Back from Africa

Back in the ‘Big White World’

I hear the voice faintly, like someone calling from far, far away: ‘Hello… hello… time to wake up!’ All of a sudden I feel a hand on my shoulder. I open my eyes and for a moment I haven't the faintest idea where I am. It's only when I catch sight of the travel cot next to my feet and my daughter Napirai lying in it that it all comes rushing back. I'm in an aeroplane. The woman takes her hand from my shoulder and says with a smile: ‘Your baby and you have been sound asleep. We'll be landing in Zurich shortly and you've missed all the in-flight meals.’

I can hardly believe it. We've done it. We've got out of Kenya. My daughter and I are free.

Immediately my mind darts back to the tension of our last moments in Nairobi at passport control: the official looking at us and asking, ‘Is this your child?’ Napirai is asleep, wrapped up in a kanga cloth on my back. ‘Yes,’ I say. He leafs through her child's identity card and my passport. ‘Why are you leaving the country with your daughter?’ he asks next. ‘I want to show my mother her grand-daughter.’ ‘Why isn't your husband with you?’ He has to work to earn money, I tell him trying to act as nonchalant as possible.

The man gives me a stern look and says he wants a better look at the baby's face. He wants me to wake her up and call her by her name. I'm getting more nervous now. Napirai, just over fifteen months old now, wakes up and looks around sleepily. The man keeps asking her her name. Napirai doesn't answer him; instead the corners of her mouth start drooping and all of a sudden she starts crying. I try to calm her down as best I can, worried that everything's going to go wrong at the last moment and we're not going to be able to leave the country. The man turns Napirai's German child's ID card in his hand and asks in a stern voice: ‘Why does a child with a Kenyan father have a German passport? Is this really your daughter?’ The questions keep coming until I'm dripping with sweat. I try to tell him as calmly as possible that my husband is a traditional Masai who doesn't have a passport and this was the only one we could get for my daughter at short notice. I tell him we'll be back in three weeks and will try to get a Kenyan passport then.

At the same time I push the letter signed by my husband at him and pray silently to myself: ‘Dear Lord God please don't desert us now, let us just manage these few meters out on to the plane!’ Behind us crowds of tourists are jostling in annoyance, wanting to know what's going on. The man gives me another penetrating stare and then his white teeth flash into a big broad grin: ‘OK, have a nice journey and see you in three weeks time. Bring back something nice for your husband.’

All this is still running through my mind as I pick up my little daughter and, still exhausted, put her to my breast to feed. Now, just before landing, my emotions are mixed. What is my mother going to say? Will she and her husband bother to turn up at the airport to meet us? And if they do, then what? How do I tell her that this isn't a holiday but that I've run away from the former love of my life and have neither the courage nor the strength to go back? I don't know where to start.

Shaking my head, trying to shut out these thoughts, I start getting our stuff together. But as the aircraft lands once again I'm overcome by a wave of relief: I've got my daughter out of Kenya. We've done it!

I stroll through the airport terminal with Napirai on my back, feeling a bit out of place in my simple patched skirt, short-sleeved T-shirt and sandals on a cool 6 October 1990. I get the impression people are giving me funny looks.

Finally I catch sight of my mother and her husband. I run up to her happily but notice straight away that she's taken aback to see how skinny I am. I'm little more than skin and bones and weigh barely fifty kilos for my one-meter-eighty height. I have to struggle to keep back the tears and suddenly feel unbearably tired and exhausted. My mother is clearly moved and takes me in her arms, her own eyes damp with tears. Hanspeter, her husband, greets us warmly but with a hint of reserve; we don't really know each other very well.

We set off for home. They have moved from the Bernese Oberland down to Wetzikon near Zurich. We're no sooner in the car than my mother's asking after Lketinga and wanting to know how long we're staying here on holiday. I feel a lump in my throat and can't bring myself to tell her the truth. Instead I say simply, ‘Three to four weeks maybe.’

I make up my mind to tell her the whole tragic tale later. My mother hasn't the faintest idea how bad a time I've had because I wasn't able to write to tell her what had been going on over the last few months. My husband watched my every move and insisted on me translating each and every sentence I wrote. When we moved down to the coast he would take my letters to other people who could read some German and ask them to translate them. Unless he agreed with the letter's contents, he forced me to burn it. Even when I thought a little about things back home he would look at me suspiciously as if he could read my mind: ‘Why you thinking at Switzerland, you stay here in Kenya and you are my wife.’ Then again, I hadn't wanted to worry my mother unnecessarily, given that at the time I was still planning on us staying together in Kenya.

When we get home we're greeted by the loud barking of a dog which scares Napirai. In Kenya people and dogs keep their distance. This animal is barking like a lunatic and baring its teeth.

