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!
