NYALOKA: The Girl from Across the Water

Copyright © 2023 by Desley Allen.

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Rev. date: 09/14/2023

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DEDICATION

For my children, Elissa and Paul,

and grandchildren Emily and Maxwell.

Without the love, encouragement and acceptance

of my adopted Kenyan family,

their story would not be told

and my life empty of the riches they bestowed on me.

KENYA 1994

‘Last night I had a dream.

I saw my eldest son lead you, hand in hand, through the bush to meet me.

You have travelled many days from a far country to be with him.

I am giving you the name of Nyaloka.

In our mother tongue, it means the girl from across the water.’

Baba

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Epilogue

CHAPTER 1

‘I ’ve made a terrible mistake thinking I could live in Kenya with you. It’s all too hard, Oke. I don’t know how I’ll manage without running water in the house. How will I take a sh ower?’

‘You’ll do like so, Nyaloka.’

‘Like what?’

‘You can bathe, wash your hair and even your underwear in a bucket of water in the bathtub. Like most people here do every day.’

Okeyo put an arm around my shoulder, wiping my tears away with his thumb. ‘Don’t upset yourself. I’ve a few suggestions up my sleeve. Trust me.’

I nodded, tried to find a few positives. ‘At least there’s a lovely view from the verandah, and the house reminds me of those back home.’

Our house sat high on a hill on the outskirts of town, at the end of a dirt road that bore no name. It faced north across a dusty valley to a line of hills blurred grey into the horizon. To me, this dwelling was not just a house of cement blocks peeling pale green, but a refuge, a sanctuary, a space to call my own in the alien culture of a third-world country.

Kisumu was only a small market town huddled along the shoreline of Lake Victoria in Western Kenya, when I first arrived from Australia. Okeyo and I rented a room in a run-down hotel, which long ago had an uninterrupted view of the foreshore of Lake Victoria, whilst we scoured the town for suitable accommodation to lease.

An agent took us to view this house, unlived in for many years and bounded by a dry stone wall crumbling away in places. The surrounding houses cowered behind high walls, sprouting rolls of barbed wire and coloured shards of glass, guarded by hard-hatted sentries armed with truncheons.

First built for expatriate missionaries, it featured a kitchen sink, shower, flush toilet, even a hot water system, but no connection to town water. Putrid stalagmites of bat guano grew in every room. The palms of my hands turned black as I ran them along the tacky walls. Every grimy window needed new latches. I stifled a scream when Okeyo lifted the heavy metal cover of the drain, allowing an army of cockroaches to escape and scuttle over my feet.

‘I’d be happy to live here,’ I said, just anxious to settle somewhere that had some similarity to houses back home.

‘Even with all these cockroaches and the piles of bat manure all through the house?’

‘Oke, you heard Mr Otieno say he would clean it up, get rid of the bats, and put security locks on the windows and doors. I love the view and don’t feel so claustrophobic here as in the other places.’

Okeyo turned to the agent. ‘So, Mr Otieno, let’s talk business. This house is not habitable. Many of the roof tiles need replacing. We want the water connected and the house thoroughly cleaned and painted throughout. Until the boundary walls are repaired, we can’t even consider living here.’

‘I understand.’ Mr Otieno wiped beads of moisture from his brow with a mottled handkerchief. ‘I have broached this subject with the owner many times. He says there is no available finance to renovate.’

‘Yet he has no problem accepting an exorbitant rent for a house that I wouldn’t allow my dogs to live in.’

Mr Otieno shrugged; his upturned hands faced the ceiling. ‘What is there to do?’

‘This is our offer to take back to your client, Mr Otieno. We’ll expect him to halve the monthly rent. In return, we pay that reduced amount in advance for 12 months. He’ll have enough money to make repairs and get reliable tenants in the bargain.’

Both men shook hands. ‘Come back tomorrow. I’m sure we’ll have a deal suitable for both parties at the table.’

Walking back to the hotel, we reminisced about how our paths crossed many times, but we had never met. Now soul mates, we belonged to different worlds, going against society’s conventions to come together to live an impossible dream. As we ate dinner, we discussed the pros and cons of setting up our new home. The thought of buying an entire household was daunting.

‘Our biggest problem is a lack of security,’ Okeyo said. ‘Gangs of thieves roam these streets at night, bashing through doors and taking everything of value. People are murdered trying to defend their homes and family.’

‘So won’t it take time to arrange for security guards?’

I didn’t realise he already had a solution hidden up his sleeve.

