Day 10

Baby goat season continues with people carrying them by the front legs into safe shady places where they can enjoy their first meal of colostrum. Emzungu happily slurps up the placentas. Everyone seems pleased to watch the baby turn from limp and dumb to alert and elastic on its feet. After a couple of hours though the mother is chased into the bush and bouncy baby left to squeak around looking for her before being taken to the little hut inside the animal enclosure to be out of the sun and the mouths of opportunistic dogs or birds.

A visitor arrived! An old man whose carrying of a duffel bag caught my eye. He was David and a gift from the gods because he spoke perfect English. He went to school in 1946 (before 1943 he told me Turkana people had no idea about education) and then became a district agriculture officer, starting a sorghum, millet and maize growing scheme in the 1960s which continues to this day. All the while he combined it with herding (except when on a short and unhappy transfer to Mandera from where he had to send a telegram to head office in Nakuru pleading rescue from a land of wild and fighting Somalis) and he looks very much the traditional mzee (elder). He’ll stay with us for a few days before proceeding to Turkwell and then Lodwar to pick up his state pension, and this was great news since he was immediately a charismatic and insightful mouthpiece on changing Turkana. Waving his hands around and mobilising the lines of influence, career and triumph-over-adversity that were etched all over his face, he spoke of today’s unpredictable rain as the greatest change and risk. His sons are a mix of working people – including a medical officer and a teacher – and herdsmen. Those sons who work in non-herding employment mean the family has access to a more reliable cash (rather than animal) economy, providing a consistency of income which is so vital in today’s callously unpredictable climate.

Sitting on our log we all played with a donkey coloured insect (named after donkey) that was playing dead very convincingly but everyone knew was alive. It reminded one boy of the story of Turkana warriors who’d been caught by Pokot when they went there to raid: all were killed and laid out on the ground but one was just wounded so played dead. He was spotted blinking and finished off… They love warrior stories and I asked if young men are disappointed that today’s peace in the area means they don’t get their call to arms. Iteni, or correct, came the response, many do feel this. Warming to a favourite theme they drew compass points of the enemy fronts that circle the Turkana: Karamojong to the west (Uganda); Merille and Toposa to the north (Ethiopia and Sudan); Borana, Gabra and Somali to the east (Kenya and Somalia) and Pokot and Samburu to the south (Kenya). Only the lake-side brings no threat. The sense of being a fierce island in enemy waters seems key to both men and women here when they talk of Turkana life, a badge of honour and identity.

I helped wife one Elizabeth with thatching her hut, passing up the bundles of eengol reed while she light-footed around the twig skeleton roof tying them down. They think rain is coming, all three wives were on top of their huts at the same time, circling the spike in the middle. The spike that reminds me of a similar house design in southern Ethiopia, which the smart-tongued city boys I travelled with (Merlin and MOH health workers) joked was a pastoralist version of the UN car radio aerial, allowing people inside to transmit messages to and from their cattle… Huts soon looked good and I was advised to put my ‘truck cover’ (tarpaulin piece) on my tent. Certainly not as nice looking, but not the perfect home for scorpions that thatch is either.

Elizabeth had made a paste from the Norwegian-imported tree etirai which is bad for animals’ stomachs but good as a poultice for people’s boils, and she had two of these on her head. I also learnt that the roots of emekwi (tiny rough shrub that grows everywhere and has grown good green shoots for goats in the recent rains) are good in tea to cure diarrhoea. Very useful information! And I now have an impressive list of plant descriptions and applications, fed daily by Erot, which go from mundane stomach cleansing to lifting the curse of indigestion put on you by a hungry person who saw you eat.

We left as some goats on the verge of delivery were tied to a tree so they couldn’t abandon their babies, and stomped off south between the hills to do much the same as we did yesterday. Plenty of sitting around with ants in pants and grasshoppers in shirts while men drank and rested their heads and women busied with children, water and in Lokaleso’s case a whole lot more: measuring out sellable quantities of sugar (110 Ksh for 1kg), beans and oil (10 Ksh for a small pot); building a new goat enclosure; distilling chang’a from busa and supervising my beading. We had a tour of the chang’a factory, a hut where busa was being boiled in a metal drum beneath pots of frequently-changed cool water. Suspended below the top pot on reeds was the pot where the distilled chang’a collected. It was quite a performance and the dark hut was filled with the warm fumes of cooking alcohol which made us all feel light.

Returned to sit with my back against ‘the tree that urinates’, ewoi (acacia) with red sap coming off its trunk and branches, a natural dye used to stain reeds in the mats. After accepting some very welcome black tea with smiles and gratitude, they began a discussion about how white people, when angry, can be really very furious. The reason for this thinking was an episode witnessed at the Merlin dispensary in Turkwell where a white health worker had torn strips off a Turkana mother whose child was not improving despite receiving a weekly ration of 14 Plumpy ‘Nuts (high calorie, nutrient-enriched peanut butter for malnourished children). The white woman suspected the mother was ignoring the acute needs of that one child and distributing the food among the whole family. What she didn’t know was that the woman was selling the Plumpy ‘Nut. Many would say that it’s up to local people to define who is vulnerable, to address that vulnerability with their own welfare systems and to appropriate and distribute outsiders’ aid as they see fit. But in this case the group thought that mother was very wrong to deprive her sick child for profit and not even for the greater good of the family group. These people who don’t like to eat before their children – and especially Lokaleso who told me that people who sell their daughters (for dowry) into marriage before they reach puberty love their own stomachs more than their children – were horrified at the story of the greedy old mama and impressed by the mzungu’s passion. Despite this I assured them that anger is not a trait they should associate with all white people, and promised that I myself rarely get angry. Stupidly I illustrated this with an impression of banshee-style rage which had one baby burst into howls of pure terror that his mother could only stop by shoving a breast into his mouth.

At the Konipad laga (dry riverbed) we discussed engagement and wedding rings in my place and here, and the group we sat with were pleased to not some similarities; a silver ring means engagement and a gold one marriage. But their wedding ‘ring’ is a big metal hoop worn around the neck on top of the other multi-coloured beads. This conversation led to another proposition for me by a slimy old man and Erot dealt with it with his usual iron fist. At this point the busa-selling ladies were getting worried about the lack of male customers and were drinking the busa and chang’a themselves between stints of looking over the laga’s horizon. They shared plenty with their tiny children so that it soon began to resemble a drunk mothers-and-babies group.

Finally a line of proud Turkana men appeared, each with his stick behind his neck like a yoke, hands draped over each end and one holding a headrest. They looked very impressive en masse, a formation of masculinity, and I wondered if their manly swaggers hadn’t been enhanced by the task they’d just been carrying out: castrating the cattle.