‘He's not used to strangers and not to children at all, but it'll be OK for a few days anyway,’ my mother explains. Once again I feel embarrassed and awkward knowing that we'll have to live here until everything gets sorted out. And that could take some time as I no longer have a residence permit for Switzerland and have only entered the country as a tourist. I may have been born and brought up in Switzerland but like my father, I have a German passport. After living abroad for more than six months I've lost my right to residency in Switzerland. I don't even want to think about all the stuff we're going to have to deal with.

God help me, I really have to tell my mother! But right now I simply haven't the strength to shatter her happiness and tell her the real reason we're here. She's just so happy to see her daughter and grand-daughter again. Apart from anything else they simply aren't prepared for her grown-up daughter and a child moving in. I haven't lived at home with my mother since I was eighteen.

Napirai and I move into the little guest room and unpack our few worldly belongings. All we have is a few bits of children's clothing, about twenty terry nappies and a pair of jeans and jumper for me. I left everything else in Kenya — Lketinga had to believe I was coming back. Otherwise he would never have let me leave with our daughter.

I have to move carefully around this beautiful big house with all its fine furniture, plants and carpets. What impresses me most however is the toilet which I now get to use instead of a stinking earth closet. My mother asks me what I'd like to eat. My mouth waters at the thought of a juicy sausage and cheese salad and I tell her as much. She's almost disappointed because she wanted to cook something special for me. But as far as I'm concerned, this simple meal is the best thing I can imagine after four years living in the bush. Living amidst the Samburu, I never got the chance to eat anything fresh. We had nothing but maize meal or occasionally rice or on even fewer occasions, basic meat with no seasoning. I'm really looking forward to a salad with some fresh bread!

Meanwhile Napirai has got used to her surroundings and become curious watching these unknown white people. She's pulled all the books off the bookshelf and is digging around in the plant pots. These are all new things for her.

At long last food is ready. I could almost cry just looking at it. When I think how often I dreamed of a meal like this! Now I can just ask for it and half an hour later there it is!

Of course, my mother wants to hear everything about my new life in Mombasa and how my souvenir shop on Diani Beach is doing. She's so happy that after three years out in the deepest bush I've moved back again to something closer to civilization. The one thing she doesn't understand is why I'm even thinner than last time I came home as it's easier now for me to get food. I can't cope with these questions which make me all the more sad, so I just give her robotic answers, all far from the truth. Her almost naive lack of worry makes it all the harder to tell her the truth.

My delight in my delicious meal doesn't last. After half an hour I'm lying curled up on the bed suffering from an attack of stomach cramp. After being treated for hepatitis barely six months ago I obviously shouldn't have eaten any fat and certainly not anything straight from the fridge. For years now all I've had to eat has been the most basic meal from a stew pot. But given the opportunity to have something special again I simply didn't think. All I can do to calm my stomach down is to make myself throw up.

My mother is giving Napirai a bath which she likes a lot, splashing and squeaking with delight. Afterwards she has a Pampers disposable nappy put on her for the first time. God, how easy that makes things! Put it on, she fills it up, take it off and throw it away. Absolutely magnificent! Goodbye to the days back in Nairobi when I had to carry dirty nappies around and then wash them each evening in cold water until my knuckles were raw.

By eight in the evening I'm exhausted. In Kenya we usually went to bed around this time as we didn't have electric light and it got dark early. In any case I have to take Napirai to bed as she isn't used to sleeping on her own. In the manyatta up in the Kenyan highlands she would either sleep with me or her grandmother and when we were down on the coast she would sleep between my husband and me. That's normal for Samburu children. They need bodily contact. Once we're in bed, I'm overcome by feelings of sadness and doubt, wondering if I'm doing the right thing. I fall asleep sobbing softly to myself.

The next morning we face a big question: what to put on? It's October and for us, just flown in from the heat of Kenya, it's extremely cold. Napirai has never taken to clothes at all and now she has to put on a pullover and jacket my mother has bought. She's not at all happy wrapped up in all this clothing and keeps trying to take it off. But we can't have that. For a start it's cold, and secondly, everybody in Switzerland wears clothes.

The dog is another problem: he doesn't seem to like us. He growls, barks and bares his teeth when he sees us. Napirai, however, has got used to him and wants to play with him all the time. She's a little Masai girl and doesn't know the meaning of fear. As for me, on the other hand, I'm half-hysterical with worry that he'll bite her. I might see him as dangerous, but as far as my mother and Hanspeter are concerned he's just the sweetest pet, a sort of child substitute.

For the first two or three days I'm just tired and exhausted. I keep thinking about Lketinga and how he's getting on in the shop on his own. Obviously he's still got William to help but they don't really get on, not since William was caught stealing money from us.

