False Space If this space as attracted your attention, it’s been put to good use. But think what it could do for your business if you used this space to draw the attention of the other passengers on this flight to your products or services. Could the person sitting next to you be a potential customer for your business? More than two million people fly on Kenya Airways every year. Isn’t it worth attracting their attention for your benefit? To find out more about advertising in msafiri magazine, contact: KENYA, TANZANIA AND UGANDA: Esther Ngomeli- Ruhiu, Media Edge Interactive Ltd, tel + 254 ( 0) 20 2711747 / 2710814/ 5/ 6/ 9, email info@ mediaedgeint. com REST OF THE WORLD: Dave Southwood, Travel Africa Ltd, tel + 44 ( 0) 1844 278883, email msafiri@ travelafricamag. com

False msafiri fiction 140 Sometimes, whenever Eranive went to the well to draw water, I prepared some light porridge for Yankho. If the mother was too busy and the nappies needed changing, I did not hesitate to change them. I was not moved by what the people in the village said, that Yankho was ‘ a lucky child with two mothers under one roof’. We were all pleased by the progress he was making. When he learnt to crawl, Eranive and I talked about it with glee, cheering him on all the time. Sometimes we would mention it to our visitors: ‘ Our child has begun to crawl.’ In fact, we monitored his crawling efforts with strange enthusiasm, as if we had never seen a child crawl before. ‘ Da! Da! Da!’ he began to utter one day. By this time, he had grown into a big, healthy baby. Again this was reason to celebrate in the house. ‘ He has begun to speak!’ we said to each other numerous times. It was all so sweet to see him mature from one stage of growth to the next. One day, however, little Yankho developed a cough. It was a strange type of cough. Whenever he started, he would cough in spasms for ten minutes or more. At night, he could not sleep adequately – he kept coughing half the time. It was a dry cough in which he only coughed out air and nothing else, no sputum, no mucus. I tried to prepare a concoction of wild herbs. After two weeks of administering the medicine, the situation aggravated rather than waned. The child had lost his appetite. All attempts to make him eat failed. He vomited whenever he was made to swallow any food. We tried to take him to Kamboni Health Centre. Unfortunately, like all public hospitals, there were no drugs. They only pacified us with aspirin. Although we never read medicine, my wife and I knew very well that Aspirin was not the appropriate drug for Yankho’s type of cough. In a matter of weeks, Yankho had lost considerable weight. He was no longer the same healthy baby we had grown to love. A little while later, even his hair began to lose its texture. It became wavy and pale, you could see each strand standing out separately from the other. One morning, we woke up to another shock: there were strange sores covering the whole of Yankho’s backside. They were big, like blisters. I had never seen anything like that. We summoned Amon, a distant cousin visiting from the city where he worked as a clinical officer. ‘ These are shingles,’ he told us. I was blank – I had never heard of that disease before. Neither had Eranive. She looked at me for some encouragement, some direction, but could a blind man lead a blind woman? Yankho’s lack of appetite worsened. He had become so thin now, he could not even crawl. He cried most of the time. The mother, too, had developed the strange cough – I guess it was contagious, like any other cough. Her appetite, too, was gone. ‘ Eat!’ I tried to encourage her. ‘ You must eat to have a lot of milk in your breasts for the child.’ Still she could not eat adequately; she ate like a mouse – just nibbling at the food. One morning, on a gloomy Saturday, Yankho breathed his last. We could not believe this was happening to us. We, who badly yearned for this fruit, why should it be brutally taken away from us? We, who spent many sleepless nights praying for the gift, why should the wind blow it away from our hands? I cried for a very long time. My grief was indescribable. We buried him on Sunday, the morning after his death. ‘ And so dust shall return to dust,’ said the minister, Reverend