Busa, payeiri, chatting, grooming and shopping. I was called over to a group of women to see how they were tying a tall stack of black beads closely round one’s neck, fixing each level on top of the one beneath with string so that it resembled a stiff beaded ruff. Next came other colours – red, yellow, green, blue and pink – and when she married the metal hoop would be added, probably with a little key to her trunk and a purse slung on it. I asked a few tourist questions like how do they sleep and what if you get an itchy neck, which they answered cheerfully with much laughter at my mimes: they sleep on high pillows and if they get an itch they poke a stick down (just as people with plaster casts scratch themselves with knitting needles). They showed how they keep coins tucked inside the beads and demonstrated some neck lurching dances that seemed quite ostrich-like. Apparently men and women deliberately trip each other up in dances here, hooking the backs of ankles with their feet which sounds like fun. They were pretty high voltage, drunk and high on group female energy, and Lokale slipped away intimidated so I didn’t stay too long.

Old man David (who is the son of Erot’s father’s older brother) laughed at the memory of how as a younger man he and his age-set colleagues tried to have dances that the older men couldn’t gatecrash. They’d cross a swollen river with the girls and hold the dance on the other side, but the persistent older men always managed to wade through in pursuit and snatch the girls away. As we walked home he gave a good perspective on how the land has changed in the 60 plus years he’s known it; not only does it rain less but the gullies are bigger because when it does rain it floods. Another voice on what seems to be a grim new world order: yes they are used to the rhythm of drought and hunger followed by rain and plenty, but it’s really not what it used to be, it’s so much harder now.

More happily, Erot spotted an ewoi tree loaded with thousands of juicy ng’itit pods and vowed to bring the baby goats there tomorrow. We fanned out as we reached the ada karin to herd all the goats home. I was so enjoying swinging my stick and cluck-clucking them in as the sun went down and another storm brewed over Mount Loima: I was admiring my thorn-scratched feet and feeling at home there, until the fatal word “Emun!” (snake) rang out. We ran to where Lokale was and found a slim silver snake in the long grass, worryingly well camouflaged to my eye. Erot declared it a friendly snake and poked it with his stick, but then it shot out of its tussock straight for us – everyone scattered and Marta and I screamed loudly and shrilly. Then Gregory stepped forward and sprinkled some water on it, speaking to it where it had stopped, frozen, in the open. He and Marta are apparently ‘of its clan’ and so it was one of their ancestors – probably a grandparent – come to speak to them and ask for water. Both did talking and water-sprinkling, Marta much more reluctantly, then Erot told us all to leave it in peace and barked at a young herdsboy who threw a rock at it.

Felt more respect after the snake incident for tagalong add-no-value Gregory, which was lucky as he then asked me very awkwardly for a hundred shillings for something to do with his dreadful health. Perhaps his ancestor had given him the courage and me the ability to help, so I gave him it and some extra to buy a proper meal and get his strength back. This seemed to please Erot greatly and I was allowed to feel that sickly benevolent feeling…

Got to tent just as enormous dust storm tore through, blowing everyone and especially all the little goats off course.

We shared plenty of different plates of food from the various wife kitchens and I made wishes on the shooting stars I saw as I lay on my back digesting. The children sang a lovely song about a place called ‘Kalongolong’, a word they sang with obvious delight: acha CHA, Kalongolong…”

Day 9

A donkey has stayed with us since yesterday, one of Erot’s son’s, on its way to town (but hopefully not to be slaughtered there, where the method of spearing them in the legs and chest is famous for the horrible noises it produces). It made its awful deep braying sounds from before dawn, maybe it was being teased by Emzungu the dog, but it was definitely bad for sleep.

The moon had crossed to the other side of the sky but was still full and bright. Made a big pot of tea to have with the wives after the children had sloped off through the grass to school holding their plastic margarine tubs and other storage containers to collect lunch in. Long’or howled in protest at being sent, wanting instead to stay with his adored father and have more lessons in manhood.

We kept aside a bit of the chai for the new baby goat but when Marta returned from the river she said it had died in her hut. Then we set about preparing a white goat’s skin to be made into a skirt for first wife Elizabeth. We held a corner each, stretching the stinking thing between us and using sharp-edged stones to push off the bits of fat and other tissue which had been softened by a soaking in ash and muddy water. Elizabeth told me she had had seven children but one had been taken when he was so high, gesturing a toddler’s age. She and Irene agreed that a woman should have as many babies as she could and that ten is a number to be pleased with. They also said what many long-experienced health workers in the area say, that for Turkana women childbirth is normal, natural, a family business; not to be feared or quarantined in a stranger’s health facility unless there’s a serious problem. Irene for example, the only case of a woman who went to a facility to give birth, had Esibitar in Lodwar because she had a very bad chest at the time and feared complications.

Esibitar took the three syrups she’d brought back from Lodwar with plenty of her usual complaining and screaming and we talked about what they might be made of. It seems they got no information at all from the hospital staff about what they are, but Elizabeth suggested they’re made from “the stronger herbs of those people” and everyone seemed confident about them and keen for the baby to take her daily dose. For ngakesiney ka Akuj – natural or God-caused sicknesses – elements of the natural world are sought as treatment, and in this category falls both locally-found plants and herbs as well as drugs and other treatment substances like the gun cleaning oil and the brake fluid. The exact natural causes of the baby’s flu were debated, with mother thinking that an adult coughed near her or that the cold weather is responsible, but other popular flu causes they cited are drinking the water at the wet season borehole we visited the other day or eating the meat of a goat that has died.

Speaking of dead goats, Marta quickly roasted and ate with her children the baby one that had died in her hut – the one I’d played with yesterday like a kitten!

We left the hide to sun-bake and then ripped pieces of the white fur off it, which mostly came off easily except on the ridge of the back where fur is thick and in places where the hide was still not dry. Emzungu the dog disgustingly gobbled a few of the dry scraps.

Erot enjoyed making his fine walking stick smooth with a piece of the sandpaper I’d given him and seemed meditative except when stoning a lokot bird (black and white, long and banana-beaked) which was singing above us and might make the goats get lost. We talked about ngimurok (plural of emuron, a seer or prophet or healer) who he visits when the family and animals are facing real trouble. He goes to the ones who interpret their Akuj- or ancestor-sent dreams (rather than those expert in sandal or tobacco reading or in interpreting the ‘song’ of a singing gourd). It’s costly and that’s why there are huge power struggles when an emuron dies having passed his gifts and secrets onto more than one son (the dream reading powers have to be inherited but the others can be taught); each son wants to assert himself as the most powerful – it’s a trade and a business. As with all of these Erot says some ngimurok are better than others and some are plain charlatans, so someone will try several and if it is a health problem probably slot in a facility visit or other allopathic treatment at some point in this story.