‘My brother, Fred, can work as our houseman. He needs a job. We need someone to help in the house. This would be a win-win for the three of us. What do you think?’

‘But would Fred be living here?’ I asked, not sure I liked a stranger living in my home.

‘He’ll stay in the servant’s quarters.’ The SQ was a small building behind the house—two small rooms separated by a narrow niche for a bathroom.

Okeyo laid down his trump card. ‘Besides, we need somebody we can trust. When I’m not home, I’ll know you are safe because my brother is taking good care of you.’

I had no other choice but to agree.

Fred was the first in a succession of Okeyo’s family members who came to stay with us. I remember wondering if I’d ever get accustomed to being married into a Kenyan family and the differences in our cultures and attitudes to family life.

Over the next week, we searched the markets nearby, buying locally made furniture, a flurry of second-hand curtains, and two blue plastic water tanks; everything delivered to the house by labourers pushing hand carts over rutted dirt roads.

The morning we moved in, Fred arrived with his meagre possessions shoved in a plastic bag he dumped in one corner of the empty SQ.

‘To work for you here is a blessing, Nyaloka. First up, a pot of chai to give us a good start to the day.’

‘Great idea, Fred. The tea leaves, sugar, and milk are on the shelf in the pantry. I’m so grateful for you to come and help us.’

I estimated Fred’s age to be about 50 years. His skin, like fine leather, stretched over a tall well-built frame. Patches of grey mottled his black woolly hair. Calluses from years of hard manual labour decorated Fred’s hands, and his feet were as wide and as tough as car tyres. I loved his wide-open smile that revealed a perfect set of pearly white teeth that never enjoyed the attention of a toothbrush.

Okeyo dispatched Fred to organise our water supply. The town council piped water from the lake for the town. As the line passed through the market areas, entrepreneurs broke into it to sell the water to the public. Young men filled jerry cans with water, loaded them on to hand carts, and ferried them to their customers in the neighbourhood. Fred needed to put us on their customer delivery list. He also had a list of supplies to buy for our evening meal: maize flour, sukuma wiki, tomatoes, onions, and chopped meat from the market.

As our cooking stove wouldn’t arrive for a few weeks, Fred would cook our Kenyan meals on a jiko. I watched him set up the small charcoal stove. Could I ever light, let alone cook, on one.

‘What does sukuma wiki mean, Fred?’ I asked when he returned. ‘Looks a bit like kale.’

‘It’s a poor man’s vegetable—one that will last all week and still taste good.’

About midday, our furniture arrived. Okeyo and Fred worked together for the rest of the day, banging the beds together and shifting furniture around the house until everything sat in its proper place. I made up beds, hung mix-matched curtains, and put our clothes away. How surreal my life seemed, setting up a house in Africa with Okeyo.

Okeyo’s lifetime ambition to establish a workable recording studio in Western Kenya was soon to be realised. The smallest bedroom, a perfect place to set up as a sound studio with Okeyo’s recording and photographic equipment.

A ruckus outside sent me rushing to the window that overlooked our gate. A steep rocky pathway ran along our side boundary fence. The people who lived in the shantytown at the bottom of the hill used it as a shortcut to the markets. An angry mob streamed down the embankment, hurling rocks and screaming abuse at a woman. From my vantage point, I could see her, huddled low, hiding behind the brush. Okeyo and Fred stood at the gate, hefty wooden clubs at the ready.

I opened the window. ‘Don’t go out the gate, Oke! They’ll kill you too.’

The rabble shifted their focus on to me—so surprised to see a white woman screaming from the window of a house long empty. Somebody pushed the pause button. The woman seized the moment and ran for her life.

The anger of the crowd dissipated in the afternoon sun. One by one, with suspicious backward glances at Okeyo and Fred still standing guard at our gate, they trudged back up the hill, murmuring amongst themselves, too hot to bother anymore.

I fled to the kitchen, shaking, crying, not able to comprehend what I had seen only moments ago. ‘There were women in that mob, Fred. Why would they want to stone her?’

Fred poured me a mug of chai. ‘My guess is the vendors at the market think she has stolen from them,’ he said. ‘The police don’t frequent these parts of town. Often the only justice here is what we call mob justice.’

‘How can we feel safe living in this place, Oke? Fred is around during the day, but what if something happens after dark?’

‘Tomorrow I’ll arrange for an askari to guard the compound every night,’ he said. ‘Fred will keep watch tonight, meanwhile.’

‘Don’t worry, Nyaloka, you’ll feel safe knowing that we’re both looking after you,’ Fred said, pouring me yet another cup of sweet milky tea.

