Corinne Hofmann: Back from Africa

Napirai and I move into the little guest room and unpack our few worldly belongings. All we have is a few bits of children's clothing, about twenty terry nappies and a pair of jeans and jumper for me. I left everything else in Kenya — Lketinga had to believe I was coming back. Otherwise he would never have let me leave with our daughter.

I have to move carefully around this beautiful big house with all its fine furniture, plants and carpets. What impresses me most however is the toilet which I now get to use instead of a stinking earth closet. My mother asks me what I'd like to eat. My mouth waters at the thought of a juicy sausage and cheese salad and I tell her as much. She's almost disappointed because she wanted to cook something special for me. But as far as I'm concerned, this simple meal is the best thing I can imagine after four years living in the bush. Living amidst the Samburu, I never got the chance to eat anything fresh. We had nothing but maize meal or occasionally rice or on even fewer occasions, basic meat with no seasoning. I'm really looking forward to a salad with some fresh bread!

Meanwhile Napirai has got used to her surroundings and become curious watching these unknown white people. She's pulled all the books off the bookshelf and is digging around in the plant pots. These are all new things for her.

At long last food is ready. I could almost cry just looking at it. When I think how often I dreamed of a meal like this! Now I can just ask for it and half an hour later there it is!

Of course, my mother wants to hear everything about my new life in Mombasa and how my souvenir shop on Diani Beach is doing. She's so happy that after three years out in the deepest bush I've moved back again to something closer to civilization. The one thing she doesn't understand is why I'm even thinner than last time I came home as it's easier now for me to get food. I can't cope with these questions which make me all the more sad, so I just give her robotic answers, all far from the truth. Her almost naive lack of worry makes it all the harder to tell her the truth.

My delight in my delicious meal doesn't last. After half an hour I'm lying curled up on the bed suffering from an attack of stomach cramp. After being treated for hepatitis barely six months ago I obviously shouldn't have eaten any fat and certainly not anything straight from the fridge. For years now all I've had to eat has been the most basic meal from a stew pot. But given the opportunity to have something special again I simply didn't think. All I can do to calm my stomach down is to make myself throw up.

My mother is giving Napirai a bath which she likes a lot, splashing and squeaking with delight. Afterwards she has a Pampers disposable nappy put on her for the first time. God, how easy that makes things! Put it on, she fills it up, take it off and throw it away. Absolutely magnificent! Goodbye to the days back in Nairobi when I had to carry dirty nappies around and then wash them each evening in cold water until my knuckles were raw.

By eight in the evening I'm exhausted. In Kenya we usually went to bed around this time as we didn't have electric light and it got dark early. In any case I have to take Napirai to bed as she isn't used to sleeping on her own. In the manyatta up in the Kenyan highlands she would either sleep with me or her grandmother and when we were down on the coast she would sleep between my husband and me. That's normal for Samburu children. They need bodily contact. Once we're in bed, I'm overcome by feelings of sadness and doubt, wondering if I'm doing the right thing. I fall asleep sobbing softly to myself.

The next morning we face a big question: what to put on? It's October and for us, just flown in from the heat of Kenya, it's extremely cold. Napirai has never taken to clothes at all and now she has to put on a pullover and jacket my mother has bought. She's not at all happy wrapped up in all this clothing and keeps trying to take it off. But we can't have that. For a start it's cold, and secondly, everybody in Switzerland wears clothes.

The dog is another problem: he doesn't seem to like us. He growls, barks and bares his teeth when he sees us. Napirai, however, has got used to him and wants to play with him all the time. She's a little Masai girl and doesn't know the meaning of fear. As for me, on the other hand, I'm half-hysterical with worry that he'll bite her. I might see him as dangerous, but as far as my mother and Hanspeter are concerned he's just the sweetest pet, a sort of child substitute.

For the first two or three days I'm just tired and exhausted. I keep thinking about Lketinga and how he's getting on in the shop on his own. Obviously he's still got William to help but they don't really get on, not since William was caught stealing money from us.

Over the next few days I go for walks to take my mind off things, passing by the agricultural college nearby and spending hours looking at the cows. Somehow that calms me down and gives me a sort of inner peace that makes me feel at one with my mother-in-law, whom I used to call ‘Gogo’. How is she going to react when she realises she isn't going to see Napirai again? According to Samburu tradition my daughter actually ought to be given to her. All these sorts of thoughts keep going round and round in my head.

When my mother and Hanspeter sit down to watch the TV news in the evening I tend to take Napirai and retreat into our little room. All the terrible pictures of the Gulf War and the misery in the world are too much for me and I can't bear to look. For the past four years I've had no contact with television or almost any other media. I was living in the world of a thousand years ago and now I feel completely overwhelmed by all the news and pictures. Only once do I find myself completely glued to the screen. It's a report about the fall of the Berlin Wall in Germany. I can hardly believe my eyes. I genuinely had no idea what had happened even though it's more than a year ago now. I really can't come to terms with it. The Wall was always something we lived with at home because my grandparents on my father's side had lived in the East.

I had known since I was a little child how different the two Germany's were, because my father was always full of stories when he came back from a visit to East Germany. And now they were reunited! The whole world knew it but the news never reached us out in the bush. I find tears running down my cheeks looking at the pictures. My mother and her husband understandably find my reaction funny. But then even movies seem different to me now. Or is it just me that's changed?

Whatever it is, I'm stunned by all the nudity and love scenes in modern films. In Kenya people don't kiss in public or even hold hands; in fact the Samburu don't kiss at all. I gradually realise that over the past four years I've turned into a prude.

After a few days my mother says I really ought to buy some new clothes. So I head out for the shops leaving her to look after Napirai. But all these shops jammed full of clothes and other goods make me nervous. I don't know what suits me any more and so I buy leggings, which seem to be fashionable, and a jumper. It seems incredibly expensive. For the same amount of money back in Kenya I could have bought at least three or four goats or a magnificent cow.

Back home I show my mother what I've bought only for her to exclaim in horror that there's no way I can go out in public in those leggings. I'm far too thin and would look like an invalid. That finishes off my newly-won pride in my pretty new clothes and I feel really ugly. I also realise with a shock that I've become terribly sensitive in this ‘white’ world. Things were different back in my world in Kenya among the Africans. Back there I had to do everything on my own and organise everything. It is becoming ever more clear to me how much I've changed over the past few years. Here in Europe time rushes by and there are so many things that are new and strange to me. In Africa everything has its own pace and days seem vastly longer than they are here. What has happened to the self-confident businesswoman I used to be? I've become emaciated, homeless, with a small child and not even the courage to tell my own mother the truth.