Over the next few days I go for walks to take my mind off things, passing by the agricultural college nearby and spending hours looking at the cows. Somehow that calms me down and gives me a sort of inner peace that makes me feel at one with my mother-in-law, whom I used to call ‘Gogo’. How is she going to react when she realises she isn't going to see Napirai again? According to Samburu tradition my daughter actually ought to be given to her. All these sorts of thoughts keep going round and round in my head.

When my mother and Hanspeter sit down to watch the TV news in the evening I tend to take Napirai and retreat into our little room. All the terrible pictures of the Gulf War and the misery in the world are too much for me and I can't bear to look. For the past four years I've had no contact with television or almost any other media. I was living in the world of a thousand years ago and now I feel completely overwhelmed by all the news and pictures. Only once do I find myself completely glued to the screen. It's a report about the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany. I can hardly believe my eyes. I genuinely had no idea what had happened even though it's more than a year ago now. I really can't come to terms with it. The Wall was always something we lived with at home because my grandparents on my father's side had lived in the East.

I had known since I was a little child how different the two Germany's were, because my father was always full of stories when he came back from a visit to East Germany. And now they were reunited! The whole world knew it but the news never reached us out in the bush. I find tears running down my cheeks looking at the pictures. My mother and her husband understandably find my reaction funny. But then even movies seem different to me now. Or is it just me that's changed?

Whatever it is, I'm stunned by all the nudity and love scenes in modern films. In Kenya people don't kiss in public or even hold hands; in fact the Samburu don't kiss at all. I gradually realise that over the past four years I've turned into a prude.

After a few days my mother says I really ought to buy some new clothes. So I head out for the shops leaving her to look after Napirai. But all these shops jammed full of clothes and other goods make me nervous. I don't know what suits me any more and so I buy leggings, which seem to be fashionable, and a jumper. It seems incredibly expensive. For the same amount of money back in Kenya I could have bought at least three or four goats or a magnificent cow.

Back home I show my mother what I've bought only for her to exclaim in horror that there's no way I can go out in public in those leggings. I'm far too thin and would look like an invalid. That finishes off my newly-won pride in my pretty new clothes and I feel really ugly. I also realise with a shock that I've become terribly sensitive in this ‘white’ world. Things were different back in my world in Kenya among the Africans. Back there I had to do everything on my own and organise everything. It is becoming ever more clear to me how much I've changed over the past few years. Here in Europe time rushes by and there are so many things that are new and strange to me. In Africa everything has its own pace and days seem vastly longer than they are here. What has happened to the self-confident businesswoman I used to be? I've become emaciated, homeless, with a small child and not even the courage to tell my own mother the truth.

A week later, fate makes the decision for me. We're having dinner when the phone rings. My mother picks it up and says, ‘Hello, hello,’ several times before hanging up. She says it sounded like a long-distance call but there was nobody on the other end. I'm staring at her with sweaty palms, not wanting to believe what I'm hearing. She just laughs and says, ‘don't look so shocked! It's almost certainly just your husband ringing up for a chat. You ought to be pleased!’

I was nearly sick with nerves and worry. Obviously I'd left my mother's telephone number. Sophia, my Italian friend, had asked me to. If Lketinga ran into problems with the shop she was going to call me, as he'd never used a phone in his life. But I hadn't told her either that I wasn't coming back. I hadn't trusted anybody with my real plans for fear things would go wrong. And now this happens! I'm sitting there staring transfixed at the telephone, but for now at least it remains silent. My mother tries to tell me there's nothing wrong and I should get on with my meal. But I've lost my appetite. My brain is whirring trying to work out how I should act on the phone. And then it rings again. My mother tells me cheerfully I should go and answer it. But I can't move. I just stare in panic at her as she lifts the receiver. She gives a cheerful ‘Yes’ in English and calls me over. I walk to the phone mechanically and hold the receiver to my ear, immediately recognizing Sophia's voice.

‘Hallo Corinne, how are you, I'm here together with your husband Lketinga. He's desperate to know how his wife and child are and when you'll be coming back to Kenya. Shall I put him on?’

‘No, wait,’ I shout into the phone. ‘I need to talk to you first. Sophia, what I'm about to tell you is bad news, for Lketinga, you, me, everybody. We're not coming back. I can't stand my husband's jealousy any longer. You've seen a bit of what it's like yourself. I couldn't tell you before or we wouldn't have got out of the country.’ Behind my back I can hear the sound of cutlery falling on to the floor. ‘Please, Sophia, please, try to explain to Lketinga. I'll do everything I can from here to help him with the shop and the car. He can have it all, all the money there, everything except our daughter Napirai. I'm going to try to make a new life for myself and her.’

