The next question nearly knocks me over: why don’t I leave the baby with its father? I tell her indignantly that it’s normal for a mother to take a three-month old child with her, apart from which my mother has the right to see her granddaughter. Eventually she stamps the passport and mine too. Relieved but exhausted, I collect the passports together and leave the office. Now I have to book a ticket. This time I can prove where the money came from. I present the passports, and we book a flight that leaves in two days’ time. Before long the booking clerk comes back with the tickets, shows them to me and reads aloud: ‘Hofmann, Corinne,’ and ‘Hofmann, Napirai’. Lketinga breaks into a temper and wants to know why we bothered getting married at all if I’m still not his wife. Even his baby apparently isn’t his. It’s the last straw for my nerves, and I burst into tears again. I shove the tickets in my bag, and we leave the office to go back to the hotel.
Eventually my husband calms down but sits there on the bed upset and unhappy, and I sort of understand. In his world the family name is the most valuable present a man can bestow on his wife and children, and I reject it. For him, it as good as means that I don’t want to belong to him. I take him by the hand and tell him earnestly that he really doesn’t need to worry, that we’ll be back. I’ll send a telegram to the Mission so that he’ll know which day. He explains to me that he feels lonely without us but that he really would like to have a healthy wife again. When we come back he wants to come and meet us at the airport. That pleases me enormously because I know what an effort a journey like that is for him. Then he tells me that he’s leaving Nairobi now to go home. I understand and accompany him to the bus station. Standing there, waiting for the bus to depart he asks me once again worriedly: ‘Corinne, my wife, you are sure, you and Napirai come back to Kenya?’ I answer with a smile, ‘Yes, darling, I’m sure.’ Then the bus leaves.
I’d only managed to ring my mother the day before to tell her we are coming. She was obviously surprised but delighted that she was going to see her grandchild at last, so I want to make both of us pretty. But it’s hard to leave such a tiny impetuous baby alone. The shower and toilets in the hotel are at the end of the corridor, and when I want to use the toilet I’ve no alternative but to take her with me. I go to the receptionist and ask her if she’d look after the baby for fifteen minutes while I take a shower. She says she’d be glad to but right now half of Nairobi has no water because of a burst pipe. She says maybe the shower will be working better this evening.
I wait until six, but nothing happens. On the contrary everything’s started to stink. I decide not to wait any longer because I have to be at the airport by ten and go to a shop where I buy a bottle of mineral water with which I wash Napirai first, then my hair and then what I can of the rest of me.
We take a taxi to the airport. We don’t have much baggage even though the temperatures in Europe at the end of November are going to be wintry. The stewardesses look after us well and keep stopping to admire the baby and exchange a few words. After we’ve eaten I get a baby bed for her, and she falls asleep. Tiredness overcomes me too and when I’m woken again it’s for breakfast. The thought of being on Swiss soil again fills me with apprehension.