Back to Lokaleso’s shady tree and to weaving the same mat strip. We talked about her age and its various interpretations: Erot knows she was born in 1979, making her 31, but her identity card says she is 45; the issuers usually assume stupidity and ask Turkana people about events that may or may not coincide with the time of birth, then make an uneducated guess. Officially my wise friend Lokale is just 21 but he knows he is more like 27. Exactly like Elizabeth, Lokaleso had had seven children of which one was taken. Plenty of them gathered round us and helped weave or sort goats and chickens. Erot drank busa and smoothed a stick for tiny Long’or to start herding goats with, using the innocent-looking cutlery knife that has been sharpened on a rock into a deadly blade that I cut my finger on while pruning reeds for my mat. ‘My mat’, or the one I am clumsily helping Lokaleso with, will apparently be sold for just 70 shillings! All that work and it will only buy three cups of busa, though canny Lokaleso will probably plough the profit into one of her many small trade enterprises: she buys large quantities of beans, sugar and oil, divides them into little bags and sells them alongside her busa and chang’a at ekriam mariams.

We were called away for Erot to settle a dispute at the big Konipad ekriam, and en route he told the story of a famously brilliant emuron, Kokoi, who had put a curse on the colonial administration’s efforts at justice in Turkana. Plenty of armed forces and administrators were sent to round up Turkana warriors who were beating the Pokot and other cross-border groups (emphasis here on Turkana being the mightiest tribe to reckon with) but each new initiative failed miserably and mysteriously and each eager new batch of forces threw in the towel having been unable to find any suspects. Finally the administration learnt it was Kokoi, arrested him and jailed him at Nakuru for the rest of his life. But I’m not sure whether their attempts to punish, curb and civilise the Turkana were any luckier, and watching Erot tell the story made me pretty sure that being beyond the long arm of the law is an ostrich feather most Turkana males are proud to stick in their hats.

Ngimurok certainly keep coming up and no-one is bashful about how much they trust and use them, but it is doubtful I will meet one here. Erot is sure that they are simply too suspicious to ever open up and I don’t think he wants to be responsible for dumping a curious mzungu at a trusted emuron’s door.

The ekriam mariam was much the same, I chatted with some people about hated neighbours Pokot and Karamojong, who few people had actually seen (raiding in this area has almost completely stopped since the rampant ‘old days’) but everyone had negative opinions about. Elizabeth knows that the Karamojong are very black and very ugly but that’s about it.

A girl rudely said that she thought I was actually a man because I was wearing trousers. It was also a bad afternoon for Erot who ended up being himself on trial for a tree illegally cut down by his father-in-law (the one we’d admired as naturally fallen last week). To keep the case away from Turkwell he had to pay 2,000 shillings to the filthy drunk ranger, who was supposed to then take it to some Forestry unit. Poor Erot the conservationist.

On the way home Erot picked out all our earlier footprints in the sand, and plenty of other people’s too. Aipa came carrying a tiny new goat, another abandoned one, and Erot tutted and said there was a disease making goats abandon their babies.

Emerged from some in-tent solitude and watched an amazing light show as a storm lit up a perfect mushroom-shaped cloud over Mount Loima in deep golden flashes. The moon rose later, almost due east, just as we had finished goats’ milk chai and were sharing food. Something is giving me dizzy spells when I stand up so I had to concentrate on walking soberly from the mat to the stove, but not linger too long by the fire to rest because they think that’s unlucky – someone might be able to throw a stone at your head.

Erot reappeared with a bag of veterinary medicine for the goat with the dry skin on its nose and joints. He and his son asked me and Lokale to help read the instructions on the vaccine bottle that had cost a massive 700 shillings, then very capably injected 1ml (of Ivermectin, some kind of broad spectrum anti-parasitic drug) under the skin at the back of the neck. The goat hated it but let’s hope it works. Goat diseases seem to be categorised in much the same way as those of humans: they’re mostly ngikesiney ka akuj (natural or God induced) requiring herbs and drugs, but some are ngikesiney ka ekapilan (witchcraft- or curse- induced) requiring an emuron to identify cause and solution. Apparently it happens often that someone with less goats is jealous and curses yours, though it hasn’t happened to Erot. The best ngimurok will tell you what to do and work with you to lift the curse but will not tell you who put it there, to keep peace between neighbours.

Irene was still in Turkwell where she and Marta had gone today, staying to care for her mother who’d been stabbed in the head by her brother. Erot got all the details out of Marta – grisly details, the man had been furious, threatened to burn down his old mother’s hut then stuck a knife in her head – and Lokale passed them on to me with morals attached about the bad characters and behaviours that exist in towns. Despite this, Erot went on to explain to me what I’ve heard Turkana people – and of course many others – say before: that children are wealth, labour, respect, protection. That parents let children eat before them because they need their help in so many ways; that no-one is likely to come and attack us tonight when they see his eldest son asleep in the ada karin; that an older man or woman who is barren is very vulnerable to disrespect and abuse, no-one can protect them if someone steals from them or humiliates them in public. A balance in children is also important, and he confided that he worries about not having enough boys compared to girls, and that this might be a problem.

The silence was interrupted by the braying of that donkey in the distance – still alive, still horribly noisy. A few good impressions of it were made, everyone laughed and said how glad they were it had left our home.

I convinced myself that some growling at my gaping tent door was a hyena, peeped out and jumped to see a jerry can sat there pretending to be one… Emzungu was prowling about instead. Erot had made me laugh and reminded me of anthropomorphising pet owners the world over when he declared the Emzungu had definitely done something wrong and that was why he was guiltily refusing to come when called. Chewing children’s sandals is apparently his most common crime.

Woke myself up shouting “No!” because I dreamt I was being attacked. Sincerely hope no-one else heard. Must calm down a little!

Day 8

Day began with reverse sorting of the goats, most of whom were sneezing after a cold night (but not getting any of the tea made from the leaves of the succulent eggs plant, which they tell me stops camels and goats from sneezing). Adult goats out first and chased far from the ada karin so they couldn’t hoover up the juicy ng’itit seed pods (from ewoi or acacia tree), then the babies were released and sped hungrily out to eat. One sick goat with a strange flaking nose and hard skin on its joints was kept back. The family sat and discussed the high number of goat miscarriages this year, but cheered up when Erot appeared with a tiny baby goat lost by its mother the day before but miraculously still alive after the cold night. Its face was pushed in a beaker of fresh milk and its started to wag its tail and perk up.

By 7.30 it was clear the day would be a scorcher, and I was taking zinc and ORS for a bad stomach. We talked about snakes (emun) and how people don’t fear them because they usually only bite someone who’s done something wrong... We headed off over the big sandy hillock (eipa) from where people look for missing camels, past the school where the dinner lady was massaging a boy’s enormously swollen stomach while a colossal sufriya (pot) bubbled with their lentil and bean stew, and on to a small ada karin we’ve visited once before. Boys and young men there were sitting around a radio listening to Lodwar FM: there was a debate in Turkana language about sicknesses contracted from busa, there was a slot for a Swahili-speaking female DJ whose raunchy way of speaking made them roar with mocking laughter, and there was plenty of music that got on my nerves what with the crackle and high volume. They busied themselves with snuff, talked about the affair scandal, and Erot reported the Lodwar news. A young herdsboy test-fired an incredible wooden bow he’d made, long and curved and topped with big black feathers; it shot his metal-tipped arrows high, far and fast, it really would have made Robin Hood proud and I couldn’t help letting out a delighted exclamation. The demonstration got longer and more impressive and I worried for any goats around.