I can sense how shocked Sophia is. She asks me if I'm sure I don't want to talk to my husband; the money for the call is running out fast. I take down the telephone number and tell her I'll call back in ten minutes to talk to Lketinga. I put the receiver down, feeling totally drained, and turn to see my mother and Hanspeter staring at me. And at that moment the tears fill my eyes and I start sobbing uncontrollably. I sit there for what seems like ages, next to the telephone, feeling as miserable as sin and at the same time somewhat relieved that my mother and Lketinga both now know.

I hear my mother asking me, in a quavering voice: ‘How did all this come about then? I thought that apart from a few minor things you two were happy. You'd bought such a nice shop with the rest of your money. And you know you haven't even got a Swiss residence permit any more!’ There are tears in her eyes now too. Her words are like daggers. I remember that all I wanted was to create a happy family with the love of my life and never to take my daughter away from her father. She is, after all, the child born of our overwhelming love. But I simply don't have the strength any more and know I have to decide in favor of life rather than death. Napirai isn't even two years old yet; she needs me. I've got through so much, from malaria in pregnancy to giving birth in a hospital out in the bush not to mention the isolation ward we had to live in because of highly infectious hepatitis. No, there's no way I'm letting go of my little girl. I want to live for her. I don't want her to undergo ‘female circumcision’ before she gets married. No, I'm not going to submit her to that, even if the price we have to pay is growing up in the white world without her father.

‘Is it OK if I call them back, in Kenya? Lketinga will be distraught,’ I ask my mother rather than answering her question which I couldn't do anyway right now. I have to dial the number three times before I get through. First I hear some unknown African voice and then Sophia, then almost immediately Lketinga: ‘Hallo my wife, why you not come back to me? I'm your husband! I really love you and my baby. I cannot stay without you and Napirai. I don't want another wife. You are my wife.’

In tears, I tell him his crazy uncontrollable and unjustified jealousy hurt me too many times. ‘I've felt like a prisoner lately. I can't and won't live like that. And when you threw at me the idea that Napirai might not even be your daughter, that finally finished off my love for you and any hope I had, Lketinga. I just can't take it any more. I'll do all I can to help you. I'll write to James and get him to come and help you. I'll try to explain everything properly in a letter. I'm so very sorry.’

But he doesn't understand any of this and just answers me half-laughingly but unsure of himself: ‘I don't know what you tell me. My wife, I wait for you and my child. I'm sure you will come back to me.’ Then there's a crack on the line and it goes dead.

I feel like I've been hit over the head. I go over to my little Napirai, lift her up off her baby chair and like a woman sleepwalking take her off to our room. I can't think straight any more today. My mother and Hanspeter seem to understand and say nothing. Napirai always knows when I'm not feeling well and gets particularly clingy. She sucks hard at my breast, kneading it with her hand.

When she falls asleep. I start writing my letters.

I also write to James, Lketinga's younger brother, who's the only one of the family that's been to school and did such a lot to help us. Then I write to Father Giuliani in Barsaloi to give him the sad news.

The next morning my mother has deep rings around her eyes. We waste no time in sitting down at the table so I can at last tell her the truth about my life in Africa. Now that I'm sitting here in Switzerland I leave nothing out. I describe my life among Lketinga's tribe in detail, from both sides, good and bad, and remind her that in the early days I had imagined spending the rest of my life among the Samburu.

‘But after we opened the food store they needed so badly, his jealousy just got worse and worse and made everything all the more difficult. I wasn't allowed to go and talk to the missionary any more and I certainly couldn't have a conversation with his little brother James or any of the other boys. And I'd always looked forward so much to talking to them during the school holidays. Lketinga had caused so many problems that one of the boys even had to leave the village before he did something dreadful.

‘Then with me being sick all the time the shop wasn't being run well and so a few months ago we'd decided to move to the coast. I'd really hoped we could start again there and that's why I asked Marc to bring me out all the money we needed to set up the souvenir shop. I had even hoped he would exert a good influence on Lketinga, talking to him as an “elder”, and indeed it worked for a while. Lketinga got back to normal and was even rather sweet and attentive for a bit. He even helped a bit in setting up the shop and looked forward to the work.

‘But then, later, when I would start talking to the tourists or even laughing with them, all hell would break loose. He would ask me in front of tourists how come I knew this person when I absolutely didn't. I kept trying to convince him that I still loved him and had done all this just for us. But as time went on he started drinking more and more beer. Sometimes tourists who didn't know any better bought it for him, but sometimes he took money out of the till to buy beer.

‘William and I worked like crazy while he would just come in, grab a handful of money and disappear off in the car to Ukunda. Meanwhile I would be living in fear of the state he'd be in when he came back. At home I was barely allowed to leave our little hut and just sat there for hours on end playing with Napirai on the bed. He even used to come with me to the toilet. It was really depressing and all the arguments weren't good for Napirai either.’

