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…
