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Authors: Corinne Hofmann
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child. We chat amongst ourselves a lot. Esther, the Muslim woman, tells me about the hard time she’s been having with her husband and warns me never to marry an African. She says they’re unfaithful and treat women badly. My Lketinga is different, I think to myself but say nothing.
After the first night we decide to buy a bed. I didn’t get a wink of sleep. Priscilla and I shared a narrow bed, while Esther slept on another but, given that there’s a lot of Priscilla, I had hardly any room and had to hang onto the edge of the bed to stop myself continuously rolling into her.
So it’s off to Ukunda where we trail from one dealer to another in temperatures of 40 degrees C in the shade. The first doesn’t have a double bed but could produce one in three days. But I want one now. At the next place we find a magnificent carved bed for eighty francs, and I want tobuy it immediately, but Priscilla is indignant: ‘Too much!’ I can’t believe my ears. Such a superb double bed, handmade, for that price! But Priscilla has stormed off: ‘Come, Corinne, too much!’ That’s the way it goes half the afternoon until at last I’m allowed to buy one for sixty francs. The carpenter takes it to pieces, and we carry it all to the main road. Priscilla gets hold of a foam mattress and after an hour’s wait in the boiling heat on the dusty street we take a matatu back to the hotel, where we unload it all. So there we are standing with the pieces, all of which are made of solid wood and very heavy.
We look around us helplessly until three Masai appear from the beach. Priscilla has a word with them and immediately these normally work-shy warriors give us a hand to carry my new double bed to the village. I have to bend double with laughter for the whole thing looks hilarious. When we finally get to the village I want to set to work immediately, screwing the bits of bed together, but I don’t get the chance because each of the Masai insists on doing it for me. By now there are six men working on my bed.
It’s still late before we can all sit down tired out on the edge of the bed. There’s tea for everyone who helped, and the conversation lapses once again into the Masai language I don’t understand a word of. Every now and then one of the warriors gestures in my direction, and I hear the name ‘Lketinga’. After an hour they all leave us, and we women get ready for bed. That means washing outside the house, which is fine because it’s pitch black and no one can see us. Even a late-night pee has to be done in the open because it’s too dark to cope with the chicken ladder. I fall back onto my new bed exhausted, and this time I don’t come into contact with Priscilla because the bed’s wide enough. That said, there’s not much space left in the hut, and anyone who comes to visit now has to sit on the bed.
The days pass quickly, and Esther and Priscilla spoil me. One cooks while the other fetches water and even washes my clothes. When I protest they say only that it’s too hot for me to work. So I spend most of my time on the beach, waiting for some word from Lketinga. In the evenings Masai warriors often come round, and we play cards or try to tell stories. Gradually I notice that one or other of them is showing an interest in me, but I don’t reciprocate because there’s only one man for me. None of them is half as beautiful and elegant as the ‘demigod’ for whom I’ve given up everything. When the warriors realize I’m not interested, I hear a few more rumours about Lketinga. It seems everyone knows I’m here waiting for him.
On one occasion when I politely but firmly turn down the offer of a ‘friendship’– read ‘love affair’– he says: ‘Why are you waiting for this one Masai when everyone knows that he took the money you gave him to get a passport and went off to Watumu Malindi and drank it all with African girls?’ Then he gets up and says I should think again about his offer. I tell him angrily to
After the first night we decide to buy a bed. I didn’t get a wink of sleep. Priscilla and I shared a narrow bed, while Esther slept on another but, given that there’s a lot of Priscilla, I had hardly any room and had to hang onto the edge of the bed to stop myself continuously rolling into her.
So it’s off to Ukunda where we trail from one dealer to another in temperatures of 40 degrees C in the shade. The first doesn’t have a double bed but could produce one in three days. But I want one now. At the next place we find a magnificent carved bed for eighty francs, and I want tobuy it immediately, but Priscilla is indignant: ‘Too much!’ I can’t believe my ears. Such a superb double bed, handmade, for that price! But Priscilla has stormed off: ‘Come, Corinne, too much!’ That’s the way it goes half the afternoon until at last I’m allowed to buy one for sixty francs. The carpenter takes it to pieces, and we carry it all to the main road. Priscilla gets hold of a foam mattress and after an hour’s wait in the boiling heat on the dusty street we take a matatu back to the hotel, where we unload it all. So there we are standing with the pieces, all of which are made of solid wood and very heavy.
We look around us helplessly until three Masai appear from the beach. Priscilla has a word with them and immediately these normally work-shy warriors give us a hand to carry my new double bed to the village. I have to bend double with laughter for the whole thing looks hilarious. When we finally get to the village I want to set to work immediately, screwing the bits of bed together, but I don’t get the chance because each of the Masai insists on doing it for me. By now there are six men working on my bed.
It’s still late before we can all sit down tired out on the edge of the bed. There’s tea for everyone who helped, and the conversation lapses once again into the Masai language I don’t understand a word of. Every now and then one of the warriors gestures in my direction, and I hear the name ‘Lketinga’. After an hour they all leave us, and we women get ready for bed. That means washing outside the house, which is fine because it’s pitch black and no one can see us. Even a late-night pee has to be done in the open because it’s too dark to cope with the chicken ladder. I fall back onto my new bed exhausted, and this time I don’t come into contact with Priscilla because the bed’s wide enough. That said, there’s not much space left in the hut, and anyone who comes to visit now has to sit on the bed.
The days pass quickly, and Esther and Priscilla spoil me. One cooks while the other fetches water and even washes my clothes. When I protest they say only that it’s too hot for me to work. So I spend most of my time on the beach, waiting for some word from Lketinga. In the evenings Masai warriors often come round, and we play cards or try to tell stories. Gradually I notice that one or other of them is showing an interest in me, but I don’t reciprocate because there’s only one man for me. None of them is half as beautiful and elegant as the ‘demigod’ for whom I’ve given up everything. When the warriors realize I’m not interested, I hear a few more rumours about Lketinga. It seems everyone knows I’m here waiting for him.
On one occasion when I politely but firmly turn down the offer of a ‘friendship’– read ‘love affair’– he says: ‘Why are you waiting for this one Masai when everyone knows that he took the money you gave him to get a passport and went off to Watumu Malindi and drank it all with African girls?’ Then he gets up and says I should think again about his offer. I tell him angrily to
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