Poisoned chalice
Aidan Hartley
Laikipia
Ekiru is the teenage son of Lopiyok, who is the undisputed authority on livestock at the farm. The boy is bright, tall and gangly with a chorister’s voice that shows no sign of breaking even though he says he’s 18. His father — lean, tough, scarred like a tomcat — tells me Homeric tales of cattle raids and past hardships in the furnace heat of his country south of Lake Turkana, the Jade Sea. Up here, rarely will you witness men and women displaying signs of affection for each other, yet I’ve seen Lopiyok quietly link hands with one of his wives while out on a walk. And he visibly dotes on Ekiru, his firstborn. Still, I told Lopiyok the boy had to go. I couldn’t employ him because I thought he was a minor and he should be at school. I said this about ten times, but always I’d encounter Ekiru out and about.
Some years ago, Ekiru was out herding goats in the bush not far from here when he found a shiny bullet. He claimed he picked it up, whereupon it exploded and wounded him. He has a longish scar on his arm. When the family heard that the British lawyer Martyn Day was suing Britain’s Ministry of Defence on behalf of those who had allegedly been blown up by unexploded ordnance discarded by the British Army in northern Kenya, they put in a claim. Britain has paid out more than £6 million to the victims, though some claims were subsequently exposed as bogus. I strongly believe Ekiru was hurt by a bullet — though I don’t know if the British, Kenyans or a cattle bandit left it there — and in 2002 the British courts awarded him £4,400. Since he was still a minor (though in this society nobody knows for sure how old he is), they withheld most of the funds until his 18th birthday and released only £350, which was intended to contribute to his schooling.
The £350 was deposited in a local bank, which took a handsome commission to handle this case. Lopiyok and Ekiru are illiterate. Due to this fact, the account was put in the name of a relative who could read and was given an ATM card. Lopiyok complains that he got his hands on only some of the money, and that his relative snaffled the balance.
Trying to get to the bottom of this, in December 2003 I wrote to the lawyer Martyn Day, telling him money had allegedly gone missing from Ekiru’s compensation and asking how the boy could obtain the rest of his money before any body else got to it. I heard not a word back until July last year, when a woman named Sapna Malik wrote, advising Ekiru’s family to get a bank statement to check if money had gone ‘missing’. She said her office recorded him as being born in 1986 and the balance of funds would be paid out when he could prove he was 18 by producing an identity card. Ms Malik said her firm had an employee named Peter Kilesi who was entrusted with handling Ekiru’s case. ‘I will liaise with Peter Kilesi about this matter further,’ she wrote. After that I never heard from either her or Peter Kilesi. I phoned Ms Malik’s office in London in October and left a message, but I never got a call back.
Today, Ekiru can still sing the solo verse in ‘Once In Royal David’s City’. For this reason, the Chief refused him an ID card until I wrote a reference, so now we’ll see if he can get his balance. I wonder what good it will do him. Of the money already spent, I sternly asked Lopiyok how much had been devoted to Ekiru’s schooling. Lopiyok spat and studied the ground.
‘You’ve spent it on cattle and booze, haven’t you?’ Lopiyok gave me a sheepish smile. But when I chided Ekiru I learnt how wrong I was to think that Lopiyok had robbed his child of a future. ‘When you get this money, you must go to school,’ I lectured the boy. ‘You will never have such a stroke of luck again. If you don’t get an education, you are a fool.’ I know he’s intelligent from our talks, when he even tries to teach me Turkana vocabulary and laughs at my slow uptake. I asked if he did not enjoy the thought of school. ‘Yes,’ Ekiru said, claiming he had already tried to attend on several occasions. ‘As soon as I walk through the doors of the class, I fall down sick,’ he said. ‘As soon as I reach home, I feel better.’ I asked if he became homesick. ‘Yes,’ he said. I asked why.
‘The other boys bully me.’ Remember, this is the son of a warrior talking. ‘Why?’ ‘They teased me for being given such good fortune and said why should I bother staying with them, when I had all that money.’ ‘I don’t know what to do with him,’ shrugged Lopiyok. ‘He’s seems happiest here with me.’
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