Читать книгу In My Dreams I Dance - Anne Wafula-Strike - Страница 9

It was Saturday 30th June 1979, right in the middle of the rainy season. I was nine years old and had been at Joyland for four years. Saturday was the day we sat outside and styled each other’s hair after we had completed our chores. We wore our own clothes at weekends and were all in a happy mood.

The day started like any other. The more able girls weeded the flowerbeds, while the rest of us cleaned our dormitories. Then one of the teachers came in and said abruptly, ‘Oh, Anne Olympia, you need to go home.’

I started laughing and said. ‘I’m not a fool. It’s not closing day yet. I can’t go home until the end of term.’

‘Yes, you can. Get your things together. You have to go home because your mum wants you. Come with me to the office.’

I had no idea what the teacher was talking about, but we had been taught to obey our teachers, so I did as I was told.

When I got to the office I saw my big sister Alice there.

‘Hi, Alice,’ I said breezily. I wondered why she had come to my school. It was usually my mum who picked me up at the end of term and brought me back afterwards.

‘Where’s Mum?’ I asked. ‘The teacher says she wants me at home.’

I was beginning to feel uneasy. Something wasn’t right.

‘Oh, she asked me to collect you,’ said Alice, trying to sound casual but not quite managing it.

‘But where is Mum? And aren’t you supposed to be at school?’

‘Come, Anne, we need to return home,’ she said, without offering any further explanation. ‘There’s a taxi outside waiting to take us to the bus station.’

She had got a bus from Webuye to Kisumu town and from there had got a taxi to Joyland.

I hurriedly packed some things and anxiously followed Alice into the waiting taxi and then got the bus to my mum’s village. My cousins and uncles were gathered at the bus stop with a bicycle to transport me to the centre of the village. I couldn’t understand why we were there rather than in Nairobi and why there was such a large group of family members waiting for me.

As I was wheeled along the dusty track local women kept running up to me, wailing and crying, ‘Oh, Ruth, you have died and left this flower. Who is going to look after it now?’

What on earth were they talking about? Surely my lovely mum couldn’t be dead. The village women must have made a mistake.

I started screaming. ‘Where’s Mum? Where’s Mum?’ I cried.

Nobody answered. We arrived at the main part of the village and the terrible truth was confirmed: I could see that my mum was laid out on a bed outside her family’s home.

Nothing felt real. My mum had been a strong and healthy woman and she wasn’t old. Was I stuck in a horrible dream? I couldn’t take in what was going on.

One of my relatives carefully placed me next to my mum. I flung myself on top of her, willing her to start breathing again.

‘Mum, Mum, wake up! You promised to make me a jumper, where is it?’ I sobbed. I hoped that she would hear me and remember her promise and that would be enough to coax her back to life.

The shock was too much. I told myself that it was all a terrible mistake and that she’d wake up and give me a cuddle very soon. How could she leave me when I needed her so much?

‘I’m sorry, Anne,’ Alice said, with tears in her eyes. ‘We don’t know what happened to her, but she really has gone.’

At that time nobody had mobile phones and few Kenyans had landlines, so circulating good or bad tidings always took a long time. It had taken five days for the news of my mum’s death to reach my dad, who was working in Nairobi. One of his friends had travelled from the village to the district commissioner and asked him if he could get a message to my dad. The district commissioner had sent a telegram to the Department of Defence in Nairobi and only after that had my dad been informed of his wife’s death.

He couldn’t believe it. ‘She only left Nairobi a few days ago and there was nothing wrong with her then,’ he said over and over again.

My mum had been in her village attending a memorial service for her brother, who had recently died, and had collapsed at his graveside and died herself. In those days people were rarely rushed to hospital, nor did they have post-mortems, so the exact cause remained a mystery. As usual when people didn’t have a rational explanation they attributed it to witchcraft and said it was the result of a curse, although why my mum had been cursed nobody knew.

People said that her last words as she set off to pay her respects to her brother were that she hoped my youngest brother Geoffrey would be weaned by the time she returned. He was two and a half and she was struggling to get him off the breast. She hadn’t expected to be gone for long and hadn’t envisaged just how absolute the weaning process would be.

I couldn’t think straight. I had never thought that my mum might die. She had always been there for me and I had assumed that she always would be. I felt very lost and empty at the thought of continuing life without her and sobbed uncontrollably.

