Malawi 2004 - 2007

 Vacation Trips in Kenya

Christmas In Kenya

Some people have religious visitations that change their lives. I had my own vision on the road to Nairobi. Following a heat induced snooze I forced my reluctant eyes open as we approached Moshi in Tanzania. As I began to focus, there before me was Mount Kilimanjaro - masquerading as a giant xmas pudding. Yes, there it was for all to see a monster pudding topped with snow cream running down from the peak, lying on a bed of cloud meringue. A slight shift in my seat and I could see Mount Meru too. But what was that cloud obscuring the peak? There was no doubt, anyone could see that the cloud was the exact shape of Santa Claus. Look there is his hat and his beard, and look at his hair streaming out behind. I looked around me in the coach expecting to see people excitedly pointing at the xmas miracle, but alas this was not a shared experience. Maybe they were experiencing a quiet but deeply moving spiritual moment. I was hallucinating about xmas. Perhaps I had been away too long. Perhaps the low key approach of the festive season in African heat and the lack of weary xmas hits, decoration and consumer intimidation had been too much to cope with.

The idea of spending Christmas in Kenya had been proposed in a moment of carefree euphoria during the early days of training in the company of six Kenyans. They were excited that I might want to visit them, but did not believe it was a serious proposition. As the months passed I kept returning to the idea with Ndambuki, but even as late as two weeks before, he was still vague about the details. My desire to plan and book dates was not very African. Ideally, decisions should be taken no longer than three hours before the event. So, by the week of departure I had booked my leave and was ready to travel on the Friday night coach. I phoned Ndambuki on the Wednesday.

" I'm in Blantyre and I have to present a report on Monday. How about leaving on Tuesday?"

I half-heartedly said that I wanted to leave by Monday at the latest and adjusted my work and leave dates.

Next day Ndambuki phoned to say he could now leave on Sunday. "O.K."

On Friday afternoon he phoned me at work. "Some other Kenyans are at my house - they are leaving tonight and there are places on the coach. Can you come?". "Ndambuki, I have arranged to work because you wanted to leave on Sunday." "Oh, sorry".

So it was that I started the three-day coach ride on my own in the last available seat at the back of the coach squeezed between a Tanzanian businessman and a woman who really should have paid for two seats.

Northern Malawi passed in night time sleep and I awoke to the sun rising over the last few dusty kilometres to the Tanzanian border. I became aware of a curious fact that once noticed becomes a constantly observed pattern. In spite of the large number of infants on the coach I had not been kept awake by wailing babies. Children here are great travellers. The grizzling baby is instantly shushed by a cosseting mother and finds a teat pushed into its mouth. The young child spends so much time in contact with maternal flesh that it must believe for quite some time that it is still part of its mother's body.

The next day was spent in and out of sleep as the temperature rose to the upper 40s centigrade. I was taken by surprise by the beauty of Tanzania. I expected a dusty scrub. Instead we were on a fertile plain in the Rift Valley bordered on either side by mountainous slopes, often swathed in forests. I made a promise to myself to return here to explore further.

By 11 p.m. we were entering Dar Es Salaam. I had heard the city manager talking on radio about Dar's ambition to be a modern African city with the help of U.N. projects. My short time here confirmed his view. It seemed to be a relaxed, clean broad-streeted city that flowed down to a long harbour area. There was a strong arab and asian flavour to the city and the people. African features had been re-modelled by the years of interbreeding.

Just eight hours from Dar and I was hallucinating about Christmas, watching Massai herdsmen in the Serengetti distance driving small tightly grouped herds of cattle across dry, dusty plains, and absorbing the beauty of the High African mountains. Frustratingly, coaches are not allowed to travel at night in Tanzania so in spite of being able to see Kenya I could not get there. I accepted the one night in a cheap sleazy room in Arusha and the five-hour trip to Nairobi the next day.

Nairobi tends to have a reputation of being a dangerous city. Kikuyu criminals know so many ways to fleece you and everyone knows someone who has been mugged. So being dropped in a narrow, busy crowded street with a bag did not feel comfortable. I phoned Ndambuki to find that he was still in Nairobi having been delayed by coach breakdowns along the way. We had arrived.

