African Nights Read online

  The ranch was dying, and there was nothing we could do. It was late December. No rain could be expected before the end of April. But there was no way we could survive until then. We needed a miracle; I could surely do with a rain-stick.

  The rain-stick, when I finally gave in to my curiosity, was a simple section of bamboo, thick and decorated with a fringe of red and black silk ribbon. It had been crafted cleverly, with much thought. When I touched it and turned it upside-down an invisible series of seeds fell through it and touched the hidden thorns which perforated its length at intervals, interrupting their fall and resounding like secret castanets; it was an uncanny sound of rain on a roof-top. I brought it in triumph to the kitchen, and explained to the staff its infallible spell. ‘Ni miti ya mvua. Natoka ngambo, mbali, kutoka mganga ya asamani. Ni kali sana.’ ‘It is a stick to make rain. It comes from far away across the sea, built by old witch doctors. It is very powerful.’ With the unquestioning African faith in talismans, they instantly believed me. ‘Tasaidia sisi,’ Simon the cook declared seriously, accepting its magic with simplicity. ‘Asante sana.’ ‘It will help us. Thank you’.

  They all nodded wisely and touched, in awe, the occult instrument of rain.

  I shook it up in the air with naive emphasis, begging the gods for rain. Rachel and Julius clapped but did not laugh. One does not play with mysteries.

  That night, believe it or not, the first tentative drops began falling without much enthusiasm on the tin roof of the bedrooms. January is one of the driest months of the year in Kenya. It was highly unlikely that any rain would fall for months. I woke up at the noise, lit a candle and looked out of my window. A cool wind blew, and with it came a distracted spray of sparse warm drops. I took the rain-stick from my bedside table and shook it a bit more for good measure.

  Was it an impression? Did the sound of rain gain momentum? A coincidence? A delusion? It seemed so, for the next day the sun was as blazing hot as ever. But a faint scattering of raindrop marks on the dust of the driveway was proof enough for my staff, who came to ask me if I could please beg again with the rain-stick.

  And so it happened. It began surreptitiously: a difference in the wind; masses of dark grey clouds coming from the east, and passing through without stopping, like flocks of foreign sheep in the silent sky. A sound of far-off thunder in the early mornings, and in the evenings a sickly rim of silver on the horizon, blackening the sun. A stillness in the air, a chill suddenly creeping into the hot noons with drifting shadows.

  Then the news came that it was raining up north, over the Chalbi desert. On a ranch called Borana several inches fell in one day. People murmured in wonder.

  We had arranged to take a few days off, and go to a camp in Samburu, called Kitich, on the Mathews range. The Mathews were dry mountains with forests and ancient cycads, and rivers of great beauty. I flew in with Aidan and Sveva, while Jeremy Block followed with his plane, his father and other friends. The mountains appeared shrouded in clouds, and the closer we approached the more we could smell rain. Even from the air we could see wet patches on the tracks.

  When we landed, the strip was so wet that, had it not been sandy, we could never have made it. Jeremy took off again immediately for Colchecchio ranch, which belonged to my old friend Carletto, to ferry in some more friends from there to join the party.

  ‘You’ll never make it back, with all this rain!’ we joked.

  Rain in Colchecchio in January was out of the question. We all laughed, but somehow we all felt a premonition, and as I looked up, the clouds seemed to gather faster, covering in mist the mountain tops. We drove in two packed Land Rovers, slipping through mud, often sliding sideways, and with great difficulty we twice crossed a river which seemed to get fuller by the moment. Our guide shook his head.

  ‘If it goes on raining tonight, the track will be blocked, and we shall never be able to drive back through the river.’ He looked confused. ‘We have never seen anything like it since I have been here.’

  Along the road we met a thin black goat, happily herded by two craggy Samburu elders dressed in red. Red and white glass bead ornaments glinted from their earlobes, like tiny antlers. They wanted a lift, but there was no way two extra people and a goat could be squeezed in with us. The Samburu went on their way, waving goodbyes.