Alice tried her best to comfort me. ‘I promise I will look after you, Anne,’ she said, ‘just like our mum did.’

I was amazed at how strong she sounded.

A carpenter was enlisted to make a coffin to carry the body from my mum’s village to my dad’s village, half a day’s walk away. It was traditional for a wife to be buried in her husband’s village.

I was taken on a bicycle and spent the whole of the bumpy journey crying.

Finally we arrived in my dad’s village. I looked around at the place I had been born in but barely remembered. It was the first time I’d been back since we’d been forced out. I remembered the wild roses growing outside our front door. They were still there.

The village was full of people sitting and weeping. My mum had been a very popular figure and everybody was sharing their memories of her. There’s much to recommend the African system of mourning. People let their grief spill out freely and don’t hold back their emotions. This helps them to heal more quickly.

Nobody paid too much attention to me or asked whether I’d eaten or wanted to wash myself. I thought of how Mum had devoted herself to making sure I had everything I needed. The realisation washed over me in sickly waves that nothing would ever be the same again for me.

My dad was in such deep shock that he could barely comfort us. He looked as if he was in a trance. Although his head had absorbed the news, his heart had not. And he was left with eight children ranging from 16 to two and a half.

I clung onto Alice and during the whole of the mourning period I barely left her side. I took her at her word when she said she would be a replacement mum for me. Whenever she left the room I cried out, ‘Where are you going, Alice? Please don’t leave me.’ I was scared that if I let her out of my sight she would suddenly drop down dead too.

I didn’t fully understand the traditional death rituals of our village, but Alice tried to explain them as best she could. My mum’s body was placed under a tree facing in a particular direction to symbolise the fact that she had been a married woman. Then everyone gathered around to hear the telling of her life story.

The digging of the grave traditionally begins at midnight. I was exhausted by this time and drifted off to sleep in Alice’s arms. Mum’s grave was in the homestead, because that was where married women were buried. We didn’t have a system of cemeteries and people were generally buried close to where they lived.

At least one cow is slaughtered to mark someone’s passing. But first it has to spend the night dancing by the grave. It is hypnotised by people in the village who know how to do such things and then the singing and dancing starts. People sing to send the spirit of the dead person away so that they’re not annoyed with the living and come back and haunt them. When the dancing of humans and cow is complete, the cow is slaughtered and then cooked in a stew to be shared by all the mourners. Different parts of it are given to different families.

Funerals sometimes attract hangers-on because it is the duty of the mourners to provide food for those who come to mourn with them. A death means that poor people can not only come and pay their respects but also feed their children for a few days.

On the third day after the funeral we were taken to the river and had our heads shaved.

‘They say that your hair dies with your mother and you have to start anew with fresh hair,’ Alice explained to me. ‘Don’t look round,’ she urged as we made our way back home. ‘They say the spirit of the dead person is there.’

To me, the mourning period seemed to go on forever. Every day new people appeared and they were still coming a month later. They all wailed and threw themselves on my mum’s grave.

When the mourning period did finally end, I refused to go back to school. I continued to cling to Alice, who tried her best to hide her own grief and be a surrogate mum to me. I was scared that if I became separated from my family again it would only be a matter of time before another person I loved died. And I didn’t want to risk that.

We stayed with my mum’s sister in the village. Nobody said anything to my face, but some people muttered that it should have been me who died, not my mum. Others cried for me and worried who would look after a vulnerable girl like me and the younger children. It was a struggle for a family of eight to be without a mother.

I found it very hard being back in the village after the comfort and support of Joyland. I spent most of my time in the bedroom, seeing only close family members. My world had completely crumbled. Here I was back in the environment where people had been scornful of me, and the one person who had always protected me had gone and wasn’t going to come back. I felt as if I had died with her.

Pure physical survival was difficult because the village wasn’t geared up for people with disabilities. My sisters Jane and Alice brought me water from the river. They tried their best to make me feel better, but they were still young, they too were grieving and it wasn’t the same as having my mum around.

I started looking at the world through different eyes. I realised that it was very difficult to survive without maternal support.

There was some discussion amongst our relatives about who should take in the motherless girls and boys. Only my grandmother wanted me; all the others said I would be a heavy burden. My grandmother really loved me and had often helped my mum to look after me during school holidays. But my dad refused to share his children out. ‘The older ones will help the younger ones and I will do the rest,’ he said firmly.