Despite all my complaints I try to explain to my mother that Lketinga was still basically a good person deep down. There'd been so many times he'd shown his love for me. But he was unhappy in Mombasa and I couldn't go back to living in the bush or I'd die of malaria. I even suggested he go back to Barsaloi and find himself a second wife from his own tribe and leave me to work in Mombasa; that way we'd all be happier.

‘But all of a sudden he doesn't want another wife, even though when we'd got married it was something I had to agree to. So I had no option in the end but to make a run for it and come back to Switzerland.’ And that's the end of my story.

My mother has been sitting there horrified as I run through the chain of events and in the end she says, ‘I gathered from your sister after her trip out to see you not so long ago that things weren't perfect but I'd no idea it was that bad! Your letters home were always so full of optimism and confidence. But now things are all rather different but in one way at least I can say I've got my daughter back and a sweet little grandchild too!’ We throw our arms around one another in relief. ‘So it's not too much of a problem if Napirai and I stay here for a bit until we work out what we're going to do?’ ‘No, not at all, we've just got to convince the dog,’ she says with a mock-timid laugh.

We spend the rest of the afternoon undoing my African plaits. My hair falls out in clumps in the process. Afterwards I relax thankfully in a deep bath of hot water, still barely able to comprehend how wonderful it is to be able to lie in a full tub. In Kenya I had to walk one and a half kilometers down to the river that had barely enough water in it to wash with. Even later on, down in Mombasa, I had to heat the water on our coal stove, then pour it into a washbasin and wash myself with my hands. Here in Switzerland, there's more water than anyone could need. All you have to do is turn a tap and you can have either hot water or cold. I had really forgotten in my time in Africa how easy life used to be. But now I realise, with literally every passing hour, how luxurious just our basic living conditions are, even the simplest things, like water, electricity, fridges and plentiful food.

No, there's nothing for me to worry about here. I can get a job doing something or other. The only thing that matters is getting a residence permit again! I decide to go down to the town hall the next morning to find out how to go about it. My mother comes along with me because she knows someone from her gym class who works there. What they tell me is that I have to apply in writing, including a curriculum vitae, for my right of residence to be restored. That will go to the immigration authorities and I simply have to wait for their decision. Back home I do what they ask, buoyed up with confidence because the people at the office were so nice. My experiences with officialdom in Kenya were very different.

For the next few days I do nothing but take long walks with my daughter just to stop thinking about Kenya all the time. Whenever the phone rings I worry that it could be Lketinga again or somebody else from Kenya with bad news. All my letters must have arrived there by now. Sometimes I can almost physically feel the sadness and emotion of all those concerned, especially my dear mother-in-law and even Lketinga who by now must have realised that we really are not coming back. Finally, on 3 November 1990, I receive a long letter written by James at school.

The letter opens up all those unhealed wounds again and I drop it and burst into tears. Despite everything, the last thing I want is for Lketinga to lose face with his tribe. I feel totally miserable and once again plagued with doubts! I tell all this to my mother who's sitting at the table watching me earnestly.

‘Look at yourself in the mirror,’ she says, ‘and you'll see you had no other choice. Even after two weeks you still look sick and you're so weak you have to sleep all the time. You have to stick to special foods because of your hepatitis and you're still nursing your baby. How do you think you're going to manage? You have to think of yourself and Napirai. You've got enough problems.’

She sounds stern but it's just what I need right now; I feel like a child in need of looking after again.

That afternoon I write back to James, thanking him for planning to go down to Mombasa to see Lketinga. It's a huge journey for him. He's only sixteen years old and only came down to Mombasa once, when we moved away from the Samburu district and drove the 1,460 kilometers to the coast. He came with us so that he and Lketinga could take turns holding Napirai during the bumpy ride. But now he'll have to make the journey on his own which is something people out there simply aren't used to; normally they always travel in pairs. The two- to three-day journey on the bus is expensive and as he says in the letter he'll have to sell a couple of goats to get the money for the ticket.

Lketinga won't send him any, because money sent in envelopes just disappears en route and James is still a schoolboy and doesn't have a bank account. In fact, very few of the people I know out there have any money at all. Their wealth is their animals and if they need money they sell one or just the pelt of a slaughtered goat or cow to buy the essentials. I hope James manages it and Lketinga reimburses him the money.

Napirai meanwhile has got used to the cold weather and doesn't protest any more when we try to put clothes on her. I use my last ‘emergency pennies’ to buy us winter clothing in some second-hand shops. I don't want to be a financial burden on my mother. It's costing her enough just to feed us. In any case she's always buying things for Napirai. Our relations with the dog have also improved although he can still be unpredictable.