  ‘It is the goat for the leopard,’ explained the driver.

  We observed it with curiosity. It was really skinny, with a bloated stomach.

  ‘They will slaughter it, and then we shall hang half of it from a tree.’ He smiled broadly: ‘We shall eat the other half.’

  ‘The leopard is very hungry. He shall surely come tonight to eat it.’

  And we would watch the leopard coming to the bait.

  We looked at the innocent goat trotting along unknowingly to her fate. Strangely, somehow, there was no real cruelty in the scheme, as the leopard would take a goat each night anyway, and the camp would buy one for the staff stew, and the fact that this one was designated for a sacrifice seemed to fit well with the Samburu’s business. They all needed cash after that long nasty drought.

  We proceeded so slowly in the mud that by the time we reached the camp we found the two old Samburu there, leaning on their sticks. The unfortunate goat had mercifully been already chinjad. Our tents were new and comfortable, near the river bank. The river was full, and to our surprise huge tree trunks were being carried off on its tumultuous waters, proving that unusually heavy rains must have fallen on the forested mountain tops.

  It started drizzling soon after we arrived, and by the afternoon it was raining so hard that we could not leave our tents. Some even had to be moved, as the ever-rising water lapped at the flies of their verandahs. The only dry places were our beds where we repaired for most of the time, and I managed to read again, after years, the entire unlikely story of The Portrait of Dorian Gray.

  Only Aidan, unworried by the elements as he could be, took off with his rucksack in the rain and came back in the dark, soaking wet, his kikapu filled with strange succulent plants.

  We crept out in the evening for dinner, giggling at the absurdity of this adventure, and during the first course in the dripping mess tent, our attention was drawn to the lit tree across the river, where half the goat hung from a branch. There was a large genet cat on it, pulling off chunks of meat with hungry determination. We stood watching until suddenly from the dark foliage a shadow jumped up into the tree, the branch swayed, and a leopard crouched in all its mystery in the light, grabbing the carcass with its claws.

  The genet cat’s mistake was its greed. The leopard, impatient of competition, swerved to one side, and with a casual jerk snapped its fangs on the genet’s neck. It trapped the genet in its powerful jaws and shook it twice; we saw a shiver pass through the grey lithe creature, and its limp body was thrown carelessly off the branch, back into the darkness, leaving us breathless. As if nothing had happened, the leopard went back to the goat, to feed on it, indifferent to the heavy rain, until only a few bones were left.

  This was the major event of the wettest two days of my life. Jeremy was never able to fly back to join us, because Colchecchio – we heard on the camp’s radio that first evening – was under water, with thick fogs, and a constant deluge.

  Eventually, we had to leave on foot in the torrential rain, wading through the river with water up to our necks, the luggage balanced perilously on our porters’ heads. We walked all the miles back to the aeroplane, which stood on its sandy strip on the hill, glistening with moisture.

  We flew back through steamy mists over new swamps and muddy, swirling rivers which filled the luggas and inundated the sands around for miles. Five inches of rain had fallen over a day and two nights. Two of Carletto’s dam walls had collapsed at Colchecchio, and torrents of water flooded the plains where zebra and giraffe ran bewildered.

  The rains had come to Laikipia too. Night after night I lay on my bed listening to the water gushing down the roof. Our big dam filled in a few days. As if by miracle,
grass sprouted again on the barren savannah; slowly at first, animals regained condition, and the elephants for a time forgot my garden.

  We found that rainstorms had spread through the country, causing unprecedented floods everywhere. Bridges had collapsed, trains had gone off the rails, rivers and lakes overflowed, and panels of experts were puzzled to find answers to this extraordinary change in the weather pattern, unrecorded in human memory. Fantastic new explanations appeared in the newspapers every day. Even the BBC World Service, the Bible of all good Kenyans, spoke about it.

  January 1993 was declared the wettest January in the history of Kenya. The final explanation was that a cyclone bound for Madagascar had, for no apparent reason, changed route and poured its avalanches of water on to the parched soil of Kenya. Wherever one went, people exclaimed in surprise.