We pushed on through the open to where people were meeting at their ada karins, not going to any big riverbed meetings because the previous day’s weather hadn’t been bright and sunny enough to make busa. A woman walked past us with her face painted white on the instructions of an emuron. She’d been sick and gone for his advice which, based on dreams that channel God or ancestors or both, included the face-painting, presumably a sacrifice, and who knows what else.

We walked in a big group of men, mostly Erot’s brothers-in-law and nephews, one of whom seemed very proud of his athletic and shiny bottom, bare under his flapping sheet. Those we reached were whittling their sticks and showed me how their hockey-stick type handles can be used to club a squirrel, hare or dik-dik that they’re hunting. Watching them reminded me of the Red Queen’s croquet match in Through the Looking Glass where flamingos are upturned to wallop curled-up hedgehogs with. Most of the players had a touch of the Mad Hatter about them too, with their favourite rimmed cloth hats decorated with feathers (ostrich if possible) and in one case pink fabric rose petals. They then started talking about a tree root they fear because thieves sprinkle it around an animal enclosure and it makes all the owners in the circling huts fall into a deep and oblivious sleep. I feel like Alice learning such intriguing things, and it’s a joy that on their side they seem to love to share, demonstrating and explaining so much so openly.

It was so hot, even under the tree, that we escaped into a cool and very dark hut where a group of Erot’s relatives were eating boiled sorghum. Ate a couple of spoonfuls which were delicious, then spotted a ginger cat in the darkness (the Cheshire Cat!?). Felt delighted to see its chubby round face, a bit startled to see that the top half of one of its ears had been chopped off, just as they do to goats, sheep and donkeys to mark them as family property. (Noticed later that Emzungu has it too). Also shown to me in the hut was the curved iron rod used to brand livestock with, and of course the usual amazing display of carved gourds and wooden containers, bead and hide clothing.

Next on Erot’s agenda was checking on a man with a terrible stomach ache, the same man who’d brought home the missing goat yesterday. He’d never been able to eat honey, thinking he had an allergy from the stomach pain and rash it gave him. But having had none for a long time he decided to check whether he was still allergic by eating some, and now looked very swollen and sick indeed. His sister Lokaleso, a slender and very pretty woman whose face is almost elfin alongside the others, had made him tea from boiling water and the ground twigs of water-soaked epong. Over the course of the afternoon we watched him get better completely, as Erot pointed out proudly to me. Having faith in herbal medicines, and knowing how to prepare them, is extremely important to Turkana.

We stayed in that place and I helped Lokaleso with the weaving of a mat and then the threading of yellow and red beads onto string for jewellery. Her name comes from ekales, which means ostrich; it was not in this case given because the timing of her birth was linked to an ostrich or ostrich-feather related incident, but given after an older person with the same name who her parents chose to pay tribute to, the second naming logic here. Meanwhile everyone drank the strong spirit chang’a in the absence of busa, and talked seriously at first. I asked Lokale what man’s business was being discussed and he reported two recent items: was the hair on my head real or a wig? And would I accept traditional women’s beads if I was given some? (both these they left unresolved and I hoped they wouldn’t test either). Some black tangawizi (ginger) tea arrived just in time to keep heatstroke at bay and for me to see the funny side of a bizarre conversation with beautiful young Lokaleso’s old, stooped and senile husband (it must be more than infuriating for young men here to stand no chance of catching an attractive and eligible girl their age, who will be bought for a large dowry by oldie)). The old man barked at me the English conversation piece he knew, “HELLO! HELLO! HELLO!” (until I said yes, the correct response, he could not move on), and then “BRING WATER!!”.

We were all distracted when a herdsboy arrived carrying a pair of tiny black goat twins by the front legs, their mother running keenly behind with afterbirth still streaming. Everyone was glad about this double luck, though one was not yet standing by itself, and I learnt how the same used not to be the case at all for humans: if a woman bore twins she was divorced and one of them would be killed. But that was in the old days they told me, the days when people who died in a hut were left there while the whole homestead upped and left, allowing wild animals to eat the body and the hut to collapse onto the remains in what would then be considered that person’s grave.

Drunk and happy, the men started target practice with their bows and arrows and a rusty can about 30 feet away. It went well and there were hysterics when Lokaleso’s hideous old husband tried his luck – dribbling, concentrating, straining and finally dropping both bow and arrow at his feet with the ineptitude of a true drunk well past his prime. The game had to be stopped when a man’s arrow slipped and very narrowly missed the person sitting next to him. In a fine show of Responsible Headman, Erot declared the fun over and threw the can up a tree, while the young herdsboys giggled at such a near miss.

It was still baking hot at five when we set off to a nawi (for home), passing the still-mute girl playing with a tabby kitten. Wife 3 Marta showed me a pair of huge teeth from the hyena they ate, and the abandoned baby goat brought in this morning looked happy and at home in her hut. One the other side of the ada karin baby Esibitar’s ear was not better, possibly worse, and she was crying even more than usual. She and I were both fed some chang’a liquor as we sat on a mat watching the goats; it seemed to quiet here and horrified as I was I enjoyed the rice wine taste very much…

A clear night and the most amazing sky: crisp and bright and a thick milky way. Plus the very bright, low star that arrives first and stands out from the rest, which I’ve been trying to find out the name of. In Turkana it’s called Etob, and its positioning matters a lot although everyone I asked told me something different and I got a bit confused: first wife Elizabeth Krien said it was fine where it was tonight but on the opposite side of the sky it meant the Pokot (old foes from further south into Kenya, also pastoralists, and the people who stole all Lokale’s father’s cattle) would send diseases to affect the animals; Erot said where it was it was ominously threatening to end the current rain, and was also responsible for the many miscarriages their goats were having. Even Lokale got muddled. I was asking, genuinely mystified, where was the moon (Elap, also the word for month), and when they said it was coming I should have had more faith. Then in the darkness above the row-of-teeth hills there was a thin but blazing line of fire which grew into a huge orange moon, rising like a paper lantern being pulled by a string. Full full full and arrestingly beautiful, even the children stopped to stare. Such a moon has a special name (which I’ve already forgotten) and Erot said that whatever town people’s calendars might say, they know August has begun when they see it.