From time to time my mother tries to get me to go and visit some of my old friends in order to get me out of the house and into company again. But I'm afraid of driving her car in the hectic traffic, and on the right-hand side of the road. Back in Africa you might run into elephants or buffalo on a road, which could be dangerous enough, but here in Switzerland I have the impression that everyone is out on the roads in their cars at the same time. So I'd rather stay at home with Napirai.

One evening in mid-November the phone rings and I feel immediately that it's going to be a call from Kenya. It turns out to be Sophia. I can cope better now that I've been nearly a month back in Switzerland and everybody knows what's what.

‘Hallo Corinne, how are you and Napirai? Are you still certain you're not coming back? Lketinga isn't doing much work. Whenever I pass the shop it's usually closed. I just wanted to tell you that your husband won't let me help him, and I don't know what to do about it. I've got my own problems as you know, because even though I've opened up my restaurant I still haven't got a work permit. And apart from that, other things are still the same! In any case I'm flying out to Italy in four days to spend a couple of weeks with my family.’

‘Sophia,’ I reply, ‘it's really nice of you to call me to let me know but I've made up my mind. I'm just pleased to be alive and to have got out of the country with Napirai. You don't need to worry about Lketinga any more, because I believe lames is coming to Mombasa soon to help him and to decide what to do about the shop. I know how suspicious my husband can be. Have you seen him though and if so, how is he?’ Sophia says she hasn't bumped into him for ages and the last time she did see him he was out in the car in Ukunda. She doesn't know any more than that. I say goodbye and give her my love and hope, from the bottom of my heart, that things work out well for her in Kenya. At that point, however, I wasn't aware that I'd never hear from Sophia again.

A few days later a letter comes back from Father Giuliani:

I'm pleased to get this little letter and glad to know I now have a way to keep my promise to my mother-in-law. When we left for Mombasa I promised her I would never stop thinking about her, never forget her and always look after her, no matter where I was living. I was so happy that she hadn't taken my Napirai away from me. After all it is their custom that the first girl of a family is given to the husband's mother as a sort of old-age pension.

As the girl grows she fetches wood for her grandmother, looks after her goats and fetches water from the river. In return she gets board and lodging. When she reaches marriageable age — between thirteen and sixteen — she is married off and the grandmother gets the dowry, which is normally made up of several goats, cows, sugar and such like. That's how Lketinga explained it to me after Napirai was born: a custom that I simply couldn't imagine myself complying with.

Even Saguna, the three-year-old daughter of his elder brother already lived with the old lady. Although her mother lived in the same corral, the child ate and slept at her grandmother's. Her brother, however, who was two years older, lived with his parents in the next hut. Indeed, I have my mother-in-law to thank that she let me keep Napirai. I explained to her that I couldn't live without my child and she gave me a long silent look and then placed Napirai back in my arms, even though she reckoned I would have another ten children.

Now I want to keep my promise and as soon as I earn some money I intend to send her some. Until I am able to get a job, I can write cheques on my existing bank accounts in Kenya and ask the mission to pass a certain amount on to her each month. That's the only way to make sure her big extended family doesn't use up all the money in a couple of days. Lketinga must have easily enough money with everything I've left behind for him.

On the other hand if he's not working, like Sophia said on the phone, and is just living on the cash he's soon going to run into difficulties. I look forward to finding out soon how things are going down there, as James must have got to Mombasa by now. Everyday I wait for the post to see if there's a letter from Kenya. Even two months on I still feel very responsible, although I've left everything I own behind me in Kenya. Eventually the letter I've been waiting for from James arrives.

I'm furious after reading this letter. Reading it a second time I realise that there must have been an earlier letter which I didn't get. So I still don't know how people back in Barsaloi reacted to us running away or how James got enough money to go down to Mombasa. I also gather that he hasn't been back to Barsaloi but has gone straight down to Mombasa from Eldoret at the end of the school term. But what really makes me mad is that after everything James has done for him, Lketinga won't even give him the money to pay his school fees. He went down to Mombasa on my request to help Lketinga and support him and he leaves him in he lurch, his little brother!

I know how different the two of them are. James is about thirteen years younger — nobody is quite sure which year anyone was born. His age is just calculated approximately by the tribal District Officer. None of them knows their birthday. But the big difference between them is that James goes to school, and Lketinga never did. As a result they seem to belong to completely different worlds.

Lketinga, who until recently was considered a ‘warrior’ by his tribe, can't read or write and grew up in the bush with all the old rituals and customs. James on the other hand is the youngest of the family and since he was seven years old has been the first of them to go to the school run by the mission. When there were differences of opinion I remember Lketinga saying, ‘Bah, they're not real men any more. They've never been out in the bush, they just sit in school instead. They don't know about life!’