I missed more than one school term, but eventually my family managed to persuade me to return. My dad told me repeatedly how important it was for me to continue with my studies.

‘You will do your mum proud if you go back,’ he coaxed. ‘Now your mum has died, I’ll try to be both a mum and a dad to you. You must return to school to please both of us.’

Not wanting to do anything that might upset my mum in case she was watching over me, I agreed. My dad took me back on the bus, a journey I had always made with my mum. I was tearful, but my dad urged me to be strong.

The school had regular visiting days when parents could come to see their children.

‘Mum always used to come for visiting days. Will you come instead, Dad?’

‘I promise you that I’ll come and visit you as often as I can, Anne, but sometimes when I’m doing training exercises it will be hard for me to visit,’ he said.

I had to be satisfied with that.

I settled back into the school routine, although I often longed to have my mum back near me.

At first my dad came to visit me often, bringing gifts of army food like corned beef, dried biscuits and sweets, which were big treats for me and the other children in my dormitory. When visiting days came around I would peer out of the gate, anxiously hoping that he would appear. But his visits became less and less frequent.

It was traditional for parents to bring gifts of bananas and bread and for children who received them to share them out with others in the dormitory. One visiting day my dad didn’t come but the girl in the bed next to me had received lots of bananas. How my mouth watered for one of them. In the end I couldn’t contain myself. I pretended to be sick so that I could stay in the dormitory and stole one of her bananas and some of her bread.

She cried when she saw that one of her juicy bananas was missing and I was accused of stealing it. I squashed the banana peel in my hand, but didn’t manage to conceal it very well—I wasn’t a very good liar or thief.

‘Anne, you must apologise to your friend for stealing from her and you must also apologise to God,’ I was told. ‘Your punishment will be to sit alone in the dormitory for half an hour.’

I knew I’d done something wrong. I felt so guilty and vowed never to do anything like that again.

Even though my dad had explained to me that he might not always be able to come and see me, I became increasingly distressed when he didn’t turn up. I started to doubt him and wondered if he no longer loved me because I was disabled. I wrote him a letter accusing him of not loving me enough.

‘I wish Mum had never died,’ I wrote. ‘This would never have happened when she was alive.’ I concluded by saying, ‘I didn’t write an application to be born.’

My dad wrote me a very long letter back, saying how much he loved me. He also sent a letter to the school, asking them to give me extra care. When he couldn’t come to visit me he left money at the school so that they could buy me the things that other parents brought for their children.

The teachers tried their best to be supportive towards me in the months after my mum died. My art teacher, Edward, was especially good. He was particularly well-loved by the pupils and we looked upon him as a father figure, a kind man and a fantastic musician too. He sometimes talked to me about my mum and how her spirit lived on and watched over me even though her body was no longer with us.

‘The Lord is watching over you,’ he said, ‘and so is your mum. You must do well in your studies to do her proud.’

Even though I didn’t see the point of some of the things Edward was saying, it made me feel better to know that he was looking out for me. Like my dad, he believed in me and was convinced that I could go on to achieve great things in life.

‘Your parents gave you the name Olympia because they believed you were going to achieve great things,’ he reminded me. ‘You mustn’t disappoint them.’

I didn’t want to disappoint Edward, but I was hopeless at drawing.

He studied my hands carefully and said, ‘Let’s try and find what those fingers can do. Everybody has a special talent.’

I longed to be able to draw like a pupil called Noah. He could look at someone’s face and translate it into a perfect image on a piece of paper. But however hard I tried, I couldn’t draw half as well as he could. I hoped that Edward was right and that some other talent would emerge.

Happily, it already had. I loved singing every night and my voice turned out to be strong and tuneful. I couldn’t decipher the words to the James Brown songs my dad had listened to, but I could understand all the words in the a capella tunes on biblical themes we were taught, and I loved singing them.

To my delight, the teachers often chose me to be the lead singer when we entered competitions and performed in different churches. They made sure I looked my best and put coconut oil on my hair to make it shine. Singing gave all of us at Joyland a huge amount of pleasure and always lifted our spirits. Anyone who walked around in the evenings would hear sweet music drifting from every dormitory.