We talked more about the sky and its nomadic lights and they were shocked but amused to hear that a thing as horrible as light pollution exists in many places. They asked whether aeroplanes flew above the clouds or below, and I did what I hoped was a good impression of an aeroplane going through clouds and experiencing turbulence, miming meals and cups of chai flying in the air and landed on people’s heads. No point making air travel look glamorous. But I think they imagine aeroplanes as airborne matatus (minibuses) so were astounded at the idea of people having cups of tea and meals on them.

At one point my stomach made such an aggressive complaint that both Erot and Elizabeth started and looked across the ada karin; knowing I was responsible I asked Lokale to tell them and he reported that they’d thought it was a strange dog growling its arrival in the compound. I was assured though that it wasn’t at all rude, routine in these parts in fact.

Poor Esibitar’s ear seems to be bleeding and I tried to get the medical history, only slightly easier than decoding the meanings of Etob the star. She’d been to a private clinic in Lodwar and been given drops that hadn’t worked, so they tried the locally trusted cure for bad ears of gun cleaning oil, bought in small ear-cavity-sized quantities from the administrative police in Turkwell. Then, as I knew, she’d gone to Lodwar District Hospital last weekend; I can’t be sure but I think whoever saw her there sent her away with just oral antibiotics (amoxicillin) for a chest infection, now gone, but didn’t bother about the ear, or perhaps Irene and Erot didn’t bother. Some failure in communication or motivation or both had left her in a lot of pain and crying nearly all the time. Their plan now is to try brake fluid, which everybody trusts to at least dry up pus in ears so that it can be removed. Yikes, I will try to find something through Merlin for her.

The children did an incredible display of childhood happiness while the adults – me, Lokale, Erot, Elizabeth, Marta and Irene – lay on mats in the moonlight. It was coordinated by the Ekidor, the oldest daughter of Elizabeth who has stayed in the ada karin (another slightly older one studies at boarding school in Turkwell). She is quite the most competent 13-year old I’ve ever seen, she cooks, carries water, thatches huts and looks after babies just as well as their mothers. Under her joyful instructions they skipped and sang and laughed their heads off. There was a game called Snake (Emun) where they held hands in a chain and ran singing and twisting until the front of the snake caught the tail; there was something a bit like the ‘off with their heads’ castle drawbridge game I remember; and then there was endless impromptu fun like where Ekidor wore the smaller children on her back like rucksacks, their arms round her waist and their feet up around her ears, pointing skywards like a military headdress. She looked a sight, running around in the pale light singing as they gurgled on her back. I felt very lucky and happy to be there.

Noticed how exhausted the herdsboys are in comparison with the other children, after their day of running around animals in the hot sun. One of about 13 was crashed out on the floor, wrapped in his purple sheet, ignoring even naughty toddler Long'or's poking and teasing. 

Tent sadly has been taken over by the ants/termites, they were nesting under everything and the ones I couldn’t find and kill now run around fat from feasting on their dead colleagues or drop onto my head from the roof to show me who was there first. It’s a great shame they aren’t the type that people here like to flash fry and snack on…

Day 7

It was raining even in Lodwar, where I enjoyed showers, spinach and emails before stocking up on basics for myself and the family. Basics like maize flour, sugar, salt, oil (some emergency dates and peanuts for me) and some sandpaper for them to finish their wooden bowls with. I hoped this would be easier than the shards of glass they use to shave bowls smooth with, and which I had immediately cut myself on when I’d joined in to help. Not sure what Erot, his daughter-in-law Irene and her baby Esibitar did in Lodwar besides going to the hospital, but they appeared at the Merlin compound in the morning looking happy, the baby wearing a pretty green dress that would put all the other ragamuffins to shame. I noticed their strong smell as we drove, and saw through their Kacha Imeri eyes how enormous and full of people and commerce Lodwar town is. It was very unfortunate that the time Erot and Gregory arrived was also the time Merlin Lodwar’s warehouse decided to spill its entire contents into the yard for an audit: hundreds of new blankets, jerry cans, boxes of relief food and medicines were tossed out in a dusty pile, and I could imagine the stories they would tell when home.

The big riverbed (Kros Pir) before Turkwell town was flowing after the rains, and makeshift washing lines were all over the ada karin following a night I had luckily but completely by accident missed. As we crossed the river I remembered the story of the two nuns near Lokichoggio (north, near the Sudanese border) who crossed a swollen river in their 4x4 with the windows closed, rolled, couldn’t get out and both died… My tent had coped quite well with the rain, but had a funny smell and a huge colony of big orange ants – termites? – had settled under and inside my boots. (I had to go on a squashing spree with a tin mug after I lifted the boots and they spread like wildfire all over the tent).

Family pleased to see us, and the supplies, and we sat down to rest and catch up. The first thing Erot did was change out of his town outfit of trousers and a t-shirt, put on his red and blue checked sheet and pick up his wooden stick and headrest. Then he set off in search of another missing goat.

Sat with Lokale and wives one and two (Elizabeth Krien and Mary Najal) as they spat tobacco juice through the gap where their lower incisors have been removed for beauty. Younger women are quite flirtatious with this gap, spitting streams of water through it as far as they can, sometimes in competition with each other or when being courted by a man. We admired and talked about their other marks of beauty, the small vertical scars in neat rows on face back, arms or shoulders. They go to a woman renowned for doing this well, and not the same person as the one who makes cuts on people, usually children, for health reasons. The most common of these are rings of small scars around the heart, sometimes curving along the rib to follow the line of the scapula behind; this is to correct an irregular or ‘too fast’ pulse in a child, something which must be pretty common to them given how many children have the striking mark. Other rows of scars are lower, on the abdomen, and I know from being here last year that many are a routine way of tackling the swollen spleen of kala azar (leishmaniasis).

On the horizon to the west appeared the missing black and white goat being led on a string by a good-looking male relative who’d matched his purple sheet with thick gold pirate-style hoop earrings. The goat had had a miscarriage and wild cats had eaten the foetus. I asked if they thought she would be depressed by the loss of her child and they said no, but they would. Children arrived and demonstrated two brilliant and intricate games that need just sand and stones: lokai (the house) and lokora (the he-goats). Lokora was too complicated and both needed supreme hand-eye coordination to be any good at but I think I might master lokai before leaving and it would be a good trick to pass time in sandy places.

The naughtiest boy in the ada karin Longor (Marta’s), who drifts after his dad Erot with complete adoration, showed up with his first attempt at a bow and arrow and was not bad at all for his four or so years. Quickly Erot and the goat-rescuing friend whittled him a perfect mini bow with full set of arrows. Each sitting on his egcholo (a wooden stool that doubles as a headrest) they looked statuesque in the golden late afternoon, their Elysian fields of tall yellow grass all around. We talked about this amazing flush of grass, the first good year of rain in at least three, and I said I hoped it would continue in following years. They said they were glad I’d said that as I’d also said I hoped the missing goat would be found, and it had been. For some reason this sort of thing makes me nervous and I think I’ll refrain from making such oracle-style statements in public in future.

