Day 2

Like everyone, I sleep very close to the animal enclosures and the he-goats made absurd noises all night long. Otherwise slept well until an even more absurd noise: the ‘escalating antelope’ of my alarm clock, still programmed to wake me in the darkness of 6am. People and animals soon up and noisy. Didn’t feel much like getting up. Am already filthy and stinking of woodsmoke. Hut stinks of the kilo of tobacco I brought for Erot who’s not here yet. Am looking forward to him coming, not least because Lokale assures me that the drunk night-time visitors wouldn’t have come, or spoken to me like that, if he’d been here. I’m also keen to offload this tobacco, wondering if it might be the cause of a constant thumping headache I have.

Women busy ‘adopting’ – tying up – a new goat arrival, and making thicker thorn fences around the enclosure because they’ve heard there are diseased goats in the area and they don’t want them mingling. Then Erot came! He asked how I was and provided a second translator called Gregory who was clearly useless but I apparently couldn’t refuse: he explained that he will be taking me around himself and that “we will be four”. He distributed the tobacco and accepted some of the disgusting too-strong black tea I’d made. Then he and a large entourage of men led the way on our tour. Up the sandy gully past where a huge grey-green snake had been recently chopped to pieces with stones and on to an enclosure of many large camels. I couldn’t go in because they fear white clothes and I was wearing a white (but almost brown already) shirt. I admired the gourds and wood-carved containers they collect the milk in, and the hieroglyphic brandings on the camels themselves. An old lady said I should try herding them and did a stooped impression of walking camels; I said I’d try (ejaribuni) and she said she doubted if I could even do that.

Erot's first wife thatching her hut

Back to base and looked at the black and white goat born lame who was to be fed and then sacrificed to the ancestors. They think it is a good omen, that perhaps it means riches. Unlike the white, long, banana-beaked bird that stopped to sing in a tree above us: that meant bad things so Erot threw a well-aimed stone at it. Women were attaching bunches of palm fronds to the roofs of their huts, perched lightly on top.

Walked past the open air school (a metal roof on legs) and signed teacher Areki’s visitors book, though not with my usual warmth and thanks as he was one of the ringleaders of last night’s unpleasant visit and I’d taken an instant dislike to him. Lucky brown birds that remind people of rain flew ahead of us. I learnt that they’d killed a hyena with spears on the day we visited last week, that they’d shared and eaten the meat and made some bracelets for the children with the skin.

Walked through rainy season sorghum field to Erot’s second ada karin built by the river for the family to move to in the dry season. Met Erot’s youngest, newest wife Marta plus his old mother (with a pink plastic child’s mirror frame around her neck – I kept wondering how she’d got it on). Also met his beautiful sister who has a domed forehead, high cheekbones and a heart shaped face. But no beads for some reason, and these are the baseline of beauty in Turkana women. And a ‘daughter’ with grey hair and an elderly face who I rudely said looked too old to be Erot’s child – the translator passed it on and they all laughed. Sat in black sandy soil with them and they drank busa, a muddy brown brew made from fermented sorghum. Most people have nothing all day but this and chang’a (a much stronger, clear distilled alcohol that they make in barrels) and they asked how I will survive if I don’t drink it too. The old mother added that she’d only ever seen white people move in planes and big vehicles so how will I walk like them; I said I feel lucky to be here like this and they all laughed. The tobacco was further distributed to this branch of the family.