Mlolongo

Arriving at Ndambuki's house some 15 kms from the city centre I realised how insensitive I had been to his situation. In neutral Malawi it seemed natural to expect to stay at his house, but when we got there he shyly said that he had found me a hotel close to the house. When we came to his house it was obvious why. He had a sitting room, which was also his daughter's sleeping space and a bedroom. There was no running water and electricity was due to be connected any day now. There were two small settees and a sideboard supporting the unusable TV and DVD player brought home by the long distance father. The paraffin cooking stove was in the same room on a small table. A row of family photos and posters with aphorisms were nailed at picture rail height. He was apologetic about his poor circumstances.

Ndambuki is an educated graduate with a social worker's view of the world. He is aware of my western values and shares many. But once back at home African family roles were resumed. Ndambuki was Dad and sat and waited for food to arrive, asked critical questions about the menu and the wife's service speed and only got up from his seat to do 'men's work'. The wife was comfortable with her female roles and their ten-year old daughter was a willing apprentice. The five year old boy was the focus of Dad's attention, the daughter was the mother's responsibility.

Evenings were spent in the many bars around the small township. Unlike Malawi, where women in bars are seen as prostitutes, Kenyan bars welcome men and women. However, the male bar culture is very powerful with a strong pressure to buy rounds of drinks. Waiting staff brings more bottles before the last round is finished. Most evenings the boys would drink 10 -12 beers whilst complaining of poverty. Ndambuki's wife was never present. In spite of lots of talk of making up for lost time with the family the loyalty to the bar was the clear winner.

Bars consisted a wide range of styles within a small area. Our favourite was constructed of gash wood. It had seating around tables and a live band that played from 8 p.m. until the morning hours. Kenyans loved to dance but were noticeably less creative than Malawians in style. Men and women dance with a variety of partners, often in a lascivious manner. Over ambitious males were frequently abandoned and left to sulk or stalk out to another bar.

As Christmas approached Ndambuki hatched a plan. If we spent Ksh 2,500 (£20) mending a friend's car we could use it to go to Makwene, Ndambuki's village home. Of course this meant 'if I paid for the mending of the car', his share now being the property of the bar owner.

Makwene

Makwene is a rural area 125 km east of Nairobi. It is set in the middle of high fertile hills that were thirsting for the expected rain that had not arrived. The beans were already ruined and the maize was gasping. The talk was all about crop failure and the need for the returning xmas prodigal sons to send money and food for hungry families.

If belts were to be tightened then Christmas is not the time to count the notches. The thirst of the land was ritually quenched by the male population in the bars of this wild-west trading centre. If it was Christmas many had reached the stage of neither knowing nor caring by the end of the evening. Intoxicated generosity bloomed. I became James to one over-generous chum who insisted that his aged parents rouse themselves in the middle of the night to wish me a happy Xmas.

Boxing day was the occasion of a vivid lesson in the lurking, unseen, dangers of Africa. We had driven a Japanese saloon car over impossibly rutted and rocky mud roads to join Ben in his family compound. Ben was an ebullient man who worked with a Human Rights organisation in Southern Sudan. His wife, a teacher in Nairobi, explained that he had been sent by his father to buy emergency supplies of stout to re-stock his fathers bottle store in a small village nearby. But hospitality rules demanded that we were fed. She cooked a fine lunch and fulfilled her female duty.

The post lunch 'stout' session brought a new group to the table. There was much discussion of football and a policeman drew a crowd as he told tabloid tales of the Meru, who carry knives like Somalis and are not afraid to dirty them. One young Kamba man had had his throat slit over a discussion about a girl at a dance. Another had been involved in a fight and as he ran away his assailant shouted to a passer-by "stab him". The helpful stranger stabbed the escapee then turned to ask "what was that for?".

An hour later we were back at Ben's compound to collect his wife for a pre-wedding houlie, but where was she? Ben found her in her bed. She could hardly talk, had to be supported to walk and was vomiting.

We jumped into cars and launched into a rally-style drive along the rutted paths to the health centre some 20 minutes away. By the time we got there she was barely conscious and was carried like a rag doll into the centre.

Some time later the doctor came out to talk. She had contracted cerebral malaria - the most dangerous form. This was the third case of the doctor's day.

" She should be alright. I have given her injections. She will sleep and should recover."

Ben arranged for her to stay with his sister in the trading centre and then fulfilled his obligation to the local bars. Life must go on as normal, even if you are worried sick.

