Alexandria of Africa (14 page)

“Eleven. Seven sisters and four brothers. With me, we are twelve children altogether.”

Now
I
was confused. I’d never met anybody who had that many brothers and sisters. They could have formed their own soccer team and still had a substitute on the bench.

There were times when I thought it would be nice to have a sister—somebody to share clothes and plot with against our parents—but I couldn’t even imagine that many.

“Sister,” she said, pointing to a little girl walking in front of us. She looked around. She called something out and two other little girls waved and smiled. “Both sisters.” She pointed down the road. “Two brothers are right there.”

There were lots of kids, lots of boys. “Which ones?”

She yelled something but nobody turned around. Ruth bent down, picked up a rock, and threw it, hitting a boy in the back! He jumped into the air, howling.

“Brother.”

He scowled at her and yelled something. He didn’t look or sound too happy. I didn’t need to understand
Swahili to get the general idea. Ruth yelled out something else and a bunch of kids, including the ones she’d identified, raised their hands. There were five of them, six if you included Ruth.

“I am the oldest so sometimes I must stay home to care for them … especially if our mother is not well. I take care of everybody.”

“What about your father? Shouldn’t he take care of things?”

She laughed and then said something in Swahili, and everybody else laughed too.

“What did you say?” I asked.

“I tell them our father would do the laundry and cook us supper tonight.”

“Is it that funny to think he might do those things?” I asked.

“Fathers don’t do women’s work.”

Obviously women’s liberation wasn’t the biggest concept around here.

“Our father is a warrior. He has to tend to the herd,” she told me.

“Your father … he’s killed a lion?”

“Many. You will see the manes when you come to my house.”

As we continued to walk, the crowd of kids became smaller as some of them left the road and took off along smaller trails. While the land was basically flat there were little bumps and rises, and in the distance there were taller hills, covered with trees and bushes. I didn’t see any houses, and I could see a long way into the distance, so we still had a long way to go. In the foreground there were only a few scattered trees.

“Ruth, are there lions around here?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Not right here.”

That was reassuring.

“Not within a mile … maybe farther.”

That was not
quite
as reassuring.

“My father says that lions can smell a Maasai and they don’t come near. You are safe when you are with us.”

I didn’t know about lions but there were a lot of cattle. Some were grazing close to the road, even wandering across it as we walked, while others were off in the distance. Some of the herds looked very large. Then I noticed different animals intermixed with the cattle. I thought they were just big goats until I saw the stripes. There were zebras in amongst the cows! Along with them were deer-like animals, some little ones with pointy horns, and other, bigger ones, with twisty antlers. And finally I saw something even bigger and taller—three of them—giraffes, reaching up with their long necks to pull the leaves from a tree! I stopped walking and stared at them.

“Giraffes!” I said to Ruth, pointing.

She nodded. “A few. They don’t bother anybody.”

“It’s just that they’re … giraffes. That’s pretty amazing, don’t you think?”

“I guess. You don’t have giraffes in your country?”

“Only in the zoo. They’re … kind of freaking me out.”

She shrugged her shoulders, as if to say it was no big deal. Nobody else seemed to pay any attention to them either. I guess for them it was like me seeing a squirrel or a pigeon or a fancy car or a shopping mall. Zebras and antelopes and giraffes were just no big deal.

“What sorts of things do you and your friends do to chill?”

“Chill? Um … we sit in shade to try to stay cool.”

“No, no, not doing things to
get
cool, things that
are
cool. Things you do to chill out, hang, stay loose, relax.”

She shook her head and looked confused.

“I’ll give you some examples. My friends and I go down to Rodeo Drive and we shop. Prada, Gucci, Fendi, all of the best stores.”

She looked as though she had no idea what I was talking about, as though she’d never even
heard
of these stores.

“And then we go to Starbucks—they have the best! I usually have an iced frappuccino.” Again, no response. “A coffee.”

She nodded and smiled. “Yes, coffee.”

