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We all eat while Dominic pours us coffee and orange juice. He fusses over John and Pat, helping them fill their plates. When he’s seen that everyone else is catered for, he comes to join me on a convenient rock that I’ve found under the shade of an acacia tree, squatting down beside me. He slips his blanket from his shoulders and lays it down for me to sit on and I shift over to it. His constant small kindnesses are reassuring and heartwarming, something that you rarely see in men at home now.
‘Do you have a Maasai name?’ I ask.
Dominic nods. ‘Lemasolai,’ he says. ‘It means “proud one”. My family name is Ole Nangon. Dominic was the name given to me by the Christian brothers at the mission school I attended.’ My guide looks into the distance. ‘I was a very lucky boy. Every family had to send one child to school by law. It should have been my older brother, but he did not want to go. My daddy sent me instead.’
‘Did you like it?’
‘Oh, yes, Just Janie. I learned many things. I played football and now I support Arsenal.’
I laugh. ‘You’re teasing me.’
‘No, no. They are my favourite team. Arsène Wenger, Theo Walcott. Come on, you Gunners!’ He laughs uproariously and I join him. It seems so incongruous to be sitting out in the African plains with a Maasai warrior who’s a staunch Arsenal supporter.
Then Dominic is serious again. ‘My family made a big sacrifice to send me to the boarding school in Nakuru. Four cows. That is a lot of money to a Maasai.’
‘I think it was worth it, Dominic,’ I say. ‘You are a lovely man.’
‘Now it is my turn to say thank you. Asante, Just Janie.’ He smiles shyly.
Sean pops up in front of us. ‘Photo?’
Dominic nods and slings his arm around my shoulders, pulling me into his body with a laugh. Sean takes our photo and records, for posterity, Dominic Lemasolai Ole Nangon, the proud Maasai warrior and Janie Johnson, the very ordinary hairdresser, under the shade of an acacia tree, sheltering from the blistering African sun.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Back in the camp and I let my very welcome bucket-shower wash a pound of sandy dirt from the Maasai Mara plains out of my hair and from my body. Every muscle and bone is aching from being jolted around the bus all day, but every fibre of me is zinging and for the first time in years I feel truly, wonderfully alive.
Not that I have the ability to plug in my hair straighteners here as Nina had hoped, but I do wish that I was able to spruce myself up a bit more. Then I realise that I want to look my best for Dominic and my heart flips as I recognise the significance.
Dinner is served outside again and we have a tender goat curry in a creamy coconut sauce with big bowls of fluffy rice and hot chapattis. Dominic doesn’t eat again, but sits and watches us all with that big happy smile of his firmly in place. Every now and again, I catch him looking at me along the table, over the light of the hurricane lamps, and his grin broadens. Despite the fact that everyone can see him, I feel as if it’s a secret smile, just for me – not for Sean and Maura or Pat and John, but for me alone. Butterflies start fluttering in my stomach, not the butterflies of job interviews or driving tests but the sort that reserve themselves only for blossoming love.
After our meal, we sit around the campfire again. The sparks fly into the air and the heat from the flames warms our toes. Not that it’s a cold night, but after the relentless sun of the day, it’s a cooler and more welcome temperature. We all laugh together, talking about our day’s drive and the animals we have seen, from huge buffalo to tiny bee-eating birds. Dominic has proved himself, once again, to be a skilled and knowledgeable guide. But then this is his home, where he grew up, all he knows, and he is a man in total synchronicity with his land.
It’s a habit that we seem to be sliding into, but the others leave us after about half an hour of pleasant chit-chat and left to our own devices, Dominic and I settle down in our chairs and I notice that he moves his closer to mine. He pours me a glass of Amarulu, a creamy liqueur made of marula fruit, which I sip, savouring the taste.
‘This is lovely,’ I say with a contented sigh. ‘The day has been exhausting but just brilliant.’ I let my head drop back and gaze up at the black glittering sky.
Dominic reaches out and takes my hand in his. I turn to look at him. The fire has died down and it’s hard to make out his expression in the darkness.
‘We are from very different lands,’ he says softly, ‘from very different cultures, but I feel that your heart sings to me, Janie Johnson, and I believe that my heart sings to you too.’