On we walked past some bulls – nervously as apparently they can be made wild and angry by “people of clothes” (me), as opposed to “people of sheets” (them) – and then through the short but thick stretch of forest that lines the river. Monkeys overhead and Erot explained that they eat them and that monkey soup is a great cure for people with “itching in their bones”. Saw and avoided some bees overhead, Erot insisting on a detour because they attack people who use lotions (again, me). I’m not of course wearing any lotions, and feel filthy, but appreciated his fatherly consideration. Bees were in traditional log hives, we saw a wiry old man cutting up a fallen tree to make these as well as wooden bowls and water troughs. He was Erot’s first wife’s father and Erot explained that he’d given permission for this work since the tree had fallen naturally. The forest is so important for their animals in the dry season (when they move lock stock and barrel to the ada karin next to it) that they’re very serious about its conservation and punish anyone cutting or making charcoal from living wood. This protection doesn’t extend to wildlife though, shown by the disappearing monkeys and recent absence of crocodiles. Conservation is defined by its relationship to their animals; anything that threatens their animals and their grazing is obliterated (and usually eaten).

As we left we saw a trail of big, biting black ants and Erot stopped, looked seriously at them and their destination, and announced, “They are moving with their entire family, just like us.”

Paused at some houses where we were joined by women – including Aipa – with barrels of busa to sell at the afternoon’s ekriam mariam (gathering), then walked on, feeling the heat and hunger by now, to the big ada karin called Konipad. A gaggle of people were busy chatting and working: a woman making herself a beaded belt from a very wide strip of hide; a man knotting string around a stick to make eyelets for hats through which prized ostrich feathers could be put; and a blind woman rolling string out of the strands of a shredded fertiliser sack. There was a pair of very jolly male elders, who reminded me of the Chuckle Brothers, bossing everyone around and trying to beat the children with their sticks. No-one can eat before they’ve eaten apparently, and I bet no-one does… One asked me to become his wife and I politely refused which they mercifully accepted. An old lady came to show me a traditional hide and bead costume, top and skirt, and then we took a short wander to meet some boys playing a traditional stone-in-hole game called peyarei and some women grinding rock salt on a big flat stone. A relief to be with the mighty headman Erot and it keeps the laughter levels down too.

On to the ada karin of his first wife where chickens were running around and I was offered one but said I wouldn’t be able to carry it around for the rest of the day. A young man put on the family wedding hat covered in black ostrich feathers. Excited by the positive response he ran back for a box of more things and then draped himself in Christmas tinsel and put heavy bells around his calves. In this outfit he did a wild hopping dance with an older woman who waved a cane dangerously close to me. I asked where the ostrich feathers are from (having heard rumours of dodgy Kenya Wildlife Rangers in Nairobi National Park killing ostriches to flog their feathers at outrageous prices to Turkana) and Erot for the first time made a request: that next time I am in Nairobi I get some mixed black and white ostrich feathers for him.

Walked on to a huge dry riverbed, site of the ekriam mariam, where the women from our family were waiting to sell their busa. It soon filled up. The old man who proposed to me was there, and trotting out the same line until Erot stepped in with, “Not only has she said no, but she is my daughter and you’re not to disturb her”. Erot also refused to buy him busa, so he announced that having been twice refused he would leave. (But he didn’t, he grumbled around for the rest of the afternoon).

There were eventually dozens of people in the riverbed, and plenty of children who’d finished their school day charging around or playing hide and seek games with a blue bead in the sand.  Erot’s suavely dressed and über-confident brother arrived – in purple sheet, matching hat with tawny ostrich feather and matching monochrome arm bracelets – and did some emuron (witchdoctor/seer/prophet) style sandal throwing. Turkana seers tell the future from the position a pair of thrown sandals lands in. But I think it was as much a demonstration for me as anything else, and from the crowd’s gasps the outcome was a bleak future for the subject being queried (in one case a pregnant woman’s coming delivery).

Other characters on the scene included a very tall, very thin crippled man who’d apparently been hit by the Dayah (aptly pronounced ‘dire’) Express bus which takes Sudanese and Somali refugees from Nairobi to the huge Kakuma camp; a blind man yelling and waving his stick at his son who he said had stolen one of his goats; a severe-faced fashion victim who spent the whole afternoon scrubbing and preening a shiny black goat’s skin to make herself a skirt; and plenty of men wrapped in floral sheets brandishing spears and wearing aberait, circular wrist-knives. At some point it was decided, I think by Erot’s charismatic brother, that I deserved re-enactments of all the vital aspects of Turkana culture. An amazing show followed for at least four hours, uplifting and an honour even if my thoughts guiltily strayed at times to what felt like critically low blood sugar and dangerously high heat.