Next day she was tired but recovered. She was lucky that a doctor was close and had the remedies. Cerebral malaria is a killer.

Ndambuki's Older Brother.

N'dambuki's father had died when he was only fourteen. His mother had eight children to raise. So the much older brother had to become the father. He provided a home for Ndambuki and paid for his education through to degree level.

The brother had been a customs manager for thirty years and now had a small mansion and extensive farming land that had been part of a 'mzungo' ranch purchased by a co-operative of local farmers. More than 80,000 whites had farms in Kenya by the 1950s. With independence in the sixties began the process of reclaiming and breaking up huge ranches. He loved farming when he could get home. There were fruits, maize, cattle goats etc. I asked whether his children would carry on with the farm. In Kenya, as in most developed countries, the more educated young do not want the tie of farming. He was resigned to the sale of the land for housing when he could no longer manage it.

My vision of a rural idyll in which neighbours work together was destroyed by his lurid story of envy. He was explaining that he built separate houses for his watchmen. They were strategically placed like the fortifications of a Norman fort. This was to create lines of defence against invaders. Last hungry season some thirty people had gathered to force their way into the farm to steal the maize in store. The watchman had shot one with an arrow and they fled. N. told me that the Kamba had a tradition of hunting and fighting with bows and arrows. In his childhood there had been regular fights with the Massai.

I asked if they were people from Nairobi

" No they were all local people."

Life In Turkana.

One of the big Rift Valley lakes is Lake Turkana. It is a night and day's coach ride north from Nairobi and is home to the Turkana tribe. Nearly all of the fourty two tribes that live in Kenya have long since settled for the modern life and western tribal rituals. The Turkana are still only at the start of that process.

The north is a dry, semi-desert area of scrub acacia and thorn bushes that borders onto Sudan. As we start to approach the Turkana District I get talking to Benson, a modern Turkana man, who has 'displayed' to the females on the bus and entertained the willing audience with his down home philosophy on a wide range of social and political subjects. He has a small butchery trade in Loki, the feeder town for Southern Sudan relief work. His story is one of a bright motivated man who's empty pockets leave him vulnerable to the gold diggers who follow the UN camp. He is paid a small wage to drive relief trucks through dangerous areas knee deep in Kalashnikovs. There is no insurance or security.

" Have you thought of organising the drivers to approach the UN organisations to demand better conditions in contracts?"

" We can't do that. The contractors would sack us and get other drivers."

We pass through villages of mixed populations and Turkana women board the bus. As we stop I watch a young teenage woman laughing with her friends. She has a half shaved head with a mohican style centre brush of short dreadlocked strands. Around her throat from shoulder to chin is a neck brace of rows and rows of brightly coloured plastic beads in red, blue, yellow and purple. She is gap toothed, which is useful because she regularly spits between her teeth. Her clothes are simple gaudy cotton wraps - top and bottom. For the first time in Kenya I am aware of signs of poverty in the village.

It is dark by the time we reach Lodwar, the trading town for the area and Benson helps me find a hotel. The town has a wild west feel with earth roads and raised single story shops on either side of the street. I check when the transport leaves for Kalekol near the lake.

Next morning I get up early - there is only one pick-up each day and I don't want to miss it. Benson had told me that water is the biggest problem here. Sometimes it doesn't rain for two years. This morning it rains and rains. The pick up driver tells me that people won't travel when it rains. I settle in for a long wait and find the shop keeper to be a kindly muslim who brings a chair and sends a boy for chai. This town is poor. Small ragged boys drag through he streets, some sell yesterday's paper that arrived with the bus. Turkana men walk through with goats. They are thin men with Massai-style cloth togas tied at one shoulder. They carry sticks with a mallet head that are for walking, herding and hitting. They have small stools, shaped like cobbler's lasts, used as a low seat or a neck pillow, (similar to those from tribes on the Ethiopian/Sudan border). They wear some beads for decoration. Some wear a feather in their hair - a bit affected I felt.

Although young males no longer have circumcision as part of initiation they are still expected to kill a bull with one blow from a spear. This requires knowledge of where to strike to hit the heart and timing to spear when the bull is inhaling to spread its ribs.

As I wait Peter approaches and skilfully gets round to offering guiding services. We engage in a negotiation ritual. Eventually I decide he is genuine and we agree a price. He is a westernised Turkana and we are to stay in his family compound in Kalekol.

