Back from Africa

Memories Come Flooding Back

Shortly before Christmas I get my last salary cheque of the year. Including a Christmas bonus it comes to a pleasing amount and for once I can afford a really good holiday for Napirai and myself. After a few minutes reflection, I head down to the travel agent's and tell them I want to go somewhere sunny and warm where there's no danger from malaria. After listening to their advice I decide to book a flight to the Dominican Republic. I'm looking forward to spending two whole weeks being pampered and having my daughter all to myself, eating whenever we feel like it and splashing around in the sea as long as we like. I wonder how Napirai will react to being surrounded by black people again, and if it will remind her of her Papa?

Just before we're due to leave I get another letter from Barsaloi. James apologies for not having written for a long time but they've had a lot of problems. First of all they were involved in terrible fighting with rebels who stole nearly all of their animals and a lot of people were killed. Now the rains have finally come again but Barsaloi is infested with mosquitos and it's only a matter of time before malaria is rampant.

He's pleased however because he's got a job in the new school in Barsaloi, but for now there aren't many pupils, not least because some of the local children have already died of malaria. There have also been fatalities in Barsaloi's little makeshift hospital. But he's glad that at least the fighting is over and he's got a job of any sort. In the meantime prices have risen for almost everything: rice, clothing, sugar and even maize flour which now costs ten times what it did when I lived there. It's unbelievable! He's planning to go down to Mombasa in December to see if he can locate Lketinga, and will write again if he has any news.

On the one hand I'm really pleased to get his letter as it's been ages since I've heard from him. On the other, he's got me really worried about my former family whose lives seem to have become really difficult. I recall my own terrible attacks of malaria. The alternating bouts of fever and shivering turn you into a complete wreck in next to no time. At the same time you get diarrhea and despite having an empty stomach feel an almost continuous need to vomit, until eventually you're left lying there in bed exhausted and lifeless. It's an illness I wouldn't wish on anyone but all I can do is hope it doesn't plague Barsaloi for long. Apart from anything else, though, I'm fascinated to know whether James will find Lketinga in Mombasa and what he'll tell me in his next letter. It has, after all, been three years now since I heard from him.

At last it's time and Napirai and I get back on an airplane for the first time since we fled from Kenya. This time our destination is Porto Plata. It's a long flight but they give Napirai some coloring books and pencils and she plays with those until she eventually falls asleep. Walking through the airport after landing reminds me immediately of the first time I landed in Mombasa all those years ago and was overwhelmed by the tropical atmosphere. Suddenly it all comes flooding back to me and I don't know whether I'm really in Porto Plata or back in Mombasa.

Outside there are little buses waiting to take us to the hotel. Looking out of the windows I gaze at the palm-lined, rough and ready roads, the black people and their brightly-brightly-colored clothes. Already this early in the morning the air is warm. I'd forgotten how much I love it like that. I can see my life in Kenya again unfolding before my eyes. Every pothole reminds me of the appalling road conditions in northern Kenya. My head's swimming and there are tears rolling down my cheeks but at the same time I feel happy and almost reborn. My emotions and all the memories of the past that I've been suppressing completely overwhelm me in minutes and I'm glad there aren't too many tourists on the bus to see my embarrassing tears. By contrast, when Napirai looks out of the window the thing that impresses her most is how many palm trees there are.

By the time we reach the hotel I've managed to get my emotions under control. The hotel is nicely situated, right next to the sea and our room is big, bright and comfortable. When we turn up for the new arrivals’ meeting in the lobby I notice that there aren't many families with children; most of the other tourists are romantically involved couples. But there's a children's club which will keep Napirai happy and I've got lots to read and lots of letters to write. The buffet is magnificent and we try as many exotic dishes as we can. The hotel employees are all enchanted by Napirai and say she must be Dominican. Immediately someone asks me if I've come back to visit her father, and I have to laugh at the disappointment on their faces when I tell them she comes from Kenya. Within a couple of days she's completely at home, running around the hotel with a couple of other children, and I hardly even see her.

One evening after dinner she tells me that she got to know a woman with very long blond hair at lunch. She wants to show her to me straight away and runs off. Five minutes later she's back bringing a tall blond woman over to my table. She tells me her name is Andrea and she's here with a boyfriend. They're both from southern Germany and she invites me over to join their table as they're a group of very different couples and I'm bound to find it entertaining, she says. Napirai is transfixed by this Andrea, primarily because of her long blond hair which she keeps running her little brown fingers through. Over the course of our holiday my little daughter keeps repeating one deeply-felt but completely impossible wish: ‘Mama, I want to have hair like hers!’

From now on Andrea and I spend a lot of time together as her boyfriend seems to prefer lying by the pool reading endless magazines to spending time talking to his nice girlfriend.

I can't understand him but I understand one thing: that it's a lot better going on holiday on your own than going with someone else and still being on your own.

The first week I simply enjoy lounging around and being lazy, but during the second week I start to get restless and want to do something more. Although it all reminded me so much of Kenya initially, this is a quite different country. Kenya is much more wild, more multi-faceted and above all has a lot more animals. Somehow or other I still miss Kenya and keep comparing the two, with the result that I'm not all that sad when the holiday comes to an end.