There was a play about a pretty girl’s mother choosing the richer of her two suitors, the wedding going ahead successfully (for this we ‘extras’ had spit rubbed on our forehead by the ‘priest’), then the jilted poorer man revealing himself to be an emuron and throwing a curse on the husband. That man then lost both strength and wealth and his young pretty wife divorced him for the other. Then some of her brothers rushed in to defend her honour and a huge battle ensued. All over the gully men ran brandishing sticks as spears or guns, their sheets and private parts flapping, jumping at each other and striking and whooping. It was like a mad Cowboys and Indians game, contagiously exciting with women and children getting involved or just screaming with laughter from the sidelines. What an amazing sense of fun, and what a brilliant way to spend a weekday afternoon: en masse in the riverbed drinking busa, chatting, getting a few things done or bought, getting disputes resolved, enjoying each other’s company and indulging in a bit of ‘horseplay’.

The role play went on and on, involving traditional courts of law, cattle raiding and plenty of dances and songs. It was a real privilege, and they loved it too. I took a few photos as requested and thanked them profusely.

 Re-enactment of a fight over a bride

We dithered around a bit, ate some crab-apple-type fruits from an ekalele tree, and I laughed when all the adults jumped to attention to stop a plump baby boy from eating a lump of human hair he’d found (by far the least filthy thing I’d seen him put in his mouth but detached hair and nails seems to be a universally repulsive taboo). Not long after five we left, crossing paths with many goats and camels also returning home. We left Aipa and other women selling to a few final customers. I’d seen a lot of children – and even babies – drinking the alcoholic busa, instead of lunch I was told, and again they worried about me not having it but I don’t think I can bear to.

Enjoyed walking with Erot and learning about the three types of ngimurok (plural of emuron): one for rain, who usually requires a he-camel be slaughtered as an offering; one for war who will ask you to slaughter anything his dreams advise, often a dog; and one for health who uses many different methods to advise on the cause and treatment of an illness, methods including sandal-reading, tobacco reading and sacrifice.

A relief that Erot finds it a real relationship of mutual curiosity, asking me plenty of questions like are there butterflies in England, do cats in England also run off to live in the bush as his did, and do children cry like this in England?

My translator Lokale

Shattered by the time we got home and stole into tent-hut for rest. Felt guilty drinking a carton of long-life milk and eating some peanuts from my bag but tried to remember tough-as-old-boots Freya Stark (1930s British explorer of Persia whose memoirs I’m reading) with her firm grasp of mission and good supply of chocolate and sardines. Emerged to cook plain rice that was mixed very successfully with Erot’s githeri and sat on a mat under the cloudy but still luminous sky talking about life and this place. Erot was born in 1955 but can remember only from 1963 so can’t say what life was like before that. He would live nowhere else but is open-minded enough to sat that he won’t comment on what Nairobi is like as he hasn’t been there.

Went to bed happy at last:, a goat bell soothing, and plenty of comfort in Erot’s assertion that Emzungu the dog now recognises me as a member and so will protect me as well as warn everyone of any thieves attacking the ada karin. Wind blowing through this huge open space under a huge open sky, and for a change the night smelt damp. Glad of my dodgy-zip tent but hoped the translator twins, sprawled on a mat outside, weren’t feeling the cold. Last thoughts were of Erot’s two young herding sons, amazingly mature for their age but reduced to little boys when their father confronted them about something a man at the gathering had said: they were accused of using a neighbour’s goat as target practice for their bows and arrows. They scampered off fast when told which I thought made them look pretty guilty despite Erot’s idea that the family were being framed.