When we finally arrive I find a hybrid village on the edge of a small one-road town. The hybrid has grown from the joining of Turkana westernised by the proselytising churches and tourism and those who stay closer to their rural kin. However, even the more westernised Turkanas try to keep their social traditions.

They have no chief system here but each village has a set of elders. Men have precedence and women are expected to stop to let a man pass before them. Traditional medicine is preferred to western medicine especially if it involves injections. Many fail to return if the health centre wants to give them a series of injections. As with many tribal arrangements the death of a husband necessitates the care of the wife and children. The wife removes her necklaces, a cow is slaughtered and she is smeared with its blood. The elders perform the ceremonies and the woman often becomes the wife of the dead man's brother. As this is a polygamous society he can take more than one wife.

Peter's compound is surrounded by a high grass fence. Security against people and animals, he tells me, is an issue. Pressure on space means that boundaries must be maintained.

Inside I meet the family. Joseph is wearing an Arsenal football shirt and has an encyclopaedic knowledge of the English Premiership. A local bar charges 10 shillings(14p) to watch a game on satellite TV. It was reduced from Ksh 20 because the price was not affordable. His sister, whose name I didn't catch is a tall slim girl of about 17 years who shakes hands and then separates herself from family life. Mother speaks softly whilst splitting palm leaves for weaving into baskets, finishing a traditional basket with a 2005 decoration. Father is with his second wife. An older brother comes and goes.

We use Joseph's bicycle to go to the lake. Joseph has cycled the 53 kms to Lodwar for schooling each week until completion this summer. The lake at this point is only remarkable for its size. We have one like this in Malawi and stay only long enough to buy some fresh fish from a belligerent drunken fisherman. Older women mend nets not bothering to cover their breasts. Younger women are busy with the fish and the children.

At night we sleep in the open air on a mat. It is important that men are in the west and women in the east. I turn around so that my head is in the west. When Peter went to woo his wife he had to stay some distance from the house in the west to avoid compromising the women's privacy.

In the morning we wake early to set out into the plains. This is flat land painted from a watercolour palette. Delicate pastel greens fading to yellow as far as the eye can see. The soft downy grasses caress our feet with dewy lips as we walk quietly towards a distant village. The rains have tempted these arid lands to share their fertility secrets. As we come closer to the village a string of ten young camels walk disdainfully across our path. Peter notes this as a sign of wealth.

The compound is small with two round huts roofed with grass. A small hutch on stilts has been made as a cupboard. We are greeted by two older men and one man's wife. They are small and stringy. One has scarification on his body and both have ear piercings. Markings on the lower body are usually the result of traditional healing rituals: those on the face and upper body are beauty treatments. They wear the 'toga' sheet. Their remaining teeth are stained brown. They welcome us but maintain a wary distance. Three young girls stand close together about ten feet away, giggling in excited embarrassment at the presence of a strange ghostly figure. They gradually sidle up beside us. The oldest girl is about fourteen, tall, with a woman's elegance but a girl's innocent playfulness. She bears scars in a regular pattern on her shoulder and has many bead necklaces. These are given as a sign of beauty. Only wives wear the single metal ring around their neck. This family is from the mountain clan. The wife wears an aluminium necklace. Leopard clan from the lowlands wear steel necklaces.

The head of the household tells us that water is the big problem here. They want a bore hole to irrigate a few crops. He shows us a small patch of ground with stunted and thirsty sorghum. The nearest water source is five kilometres away. It is unusual for Turkana to garden, they are nomadic pastoralists who move to where the animals can graze. Perhaps this man is a natural entrepreneur. Living within long walking distance of the market town, perhaps he sees an opportunity. The camels are very useful and can be milked four times a day. He invites us to return later for a drink of camel's milk but we never make it.

We offer the adults and the elegant, coltish girl chewing tobacco. Men and women chew tobacco, explaining the brown stain on their teeth, and the regularity of their spitting. The father, though grateful for the tobacco, thinks we should also leave something to fill his empty stomach. As we leave the fourth daughter comes into view with the families goats.

The compounds are separated by significant distances. I had noticed that dwellings were sparse along the roadside. The need for pasture and water means that families live in small units with a large space around them. I ask Peter about the large number of daughters. Who will look after him in old age? Whilst girls are worth a lot of camels, cows, goats or donkeys (10-50 goats or 1-5 cows) the family will loose them to other households when they marry.