Goat rush hour began and I stood in the thick of things with the entire family, learning words for coat colours [nakwan, black; nakirion, white; nangor, pale brown; epus, blue (grey); nangorok, black and white; narengan, red (chestnut brown)] while they computed, joined, divided and milked the hundreds of goats in a perfect symphony. On the edges children and babies’ mouths went white around the edges as they drank still-warm milk passed out of the scrum in cups.

A visitor was staying the night and would share Lokale’s outdoor mat, hopefully providing some body warmth on what was a much colder night. We sat with him and wives 1 and 3 (Elizabeth and Marta) who seem very fond of moonlit chats. In her usual direct way wife 1  - the oldest, sterner and a paragon of hard work and reliability – asked me questions about marriage and the status of women: if a man in my country is only allowed one wife, do I think Erot is wrong to have three? If a woman runs off with a man without her parents’ consent, is she beaten like she would be in Turkana? I tried to explain that England is multi-cultural so while some families are liberal towards women, others are not, for instance people are disturbed by stories of honour killings in ultra-muslim communities. They wanted me to know the traditional punishment for an adulterous pair in Turkana: a bull is taken from the man’s family and slaughtered, then he and his lover must carry the very heavy stomach and all its contents around the ada karin of the wronged husband, flinging the undigested food and shit at all the huts to cleanse them, and being beaten by all the family as they go. Before all this the adultery will be made very obvious by all the goats “sitting down like dogs” when they are released from their night enclosure. Even Lokale believes this is watertight proof that an affair has taken place.

It seemed the older wife feels life here as a woman has many burdens that she wanted me to know about, but her life-worn attitude was balanced by the sexy, confident Marta. Young, beautiful and oblivious of such things, Marta laughs and performs during these dramatic renditions. But they both did know a woman and man the adultery punishment had been meted out to, in neighbouring Konipad, and that conversation got them onto the latest scandal that was emerging yesterday as we set out for Lodwar. The woman who’d been teaching me so patiently to make string and weave mats had been practically abandoned by her husband 18 months before when he moved down-country to Kitale for work. An older man, Erot’s age, asked her family for permission to take her; her parents agreed but she refused. She was secretly in love with that old man’s son and in the cover of the rain storm that caught us two days ago they’d run off together. Now the families were deciding what to do, but seemed to agree that the absent husband was largely to blame, a humane outcome I thought, and I hope the lovely round-faced woman will be spared the intestine-carrying, shit-spraying exercise.

There were a few light-hearted interruptions from the visitor, who seemed jovial but was shrouded in his blanket so I never saw his face. He wanted to know if there were donkeys and mountains in my country, if it was true that it’s night there when it’s day here (several people have asked me this already) and if didn’t think that when a male camel mounts a female camel, puts its tongue out and makes noises, it sounds like a vehicle? Then we talked about names for animals; they don’t seems to name any of theirs except Marta could remember a cow who was called Edward after a white missionary of the same colour. I asked if they would name any white/pink dogs or cows after me and they laughed and said no, but they will use me as a time marker, so they will always say that Esibitar started to walk at the time the mzungu came to stay in Erot’s house.

Sadly the bad smell in my tent is the rotting of the rain-soaked ancient foam, and there are far too many survivors of the ‘anticide’. And I have a bad stomach. Otherwise life is beautiful and I look forward to tomorrow’s appointment with the camel-milking women.

Day 6

Stomach seemed fine so I drank goat’s milk chai and some soured camel’s milk to finish it off. Quizzed by Aipa about why tall buildings don’t fall over and whether there are really metal boxes on ropes (lifts) that carry people up inside them, then the Merlin vehicle arrived, having fought through the flooded river and muddy riverbeds that the rain had left behind. A huge group of people jumped in for the lift, some for Turkwell and some for Lodwar, and off we went wearing our floral bed sheets (in my case the only dry thing left).

Day 5

Made a big pot of chai for everyone, sitting waiting for it to boil with the lame goat who was trying to get warm. She knows she’s different from the sprightly, impish ones who charge around chasing and play-fighting each other but I don’t think she knows she’s an auspicious omen to be sacrificed in a year or so.

Sat with Aipa, the two translators (Gregory had reappeared looking much better) and another young person on a log, feeling quite the naughty youth as we laughed about donkeys mating. They at last seem to trust me, and complained that I should be planning to marry someone here so that my useful, hard-working children could be added to the family. But I need improving: the other night when I slept through the rain rescue mission it had shown them that I wouldn’t be alert to dangers in the night or able to get up and rush with the rest of them. Felt very ashamed, my deep sleeping and slow waking seem to follow me around the world.

Children joined us and an impromptu clinic started, everyone grabbing long acacia thorns and removing splinters or in one case painfully lancing a toddler’s boil. Older ladies came and we had a long conversation about health and the dispensary, lots of interesting things learnt but most underpinned by a lack of trust in the staff, drugs and services. It’s a shame when politicians and missionaries have so many people here believing everything they say, and voting and praying to prove it, that health professionals can’t apply the same passion to educating people about the basics of something like malaria prevention and treatment; what to do, ask for and expect.

Erot returned and we set off for another ekriam mariam, this time back in the huge Konipad riverbed. The four of us walked across the huge scrubby expanse, dragging our heels and chewing on the esekon – twig toothbrushes – we grabbed from a bush at the start. On one side of us lay the row of hills that look to me like teeth but have names like ‘spear’ and ‘home of the monkeys’ and on the other is the tall but cloud-covered Mount Loima where the herbal perfume (epie) I bought the other day comes from. Erot asked questions about my home and learnt that we usually eat with knives and forks rather than spoons and that a family can move as much in its lifetime as a Turkana one can. The logistics and geopolitics of mine, even simplified, were baffling. We talked about the history of this land, me repeating what I’d uncovered at the British Institute in Nairobi about Turkana people being here for just 250-300 years having been in Sudan before that. Erot said yes, that man was correct, and that Turkana had fought wars to displace people from the land, people whose descendants like the Pokot still resent and fight them.

Having crossed the plain we were at Konipad and at one of the first houses we stopped, toothbrushes still in mouths, to gape at a girl who’d recently stopped speaking. She was young and looked very miserable; I said uselessly that she shouldn’t worry and her voice would surely come back but suspect from their faces that the others had another, grimmer explanation and probably one where a sacrifice would be required to appease whoever her loose tongue had wronged… On we went to where some women were thatching their akai while their children ate the huge dry palm fruit eengol which clever Lokale joked is the Turkana doughnut. One of the women was wearing traditional hide sandals, beautiful, and there was an ugly stepsister moment as one was rammed onto my big foot.