The school decided that because my mum was dead and my dad was often absent it would be better if I was adopted. They contacted a German family who agreed to take me. Little was explained to me and I was too young to fully understand what was going on. But I burst into tears when I overheard one of the house mothers talking to one of the Salvation Army officers about sending me away.

‘Does that mean I’ll never see my brothers and sisters again?’ I asked, sobbing.

They looked startled that they’d been overheard. ‘No, no, Anne,’ said the house mother. ‘Please don’t worry, nothing has been decided yet. But if you do move you’ll have a better life—and so many toys.’

I wasn’t worried about the toys, but the thought of suddenly being transplanted into a family of strangers in a strange land and never seeing my own family again filled me with dread.

At that time my family and school were the only worlds I knew and I didn’t want to venture into any others. I became scared to go to sleep in case I woke up in a different place and couldn’t find my way back home. I was convinced that I could be snatched under the cover of darkness, and felt a rising sense of panic every time I watched the sun setting. I had received regular gifts from my German sponsors, high-quality books and toys that weren’t available in Kenya, and had always looked forward to receiving them, but now I was scared to accept them in case it made it easier for me to be taken away from Joyland.

My dad hadn’t visited for a few months and once again I became convinced that he no longer wanted me. I lay down on my bed and sobbed. Things were going from bad to worse. First my mum had died, then my dad hadn’t come to visit and now I was being given away. I began to feel permanently frightened.

I started to sit under a big, shady tree where I had a good view of the front gate. I kept my eyes fixed on that gate in the hope that my dad would appear to take me away. But he never did.

After a few months, just when I’d given up hope of ever seeing my dad again, one of the teachers hurried up to me and said, ‘Oh, Anne, your dad has arrived.’

Joy surged through me. I hugged and hugged my dad. He swung me round and round and seemed just as pleased to see me as I was to see him.

‘Oh, Dad,’ I said, ‘I thought you were never going to come back, I was sure you didn’t love me anymore. I beg you, don’t leave me here any longer. Please take me with you. I want to go home right now. They’re trying to send me away, but I don’t want to go. If they make me leave, I’ll never see any of you ever again.’

My words tumbled out so fast they barely made any sense, and tears rolled down my cheeks, but my dad wiped them away with his handkerchief.

‘What kind of foolish talk is that, Anne?’ he said, stroking my hair. ‘I’m your father and I’ll always be your father. I’ll never abandon you. Please stop worrying.’

Hearing that made me feel very happy. But I was still concerned.

‘I must go home with you now, because things can change,’ I said.

‘Nothing is going to change, I promise you,’ Dad said reassuringly. ‘You’re at Joyland not because we don’t love you or care about you but because this is the best place for you to get a good education and learn how to be independent. I don’t come more often because I can’t get too much time off from the army, that’s all.’

We went to the dormitory and my dad spent a long time playing games with me. Having him all to myself was an exquisite luxury.

‘Don’t worry about anything, Anne,’ he said. ‘I’m going to speak to the Salvation Army people about your future. I’ll make sure that you’re not sent away. None of us wants to lose you.’

Once again he left money with the staff to buy me the things that other parents brought their children because he knew that he wouldn’t be able to visit me often.

‘Just because I can’t be here with you as often as some of the other parents doesn’t mean that I love you any the less,’ he promised me. ‘If I don’t work hard I won’t be able to afford to send all of you children to school, and you know that making sure that all of you get a good education is the most important thing in the world to me.’

I nodded.

‘I do understand, Dad.’

But understanding didn’t make it any easier for me to cope with his long absences.

A few weeks after my dad’s visit to Joyland a pupil called Tom died. We saw him being carried out of the dormitory in his bed with the covers over his face. Many of the children hadn’t come across death before and all of us suddenly became scared of simple things like going to the toilet alone.

We mourned Tom. He had been a very quiet seven-year-old boy. Like me, he had walked on callipers and crutches. I never knew exactly what was wrong with him and we never discovered why he had died.

‘Don’t cry,’ said one of the house mothers soothingly. ‘Tom is at peace now. He’s in heaven and has become one of the stars. You can see him if you gaze at the sky at night.’

Nobody had mentioned anything about stars to me when my mum died. I found it comforting to think that she had become a star too. That night I looked up at the inky black sky, focused on the brightest star and hoped that it was her.