On the other side James and the other schoolboys say: ‘You know you just can't talk to these people because they know nothing about the world. All they know is the bush and how to survive with their animals. They have no idea what's going on in the world outside.’

Sometimes I used to think they hardly knew each other at all. Even so I had assumed that in a situation like this, Lketinga would have trusted his brother and helped him out.

I'm so angered by reading the letter that I decide to do something about it straight away. I get the Indian's telephone number from international directory inquiries and get in touch with him. He's very surprised by my news and the fact that I'm not coming back. lust a few days ago Lketinga told him I was on holiday and would be back shortly. He's sorry to hear of my decision but agrees to talk to Lketinga about taking the shop back as he can't see it surviving if I'm not there. I thank him, relieved that at last the shop won't be a problem for Lketinga much longer. I have no idea what he'll do with the money. I can only hope that he doesn't spend it all on beer and miraa. I immediately write to James to tell him what's been agreed.

At least one good thing has come out of all this fuss. Here in Switzerland I'm just sitting around doing nothing waiting to hear from the immigration authorities. But when it comes to Kenya I'm astonished at how quickly and efficiently I can act to get things done. It's good for my self-confidence and makes me keen to get back into work again. My new surroundings no longer seem as alien as they initially did and I'm gradually putting on weight again. I'm trying to eat normal food more often rather than stick to my special diet and I'm delighted to find that as the weeks pass I'm having fewer stomach problems.

Shortly before Christmas, Napirai and I are delighted by her first sight of snow. It really is incredibly cold but it doesn't bother me any more. On the contrary in fact, I find the weather here suddenly far more interesting than a clear blue sky day after day and an unforgiving sun shriveling up the vegetation. And then when it does rain after months of endless sunshine, there are floods everywhere and people and animals run the risk of getting swept away to their deaths. I'm happy again just to see rain, snow and even fog.

A few days before Christmas we go shopping with my mother down in Rapperswil. I find all the excess in the shops just incredible, and decide that from now on I will make do with the bare minimum. This overabundance is really unnecessary. Purely by chance I bump into my first boss from way back when I had my first job selling insurance. After two years working for that firm I'd saved enough to open up my own bridal wear shop. I had been so taken with the idea of buying and selling new and second-hand clothes that I'd taken the risk of setting up my own business. He on the other hand had been sorry to see me go. Now here he is standing opposite me listening in astonishment to all my stories. By the end he gives me his card and says he'd be glad to give me a job again whenever I want; all I have to do is give him a call. We say goodbye and I beam at my mother and say: ‘You see, it's going to be easy for me to find a job again.’

Even though I don't really want to go back into the insurance business, the chance meeting has cheered me up enormously. It's been a big boost for my self-confidence. Apart from anything else it was the first conversation I've had with another man, and one who knew me back in the days when I positively oozed self-confidence. And straight away he makes me a job offer! Whether it was a serious offer or not, I feel like I'm in seventh heaven just because he showed belief in me. I tell my mother that as soon as the holidays are over I'm going to get on to the immigration authorities to find out what's happening to our case, especially as my three-month residence permit will be about to run out. She says I might be better to just wait quietly for them to get back to me.

I'm really excited about having a proper Christmas once again, with cold weather and snow and all that goes with it. It never really felt like Christmas in Kenya as it was almost always unbearably hot. The only thing back there that made me realise it was Christmas was all the old people in Barsaloi making their pilgrimage up to the mission to get some maize meal and new woolen blankets. All those who regularly attended the ‘bush church’ were entitled to these presents at the end of the year and Mama obviously wasn't going to be left out. I would watch each year, smiling inwardly to myself, as she got ready for her calculating little trip to the mission.

On Christmas Eve we have nearly my whole family together as it's my mother's birthday the next day. Only Eric, my younger brother, and his wife Jelly are turning up two days later as they want to spend Christmas itself in their own home with their two sons. Already there are piles of presents under the tree for my little girl. Everyone wants to give her something and Napirai just sits there in amazement.

Then she starts ripping the paper off one after another and doesn't know which to start playing with first. Two or three parcels would have been more than enough for her. Where are we going to put all this stuff? In any case Napirai is happiest of all when I take her out to the playground to play with other children.

But I really do enjoy sitting down with my family at a beautifully laid table for our traditional fondue bourguignonne. Then all of a sudden, looking at the plate piled high with an enormous amount of meat I burst out laughing. When everyone stares at me curiously I have to tell them what it is that amused me so much: ‘If Lketinga was here he simply wouldn't comprehend that this little pile of meat is going to be enough for all of us. He and another warrior could easily polish off an entire medium-sized goat in a single night.’

