Reunion in Barsaloi Read Free Page B

destination for today is Maralal and if everything works out as planned, James will be waiting for us there. In his last letter he suggested he might come part of the way to meet us to show us the new road to Barsaloi.
    I’m really looking forward to seeing him again and curious to know what news he’ll have. Above all, I’d like to know how Lketinga feels about my visit. Is he happy about it or are there likely to be problems? Even though he has since married a native girl, I’m certain he still regards me as his wife. I’ve simply no idea how he’s likely to react. I hope we manage to find James okay and he can reassure me.
    We start out on an asphalt-surfaced road that goes as far as a little village called Rumuruti before turning into a rough track. From now on we’re in Samburu country. All of a sudden the vegetation is different, as if there was a line drawn by a ruler across the landscape. Up until now we’ve been travelling through mostly green agricultural or meadow land, but from here on the land is arid and the colour of the earth begins to change from beige to red. The temperature rises too.
    There are no more tarmac roads here, just rough tracks. Our vehicles leave a huge cloud of dust behind us and we’re getting shaken to the bone. When my companion comments on the state of the road I can assure him with a laugh that fourteen years ago it was much worse. The bumpy ride cheers me up and I get happier by the moment. I have incredibly vivid memories of this road and all the hazards along it and I ask the driver to let me take the wheel. If I can’t travel this road on the big old bus then I’d at least like to remind myself of my beaten-up old Land Rover. We bounce along the road and I have to really concentrate to make sure we avoid the biggest potholes at least.
    From the corner of my eye, however, I can’t help noticing the first manyattas some distance from the road. Every now and then a few white goats pop up in front of the car. They’re slow to get out of the road, and the eyes of the children minding them follow us. Most of the boys carry a stick horizontally behind their back in the crook of their elbows. The little girls, on the other hand, laugh and wave at the white ‘ mzungus ’. After two hours we come to a little village, identifiable only by a couple of shops on either side of the road and a group of people in brightly coloured clothing standing in front of them. No, there is one more thing that indicates human habitation that we didn’t have earlier: plastic! It is tragic to see how much inroad plastic has made into Kenya. Fifteen hundred feet before each village the first signs of it appear: starting with just pink, blue or clear plastic bags hanging on the shrubs, but then the nearer we get the worse it is. There are plastic bottles impaled on virtually every thorn on every bush. At first glance it almost looks like they’re in bloom, but a second later the tragic truth is all too painfully evident. When I was living in Kenya there was virtually no plastic here. If someone got hold of a plastic bag from a tourist, they would have looked after it as if it were something precious and used it again and again. Now they hang on the bushes in their thousands.

Maralal
    S hortly before we reach our destination for the day I hand the wheel back to our driver so I can properly take everything in as we drive into Maralal. It’s soon clear how much the town has grown. There are new roads, although still unsurfaced, even a roundabout, and directly opposite it – I can hardly believe my eyes – a new BP service station with a shop, just like we have back in Europe. Before long I realize that Maralal nowadays has three filling stations, and petrol is available all the time. It was so different in my day. I never knew when the solitary petrol station would get a delivery of fuel. Sometimes we had to wait for more than a week and then drive back on the dangerous bush track carrying a full