Contents
Cover
About the Author
Also by Elspeth Huxley
Maps
Chronology
Dedication
Title Page
Introduction
Epigraph
The Background
Part I: Exploration
Chapter 1
Part II: Travel
Chapter 2
Part III: Settlers
Chapter 3
Part IV: Wars
Chapter 4
Part V: Environment
Chapter 5
Part VI: Wildlife
Chapter 6
Part VII: Hunting
Chapter 7
Part VIII: Lifestyles
Chapter 8
Part IX: Legend and Poetry
Chapter 9
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
Index
Copyright
About the Author
ELSPETH HUXLEY (née Grant) was born in 1907 and first went to Africa in 1913. The story of her childhood years, memorably dramatized for television by John Hawkesworth in 1982, was told in The Flame Trees of Thika (1959) and its sequel, The Mottled Lizard (1962). She returned to England in 1925 and studied agriculture at Reading University and Cornell. She married Gervas Huxley in 1931 and during the thirties travelled widely with him in Africa, America, Australia and elsewhere. Among her many novels, biographies, travel books and memoirs are several about East Africa, including White Man’s Country (1935), Red Strangers (1939), The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (1948), Forks and Hope (1964), Nellie: Letters from Africa (1981), and Last Days in Eden (1984). In 1962 she was awarded the CBE. Her last book was a biography of Peter Scott. She died in 1997.
Also by Elspeth Huxley
Non-Fiction
WHITE MAN’S COUNTRY: LORD DELAMERE AND THE
MAKING OF KENYA
EAST AFRICA
ATLANTIC ORDEAL: THE STORY OF MARY CORNISH
RACE AND POLITICS IN KENYA
(with Margery Perham)
NO EASY WAY
A NEW EARTH: AN EXPERIMENT IN COLONIALISM
BACK STREET NEW WORLDS
BRAVE NEW VICTUALS
THE CHALLENGE OF AFRICA
THE KINGSLEYS
FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE
GALLIPOT EYES
SCOTT OF THE ANTARCTIC
PIONEER’S SCRAPBOOK
(with Arnold Curtis)
NELLIE: LETTERS FROM AFRICA
WHIPSNADE: CAPTIVE BREEDING FOR SURVIVAL
LAST DAYS IN EDEN
OUT IN THE MIDDAY SUN
PETER SCOTT
Travel
THE SORCERER’S APPRENTICE
FOUR GUINEAS
FORKS AND HOPE
THEIR SHINING ELDORADO
Fiction
MURDER AT GOVERNMENT HOUSE
MURDER ON SAFARI
THE AFRICAN POISON MURDERERS
RED STRANGERS
THE WALLED CITY
I DON’T MIND IF I DO
A THING TO LOVE
THE RED ROCK WILDERNESS
THE FLAME TREES OF THIKA
THE MOTTLED LIZARD
THE MERRY HIPPO
A MAN FROM NOWHERE
LOVE AMONG THE DAUGHTERS
THE PRINCE BUYS THE MANOR
Chronology
AD
95–110 The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea written by an anonymous Greek.
622 The Hegira: flight of Muhammad from Mecca to Medina and start of the Muslim era.
650–800 approx. Arab and Persian settlers colonize East African coastal towns.
1414 Chinese fleet arrives off the coast of Zinj (East Africa).
1415 The K’i-lin (a giraffe), a celestial horse and a celestial stag presented by the King of Malindi to the Emperor of China.
7 April 1498 Vasco da Gama’s fleet anchors in the roadsteads of Mombasa.
7 Jan 1499 Vasco da Gama’s fleet reaches Malindi on its return from India.
1505 Sack of Mombasa and other East African settlements by Francisco d’Almeida, and start of Portuguese rule.
1587 Invasion of Mombasa by a tribe of cannibals, the Zimba, who devour its inhabitants.
1593–96 The Portuguese build Fort Jesus in Mombasa.
March 1696 Arrival of hostile Arab fleet at Mombasa, and start of the siege of Fort Jesus.
12 December 1698 Remnants of the garrison of Fort Jesus surrender to the Arabs of Oman.
26 November 1729 Final evacuation of Fort Jesus by the Portuguese and end of their rule in East Africa north of Cape Delgado.
