Camels and goats are unbelievably noisy in this place, from before any sign of first light. It’s the first time we’ve slept so close to camels and they really wail, a prehistoric sound that I’m sure the Natural History Museum use in their animated dinosaur display. Their wails get even worse when ticks are being pulled off their faces, as they were this morning.
At our breakfast chai there was an animated discussion about recent beatings, maybe prompted by me asking a little herdsboy of about 11 how he hot the huge slashes across his face – narrowly missing his eye – that looked like they must have been the result of a fight with a large wild cat. He was caned for losing a goat and told us this had happened because he had been drunk and fallen asleep. Pastoralist childhood is never quite what it seems…
The other unlucky people beaten recently were another naughty herdsboy and an unmarried girl who’d had an affair with a man, threatening to deprive her parents of the chance to exchange an uncontaminated daughter for a healthy dowry. Both had been tied to a tree and in the boy’s case the father had been heard screaming for someone to help him make a hole in the boy’s nose to pass a rope through. For both, people threw stones at the tree trunks to attract ants out that would bite them. As well as an effective behaviour regulator it seems to amuse the innocent, or uncaught people, so there was plenty of “That’ll teach him!” and “She won’t be doing that again!”
Frederic joined a big circle of men to explain again what we are doing here. While we’ve been through this many times before and reached what we thought was an understanding they would remember, the men seem not to tire of re-asking and quizzing our potential links to relief food and compensation. The young men – mainly Nachukuli’s sons – turned up with a collective swagger and brought a nastier, greedier tone by saying that we would curse their animals, that maybe we had come to kill them, and that their father should really be careful and ask for money from us. All this went on for what felt like hours, with the men perched on their egcholos in the burning sun. I sat in the huge thatched dome with the women and very delightful, much loved ada karin dog with the important name of Longolengor and a good touch of terrier about him that made him a perfect playmate and chaperone for the children. Sitting with that crowd was definitely a much better option than being among the testosterone-filled ego session of the males, but I did have to explain that I couldn’t help breastfeed the baby, which an old mama made sure everyone understood by pointing at me and then at both her nipples and saying, “Emam ng’akile” – no milk.
They deliberated over the design of a patchwork hide skirt, artistically lining up brown segments next to black segments and incorporating a black stripe that ran down the spine of the brown goat’s hide. We ate some seeds from the ekalele tree, delicious little nutty brown things that you get by smashing the kernel between rocks, and then the men had dispersed, satisfied.
We went to town, Kaaling, in search of network, chai and some relief from the ada karin. No network despite much standing around on piles of stones where locals promised signal could be found; some chai but we thought we got overcharged at 15 shillings a cup, and some relief but we ended up ferrying plenty of Nachakuli’s people to and fro plus picking up townies to guide us to network ‘hot-spots’.
On the way to town we brought a daughter-in-law and her very new baby who was going to the dispensary for vaccinations. She told us no-one uses a health facility to deliver because they are far away, foreign and costly, but if a woman has stayed in labour for two days then she will be taken. Added to this, it is shameful for Turkana men to be present at a birth and so difficult for them to reconcile the presence of male as well as female staff at the facility where a woman is expected to deliver. This information put into my head the image of pre-natal classes in the western world where men practise breathing exercises that will make them good birthing partners… (And I thought how funny it would be to bring a montage of video clips of things like this to our Turkana families: new age men puffing in mock labour on yoga mats, male TV chefs wearing make up and preparing chocolate pots for the camera; people carrying toy dogs in their Tokyo-imported outfits; and maybe the butch female lorry driver in the leather outfit who appears in TV show Gavin and Stacey).
Also on the way the car broke down in a laga, half way between home and town, because whatever links the accelerator pedal to the engine snapped in the heat. Mother and baby got out and found shade to eat oil in – babies dine on breastmilk and oil here – and Frederic toiled with all sorts of boy scout things under the bonnet while I worried that that Nachakuli’s sons had cursed us and the car. With the pedal somehow held together by gimmicks and initiative we got going at last, relieved but reminded of the mortality of vehicles in these parts, and with a taste of the despair you’d have if your car had a serious problem so far from anywhere with a reasonable garage.
The curse of the accelerator pedal: every time we refused someone a lift it disconnected from the engine
Before we left town I spoke to the assistant chief of the neighbouring division, the one right on the border with Ethiopia, and he spoke of the insecurities caused by Merille and Nyangatom tribes from there crossing the border. He did a good impression of how differently Nyangatom men walk, bobbing their heads like camels.
As we drove home – the car still mercifully fine – the little daughters we’d picked up sand high-pitched pretty songs and chewed bubble gum they’d bought with profits from the chang’aa they’d walked to town to sell. They looked like mini women, each with a full set of beads around their neck, bracelets and anklets, Mohawk hairstyle and dramatic earrings from tip to lobe. They don’t go to school and seemed exhilarated by their town visit, their faces shining and their chatter rising and rising at an excited double-speed. Their oiled hair left greasy patches on the canvas roof of the car.
First wife was pleased with the gift of tea and sugar and taught me lots about local birds and their meanings – good or bad, wealth or sickness bringing – while also feeding us delicious green pea-type snacks, edupal fruits, that are bitter when picked from the tree but can boiled all day until they become soft and tasty.
The camels came home, rolling in dust patches as they went and then coming to rest alone, in groups or in one case as a kissing pair whose necks made a heart against the sunset that could have been used by Clinton Cards. Milking began and was a bit chaotic, we always compare families unfavourably to our Turkwell friends at milking time: the three wives and children of Erot were unbelievably ordered, methodical and kind with their goats, everyone else seems to do a fair bit of scruff-grabbing, dragging and general rough manhandling.
I was happy to spot one of my favourite little boys – one who grins and flops around in a hole-covered adult’s singlet that reaches his shins and leaves gaping armpit holes all the way down his sides – helping himself to goats’ milk straight from the udder. He was doing it furtively, looking round nervously as he grabbed the spare teat of a mother feeding her kid and squirted it straight into his mouth.
We cooked lentils with spicy rice, a real power meal that you feel strength from the next morning. A windstorm picked up, promising rain, and scattering loose things into the distance and loose people into their huts. When the sky was clear again we saw a huge and full orange moon pop up over the horizon and its mountains. The mzee, who was spitting profusely on our mat, told us it was good for Turkana when it rose on one sire, and good for the Pokot when it rose on the other (the two fortunes being mutually exclusive of course). We had a shower with a jerry can in the laga and slept in the hut, under a tarpaulin-covered tent, waiting for rain.
Our hut, Kaaling