“And we go cruising, listen to tunes … if we’ve got a convertible we might take the top down and catch some rays.”

“No top?” she asked.

“Yes, we drive in a car without a top.”

“That is too bad. Maybe they can make a top for the car.”

“No, no, you don’t understand, there is a top but it’s down so we can get the sun and be
seen.”

“Couldn’t you be seen through the windows … doesn’t it have windows?”

“Yes, it has windows and a top and …” This wasn’t working. “And then we go to somebody’s place and maybe watch MTV or listen to the latest tunes that we’ve downloaded from … you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?”

She shook her head. “But it sounds very nice.”

“And on weekends we get all dolled up and get together and some of us have fake IDs and we go clubbing.”

“Clubbing … you mean like a
konga …
like you hit things?” she questioned.

“No, not a club, a
club.”

She didn’t look any less confused. I really wasn’t being very helpful. And then it hit me. There was absolutely nothing I could say that would impress her. She didn’t know about the styles, makeup, cars, people, or places that defined my world. For a split second I was disappointed. Then I just felt relieved. Not only
couldn’t
I impress her with any of this, I didn’t
need
to impress her. It wasn’t like I was afraid she’d pull out a new Gucci bag or flash a Cartier watch. She was just going to smile and hold my hand and walk along the road with me. It was almost freeing. Sort of Zen-like.

“What sorts of things do you do after school?” I asked.

“Gathering wood. Getting water. Cooking.”

“I meant for fun. What do you do for fun?”

She shook her head and shrugged her shoulders.

“With the other girls.”

“We go together to get water.”

“And that’s fun?”

“We talk when we walk. Sometimes we sing or play games.”

“How far do you have to go?” I asked.

“Not far. We walk about twenty minutes there. Twenty-five back.”

“How come it takes longer to get back?”

“The water is heavy.”

“But you have to do
some
things that are fun. Don’t you play?”

“When I was little I’d skip or sing songs. Sometimes we’d kick a ball. Now I cook. If I have time before dark I study. I need to study for my exams.”

I tried to think what my evenings were like. I’d watch TV, maybe listen to some music on my iPod, talk on the
phone, go out shopping or dancing, hang out with my friends. No cooking and no cleaning—Carmella took care of all that. No gathering wood or water. I just turned on the tap or dove in the pool.

We’d been walking now for at least forty minutes. The road was basically flat but in those few sections where it went uphill, even slightly, I could feel the strain in my lungs. Where I lived was right at sea level. Here, we were thousands and thousands of feet up. No wonder all those marathon winners were from Kenya. They got used to the thin air, and when they ran something like the Boston or New York Marathon it would be like their lungs were just drinking in all that thick oxygen.

“Here,” Ruth said, and she led me off the road, along with her brother and sisters and a bunch of other kids who were already headed in the same direction.

“Do all of these kids live in your village?” I asked. There had to be twenty or thirty of them.

“Yes.”

“And you know everybody in your village, right?” I asked.

She nodded. “Those who are not my brothers and sisters are all my cousins. Everybody in the village is my family.”

“The entire village?”

Again she nodded. “If they were not family, they would not live there.”

Although I hadn’t seen it originally, I soon saw where we were headed. On the horizon was what looked like a large wooden fence. The closer we got, the more detail I could make out. It wasn’t a fence, more like the wooden walls of an old-time fort. There were wooden stakes—really tree branches—driven into the ground, and between
them were piles and piles of thorn bushes that formed a thorny wall.

“Is that your village?”

“Yes, we live there. All of us.”

The thorn branches made it appear to be impenetrable. We started to circle around and I was impressed by just how big it was. It looked as though it wrapped around the whole village. There was a little gap, about the size of a driveway, and we walked through.

Inside, the fence was lined with small mud huts. It was like a gigantic circular townhouse development. And in the very middle was a large, muddy field. Why would they do that?

