rolled over, annoyed at being woken. “Hyenas.”
Hyenas? Now sleep was even more impossible. I tried to block out those echoing wails, but my mind flooded with questions. Was I doing the right thing? Was I just substituting one set of frustrations for another? Had I made a terrible mistake?
I winced at the thought of my parents seeing me filled with doubt or letting anyone see my apprehension. Dad, you want me to be fearless? Powerful? Determined? Unstoppable? They wanted me to be strong. I’d show them how strong I could be.
The next day I woke at the crack of dawn to voices and clatter coming from the kitchen. Stepping out from the manyatta, I stretched my arms and breathed deeply in the fresh morning air. The clouds hovered just over the hills’ grassy peaks under a wide overcast sky. I felt light years from the congested freeways and glittering shopping plazas at home. Despite restless sleep, I felt ready for the day to come.
I was jarred from my reverie by Mama’s shrill calls.
“Naserian! Tuende! ” Let’s go!
Back home, our family set aside Tuesdays for housecleaning, and I would inevitably gripe about having to do the dusting and vacuuming. Or throughout the week, when my parents asked me to clean my bedroom or wash dishes after dinner, it felt like a punishment, a little thing that felt like a life sentence. I’d whine and delay, thinking I had better things to do than help maintain our household. In my journal, I’d written, I will never settle for staying at home, cleaning up after my husband and children. Please let me never live that life, centred around daily chores, maintaining the status quo.
But it was quickly becoming obvious that my days in Nkoyet-naiborr would be defined by the many chores needed to maintain the boma, or household. Many of these were the same chores done for the upkeep of a North American home . . . but in a very different way. We still washed dishes and clothes, cooked meals, shopped for necessary supplies. But here, these daily duties weren’t just to keep the place spic and span. Here, they were necessary for our very survival.
The day’s first task was collecting water. In recent years, Western missionaries visiting the area had introduced piping projects throughout many areas of rural Kenya, allowing more families across the land to enjoy greater access to water. Our boma’s water was piped in from a natural spring up in the Ol Doinyo Hills down to a large metal storage tank about a kilometre from our home, next to the red-brick community schoolhouse where my brothers and sisters attended classes. Mamas from all across the community trekked there several times daily to collect water for their household purposes, from laundry to bathing to cooking ugali—a starchy, inexpensive cornmeal staple food for much of Africa.
As Mama explained, recent weeks had been dry, and water was scarce. It was the parched “white grass” of the prairies that gave Nkoyet-naiborr its name. During spells of drought that lasted anywhere between a couple of months to a couple of years, the daily water levels in the metal storage tank would be so low, the water could only be tapped from the spring at night. With such scant supplies, everyone had to reduce their overall usage, even as low as only one mitungi a day. Generally people were diligent about their usage, but it required community-wide participation to ensure everyone received their fair share.
In these dry periods, tough choices arose: should you wash your hair or your clothes? Can you bathe using just a cup of water? Can you prepare enough ugali with such limited cooking water?
I could tell Mama was unsure whether I was up for the task. She looked at my well-fed body and my soft, unworked hands, clearly sceptical as to my ability to do hard work. But I insisted I could do it—I just needed to learn. With a shrug, she picked up two plastic mitungis made from recycled cooking oil containers and motioned for me to follow her to the water source.
I followed Mama to the end of our property, marked by the fence fashioned from the thorny branches of felled acacia trees. With the fence in place, she explained, our sparse grass could grow protected from the grazing of the neighbouring cows that occasionally wandered by. We crossed the main road of red pebbled dirt and headed down the curved, worn footpath, weaving through the growth of sage bushes.
Rounding a bend in the path, Mama paused to twist a branch off what she told me was an East African greenheart tree. She snapped it in two and handed half to me, then continued on. I followed her example, shaving the bark off the branches’ edges and placing it in my mouth to soften the phylum. After a few minutes, she showed me, their bristles could be spread out and used as a type of toothbrush.
As we came down the hill’s crest toward the water source, I heard the high-pitched chatter of women’s voices. My face flushed and my palms began to sweat. Until now, Mama had been my guide and protector, leading me through this unfamiliar experience. I wasn’t a child, and I didn’t want to be shielded or supervised through new experiences, yet a lump formed in my throat. Would I be accepted, or would the women band against me? Would they not all wink at one another and sneer at me as an outsider?
The women in their colourful shukas circled the tank, waiting to fill their mitungis. I followed close behind Mama as she joined the line, greeting the other women. Everyone knew her, and the mamas greeted one another as if they hadn’t seen each other in years, even though they each came here every day. Mama was probably the loudest of them all; she called each woman by name, asking about their families, their livestock, any news heard along the way. The water source was the community’s mass communication system.
The attention quickly shifted to me. Mama took the stage and began rattling off Swahili to her gathered audience of mamas. I didn’t understand these words of introduction but tried to smile politely. I took my cue to bow my head to those older than me, as I had done with the elders in the pickup truck the day before. As the women looked me up and down, I felt horribly self-conscious and awkward. Everyone’s laughing! Are they laughing at me? Am I ever going to fit in?
I tried to play along, following the flow without fully understanding what was going on. Occasional words leapt out from the flurry of conversation: Chicago. America. The mamas nodded, impressed by whatever Mama was telling them. I could see my concerns were unfounded; Mama clearly just wanted me to get to know my neighbours, and she wanted them to meet me. They weren’t mocking me but discussing how they could best welcome me into their community.
As I watched the women talk I began to understand a bit about gender dynamics in this society. From my time so far, I could see that as a woman—and particularly as a young, unmarried woman—I would be expected to assume a very specific role in the family and in the community as a whole. At home I was used to laughing freely when a friend made a witty observation, or when a silly situation arose, yet now I was witnessing a new way for women to behave.
Back at the boma I learned to follow Mama’s and Faith’s examples, as I had been told that acting publicly in a flippant, overly enthusiastic and open manner would be seen as the behaviour of a promiscuous, easy woman. I had to learn to tone down my actions—not to be submissive, necessarily, but always remain conscious of acting respectfully. Men were the centre of attention, while women were meant to keep conversation going while sitting in very careful poses. Women maintained a humble demeanour, always staying vigilant of the family’s needs.
Yet at the water source, with no men around, the women were free to behave much more openly. Fetching water is a woman’s task, and this place was the women’s domain. Here mamas could gossip, joke and enjoy the camaraderie of fellow mamas. They sat however they wanted, their usual composed postures now relaxed as they sat on their mitungis and waited their turn. They laughed uproariously with one another, and I laughed too—though, of course, I understood none of it.
Soon it was my turn. Transporting water, I saw