We were early, as usual, and it took a while for the riverbed to fill up and become the bustling market place again. I discovered that instead of sitting upright in a series of awkward, twisted poses I could just lie flat on my back and no-one minded at all. I sat up for a few chats and greeting rituals and then was grateful to be invited to join a group of women rolling string from a shredded fertiliser sack on their calves. Much harder than it looked and they laughed at how inept I was before getting worried by how red my leg was starting to look after they’d spat and rubbed on it furiously for a while. My triumph, after much undoing and starting again, was two pieces of string about a foot long each. It’s amazingly resourceful to make something out of nothing and they use the it for their beautiful bead necklaces but it’s a bit galling to spend so much time on something as basic as string… At my pace of making anyway. More my style was the reed mat-making; I made a nice long green strip of woven reeds and then stitched it to another in what looked like a mermaid’s tail. Of course the best thing was being finally taken in by the happy group of women who laugh, sing, sell busa and bounce babies. Until last night I’d been wondering if I’d ever break through what Kenyan author-photographer Nigel Parvitt describes as Turkana’s famous unfriendliness.

Some time after five we began the three or so kilometres home. To our right the row-of-teeth hills were dazzling in evening sunshine but towards Mount Loima and directly ahead of us the sky was a dramatic and deep blue-grey, pretty furious looking. Knowing what lay ahead, an incredibly fast pace was set, quickened when the warm wind in our faces became cooler, powerful and full of dust. Erot ran back to rescue his youngest wife Marta and their chubby little boy and we three marched on into what was making me think of a biblical plague of locusts. Although my bones seem to be poking out more than usual – hips, ribs and clavicles especially – I was feeling strong, stronger than previously this week, and thinking of how muslims say their bodies adjusts to the rhythm of Ramadan fasting after a week or so (Lokale scoffs at Ramadan and says the fact they eat a huge pre-dawn breakfast means they have it a lot easier than most Turkana people). That was until it started to absolutely pour with rain and we had no choice but to run as fast as we could for at least the last kilometre. It felt like brutal army training but we made it to the ada karin without stopping, looking like drowned rats and me with my thin white shirt plastered to my skin and surely indecent. Tent soaked but in the spirit of shutting the enclosure after the goats have bolted I threw a square of tarpaulin over it, one that I should have attached to it to begin with but decided against because I thought it would be too hot and would block my view of the stars.

Felt a bit miserable as I lay wet in a wet tent and wondered if I couldn’t just pile on the few things in my bag that were still dry, put some plastic over the soaking foam mattress and hope for the best until morning. But the thought of two hungry translators got me up and dragging a dirty pot over to the other huts. Plenty of lightning flashing on the horizon and though the worst of the rain was over it was still drizzling. Lokale called me into the good hut – the one with a roof – and what a world it was in there! With thick thatching all over it and mats and hides covering the floor it was dry and snug and I could see just why the children loved to tumble around in there together. Bowls, plates, spoons and milking containers all carved from wood or from gourds hung all over the tied-twig walls and there was a tin trunk which I suppose holds clothes and valuables. It felt huge inside and in the darkness it took me ages to realise that two children were asleep on the mats. I only had a bag of millet meal to offer for supper but my spirits soared when they told me just to sit down and dry off, that that would prepare and bring the food. In came a pile of epocho, a strong spinach dish, a chapatti-based mush and finally my millet porridge. I threw caution to the wind and stuck my fingers into the communal bowls along with the rest of them, wondering whose were filthier but relishing the taste of grease, soil and general filth holding the lovely hot dishes together. The shallow well water that everything gets washed and cooked in seemed the least of my worries alongside all our streaky fingers and the grimy plates but I ate plenty, remembering that I’ll be in Lodwar tomorrow for the almost-inevitable bout of dysentery. The abundance of supper might have something to do with me buying two lovely wooden bowls, paying probably more than I should have. We talked – headlines being that the new goat had run away and that an ear infection is bothering baby Esibitar (which means born in hospital, and she’s the only one I’ve met) – and then I excused myself and walked to my own shallow well to sleep.

Day 4

I worried in the night that sleeping with my head on a first aid kit (makeshift pillow) that contained sharp metal things like scissors and safety pins would be bad for my sleep, or at least my dreams. I’m becoming more superstitious here in the land of sandal-throwing and sacrifice. But I slept fine, so deeply that when Erot and Lokale came to my tent during the rain to wake me and move me to the big hut I slept straight through it. And I was slow to get up too, despite the goats screaming in my ears.

No black tea this morning, we set off straight for town to catch this white man meeting. En route we skirted around the notorious angry camel, well branded and with a big snorty nose; it took a long hard look at me in my white shirt. Erot stamped out his beat, picking up people and news along the way despite saying his bones were itching and he was tired by what he thought must be malaria. A woman’s house in town (Turkwell) had been robbed of nearly 300 US dollars that UNICEF had given her – in cash (?!) – to pay secondary school fees, so she joined Erot who agreed as headman to present the case to Turkwell police. There was another mention of NGOs yesterday when a young man came to the meeting with a sort of ‘count the white-tops’ mission: Oxfam were apparently distributing relief food to locals with white hair, so he was sent out with a notebook to record them. There was naturally plenty of discussion and hair tugging as people selected themselves and others for this group.

On we walked, stopping only to discuss Erot’s brother’s lost cow with him. It’s meditative to walk in a group over the soft sand but I missed watching the busy bustle of the goats in front, swinging a stick at the stragglers and enjoying the rustle of all their legs, hips and shoulders brushing each other. As we got close to town two fat people with bad body odour appeared and stopped to talk. Questioned by me, Lokale confirmed that all town people smell; I stupidly asked if I did too and he said yes, I smell different to them. This topic was hastily dropped by both sides but I would love to find out what I smell of, remembering the myth that Chinese people say all whites smell of off milk.

It was four or five kilometres to the Merlin dispensary, a small scraggle of people were outside but no Merliners within so I left a note. On to the chief’s office, also empty, but a group of indolent policemen idling under a tree gave me a sour-faced quizzing. I fought down my disgust and urge to ask them what duties they were hoping to achieve while sat on their bottoms under that tree; instead I showed the firm politeness that I thought was expected from Erot’s daughter before leaving gladly in search of chai.

I suggested chai for the family as a way of satisfying my own craving and we piled into a shack with rickety benches, a kitten and some strapping youth downing big plastic bowls of githeri. The chai was delicious and the smart town-dressed landlady brought three plates of mandazi, deep fried lumps of dough which I was glad to see Erot eat an amazing six of.  Gregory was not so lucky and began to shiver and look terrible. He’s had malaria since he arrived but now really needed treatment. Poor sod was dragged first to the house of a confident English-speaking boy Jerry who wanted to show me some sort of turtle he’d caught while fishing in the river and was now keeping in a muddy plastic bucket. (Sadly for him I definitely did not want to buy it). Then to the dispensary where a Merlin nurse Mary had arrived and greeted me like a long-lost daughter, exclaiming that not only was she surprised to see me alive but that I actually looked well. Thank goodness noble Erot didn’t understand her rudeness. He and Gregory both requested Coartem from the dispensary and were given it despite not being tested for malaria.