The kids scattered, running across the field, and were greeted by women, who seemed to be in front of all the little huts. Judging from all the chickens and goats wandering around and the way the field was beaten down and muddy, this had to be something like a corral for livestock, and all those little buildings were probably chicken coops or little mini-barns or workshops—sort of like garages when you don’t have cars.

Ruth led me by the hand across the mud. I quickly realized that the mud was dotted with enormous piles of cow dung. These seemed to be everywhere. On the upside, that meant lots of new building material for the huts. I tried to envision just how many cows could be in a space this big. I had no idea, but I knew it had to be a whole lot.

Ruth stopped in front of a woman sitting on a little bench in front of one of the huts. She was very, very pregnant. She was working with a bowl filled with something. Food, I guessed … maybe cornmeal or something like that.

“This is my mother,” Ruth said. She said something in
Swahili, and the only word that sounded out of place was my name.

Her mother looked up at me and smiled and nodded. Everybody smiled all the time. Everybody always seemed so friendly, so happy.

“Hello, I’m pleased to meet you,” I said.

“My mother does not speak English.”

“Oh, sorry.
Jambo.”

Her smile got even bigger and she started talking to me, quickly, in Swahili. Ruth said something to her and she stopped and laughed.

“What did you say to her?” I asked.

“I told her that you don’t speak Swahili. She thought you did.”

“I just know a few words, a few phrases.”

“You speak them well,” Ruth said. “Like you are Maasai.”

Now I laughed.

“I could teach you more Swahili,” Ruth said. “You could teach me English.”

“Your English is already excellent.”

“I could practise with you, learn more about … 
chilling.”

“I can teach you the words, but I don’t think the concepts apply.”

Again she gave me a confused look.

“Will you show me your house?”

“Yes, yes, come.” She took me by the hand and led me toward the little hut and she ducked down to go inside. I stopped. Obviously her English wasn’t as good as I thought.

“No, your
house …
where you live.”

“This is house. Come.”

I ducked my head to get through the low doorway. Inside I could stand up, but just barely. The roof was scarcely higher than my head. It was dim in there and the air was smoky and thick. There was a small fire going, coals glowing below a metal grate. The only light that wasn’t coming from the doorway was peeking in around the top, where the metal roof sat roughly upon the mud walls.

Ruth led me through another doorway, ducking to get underneath. “This is my room.”

There was nothing but a large wooden box in the centre and rugs—no, skins—in piles on either side of the box. If this was her room, where did she sleep? There was no bed … no, she couldn’t just sleep on the floor!

“Girls’ side,” she said, pointing to some skins. “Boys.”

“You all sleep in here together, all twelve of you?”

She picked up a skin. It was striped, zebra. “Each has their own skin.”

I didn’t know what to say, how to react. I just knew that it felt as if the walls were closing in on me, that the air was getting thick. The air
was
thick. Thick and smoky, and I could taste it in the back of my mouth. I had to get out of there.

“Can we please go outside? … I’d better get out by the road to wait for my ride.”

“Can I come in?”

I looked up. It was Renée, standing just outside the door of the tent.

“Could I stop you from coming in if I wanted to?” I asked.

“Of course you could, but you’d miss out. I brought you something.”

That did perk my interest. “Well, in that case …”

She undid the zipper and stepped inside.

“Tents are tricky because there’s no place to knock. Here.”

She handed me a bottle of water and a plastic bag containing three pieces of bread.

“How appropriate. Bread and water for the prisoner.”

“I noticed you didn’t eat much at supper. I thought the bread might settle your stomach, and the water is to keep you hydrated. Are you still not feeling well?”

“I feel fine. I just wasn’t that hungry.”

She sat down on Christina’s bed. Christina was hanging out with the church kids, who were probably learning some new inspirational songs or clapping games for the back of the truck. I imagined she’d prefer anything to butting heads with me again.

“I have a question,” Renée said. “Tonight, when you were talking to the people serving, you were speaking to them in Swahili.”

“Not really speaking, just saying ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ and a few other phrases.”