The entire episode shocked me to the core. For the first time, I realised the temperament of the happy-go-lucky Africans could explode in an instant. The reality of living here in an African community hit home like a bombshell.

Despite Fred’s reassurances, I lay awake for hours that night. If my troubled dreams gave me a peek into the future, the morning may have seen me packing my suitcase.

CHAPTER 2

O keyo’s mother, tight mottled grey curls hidden under a colourful headscarf, sat in the sun sipping on a mug of hot chai when she heard a car winding its way down the boggy track from the main road. She was not expecting visitors, didn’t know anyone who owned a car. So it surprised her when her firstborn son jumped out of the passenger seat of the hire car, calling out greetings to his mother in Luo, the mother tongue of his t ribe.

Okeyo took my hand and propelled me across the rough compound to the door of the mud hut where his mother waited. Her walnut-textured face told the story of a lifetime spent weathering the harsh African elements. She beamed at me, revealing the gap of a missing front tooth. Her eyes lit up in welcome as she clasped my smooth hands between her rough ones. Enveloped in her embrace, I smelt the smoke from her cooking fire and the scent of Vaseline she rubbed into her ebony skin and felt not only the strength of her arms but also her unbounded inner spirit. Then she broke into song, shuffling her bare feet in the dirt, moving to a beat only she could hear.

My jumbo jet from Australia had landed on African soil only a few days ago. I had followed her firstborn son, Okeyo, with his ebony skin and unfathomable dark eyes, to his homeland of Kenya to begin our new life togethe

‘See, Mama approves of you. I told you she’d love you when you met each other.’

Mama led me to the sofa and poured two chipped enamel mugs of chai from the large battered teapot sitting on the coffee table. As Okeyo translated, she recalled how, according to her tribal customs, her mother-in-law gave her three flat river stones for her hearth fire.

‘And they still support her cooking pots in the kitchen lean-to at the back of the house,’ Okeyo said. She might give me three flat stones from the river one day, I thought.

I looked around the room. The windows, empty except for the wire netting, looked across to her shamba, where maize, beans, and other green plants I couldn’t identify flourished. On the far wall, a torn curtain fluttered over the door to the bedroom. Scattered around the living area was a wooden table and a mismatched collection of sofas, chairs, and coffee tables, all covered with hand-crocheted yellow covers.

Sipping sweet milky chai, as Okeyo translated back and forth, I asked her many questions about her life living in rural Kenya.

In 1964, she and Baba left their remote ancestral village to become pioneers in establishing the lucrative sugar-cane industry in Western Kenya. When they arrived, Baba pointed out the boundaries of their allocated ten-acre block to grow sugar cane, build their homestead with enough space for their livestock and a shamba to grow their food.

‘We’ll build our new home here,’ Baba told us. ‘This allotment will guarantee the future for our family and the generations to come.’

‘Mama, how did you feel when you built your new home here?’

As Mama sipped from her chipped enamel mug, her eyes wandered around the room, releasing a flood of happy memories.

‘It was an exciting day. All our neighbours came to help us.’

She described how wattle saplings, liberally coated with a ripe mixture of mud and manure, formed the walls. Wooden shutters covered the open window holes and a sturdy door hung as security against wild animals.

Not much had changed apart from the corrugated iron sheets that replaced the thatched roof to shelter the family from the equatorial sun and the wet season’s torrential downpours.

I could almost hear the women singing as they packed the mud floor, recreating the rhythm from time immemorial. They etched an intricate pattern on it with a carved wooden roller; most of the grooves now worn away with only a few patches surviving in the corners.

‘Do you still use a twig broom?’ She laughed and nodded, pointing with her chin to the broom leaning against the far wall.

‘She leaves it there, handy to chase the chickens if they come in to roost under the coffee table,’ Okeyo said. I laughed, imagining her wielding the broom around the flapping and clucking chooks.

Her mind meanders back over the years. ‘Mama says she marvels now at how much energy she had in those early days, planting the first shards of sugar cane in the furrows the oxen made, dragging the plough to break up the virgin soil. The cycle of planting, tilling, weeding, and harvesting the cane seemed to be never-ending. She also grew food for our growing family in the shamba and looked after the cows, goats, and chickens.

As the old lady replenished our mugs, a small girl brought in a plate of bread spread with margarine and red jam. Okeyo remarked Mama had never attended school, yet her mind overflowed with wisdom and the ways of her world.

‘Mama raised 12 children from her 16 pregnancies. All except the last baby, born on a jute sack in her bedroom.’

‘What! Your mother gave birth