Wrapped Up In You by Carole Matthews

Author:Carole Matthews [Matthews, Carole]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Romance
ISBN: 9780956733146
Publisher: Carole Matthews (INK) Ltd
Published: 2011-10-20T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Forty-Seven

I meet Dominic’s father and his mother and then the other three wives in the family. There seem to be dozens of children in a wide range of ages who are all Ole Nangon offspring – some who look older than Dominic, some who are still babes in arms.

My greeting is warm and enthusiastic and I feel very humble to be welcomed into their home. Instantly, my heart is captured by their sunny disposition and open manner. But inside the hut, things are even more basic. Even at my height, I can’t stand up and all it consists of are a couple of sparsely furnished spaces that serve as the living room and communal bedroom. The beds are wooden pallets on the floor covered with traditional woollen kangas. Cooking is done on an open fire, which is smouldering in the centre of the room. There’s no window or chimney and the air is stifling, hot and heavy with smoke. A few pottery dishes grace the single shelf that is fashioned from mud and there’s a curved tubular jug, a calabash, in which, Dominic tells me, the milk is fermented before drinking. But that’s pretty much it. No microwave, no fridge, no state-of-the-art range cooker. Just a few pots and some spare fire wood. And I know straight away, in my heart of hearts, that never, no matter how much I love Dominic, could I ever contemplate living here.

‘They think you are strange,’ Dominic says with a smile, ‘because I tell them your family has no cattle.’

‘They’re very kind to have me here,’ I say. ‘Very kind, indeed. Asante. Asante.’

His whole family grin broadly at me.

‘Come,’ Dominic urges, ‘I will show you our school.’ He leads me out of the hut and to the far side of the manyatta.

Under an acacia tree, there’s a range of wooden benches. Children, tiny ones from the age of two, up to self-conscious teenagers, crowd on to them. Their attention is held rapturously by an elderly gentleman wearing an orange kanga and leaning heavily on a stick. On the tree, a piece of paper is pinned. It has the days of the week and the months of the year both in Swahili and English. A young girl, about eight-years-old, is pointing out the words and the rest of the children are chanting them musically.

‘No schoolroom?’

‘We are hoping one day that the village will have enough money,’ Dominic says. ‘It is difficult for the children to sit still in the heat and harder when the rains come. If they come.’

He waves to the teacher and indicates that we wish to stay. With his blessing, we then sit down at the back of the class on a spare bench and listen to the lesson. The children twist and turn in their seats to get a glimpse of me and then giggle into their hands.

‘Is this is how you started your learning?’ I lower my voice.

‘Yes,’ he says. ‘Then I was very lucky to go to the mission school.

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