  But we, at Ol Ari Nyiro, knew better. On my bedside table the rain-stick lay enigmatic, and many of the ranch people came over to thank it. With knowing glances, wherever I went on the ranch, they alluded to its powerful medicine. Even the Pokot came to know about it, and they suggested that every season I should go with it where rain seemed to be most needed.

  Now it is March, and the dams are again beginning to dry out. People start whispering that I should use the rain-stick once more. But I prefer to wait, as the gods should not be bothered too often. I shall resist and wait to the end of April, when the rains are meant to come anyway. And when the sky begins to darken with clouds from the east, I shall again, with reverence, use the rain-stick from the Red Indians to attract rain to this land once more.

  The rain-stick belongs to myths and legends; and as one has learnt in all the tales one has read as a child, magic powers should not be abused, lest one should lose them.

  20

  Birthday in Turkana

  My birthday began with the water-

  Birds and the birds of the winged trees flying my name.

  Dylan Thomas, ‘Poem in October’

  When Sveva was about to be ten years old, I asked her:

  ‘Now, tell me. Where would you like to celebrate your tenth birthday? It is a most important one, the first one with two figures.’

  She looked at me with those turquoise blue eyes, like Venetian trade beads, which had been Paolo’s.

  ‘Choose something special,’ I continued, ‘a symbol of what you would like to do for the next ten years. And tell me why.’

  I did not know what she would ask. But as I knew she had come from a wild seed of unpredictability, I anticipated that it would not be obvious – not a party with cakes and music, pony rides and fancy dresses, confetti, presents for each little friend and perhaps a treasure-hunt.

  There was the time – she was about eight years old – soon after our Turkana companion and guide Mirimuk had died, when she asked to spend the night of a half-term out in the bush with me in Laikipia, without a tent. We went alone to Luoniek dam, and, after eating and telling each other stories around a fire of lelechwa roots, we had slept on a large mattress on the ground, under a mosquito net tied to a small tree as an illusion of protection.

  In the middle of the night a noise woke me up. Grey and massive in the light of the moon, hovering above us so close that he could easily have touched us, was a large male elephant. He had stopped next to us to pee, and was attracted by the net flapping in the breeze. Totally still, head tilted on one side, he seemed to be listening. His tusks stood out, white in the moonlight.

  I caught my breath and looked at Sveva. She was fast asleep next to me, curled up in her blanket, her fair hair spread on the pillow, and she appeared innocent and vulnerable, so terribly small below the tall elephant shadow. I moved my head close to hers and murmured in her ear, while squeezing her arm gently:

  ‘Wake up. There is an elephant here. Do not move. Be ready to run into the car when I tell you.’

  My Toyota, with the back door open, was parked nearby.

  Unlike children normally shaken from deep sleep, she opened her eyes instantly and fixed them into mine, slightly glazed for only a moment. Then, without moving her head at all, she turned them up and considered the elephant. She was not worried by what she saw.

  ‘We’ll be fine,’ she murmured with a smile; then she closed her eyes and in no time she was asleep again. Soon the elephant moved away quietly. I shall never forget that incident.

  Now she considered my question. It did not take her long. She smiled brightly, glowing as ever.

  ‘I would like to go to an island in Lake Turkana, because you said it’s wild and beautiful, and Papa Paolo and Emanuele loved it. It will be right to be in a place where I have never been yet, because there will be nobody there, apart from us, and because for the next ten years of my life I want to see special wild places where few people go.’

  ‘That’s a deal,’ I said happily. It had been ages since I had travelled to Turkana myself.

  Turkana of the savage, torrid winds, like the breath of hidden giants; of the basalt rocks and immense waters, and crocodiles and huge fish; of solitude and silence, and spectacular landscapes: I longed to go back. But, to an island? How? There were no islands large enough to have an airstrip, and few real airstrips round the lake apart from one at the oasis of Loyangalani, and another in the north near Ethiopia, at Koobi Fora where Richard Leakey had his anthropological dig. And we had no boat. There was only one island flat enough to land on, and was the remote, deserted South Island.

