Read Reunion in Barsaloi for Free Online Page B

them are women. They all give me beaming smiles and apart from greeting me with the usual ‘ Supa ’, ask if I remember them. I recognize afew straight away but there are others whom I can hardly recall at first. One old woman with only a couple of teeth left in her mouth comes up with a big smile and spits in my hands, as a way of giving me her blessing. She is the mother of a girl I visited in her hut just after she’d undergone so-called female circumcision. She was a neighbour of ours who was married at the age of twelve and, according to Samburu tradition, had to undergo this horrific ritual on the morning of her marriage. I want to ask the old woman how her daughter is because I remember her really well as a happy, laughing child, but I can’t because the oldest people here understand only Maa and, apart from a few set phrases, I don’t speak any. All of a sudden I feel really useless; there’s so much I want to say and so little I can. It will be the same with Mama.
    James urges me on. Within the corral there are three larger manyattas for living in and two little ones where the kid goats are kept during the day when their mothers are taken out to pasture. The newborns, however, are kept in the big manyattas with the humans. Manyatta walls are made of thin planks of wood placed tightly together and plastered with dried cow dung. The roof is made of goatskins, hand-woven sisal matting, old sacks and pieces of cardboard, all somehow interleaved to provide protection from the rain. Outside the door there’s usually a rolled-up cowhide, a pile of firewood and oval willow wickerwork baskets which, if they need to up sticks and move, can be strapped on the back of a donkey and used to carry everything. Everything they have has to fit in there.
    A few chickens are pecking in the red-brown sandy earth around the manyattas . I’m astonished to see all these birds because the Samburu have absolutely no tradition of keeping poultry. When I arrived with a chicken for the first time it caused a great stir. Nobody had a clue what to do with something that to them was a useless animal. They ate neither eggs nor chicken meat and the only thing Mama could see was the problem of preventing the wild animals getting it. She was also worried that it would attract birds of prey that would be a threat to the baby goats. And yet now there were at least ten chickens running around. When I expressed my astonishment to James, he grins and says: ‘You showed us what could be done with these animals. My wife cooks with eggs every now and then and what we don’t eat we sell in our little shop to the nuns from the Mission.’ There’s another piece of news: in Father Giuliani’s day there were no nuns at the Mission.

Mama
    J ames disturbs my train of thought to say: ‘I’ll show you around later. Right now let’s go and say hello to Mama. This is her hut.’ He’s pointing to a hut about the height of an average person. I’m about to bend down and crawl through the little opening when James stops me and whispers: ‘No, no, let Mama come out or else you won’t be able to say hello properly with all that smoke in the little hut. And it’s an excuse to get Mama to come out for once.’
    He says a few words in Maa at the door and I hear her rattling around inside, bending down to crawl out of the manyatta . And then suddenly after fourteen years, she’s standing there in front of me again. To my complete astonishment I realize that in all this time she’s hardly changed at all. I had imagined her much older and weaker. Instead the Mama standing in front of me is a dignified and still imposing woman. We each reach out a hand and as they meet we look each other in the eyes silently, trying to say as much as we can without speaking.
    My God, what an aura this woman projects! I do my best to read her emotions in her faintly clouded eyes. It’s not the done thing in Samburu culture to throw your arms around each other and give vent to