themselves, working the margins of a racial caste system, more visible and so more vulnerable to resentment. It was
nobody’s fault necessarily. It was just a matter of history, an unfortunate fact of life.
Anyway, the divisions in Kenya didn’t stop there; there were always finer lines to draw. Between the country’s forty
black tribes, for example. They, too, were a fact of life. You didn’t notice the tribalism so much among Auma’s friends,
younger university-educated Kenyans who’d been schooled in the idea of nation and race; tribe was an issue with them
only when they were considering a mate, or when they got older and saw it help or hinder careers. But they were the
exceptions. Most Kenyans still worked with older maps of identity, more ancient loyalties. Even Jane or Zeituni could
say things that surprised me. “The Luo are intelligent but lazy,” they would say. Or “The Kikuyu are money-grubbing
but industrious.” Or “The Kalenjins-well, you can see what’s happened to the country since they took over.”
Hearing my aunts traffic in such stereotypes, I would try to explain to them the error of their ways. “It’s thinking like
that that holds us back,” I would say. “We’re all part of one tribe. The black tribe. The human tribe. Look what
tribalism has done to places like Nigeria or Liberia.”
And Jane would say, “Ah, those West Africans are all crazy anyway. You know they used to be cannibals, don’t
you?”
And Zeituni would say, “You sound just like your father, Barry. He also had such ideas about people.”
Meaning he, too, was naive; he, too, liked to argue with history. Look what happened to him....
The van suddenly came to a stop, shaking me out of my reverie. We were in front of a small shamba, and our driver,
Francis, asked us all to stay put. A few minutes later, he emerged from the house with a young African girl, maybe
twelve or thirteen, who was dressed in jeans and a neatly pressed blouse and carried a small duffel bag. Francis helped
her into the back and pointed to the seat next to Auma.
“Is this your daughter?” Auma asked, scooting over to make room for the girl.
“No,” Francis said. “My sister’s. She likes to see the animals and is always nagging me to take her along. Nobody
minds, I hope.”
Everyone shook their heads and smiled at the girl, who suffered bravely under the attention.
“What is your name?” the British woman, Mrs. Wilkerson, asked.
“Elizabeth,” the girl whispered.
“Well, Elizabeth, you can share my tent if you like,” Auma said. “My brother, I think he snores.”
I made a face. “Don’t listen to her,” I said, and held out a package of biscuits. Elizabeth took one and nibbled neatly
around its edges. Auma reached for the bag and turned to Mauro.
“Want some?” she asked.
The Italian smiled and took one, before Auma passed them around to the others.
We followed the road into cooler hills, where women walked barefoot carrying firewood and water and small boys
switched at donkeys from their rickety carts. Gradually the shambas became less frequent, replaced by tangled bush
and forest, until the trees on our left dropped away without warning and all we could see was the wide-open sky.
“The Great Rift Valley,” Francis announced.
We piled out of the van and stood at the edge of the escarpment looking out toward the western horizon. Hundreds of
feet below, stone and savannah grass stretched out in a flat and endless plain, before it met the sky and carried the eye
barré
(Barré)
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