 

The mysterious mzungu meeting had been mysteriously cancelled; I wondered how many people had trotted into town on a wasted journey for it. So back to yesterday’s meeting place to rest. Erot’s coquettish daughter-in-law was one of the first to arrive, selling her busa and playing adorably with her baby girl. As dowry-bringers, baby girls are particularly welcome, with women who attend the birth doing extra ululations to celebrate their arrival.

Another idle afternoon in the tree root, taught more useful words and phrases by Lokale and just generally absorbing the scene. I watched the babies and a woman chiselling a wooden bowl and everyone drank busa as usual. They brought me a blue plastic mug of local honey (ao), sweet and smoky, and I dropped it on my palm as I was shown and ate it all up (as my stomach was immediately and ominously aware, probably because they mix water with it). Shown a bundle of twigs good for curing boils and remembered somewhere reading the flowery phrase “extensive pharmacopoeia” in reference to Turkana herbal remedies. Thoughts are gathering for the report on health I must write (jotted down in a notebook for more useful and less flippant observations than these).

A mad herdsboy was presented to us; he had burned down his father’s hut and been taken to Turkwell police, but they shooed him away and told those who brought him not to waste police time with mad people. So he was back at the local justice system of Erot and his henchmen under the ewoi (acacia tree). He looked big-eyed and forlorn and was dressed in a ripped shirt under his purple sheet. I thought how the only people who’d actually disturbed me since arriving have been those gainfully employed outside the local pastoralist ways of life – teacher Areki and the hideous forestry ranger Jacob. They were both drunk with the toxic anger of the dispossessed, nothing like the more manageable and humane spectrum of drunkenness and insanity seen in the more traditional men. I came trying hard not to romanticise this way of life but it can seem really to be a very complete system.

As one group got drunker they sang a jolly song about a goat, the only one a person owned, tied under a tree. They fought a little, or “abused each other without shame, just like matatu men” as prudish Lokale put it, although he wouldn’t tell me exactly what was said no matter how hard I pushed. My grubby little friend/teacher (the toddler) was so charming to the adults that he managed to drink a lot of their busa – someone explained that adults can’t eat or drink in from of their children without sharing, even if it is alcohol, and that without food until dinner busa is good energy for children. He started to slur and stagger like a drunk dwarf, my romantic ideas were knocked off course and it was almost enough to bring out the missionary in me.

Erot asked whether there are headmen and chiefs where I’m from and I said not as such – there are bosses and authorities but not community leaders, at least not in most city-based set-ups – and some people think that’s what’s wrong with city life. On the way back, after the jolly afternoon in the riverbed was over, we continued a fairly deep conversation about Turkana life. We walked through the huge stretch of land that had once all belonged to his father, a man who’d owned twice as many goats as Erot plus four enclosures of camels and cattle. The wealth, now lost, was possible because the climate was so much better, it could even rain once a month. Erot had been forced to give family land to others, outsiders, instead of being able to make sure his brothers could stay there with their animals. He now believes that only education can protect his children from the precariousness of this life, and wishes his father had made him complete school so he could have left it all behind and built proper iron-roofed houses. I pleaded that most people in tall buildings in big places like Nairobi and London can only dream about the togetherness and happiness which he and his extended family have daily in shady spots in dry riverbeds, and that there must be ways to safeguard herding without swapping it completely for school-bred drop-outs. Very judgemental, but surely they’re doomed if they think salvation for their children comes in the shape of the useless Areki, perched on a chair on a hill, picking his nose and tossing the odd dog-eaten Swahili book at his flock of bored Turkana children. They seem to get nothing more useful than a hot meal out of each day spent in school. It makes my stomach sink, and I probably need rehydration for this conundrum. Erot seemed to agree though that the education might need a shake-up, and to be hinting at a backlash it’s experiencing when, embarrassingly, he described Lokale as evidence that people are becoming discouraged from sending all their children to school: able to speak English, read and write, poor Lokale still spends his days idling unemployed in Turkwell unless something like this job appears. Worse, Erot knows that young school-leavers might get so frustrated with unemployment that they’ll become thieves. We pondered as we trekked over the thousands of animal footprints and I fell in step with his serene and very short second wife, sticking to her as another tedious lesson in ethnobotany began and lasted all the way home.

A bad night for me and insects. Such a nasty-looking big spider was sitting on my tent door that I took delight in sneaking around it to be inside the tent and then whacking it off into the distance. I then felt bad for it, being flung so fast and far without warning, and wondered if it would rush back to get revenge. The next thing that happened was my tent’s already temperamental zip became completely broken from start to finish and I was left at the mercy of whatever the desert or Akuj (God) wanted to throw at me. Seeing a scorpion at my feet as I cooked felt like a further reminder. Everyone here has been stung many times by scorpions but I don’t fancy it at all (and wonder if I’d cry in front of them?).

Cooked epocho as they suggested, with salt, sugar and some oil, and it was delicious. The new system is to cook at least twice as much as Lokale and I need and then give the pot to the family; it works a treat. It was a windy night with a near-full moon. I shared a hide mat with the first wife and chatted for ages about all manner of things (everyone much more relaxed without patriarch Erot around): fat people and full moons, weddings, dowries and children… There’s a wonderful word for a fat person, tatoom, said with a long and deep emphasis on the ‘oo’ and an accompanying gesture of wide arms, clenched fists and no neck. Fat is of course great here and they’re amazed that thin is considered beautiful where I’m from.

Turkana have so many words for the moon in its various phases, but they also believe there’s more craziness and theft (of their best animals) when it’s full. They told me that when the moon ‘dies’ (in a lunar eclipse) they beat drums to bring it back, and the mama asked if we do that too, brushing off Lokale’s earth-moon-rotations-eclipse explanation. Without Erot she talked on and on about weddings, initiations, what makes a good family size and what determines fertility. Her own courtship and wedding to him were splendid, marked by her being given many beaded necklaces by her family to appear beautiful to him, then him giving the family a huge dowry of livestock including a big bull he had to spear himself at the wedding. Like Maasai met last year, they’re outraged at the thought of girls being given in marriage without a dowry being paid, and they scoffed at my idea of a woman having just two or three children as ridiculously modest.

Ngimurok seem to be present in everything they mention: rituals like initiations and weddings; prayers to ancestors for rain and children; and bull sacrifices done for barren women who need to appease the man, wounded by their abuse or rough words, who cursed them with infertility. My head spins with things I hope to see and things I fear I won’t remember. And I feel irrationally afraid of what might be sheltering from the wind with me in my gaping tent. There’s never been so much scratching and scuffling and I’m waiting for a long slithering. I remember Lolepo in Lodwar telling me that snakes are attracted by scented soaps; I’ve got one of course and although I haven’t used it I expect Hissing Sid will know it’s there.