Just before a UNICEF trip involving community consultations and a lot of Nairobi visitors, we went up to see our Nakepelewoi family. It had been a while; the last time was in November when it had poured with rain. We always asked ourselves, “Do you think Nachukuli will be there?” for the old patriach really did always seem to be hanging on, but each time his huge spirit and presence had been reassuringly there. This time of course was different.
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| Nachukuli - ?-2012 |
Then a neighbour found us as he herded camels home and told us what we’d already guessed: “They had a problem; the old man died; so they moved”. He pointed vaguely at the hills north-west of this old home, gave directions to a single tree which Lokale seemed to follow, then disappeared to bring his camels home.
It was a rocky, tricky journey across country, or rather moonscape, and once again we relied on Lokale who not only pursued the single tree, but promised he could see a wisp of smoke that meant a homestead. And we relied on Frederic’s impressive rock-hopping LandRover driving. Finally we arrived and braced ourselves for greetings that would be very different to what we were used to.
Sure enough they were flat, unsmiling, and a bit listless in their various positions around a new, temporary and very non-committal homestead. They welcomed us kindly but explained that they had been depressed and sick – mostly with fever – since Nachukuli had died four months ago. Maybe God took him, or maybe Satan, they said; they certainly weren’t at peace with the old man’s passing. Poor Nachukuli, we felt sad to think of him lying in his thorny tomb, departed after a brutal drought that had entrenched him in some pretty bitter thoughts like his famous “God is a liar!” theory.
There had been a series of funeral ceremonies, some of which must have been attended by a lot of people. That was one of the reasons they were in this place, albeit temporarily: to accommodate all the visitors and all the sections of Nachukuli’s herd brought for the funeral; and to be somewhere peaceful and far from the road which might draw curious interlopers.
As a sign of mourning, heads had been shaved: for children, just the hair at the front of the head, but for the three widows, all of it. Now these women had just stumpy fuzz where once had been a strip of typical stringy braids. Relationships were pretty strained between them, and this was most obvious in how they’d positioned their huts: separately and far apart, with no obvious centre and all pointing in different directions rather than towards each other. It made the ada karin a bit disorienting. When we had set up camp a respectful distance away (positioning slightly forced too, for there was a nasty, uncrossable gully lying between our entry route and the ada karin), the first wife came to speak to us. With resources still being divided and lines of authority drawn, it wasn’t surprising everyone is wary, but I had probably been naïve about how much their common husband had held together these three women and their competing broods. She told us just that, and was doing so to be sure we were under no illusions when we gave food to Etukoit but asked that it be divided between everyone (as we often did). We gave her some tea, salt, lentil and sugar rations of her own, and she even managed to take from us the tobacco we’d brought for Nachukuli and then decided to put on his grave. She was probably right when she said we’d never get close with the thorn bushes as they are, and we were happy when his adult son Akal later suggested that all of us go instead “as a family” on our next visit and take all sorts of good things he’d like. Oil, liver, milk and tobacco are standard issue, and we lobbied to include the sweet tea and eye drops he always took gladly from us.
The widows now depend on the grace of their married sons, who now own the herd of camels, cattle, donkeys, sheep and goats. Inheritance of these was all pre-decided but a few issues like milking rights and small stock needed establishing, and there is always room for inheritance disputes as the wives’ wariness proved. While Elim was off with cattle and other older sons were elsewhere, we met with Akal – the only son who lives in the ada karin, responsible for camels, married to Esekon and the first born son of Etukoit – and he was a transformed man. For the first time we saw uncanny resemblances to Nachukuli, even the strange hand gesture where he’d tapped himself with long fingers on his tightly braided basket weave hairdo. Empowered, he took centre stage in discussions and welcomed us magnanimously whenever we wanted to visit, for we “are like the children who went to school, and now come back and help the family”. Once we got used to it, it was very welcome and we even thought we saw some of what Nachukuli’s youthful greatness must have looked like (remembering his immodest description of himself as a glorious catch, which was something like,“strong, handsome, and with lots of animals”).
Another transformed young man was Nangolekou, teenage herdsboy son of Kwee who we remember being beaten by Nachukuli for losing goats but also having the courage to stand up to the old man when he refused him food (only to leap into the darkness at a sprint afterwards). He had had to bear quite a burden since his father’s death: the family bulls needed bringing back from the Oropoi area on the Uganda border, because some were necessary for the funeral (animals of all types were slaughtered for the ritual and to feed guests) and the whole lot had to be gathered with all other stock for a kind of asset consolidation. ‘Bringing the bulls back’ meant Nangolekou walking to Oropoi with his older brother Elim (back from Todonyang immediately on learning of his father’s death), collecting them from where they were looked after as part of a relative’s larger herd, and then walking back. A round trip of two months. I asked what he ate along the way and he said they stopped each night wherever they saw smoke – “Those people either share food with us or they do not”. He seemed pretty pleased with himself though, an air of Kipling’s Kim about him, so on instinct I dared to ask if he might have met the girl he wanted to marry on this odyssey… He immediately grinned and said yes! She was brown-skinned, he said (meaning relatively fair), and beautiful. Clearly moving with a herd of bulls grown splendid on the pasture of the insecure but green border hills had given him a manly confidence; he said that he could certainly convince her father to give her to him, because he had seen him moving with animals that could pay a handsome bridewealth! His mother Kwee and step-mother Etukoit smiled proudly at this boy-man, and the cycle of life seemed to be moving steadily along.
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| Nangolekou, a man of migration - and soon, marriage! |
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| Etukoit, pleased with a jerrycan from us; 'the businessman' Ekireket; and confident Nangolekou |
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| 'Vanity Without Borders' - competing with a beautiful neighbour for a look in the wing-mirror |
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| "See the house of my children?" said a proud Etukoit to the passing girls |