  So strong were the winds and so barren the waterless dunes, that no one lived there. Only untamed Turkana fishermen, naked or clad in the flimsiest loincloth, reached it on fishing safaris, after rowing through turbulent, crocodile-infested waters, in their wooden canoes packed with harpoons and hand-made sisal nets.

  There was no strip, just an almost flat area, like a curving track through the rocks and rare thorn trees, with a bend and a dip in its middle, as if drawn in the black sand by the swishing tail of a dinosaur.

  I had heard about the island’s extraordinary beauty, its dramatic landscapes, the difficulty of reaching it, the danger of landing there in high winds. For years I had heard about its bewitching spell.

  Among the places I had always wanted to see, but had never found the right person to go with, or the right circumstances, South Island in Turkana was certainly first. But among my friends with an aeroplane, there was not one of whom I would dare to ask such a favour.

  So, South Island had remained beyond my reach. As with all places long coveted, the yearning made it more precious, unattainable. As with all places of essential simplicity and stark spiritual quality, I felt the adventure of its discovery should only be shared with someone I felt deeply in tune with.

  But now there was one person in my life who could help to make this mad dream come true. Aidan.

  He was the one who walked alone, exploring virgin mountains and unvisited deserts. He loved travelling through new country with only his camels and camel handlers for company. He knew the African bush, and he knew the sky. He flew his small plane with legendary ease and could land anywhere – on a road, on a beach, on the sand, by the light of the moon or of a hurricane lamp.

  Our relationship had known the test of time and the agony of separation, but when it pleased the gods he had flown back into my life. I was allowed to see his eyes by daylight, and to walk at his side in the sun: together we could smell dry grasses, dusts and growing things. Now was the time of travelling together to strange places.

  There came a week of walking with his camels through deserts, and the bewilderment of the desert kiss. There was the time he flew me for hours over parched hills to a place of antique Muslim dignity and traditional hospitality, a small town on the border of Ethiopia.

  There was a day when we landed on a forsaken strip in the middle of nowhere, and walked along a dry river bed to find a biblical well, herds of camels and goats, and wild herders in turbans and loose shukas. And there was the night when the noise of a light aircraft landing on my strip at Kuti had woken me up, and
I had run out, followed by my dogs, to find him walking up my drive.

  ‘I thought there was just enough moon to ask you for a moonlight walk.’ He had smiled at me. Sveva, who had been spending that night in a tent in the garden with a friend for fun and adventure, told me next day they had believed a rocket from another star had landed on our strip.

  Aidan was, beyond doubt, the ideal companion for South Island in Turkana. Sveva’s tenth birthday was the ideal occasion. My daughter and my man: what a perfect combination.

  The aeroplane skidded in the black sand towards a bare hill tinged with orange, and with a last roar the engine stopped. Then there was only the silence of the island, coated with the fire of the evening.

  I opened the door and jumped out. The warm wind of Turkana touched me again, after many years, bringing the soft soda smell, the cry of a crow, and a wave of memories. The wind caught Sveva’s hair in a sunny swirl.

  ‘Thank you, Mamma!’

  I turned round, shaking my fringe from my eyes, and as far as I could see there was only water, volcanic sands, black gravel, yellow hills, and mountains devoid of any human life. We were the only people on earth, and the first ones, and the last ones.

  I squeezed Sveva tight; her head already reached my chin; she would be very tall one day soon.

  ‘Happy birthday, amore.’

  So, this was it, South Island in Turkana. I may live to be a hundred or I may die any day. To my last moment I will carry with me the memory of those enchanted days and nights in Turkana with Aidan and Sveva. There was talk of war in the world during those days, tension growing in the Middle East, Iraqi threats, the invasion of Kuwait. The world was waiting ready to start a bloodshed born of mad pride and greed. It did not matter in Turkana.