‘Well he couldn't do it here, not least because of the price of meat,’ says Hanspeter with a smile. But my thoughts are back with Lketinga and I can't help wondering what he's doing now.

Some days now simply drag on and on while others flash by in a trice. New Year's Eve is one of those days that just doesn't seem to end. We don't make a big thing of it as we're all locked in our own little worlds. The one thing I want more than anything from the immediate future is for us to get Swiss residency. I'm not worried about anything else.

Early in the new year, the Indian shop owner rings me up and says he was ready to take it back again but Lketinga has changed his mind and wants to keep working in it. So now he's expecting rental in advance for the next three months. I tell him he'll have to deal with Lketinga; I've paid until the end of the year and if Lketinga wants to keep on the shop he'll have to take responsibility for it. I tell him I've left all my money in Kenya with my husband and have no influence over him any more.

Nonetheless I'm worried at the idea of Lketinga trying to keep on with the shop and can only hope he's found someone good to help him.

It's exactly three months since my arrival back in Switzerland when a letter arrives from the immigration authorities. My heart is pounding as I open it — this could decide the whole future course of my life, or at least which country I spend it in. But after reading the first two sentences, I'm both relieved and disappointed: all it says is that they require more information about all the members of my family.

I fill in all the details as precisely as possible and stress in a letter that I am not expecting any sort of income support as I have my family to support me in any conceivable financial difficulties. Apart from that I mention that I have already had a concrete offer of work. Confidently, I send off the documents again. My mother however comes over all sad saying she's got so used to having Napirai and me around she couldn't bear it if we had to move abroad again. I do my best to console her: ‘Everything's going to be fine. Otherwise they'd already have deported me in the last three months.’

By the end of January, it's so cold that the nearby lake, Pfaffikersee, has frozen over, something that only happened every ten years or so at most. So we all head out to walk on the ice, with Napirai wrapped up warm and being pulled on a sledge behind us. I watch in amazement at all these people merrily careering around on the ice on all sorts of strange conveyances. Totally crazy: only three months ago I was sweating in a totally alien world and now here I am strolling about on a frozen lake. Even now I'm still automatically drawing comparisons every day with things back in Africa. Looking at all these happy faces, old and young, I'm still struck by how cut off from one another most of them are in their daily lives, and how little respect young people show to their elders. Before I lived in Africa I hadn't noticed, but now I can't help comparing them with the Samburu. Back there people are respected more and more as they get older. Good looks may fade but respect increases. The older a person is, male or female, the more their decisions are respected. Young people don't do anything without their elders’ approval. When James came back home from school in the holidays he would go to his mother and bow his head before her without looking her in the eye. Only when he was telling his stories about the past term would he gradually glance at her briefly. A Masai grandmother is normally surrounded by a host of children and everyone who passes, man or woman, young or old, friend or stranger, says hello to her and stops for a chat. Even though my mother-in-law spends all day just sitting under a tree outside her hut, life is never dull for her.

Compare that to the way things are back here in Switzerland: I can't help noticing how many people there are sitting on their own in cafes or restaurants. Nobody pays them any attention, nobody talks to them. People here have more material things than they could ever need, yet they have no time for one another, no social network to support them. The other side of the coin is that people here can get by living on their own. Amidst the Kenyan Masai that would simply be inconceivable.

When we get back from our walk on the ice I find a letter from James, written on January 12. I open it excitedly looking for news about Mama and people at home in Barsaloi.

The letter cheers me up. I'm pleased the people back in Barsaloi aren't upset with me and would welcome us back. It's particularly important for Napirai. I feel as if a weight has been lifted from my shoulders and could give my mother-in-law a big kiss on her shaven head. I write back with a light heart.

Two days later a letter arrives from a German woman living in Kenya and I realise that I must have met her briefly. She wants to buy the car from Lketinga and needs the enclosed documents signed by me. The car got damaged by a fire but she still wants to buy it and have it repaired. I can hardly believe what I'm reading: my lovely expensive car half burnt-out! Obviously Lketinga isn't going to keep the shop on, despite what the Indian told me. How could he fetch new stock for the shop without a car? But how is he? Was he injured in whatever accident he must have had? I couldn't care less about the car but I could burst into tears. At the same time, I can't help wondering what happened. He probably had the car full of Masai going to one of their performances, all smoking, and he probably never topped up the oil or water.

All these thoughts are running through my head as I sit there studying the documents. I would really like to lift the phone and call Kenya to talk to Lketinga. But nobody I know out there has a phone. Most of them, even down by the coast and the tourist industry, don't even have electricity. The only light they have comes from oil lamps. So there's nothing I can do but fill in the forms, send them off and wait to see what more I hear.