Back from Africa

Longing for Africa

Sitting on the plane the next day, tired and drained, I finally have time enough to reflect on my adventure. I'm rather disappointed to realise that this trip has not quelled my recurrent nostalgia for Africa. Maybe it's because Tanzania isn't Kenya, but maybe it's because so much has changed that ‘my’ Kenya no longer exists.

I've realised that as a tourist on this continent I'm always going to be torn two ways. I can't simply enjoy it as a white person just visiting, because I see too many things from the point of view of a native. And from their point of view I can see some of what we do there must seem incomprehensible. Lketinga and his family would never have understood the fact for example that we Europeans almost kill ourselves trying to climb a mountain and then pay for the torture of doing so. He would just have laughed and said: ‘Corinne, why do you do it? It doesn't bring in food or water, it just causes you grief. It's crazy!’

And in some ways he'd be right. People who need to use all their energy and strength just to survive would never dream of expending effort to no purpose. So I now look on my Kilimanjaro trip from two points of view: on the one hand it seems absurd and crazy, but on the other I'm proud and happy that I didn't give up and reached the summit, the roof of Africa.

But this journey also proved to me that I couldn't live in Africa any more. My place is back home with my daughter and my current partner. When Markus throws his arms around me at Zurich airport and we drive back to Lugano, then I realise that this is where I feel at home.

Often people ask me if I ever regret having fallen in love with a Samburu warrior. It is a question I can answer without the slightest doubt: Never! I had the privilege to become part of a culture that in all probability will not exist for very much longer, and at the same time to know what a great love can be like. If there is any chance that we really have lived several lives then I am certain that at one stage I was born into a Samburu tribe. That's the only explanation I can imagine for the feeling I had back then that I had arrived home and that despite all the problems, I felt so safe and protected among Lketinga and his family.

I know for sure that if I hadn't listened to this inner voice I would have felt my whole life long that I was missing something important and decisive. And I also would never have had my darling daughter Napirai whom I love more than anything.

But even if I was a Samburu in some other existence, I know that in this current life I was born and brought up in Switzerland and imbued with our central European culture. That is the real reason why the love Lketinga and I felt for one another couldn't last. We were simply too different.

Apart from anything we had no means of carrying out a deep meaningful verbal conversation. In my current relationship I realise how important and good it is to be able to use words to share thoughts and feelings. And I can no longer imagine giving up the comforts we take for granted in our lives today, even if it was my African experiences that made me enjoy them all the more.

No, I couldn't go back to live in Africa. But what remains is my bond with my former family and a huge curiosity about Kenya today. Maybe one day I will satisfy my curiosity, when Napirai is grown up and wants to meet her African relatives. Who knows?