We had not gone more than a hundred metres before an older woman approached cheerily and greeted us. It had taken no time at all for the message that free tobacco was in town had been passed around.

At the next settlement a single woman with two small children and another teenage girl were sitting outside a poorly thatched hut. In fact everything about this situation looked less affluent. We jawed for a bit left some tobacco and departed. I asked Peter which of the two teenage girls we had met would be considered more beautiful. He weighed up the options.

" The first one".

" Why?"

" Because she had more necklaces and was cleaner".

Lake Naivasha

Samuel, a very tall, intelligent VSO agricultural worker lived here. Again I stayed in a hotel because of the shortage of house space. As with all of Africa he was trying to support the children of a dead brother and other family members had turned up. Naivasha was the place in which Joy Adamson (Born Free) had lived and been murdered. It has a fresh water lake accessed through a small park with zebra and giraffes that pose for pictures as you walk around. Local men set you on edge by visiting cray-fish nets in the reeds whilst submerged hippos bellow. Like most lakes it is receding each year as drought and human irrigation suck it gradually dry. Samuel told me that there were several flower farms here. His wife works for one that supplies Marks and Spencers and Safeway with fresh-cut flowers on a daily basis.

The hotel was really a bar with resting places for working girls. However, it was a clean pleasant and cheap place. The first evening I joined the few locals in the bar for a convivial drink. On the second evening I was a bit later and following a crowded, drinking Sunday, people were in tired but relaxed mood. As I ordered my drink the TV flickered into life. Oh good I fancied a bit of the box before I went to sleep. I wondered if they would show some football. I was vaguely aware of an American style programme as I took my soda. When I finally turned to the screen there was no soccer. Instead I realised I was the unwelcome guest at the screening of a hard porn video. What to do. If I walk out in a huff will it cause offence? If I stay am I condoning it? Being British I took the middle path. Feigned indifference with sneak glances at scenes I had difficulty understanding. What are they doing? I mainly watched the audience who might have watching a quiz show for all of the excitement it generated. After a decent time I made my excuses and left.

The Massai Mara.

In spite of my fears of mass tourism I felt I could not leave without at least seeing the Longleat of Kenya for myself.

You cannot stop for a minute in Nairobi before a man approaches you. It is either a scam - "I'm a refugee from Sudan" , followed after a few minutes by two men "We are the police. We have been looking for this man" - or it is someone touting for a Masai Mara tour. As you cannot enter the park independently you have to sign up with one in the hope that your choice is reliable.

In order to raise productivity I had booked a tour to go out on the morning I arrived from Naivasha. Pleased with myself I arrived at the tour office with five minutes to spare.

" Ah, Mr Hague. Could you possibly go tomorrow instead?".

Several calls later and I was in a car speeding to the first honey pot viewing point where I was added to a group of four other 'misfit' tourists who were already congratulating themselves on bargaining down the price of mangos to 100 Ksh each, instead of the 25 Ksh they fetch in the markets. There was talk of buying tat drums and gifts. We started in festive mood but It didn't take long before our anticipation of a rip-off led us into 'storming' with the driver over the programme.

" What tribe are you Joseph?"

" I am a Meru"

The lurid stories of the policeman flooded into my mind.

Actually once we had settled down Joseph turned out to be as good a guide as we saw.

We tourists start the safari in the anxious anticipation that we will not see any animals. The tour companies know this and ensure instant gratification. Up to twenty five 4 X 4s and Nissan mini-buses with raised roofs converge on a small area. They are equipped with CB radios that allow drivers to announce the latest find. It has to be admitted that it is thrilling to drive within a few metres of a pride of lions. But this is soured by the spectacle of magnificent predators surrounded by vehicles. This is probably only a human concern because the cats seem totally uninterested in the circus surrounding them. As the vehicles are neither food nor foe they don't register. Even cheetahs wander into the midst of the traffic jam and lay their tear-lined pussy faces on the ground, until a bored male makes a kitty mew and they lazilily get their feet and saunter off.

Within two hours of arriving in this vast plain bordered by steep escarpments we had corralled two families of lions, four cheetahs, and a giraffe. We were already bored with broad bottomed zebras and exhausted our repertoire of buffalo jokes. Warthogs, Thompson's and Grant's Gazelles, Bushbucks, Impala, Topi and silver-backed jackals, had made cameo appearances.

