Small Visitors

Lila and Uma are living in the garden. They tell me they will only be coming inside for meals now. The walls of their home are made from a couple of large plastic yellow barrels and some crumbling bricks. They had Ossian round earlier on, but he made the mistake of trying to walk off with one of the walls and got chased away.

Now Linda has come to visit. She comes everyday at this time, around 5.30 in the afternoon, after she's changed out of her school uniform and done her homework. Her visits are usually chaotic; the contents of the sitting room are examined and scattered on the floor, only to be cross-examined and re-scattered by the two or three smaller children who trail behind her. But today Lila and Uma have invited her into their game. This is unusual.

Soon after we moved in, we began to get small visitors calling at our house. Every afternoon, after school, cries of 'how are you?' or 'mzungu!' came from the hole in the gate. For the first few days Uma was keen to run out and play, taking Ossian's large red beach ball with her, to the delight of the crowd of children gathered outside. Lila would follow hesitantly, suspiciously, reluctantly joining in.

But soon our visitors grew more confident, opening the gate and pushing each other into the garden, laughing and whispering to each other. Lila and Uma would disappear under

a storm of hands wanting to touch their skin and stroke their hair. They became exotic objects to be wondered at, prodded, poked and discussed. They also became intimidated.

After a few weeks of this, they would run inside and hide whenever they heard calls from the gate, pretending they were tired, or were too busy playing their game. Only Linda still insisted on coming in, but eventually they began to ignore even her, hiding away in Flora's room wh

enever she came.

Today is different though. This morning Lila and Uma spent four hours in a salon in Iten having their hair plaited with long extensions, the fulfilment of a lifelong ambition for both of them to have long hair. And as their hair has grown, so has their confidence. Like Samson, their hair has given them new strength to go out and play with the children, or maybe they just feel more like everyone else with their African braids.

So now Linda is here, and they are pleased to see her. They don't even seem to mind when she dismantles their house, and with a flick of their pony tails they chase after her, out of the gate, to join the other children playing outside.