Back home I devote all my energy to my new job. The printed and embroidered T-shirts go down well with lots of companies, either as a promotional gift or as a staff uniform. And in the meantime the economy is on such a boom that lots of pubs and restaurants can even sell T-shirts with their logo on or baseball caps with motifs that advertise them. My business therefore is on a roll too and that means a lot more spare cash too. So much that I can afford to hand a hundred-franc note to one of the women from our group who can't even afford her bus fares, and at the same time I've been able to find jobs for one or two of the others.

Increasingly I'm getting to know other interesting women through work and get friendly with them. One of them, called Hanni, is always on at me to tell her more of my stories from Africa whenever I go in to show her my samples. She's so taken with my stories that she keeps telling me I should turn them into a book. I just laugh and say, ‘Hanni, first of all I wouldn't know how and secondly, I've already got a full-time job as well as a flat to run and a daughter to look after.’ As far as I'm concerned that's the end of it, but over the next few months Hanni keeps on at me with the same idea.

In mid-February 1994 I get another letter from Kenya. I'm consumed by curiosity as I open it and read through the usual good wishes from the family. Then James says he's been down to Mombasa and found Lketinga, who was in a bad state, nothing more than skin and bones and had more than a few problems. Not only does he no longer have the car, he scarcely has any proper clothes. James had to go and buy him some and has now brought him back home. He's living with Mama now and wants to get married again but James doesn't think he'll be able to because he has hardly anything he can call his own.

James also tells me that the money I sent to the mission to be handed over to Mama on a monthly basis has all been used up now. She sends her thanks for having supported her so long. But James asks for another contribution because she's having problems with her eyes now that only a doctor can help with. He says he'll write again if there's more news, especially anything concerning Lketinga.

I'm relieved that after such a long time, Lketinga is finally back living at home. But at the same time I'm sad that he has nothing left of the relative riches I left him. Even so, I hope he finds some way to get married again. Funny, I think to myself, it's not two months since I got divorced from Lketinga because I had heard nothing of him for more than three years, and now all of a sudden he turns up back home, talking about getting married again himself. What strange tricks fate plays!

Time just flies past now. Weekends are mostly reserved for my female friends and their children. Now that it's winter we often go skating or tobogganing down the slopes at the end of the village, which is a lot of fun. Afterwards we all sit together in my warm flat and chat while the children play.

One day, coming into spring, — the telephone rings and I recognize with astonishment, the voice of Andrea, the German woman with the long blond hair. People on holiday often exchange addresses at the end of the trip but as a rule you never hear from them again. But now Andrea wants to come and see us. Napirai is delighted. Barely one week later she turns up, on her own, and tells me that her relationship isn't working out: her boyfriend simply doesn't seem to find the time for her any more. Napirai says in that case she should just come and see us more often, and she'll do wonderful things with her hair. Andrea doesn't seem too enthusiastic about that but promises to come back and see us again soon. A few weeks later she does indeed come back after I ask her whether she has the time or inclination to take part in the opening of a shop run by friends of mine who also happen to be customers. She agreed immediately and so the two of us joined in organizing a successful event which would turn out to change her life forever. That evening she fell in love; six months later she moved to Switzerland and a year after that got married. From then on we became good friends, which in turn was going to alter my life dramatically.

Early in 1995 I got a reassuring letter from James to tell me Lketinga had married a young woman and she's already pregnant. I'm really thrilled to hear this and relieved at the same time to hear he's going to be a father again. His new wife is a girl who lived near our manyatta. James will send me a photograph whenever he gets the chance to borrow a camera. I can't wait to see who the girl is: if she lived near us I'm bound to recognize her. I'm really pleased for Lketinga and immediately sit down to write a letter in reply and transfer some money so he can buy a cow for the wedding. I wonder what their child will look like. Will there be a resemblance to Napirai? But for now I just have to control my curiosity and wait patiently; even if James does get hold of a camera it could take two months to get a film developed.

I'm still enjoying work, particularly as my turnover is growing faster than ever. During the course of the spring a new employee joins the firm to help out with the management. As soon as I meet him I realise he's a completely different character to my current boss and I can't imagine how the pair of them can work together. But it doesn't matter to me, as I work mostly on my own and rarely come into the firm. I've got other things to worry about: Napirai will start nursery after the summer holidays and that means I'll have to find a new childminder because the one she has at present doesn't live in the same area as us. Once again I'm lucky and a family we already know is able to look after my daughter. This new family has four children of their own, a girl and three boys, and it doesn't take long for Napirai to feel at home with them too, even if it is a big change at first to have so many other children competing for attention. During the course of the year my mother and Hanspeter move to our village too.

Eventually the big day comes for Napirai to go to kindergarten, proudly carrying her satchel and wearing her luminous road-safety vest. At the kindergarten, an elderly lady introduces herself as the nursery teacher. There are several other parents there and a few of them give us sideways glances rather than a straightforward welcome, partly because I'm the only single mother. But Napirai gets stared at openly by the other children and all of a sudden she doesn't like it. There's no way she wants me to leave her there on her own. It's not the way she normally behaves at all and thank goodness over the course of the next few days she gets over it.

In fact now she more frequently spends the night at the childminder's or with my mother which means I can go out more. Hanni and I quite often go out for the evening for a meal and then go dancing. It seems she knows the world and its wife: wherever we go she meets people she knows and introduces me as the ‘African one’, which leaves me having to answer a lot of questions. Even five years after my return, it seems there are people interested in my love story, and Hanni keeps pestering me to write it all down.