What was surprising was the harmony in which the food and the diners existed. Small groups of gazelles wandered within easy eating distance of lions, without a hint of interest from the resting cats. This was not hunting time and no-one was fussed.

The second day was the focus of the experience and by far the most satisfying. The busses spread out over a much larger area and we spent much longer times watching animals without choking them with carbon monoxide.

The scenery was a mixture of flat grassy plains and gently rolling hills. We drove slowly around looking for early birds and becoming aware of the large territory needed to support the grazing of ruminants in order to satisfy the blood lust of carnivores. It was here that your guide earns his shillings. "Look lions". Tourists look everywhere except the place he has seen prowling tawny beasts. The male is usually separate from the family except at meal times when the lionesses are expected to have dinner on the table. This brings out a sisterly recognition of the faults of the male of both species present. This time we see two magnificently black-maned males, lionesses and cubs padding up and down the bank of a river. This is the first of at least six sightings of lions.

The highlights mount up. We run across the exquisite cheetahs covering great distances to locate a source of food. Just as beautiful are the gazelles - we are spellbound by the 'survival of the prettiest'.

A family of nine giraffes move in slow motion across our path. These Heath Robinson inventions of a random world are usually seen in small groups. Seeing them in a family of different sizes is a rather wonderful sight. This elegant fleet of drifting vessels moves silently from bush to bush in a carefree feast of plenty, seeing everything from their crows nest vantage point.

As the heat grows we reach an area full of elephants. A group comically tries to arrange its bulk into a pattern that can fit into a small amount of shade. The females gather around the youngest to ensure its safety, although they are, otherwise untroubled by our close presence. We watch one skilfully removing bark from a tree with a tusk. These creatures can do a large amount of damage in a short time. At least here it seems that poaching is under relative control.

We leave the bus to spend lunch watching two hippos kissing in the River Mara. They stay in the water to avoid sunburn and this couple open their huge jaws and canoodle with each other in a gentle way. Families have a stretch of river and colonise the length we can see. Crocs warm their chilled blood while the sun is strong. It is curious how edgy people feel leaving the bus. We are given a guard with an old bolt-loaded rifle for protection.

In the afternoon we see stocky, spotted hyenas. It is not normal to see them at this time of day. Soon we find out why. Under a clump of shade-giving bushes and trees lies a male lion feasting on an Impala. Females sit waiting hopefully and the young lie casually in the heat. There is a sudden violent spasm as the male leaps to its feat and rushes at an over eager wife with frightening speed. Its roar is as loud as the thunder that sometimes rolls around these hills.

Another surprise to me is the variety of bird-life, from the ostrich at one end of the scale to the tiny insect eaters on the backs of buffalo. There are bustards, vultures, eagles, secretary birds, storks, yellow-fluted weavers in hanging nests, and many more.

One other species of which we had also seen a great deal was the human Massai.

In our low-cost end of the market, young Massai men in red checked togas cook the food, sell the trinkets and charm the tourists. These young men are attentive and engagingly polite.

Tourists are given the option of visiting a local village. They are geared for the experience. Young men and women answer the call for their shift instantly and dance a welcome dance around us. The men make a choo-choo train noise as they dance in a conga line. Hoo-ha, Hoo,ha, Hoo,ha. They stop and change dances. They do the leaping dance, jumping prodigious heights. There is body scarification and boys who have not been to school have made enlarged holes in their ears by inserting sticks of increasing size over time.

An educated man in his twenties takes us inside the stockade. The fence, around the whole village, is strong enough to protect against man and beast. The houses are built around the edge of a central communal space, which is covered in the dung of the cattle that are brought in every night. These are pastoralists who move regularly to find pasture for the revered cattle, so grass- roofed houses are simple structures made roughly with dung and mud. They are only required for a few months. Women build and repair the tiny dwellings and men look after the stockade.

We are asked to come into one of the tiny dwellings. We greet a woman in her eighties at the threshold. She is the oldest inhabitant and sits by the house making bead necklaces. We have to crouch as we enter a tiny porch with two sharp left turns to enter the living space. This, along with the tiny windows are a clue to the dangers faced by people in a world shared with predators and raiders. Inside is a single small room with three cow-hide bed spaces and a fire in the middle. One is for the father, one for the mother and one is for the children. Father may have up to ten wives, so if he wishes to cuddle up to mum the children are sent to another house.