1832–40 Sayyid Said ibn Sultan, ruler of Oman, moves his headquarters to Zanzibar, and confirms his sovereignty over the East African city states.
11 May 1848 Johann Rebmann, in the employ of the Church Missionary Society, sets eyes on the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro.
10 November 1848 His colleague Johann Ludwig Krapf sights the peaks of Mount Kenya.
28 July 1862 John Hanning Speke reaches the source of the White Nile at the Ripon Falls issuing from Lake Victoria.
1873 Sayyid Barghash ibn Said, Sultan of Zanzibar, signs a treaty with the British Government prohibiting the export of slaves from his dominions and closing all the slave markets.
11 December 1883 Joseph Thomson and James Martin reach Lake Victoria from Mombasa after passing safely through the highlands dominated by the Maasai.
5 March 1887 Count Samuel Teleki von Szek and Lieutenant Ludwig von Höhnel reach and name Lake Rudolf, later Turkana. First contact with the Kikuyu.
3 September 1888 The Imperial British East Africa Company, founded by Sir William Mackinnon, receives a Royal Charter to open up the British “sphere of influence” to “legitimate commerce”.
1889 The IBEA Company opens its first inland station at Machakos.
1890 Captain Frederick Lugard builds Dagoretti station.
1893 First coffee planted at Kibwezi by John Patterson.
1894 Revd and Mrs Stuart Watt walk from Mombasa to Machakos with seeds of first apple, plum and quince trees.
15 June 1895 Her Majesty’s Government proclaims the British East Africa Protectorate, taking over from the IBEA Company and leasing a ten-mile coastal strip from the Sultan of Zanzibar.
1895–1905 Five military expeditions against the Nandi tribe, following their raids on neighbouring tribes, attacks on trading caravans and thefts of railway lines, culminating in the death of their principal laibon (medicine-man) in October 1905.
1896 First British settlers walk from Mombasa to Fort Smith near Nairobi, bringing the first plough.
1897 Lord Delamere and Dr Atkinson reach the Protectorate’s highlands from Berbera on the Red Sea.
July 1900 The East Africa Turf Club holds its first meeting in Nairobi; there was a race for mules.
1901 First hotel opened in Nairobi by Tommy Wood.
20 December 1901 The Uganda Railway, begun in 1896 and laid mainly by labour brought from India, reaches Lake Victoria at Mile 582.
1902 First tea planted at Limoru by G. W. L. Caine.
April 1902 Those parts of the Uganda Protectorate east of Lake Victoria and extending as far as Naivasha transferred to the British East Africa Protectorate.
1904 First Agricultural Show held in the Jeevanjee Gardens, Nairobi.
1905 Zionists offered the Uasin Gishu plateau as “an ante-chamber to the Holy Land”; after a visit, they decline.
1907 Legislative Council formed, with two members representing the settlers, all the other members being government officials.
1908 Forty-seven Afrikaner families led by Jansen van Rensburg trek by ox-wagon to the Uasin Gishu plateau to settle there.
1910 First Eu
ropean farmer arrives in the Nanyuki district with four dogs and thirteen chickens.
1911 Maasai moved from Laikipia to Narok, following the second Maasai treaty.
1912 The Trans Nzoia region opened to European settlement.
4 August 1914 Britain’s entry into First World War, and formation of the East African Mounted Rifles.
March 1916 British forces under General Jan Smuts invade German East Africa (Tanzania) and force General von Lettow-Vorbeck’s army into a long-drawn-out retreat.
25 November 1918 General von Lettow-Vorbeck surrenders to a battalion of the King’s African Rifles at Abercorn in Northern Rhodesia (Zambia).
1919 Launch of the Soldier Settlement Scheme offering land in the highlands to ex-service men and women on easy terms.
1920 The British East Africa Protectorate becomes Kenya Colony.
1921–22 Indian currency, rupees and pice, replaced by British-based currency, at first florins, then shillings and cents.
1923 Following demands by the Indian community for the franchise on a common roll, the Secretary of State for the Colonies issues a White Paper stating that “the interests of the African natives must be paramount”, and that if those interests should clash with those of the “immigrant races”, the interests of the Africans must prevail.
