In My Dreams I Dance. Anne Wafula-Strike

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       Chapter Two The Day My Life Changed

      I was too young to remember what happened next, but my family have told me the terrible story many times. As swiftly as a rainy season downpour drenches the earth, my happy, carefree life in the village ended.

      My dad was away trying to stop the Shiftas, Somalian bandits, from crossing the border into Kenya and stealing livestock, when catastrophe struck. I had accompanied my mum to the river. As usual she was washing clothes and then washing us. I liked to carry a small pot of water on my head, copying the huge pot she balanced effortlessly on hers. But something was wrong with me that day. As soon as we returned to the homestead, I fell down screaming.

      My family thought a snake had bitten me, even though none had been seen anywhere near me. But, after examining my writhing body all over, my grandmother, who was an expert in these things, pronounced, ‘No snake has bitten this child.’

      My mum and grandmother could see that I was in terrible pain, but if it wasn’t a snake, what had caused it? They had no idea. Nor could they calm my screams. They told me later that I had cried for 24 hours, giving great heaving dry sobs when no more tears would come. At one point I was so distressed, I swallowed my tongue. And then my whole body went limp.

      My grandmother was a Christian, so she prayed and poured holy water over me. When that didn’t work, she turned to traditional medicines. She was perplexed. Why was a previously healthy child suddenly unable to talk or eat? How could it be that I had gone down to the river apparently well and had returned terribly ill?

      The more baffled everybody became, the more desperate the remedies they resorted to. My legs were massaged with donkey dung, tribal cuts were carved into my skin and foul-tasting potions were forced down my throat. Though my dad was an educated man, he too believed that the herbs could cure me because a British doctor had once told him that a lot of powerful western medicines were contained in them.

      Alas, none of the traditional remedies did me any good. My condition was deteriorating and I was struggling to breathe. My family were convinced they were going to lose me.

      In a flash of inspiration, one of the villagers found a plastic tube and put it into my mouth. Family and friends took turns blowing their breath into me to keep me alive. It was the primitive equivalent of an iron lung.

      After a few weeks I recovered enough to breathe unaided, but my breathing remained very laboured and the bottom half of my body mysteriously withered, leaving me unable to move around. I was effectively paralysed from the neck down. I reverted to babyhood, no longer able to talk or to stop myself from dribbling. I shared a bed with my mum and she had to turn me over when I wanted to change position. With tears in her eyes, she fed me sloppy food because I could no longer chew anything. Her lively, inquisitive daughter had turned into a helpless rag doll.

      ‘What kind of illness is this?’ my mum and my grandmother kept asking each other. They had never seen anything like it before.

      My immediate and extended family rallied round, but some of the villagers thought I’d been cursed and should be left to die.

      Solomon, a local witch doctor, was called in to treat me, but he too drew a blank, muttering only that an evil spell had been cast on me. ‘This is caused by black magic,’ he declared.

      People in the village started to shun our family. ‘They’ve been struck by a curse from God,’ they muttered. They couldn’t understand my parents’ determination to keep me alive. ‘She’s more or less dead—let her complete her dying,’ they said.

      My dad didn’t discover what had happened to me until he returned home on leave six weeks later. He was distraught at this terrible transformation in his formerly healthiest child. ‘We’re not going to give up on our daughter,’ he said firmly whenever the villagers urged him to let me die.

      So profound was his distress that he even forgot to shave when he went back to the army. Shaving regularly was a vital part of army discipline, but he told his superiors that he hadn’t bothered because it ‘wasn’t important’. He was promptly demoted for rudeness and lost out on being commissioned as a senior officer. My illness was not only affecting me but also those I loved the most.

      Gradually some movement returned to my upper body, although from the waist down it remained like dead wood. Slowly and painfully I learned to pull myself onto my stomach, my thin misshapen legs and feet dangling inertly, and drag myself along the floor using my arms.

      My mum and dad were delighted that I had regained some mobility, but this technique didn’t impress the villagers. ‘There’s a young snake living in that house,’ they chorused. ‘It is not right that it should remain amongst us.’ They gathered at our door and said, ‘You need to get rid of that child, otherwise the curse that has possessed her will spread to the other children in the village.’

      My mum begged and pleaded with them to leave us in peace, but they were in no mood to compromise.

      ‘We’re going to burn your house down,’ they informed her. ‘It’s better that you leave now, before you all perish.’

      Family members advised my mum to run away and we escaped to my maternal grandparents’ home in a nearby village. We stayed there until my dad was next home on leave.

      The behaviour of the villagers made him sad and angry. ‘We have as much right as anyone else to live in our own village,’ he said. ‘This is our ancestral land.’

      Defiantly, he rebuilt our home, substituting corrugated iron for straw so that the villagers couldn’t burn it down. But even with the reinforcements we continued to feel under siege.

      My dad was confused by my illness. He had a modern, educated outlook but was also steeped in the traditions of the village and wasn’t entirely sure if my illness was a new disease or witchcraft.

      He was also torn between staying at home to protect his family and continuing in the military so that he could pay for our schooling and give us the kind of life he had ambitions to provide for us.

      Eventually, with a heavy heart, he decided to apply for accommodation in the army barracks in Nairobi for all the family. He thought that we would encounter less prejudice in the capital and hoped that I would be able to get some proper medical treatment there. He also thought that that way he could be closer to us.

      His faith in me remained steadfast. ‘One way or another you’re going to recover, Anne,’ he said. ‘The local remedies haven’t worked, but in Nairobi you can get the most modern treatments.’

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