and humped shoulders that seemed too much for their slender legs to carry. Francis began to inch the van through the
herd, and the animals parted before us, then merged in our wake like a school of fish, their hoofs beating against the
earth like a wave against the shore.
I looked over at Auma. She had her arm around Elizabeth, and the two of them were wearing the same wordless smile.
We set up camp above the banks of a winding brown stream, beneath a big fig tree filled with noisy blue starlings. It
was getting late, but after setting up our tents and gathering firewood, we had time for a short drive to a nearby
watering hole where topi and gazelle had gathered to drink. A fire was going when we got back, and as we sat down to
feed on Rafael’s stew, Francis began telling us a little bit about himself He had a wife and six children, he said, living
on his homestead in Kikuyuland. They tended an acre of coffee and corn; on his days off, he did the heavier work of
hoeing and planting. He said he enjoyed his work with the travel agency but disliked being away from his family. “If I
could, I might prefer farming full-time,” he said, “but the KCU makes it impossible.”
“What’s the KCU?” I asked.
“The Kenyan Coffee Union. They are thieves. They regulate what we can plant and when we can plant it. I can only
sell my coffee to them, and they sell it overseas. They say to us that prices are dropping, but I know they still get one
hundred times what they pay to me. The rest goes where?” Francis shook his head with disgust. “It’s a terrible thing
when the government steals from its own people.”
“You speak very freely,” Auma said.
Francis shrugged. “If more people spoke up, perhaps things might change. Look at the road that we traveled this
morning coming into the valley. You know, that road was supposed to have been repaired only last year. But they used
only loose gravel, so it washed out in the first rains. The money that was saved probably went into building some big
man’s house.”
Francis looked into the fire, combing his mustache with his fingers. “I suppose it is not only the government’s fault,”
he said after a while. “Even when things are done properly, we Kenyans don’t like to pay taxes. We don’t trust the idea
of giving our money to someone. The poor man, he has good reason for this suspicion. But the big men who own the
trucks that use the roads, they also refuse to pay their share. They would rather have their equipment break down all the
time than give up some of their profits. This is how we like to think, you see. Somebody else’s problem.”
I tossed a stick into the fire. “Attitudes aren’t so different in America,” I told Francis.
“You are probably right,” he said. “But you see, a rich country like America can perhaps afford to be stupid.”
At that moment, two Masai approached the fire. Francis welcomed them, and as they sat down on one of the benches,
he explained that they would provide security during the night. They were quiet, handsome men, their high cheekbones
accentuated by the fire, their lean limbs jutting out of their blood-red shukas, their spears stuck into the ground before
them, casting long shadows toward the trees. One of them, who said his name was Wilson, spoke Swahili, and he told
us that he lived in a boma a few miles to the east. His silent companion began to pan the darkness with the beam of his
flashlight, and Auma asked if the camp had ever been attacked by animals. Wilson grinned.
“Nothing serious,” he said. “But if you have to go to the bathroom at night, you should call one of us to go with you.”
Francis began to question the men about the movement of various animals, and I drifted away from the fire to glance
up at the stars. It had been years since I’d seen them like this; away from the lights of the city, they were thick and
barré
(Barré)
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