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hotels do native dance evenings. He doesn’t think to ask if I’d like to come too.
    I go to the well with Priscilla and try to bring back a five-gallon water canister as she does, but it’s not that simple. First of all a half-gallon bucket has to be dropped fifteen feet down and drawn back up again. Then you have to use an empty tin to transfer it via the narrow opening of the canister until the latter is full. It’s all done extremely carefully to make sure not a drop of the precious liquid is lost.
    When my canister is full I try to drag it the two hundred yards to the huts. I had always considered myself to be sturdy, but I can’t manage it. Priscilla, on the other hand, takes two or three swings with her canister to get it up onto her head, then she walks calmly and unhurriedly back to the huts. She comes back to meet me halfway and takes my canister back for me. My fingers are already aching. We do the whole thing several times because the Omo here is very frothy. Doing washing by hand in cold water, to Swiss standards of cleanliness, soon takes its toll on my knuckles. After a while they’re red raw, and the Omo water burns them. My fingernails are ruined. Exhausted and with an aching back, I give up; Priscilla finishes the rest for me.
    It’s gone lunchtime by now, but we haven’t eaten anything. How could we? We don’t keep supplies in the house or we’d be infested with mice and beetles. We buy what we need each day in the shop. So despite the incredible heat we set off on what is at least a half-hour walk as long as Priscilla doesn’t stop to gossip with every single person we meet on the way. It seems to be the local custom to hail everyone we meet with ‘ Jambo ’ and then stop to exchange half the family history.
    At last we get there and buy rice and meat, tomatoes, milk and even some soft bread. Now we have to go all the way back and then start cooking. By evening Lketinga still hasn’t turned up. I ask Priscilla if she knows when he’ll be back, but she just laughs and says: ‘No, I can’t ask this a Masai-man!’ Exhausted by all this unfamiliar exertion in the heat, I go to lie down in the cool of the hut while Priscilla gets on with the cooking. It’s probably just the lack of food that’s made me so listless.
    But I miss my Masai. Without him this world is only half as interesting and worth living in. Then at long last, just before darkness falls, he strolls up to the huts with his familiar, ‘Hello, how are you?’ I answer somewhat crossly, ‘Oh, not so good,’ which shocks him and he asks: ‘Why?’ A bit disconcerted by the expression on his face, I decide not to nag him for being away so long; with both of us struggling to makes ourselves understoodin English there are too many opportunities for misunderstanding. Instead I point to my belly and say: ‘Stomach!’ He beams at me and says: ‘Maybe baby?’ I laugh and say no. The idea frankly never occurred to me, because I’m on the pill, which is something he doesn’t know and has probably never heard of.

Red Tape
    W e’re looking for a hotel in which a Masai with a white wife is apparently staying. I can hardly imagine it, but I’m eager to ask her a few questions. But when we meet them I’m disappointed. This Masai looks just like a ‘normal black’ who doesn’t wear jewellery or traditional clothing but a red made-to-measure suit. He’s a few years older than Lketinga and even his wife is already in her late forties. Everyone starts talking at once, but Ursula, who’s German, says: ‘What? You want to come and live here with this Masai?’ I say yes and ask shyly why not. ‘Do you know?’ she says. ‘My husband and I have been together for fifteen years. He is a lawyer, but he still has enormous difficulty with the German way of thinking. Now look at Lketinga: he’s never been to school, can’t read or write and barely speaks English. He has absolutely no idea of European customs and manners, let alone the