From My Notebooks In 1974: Day 2 with the Turkana
22nd February 2026 |
Yesterday Lucas flew me to a remote tribal area, home of the Turkana, north of Nairobi and close to Lake Rudolph. This is my second day.
Lodwar, January 10th
[Outside the hospital, on the sand with Doctor ”Jerry” who invited me here. We’re waiting for the flying doctor who does operations.]
Outdoor surgery. Doctor arrives in LandRover. Soon a woman arrives with her baby boy. But no interpreter. Crowd gathers. Finally, George [the interpreter] gets there. One child on point of collapse with TB, malaria. Very far gone. Will die. Others with mild cough, OK.
“I can tell the healthy ones now from their skin and general appearance. Use methods of diagnosis which are old-fashioned in UK now.“
Old lady eyes almost closed and full of sticky liquid. “They leave these things so long.” An infection that gradually closes the eye until they turn up and scrape the lashes on the eyeball, causing inflammation. She will wait until the Flying Doctors do the next batch of eye ops.
Little boy has his mother worried because his testicles are the wrong shape. Jerry lays him in the sand. Sits him up, and lays him down again. Then: “Tell her it’s all right. There’s nothing wrong. It’s only the shape of the skin.”
Old woman has headaches, then her left arm goes numb.
“Arterial disease is almost unknown here. They hardly ever get old enough.”
Fifty is old in Turkana. The patients are made to queue up by George.
Jerry insists on words like “patient,” “prognosis,” etc. They seem very strange here.
He looks at them one by one, while the others look on curiously, perhaps one minute, five at most. On the back of some obsolete buff forms, torn in half, he prints her name as spelled out by George. The words usually mean “under the fruit tree” or “by the river” or “in the big rain.” And record the circumstances of birth. Then he scribbles his diagnosis, a treatment if it’s straightforward. And tells them to come in next day.
He can handle most things that turn up but has a hard time getting blood to pull back the really desperate cases. He lost a small boy the day before for want of hydrocortisone and has a limited arsenal of drugs. On the other hand, they work much more efficiently where the recuperative well-springs have not been muddied by exposure to drugs before. He thinks the Lodwar hospital loses about the same proportion of patients who could theoretically have lived as a good Western hospital – but the reasons are different.
Pain threshold is much higher. They hate hanging about in hospitals. They insist on sleeping outside on the pathway or in the sand.
No graves except for special cases. Bodies are thrown out for hyenas and vultures. Very little concern for suffering of others, except in family. People die in the ward and nobody thinks to call the doctor. Father will come in and shove sick child off the bed to make room for himself.
Native medicine is extensive. If there is internal pain or deformity the skin is cut around the affected area, in many small incisions, half inch long. Doctor can often follow the course of a growth by these cuts and the newness of them. They have their natural remedies too.
[Immanuel, in the straw hat, is the son of the Mzee, or Chief. He loves pranks, interfering with the fake authenticity. The other “Westerner” is a hospital assistant.]
Immanuel and the Mzee: “With one spear we can kill a lion or an elephant or a giraffe.” Accurate at 20ft. “The Turkana will never change their customs. We want more schools so that children can get good jobs in city and send money back to their parents. But they will never forget their tribe. Only the bad ones.”
“If any other tribe tries to overcome us we will beat them.”
Invincible. Killing another man adds no particular glory or lustre. A little extra respect, but nothing compared to ownership of animals. No indication that a person’s life can be improved other than by material things.
Immanuel says girls have to be very careful not to give the impression of greed. Before marriage they avoid at all costs letting a man see them eating, often going without food for long periods if men are around. If by chance she is seen, she will try to marry immediately before the word gets out.
The most respected men have up to 15 wives. Immanuel’s father has 500 cattle, 1000 goats, plus camels, donkeys etc.
Remember how the girls walk, leather skins polished and rounded to the shape of their buttocks, switching from side to side. There is obvious pride in being able to do this well. They move always in a very girlish way, a movement one only sees among professional dancers in Europe in folk ballet. The pronounced arching of the back, which is natural to Africans, has much to do with it.
[I was flown back to Nairobi the next day.]
Nairobi, Friday January 11th
To the movies to see “All cops are ???”
Could have been any British cinema, but for the pepper on the peanuts. Pretty ugly impression of life in London (Battersea).
[I spent another week in Nairobi. With the bike nicely serviced, and with a new set of pannier bags across my tank and new tyres and innertubes, I set out for Mombasa. Then 150 miles down the road, at Kibwezi Junction, I had a puncture, which led to even more intimate relations with the native population.]