The goods news, however, is almost immediately followed by bad: Napirai's childminder tells me she is pregnant again and when she has a new baby she simply won't have the time to look after Napirai during the day, or have anywhere for her to sleep over at nights. I'm initially very sad to hear this as Napirai gets on so well with her but I calm myself down and realise that I've still got a few months and something else is bound to turn up.
It's autumn now and easier to sell promotional material as people are stocking up on gifts to give their own customers at Christmas. For the moment at least I'm earning more money than I did in my first job and so in January 1993 I can even afford to go on a skiing holiday to France with my mother and Hanspeter. They both go every year and this year we decide to join them, so one of the presents under the Christmas tree is a first set of skis for Napirai.
We have a magnificent holiday. The sky is bright blue every day and it's so cold the snow crunches underfoot. After ten years it's a delight to be back on skis. Napirai spends the mornings at a ski school and after two days she's already using a button lift on her own even if it almost pulls her off her feet. On the fifth day we bump into the whole ski school out on the slope and I watch Napirai skiing slowly downhill, snowploughing in a line. I'm speechless with amazement at what my three-and-a-half-year-old Masai child has managed to learn, and inestimably proud of her.
As at the beginning of every new year, work slows right down. There's simply no money to be made in January or February. And the weather's miserable too. It's at this gloomy time of the year that I get an invitation from one of my girlfriends to join her and some others for dinner. She says I absolutely have to come because it's a lively group of people from all over and lots of them are absolutely bursting to hear my story. I'm curious so I agree to go along and end up having a great evening.
Everybody's talking to one another and telling interesting tales and before long I find one man paying particular attention to my story, while I find myself also paying particular attention to him. As we're leaving we swap addresses and telephone numbers and just two days later he rings me up and we arrange to go out together on a date. It's the beginning of the first relationship I've had since coming back. He's lively, works abroad a lot and doesn't seem to have any prejudices about my own previous life. We don't see each other often, but I don't have a problem with that because I don't like leaving my daughter with anyone else too often.
Sometimes I think I can sense in him a feeling of almost regret that my relationship with my daughter is so close that there's scarcely room for anyone else. At the same time Napirai doesn't seem able to get close to him. She likes him but he's just not very good with children, probably because he's never had any of his own. He's a few years older than I am, and I gradually realise, rather set in his bachelor ways. His frequent long trips abroad gradually lead to us growing apart each time and eventually after two years the relationship simply breaks down. It wasn't exactly a great love for either of us, but then again maybe it's just that I'm simply not quite ready yet for a new partnership.
Meanwhile I've found another family to look after Napirai during the day: a couple with a little girl the same age as her. At first their little one isn't exactly pleased to have to share her mother's attention with someone else but eventually the two of them become the best of friends. I'm amazed by her mother, by her patience sitting there for hours on end painting with the children, making models and telling stories, or taking them down to the garden to plant flowers. Once again it's not long before my daughter doesn't want to leave to come home when I call to pick her up.
But I want to have my child to myself for an hour or two at least each day. Often the children next door are waiting for us anyhow. Sometimes they all stay at our place and I end up sleeping on the sofa. When they're all in the bath together, it's pure chaos. Napirai's birthday parties are popular events too: we put on a big children's party each time with some dozen parents and children out on our patio. Obviously we put up lots of decorations and I organise all sorts of games. We barbecue and I get a lot of appreciative comments about my pasta salad. Whatever's going on at work, I always make sure to book Napirai's birthday off.
It's always an occasion for me to remember the fraught circumstances of her birth in the missionary hospital in Wamba. My friend Sophia, also expecting her first baby, and I caused something of a sensation for the natives because no white woman had ever given birth in the hospital before and so obviously everybody watched us with the greatest of curiosity. When my first pangs of labor started and I was taken into the birthing room, there was almost a scrum amongst the black women to watch through the open window. As it happened I was in so much pain that I was hardly in a position to notice. It was only when my little girl was finally born that I noticed Sophia charging in to congratulate me with a lit cigarette in her mouth while I was still in the obstetric chair being sewn up without anesthetic. Not exactly something women in Switzerland can imagine, and every time I repeat the story their mouths hang open in astonishment.
Indeed I've started noticing, that almost every time I tell my story about my great love and the life that went with it, women seem to sit there entranced by every word. Sometimes when I'm in company we end up canceling a planned trip because people would rather just listen to me telling my tales about life among the Samburu.
Divorce from Lketinga
During one of the single mothers’ meetings one of the participants tells us it took years for her to complete her recent divorce proceedings. I ask her how to start the process as I simply have no idea about any of this stuff. Gradually now I'm beginning to feel it's time to make a clean break and sort out my own divorce. Following advice I ring up the local magistrate and tell him my position, that I haven't seen my husband for more than three years now.
Under the circumstances and given that Lketinga lives somewhere in Kenya and we aren't in contact, there's no need for the normal meeting with both parties and the attempt at reconciliation. He'll simply send me the forms for me to till in to begin divorce proceedings. In conclusion, however, he says he has to tell me he's never come across a case like mine before and he'll have to take advice on how to proceed. Studying the forms a few days later I'm relieved to see how simple it all seems to be. On the other hand I'm surprised to see that they want to know details about my family, my brothers and sisters and my own early life. I have to list all the schools I went to and give details about my current employment situation. Then I have to fill in details about our relationship, including how, where and at what age we got to know one another. Well, I've more than enough to fill in there. When I get to the section about financial support for the child, I put a dash and write that I'm not asking for any money or support of any kind. How on earth could Lketinga send money when in fact I'm the one sending money to his family whenever I can? Then I put it all in an envelope and send it off in hope, thinking that after all there's not much to lose.
We spend our leisure time during the summer doing all sorts of things: one day Madeleine came over with a cutting from the paper advertising a bus trip to the south Tyrol in Italy with three days in a hotel with a swimming pool. We don't have very much money but the offer is good value and so we sign up. The main thing is to get away for a couple of days. It's only when we're getting on to the bus that we realise we're the youngest passengers by far, and I mean Madeleine and me, not the children. ‘Mama why are their only grannies going on holiday?’ says Napirai, in a voice loud enough for them all to hear.