If you are considering taking a Massai wife it will cost you a cool twenty cows - payable to the village not the parents. Your parents will need to give permission for the first wife but you may choose after that. You will be expected to supply the necklaces for the wedding, where you will also drink the mixture of milk and blood leached from the neck vein of a live cow. A bull will also have to be sacrificed.

If you are a female wanting to be a wife you must be circumcised at an early age to allow you marry early. This is important because should you be tempted and become pregnant before marriage you will be "chased away". Unlike the boys your circumcision will be in private and you are allowed to cry. If your husband dies your clan will look after you and your children but you cannot remarry.

If, on the other hand, you are a young man considering a Massai career be prepared to be sent out to the forests with other hopefuls to engage in initiation. You will be circumcised in a public ritual. You will be expected to maintain your dignity through the pain. Any sign of discomfort through moving fingers, facial expression or eyes will bring disgrace on your family and necessitate the slaughter of a bull by them to make amends. Later you will be taken to the forests and taught how to steal cows from other tribes, fight with spears, manly arts and be expected to kill a lion. This last test drew differing explanations. Some said they were no longer allowed to kill lions unless they threaten livestock, others said that the practice still exists. When it takes place the young men hunt as a group. The male who's spear strikes first claims the kill and the manhood. Others then kill the lion - it takes five spears. Sometimes the lion kills the foe too, but it is unusual. Initiates become warriors and often do not marry until their late twenties or early thirties. Lion masks are genuine ex-lion stock. It is the young warriors that have been involved in the wars with the Kikuyu near Naivasha that led to fifteen deaths. The cause, land and water disputes.

There is terrific pressure on land and elders have tried to challenge the Government. Like all peoples who developed a life dependent upon extensive land use they have had their traditional lands taken from them. The Massai Mara was made into a game park for the likes of me. Nairobi was built. Water was diverted. The fact that their land recognises no Tanzanian border and requires no passport does not ease the pressure. Churches and education are also carriers of change. Yet this man was passionate about the preservation of the culture. He would teach the young both modern knowledge and traditional ways.

Unlike many tribes the Massai have a mixed system of elders and chiefs. The chiefs seem to look after several villages and are only called in to settle serious issues. Otherwise the elders are the village government. Each clan specialises in a different skill. Some provide chiefs, others witch doctors, or birthing attendants etc.

* * * *

Back in Niarobi I decided to see the centre. The Parliament area was modern but I was more interested in River Road, the notorious street famous for shady dealing and street crime. Niarobi was called 'Ni Robbery' by travellers and a a Kenyan colleague had recently been robbed of a large quantity of cash as he returned to his family home. I was watchful but fairly relaxed as I strolled up the long busy road. As I reached an Asian shop the shop keeper spoke to me,

" Come inside"

" No thanks you, I am passing through and not looking to buy anything."

" No! I need to tell something.

I went inside

" There are two men across the road following you." I was grateful and thanked him.

As I left the shop I made eye contact with one of the men and knowingly smiled at him. Luckily, they were not serious muggers and left me alone. River Road - no problem.

Some days later, as I bid farewell to the acacia tree in the sunset, the vast plains of Kenya and the street children of Nairobi I stopped, alone, at the border at around 8.45 at night. Four Massai women instantly surrounded the mzungo.

" Buy this necklace - good price"

" What about this - dollars, Kenyan Schillings, Pounds".

They are impossible to deter. Whatever you say they will ask the same question again. They would have made a fortune on the floors of the stock-market.

When I finally convinced them that I had no money left, having bought a wedding necklace (I am still saving for the cows) they relaxed. In the 'tourist' village contact was with the men. Women were there only to sell. These women were the most charming companions. I asked them why they needed money. They only needed it for sugar, oil, and a few luxuries, as well as beads. They traded wool and trinkets for the red blankets that had become a fashion favourite in Kenya this season. Most important was money to educate their children. One was a teacher. We chatted about families and our lives.

I wondered what time they worked until. They finished at around nine o'clock when their husbands came to collect them to walk back to the village five kilometres away. They press small bracelets on me as a farewell gift. We all agreed that it was a shame I could not come back with them and spend some time in the village.

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