1925 The railway extended to Eldoret on the Uasin Gishu plateau, and ultimately to Kampala in Uganda.
1926 Commercial tea plantations established at Kericho.
1928–34 Invasion by locust swarms which devastate crops and pastures throughout East Africa.
1930 Start of the World Depression, which leads to drastic falls in commodity prices and widespread poverty and distress in eastern Africa.
October 1935 Italy invades Abyssinia (Ethiopia).
10 June 1940 Mussolini declares war on the Allies: in August, Italians occupy British Somaliland.
25 February 1941 East African forces capture Mogadishu, capital of Italian Somaliland.
6 April 1941 Fall of Addis Ababa to the Allies.
27 November 1941 Capture of the fortress of Gondar, and end of the East African campaign. East African forces despatched to Burma.
10 August 1945 Surrender of Japan and end of the Second World War.
1946 First National Park – Nairobi’s – established, followed by Tsavo in 1948.
1948 Amalgamation of railway systems of Kenya and Tanganyika, and linking of other services common to Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika and Zanzibar, in the East African Community.
August 1950 Banning of the Mau Mau secret society among the Kikuyu.
6 February 1952 Princess Elizabeth becomes Queen of England, on the death of King George VI, while watching game at Treetops at Nyeri.
20 October 1952 State of Emergency declared, and arrest of Mau Mau leaders.
March 1953 Massacre of all the inhabitants of village of Lari in the Rift Valley by Mau Mau guerrillas.
April 1953 Jomo Kenyatta found guilty of managing a “proscribed society” and sentenced to seven years imprisonment.
1954 First elected ministers take office in the colonial government.
21 October 1956 Capture of “General” Dedan Kimathi, and de facto end of the Mau Mau revolt.
1960 Official end of the Mau Mau Emergency.
January 1960 First Lancaster House Conference in London at which the British Government’s intention is made clear to liquidate European settlement, introduce immediately majority rule based on universal suffrage, and withdraw from the scene.
1960–61 Implementation of the “million acre scheme” whereby roughly one million acres of the “white highlands” was bought by the Government to be redistributed as smallholdings to African farmers.
12 December 1963 The Duke of Edinburgh hauls down the Union Jack in Nairobi and Kenya becomes an independent nation, with Jomo Kenyatta as its first Prime Minister.
12 December 1964 Kenya becomes a Republic; Jomo Kenyatta takes oath of office as its first President and swears in his Cabinet.
July 1967 Murder of Tom Mboya, Minister of Economic Planning and leader of the Luo people, by Kikuyu gunman.
1968 Asian exodus starts, following Africanization policy.
July 1974 Swahili declared to be the national language.
April 1977 Closing by Tanzania of Kenya/Tanzania border and dissolution of the East African Community.
May 1977 Kenya Government bans the hunting of wild animals.
22 August 1978 Death of President Jomo Kenyatta, and immediate succession of Vice-President Daniel arap Moi.
31 December 1980 Norfolk Hotel destroyed by bomb with many casualties.
August 1982 Attempted coup by members of the Kenya Air Force fails to topple the government of President Moi.
December 1983 Kenya’s population passes the twenty million mark, all set to double in the next fifteen or sixteen years.
1987 Kenya declared a one-party state, with the Kenya African National Union as the one party.
1987–8 Secret ballot replaced by system of queuing openly behind the candidate of the voter’s choice.
1989 Ivory poaching threatens the extinction of Kenya’s elephants and Dr Richard Leakey appointed Director of Wildlife Services to combat it.
For Michael Blundell Citizen of Kenya
Elspeth Huxley
NINE FACES
OF KENYA
Introduction
All anthologies reflect a personal choice: I think one should also consider the reader. The editor casts his net: what sort of fish does he hope to hook? Perhaps historians? Armchair travellers? Academics? Students? Tourists? Would-be big game hunters? Wildlife enthusiasts? Or that mythical creature the Ordinary Reader, scanning the shelves of his, or more often her, local library for something to fill in the time between favourite television programmes?
At the back of my mind I have had a special pair of readers. One is the Curious Visitor, who either contemplates a trip to Kenya and wants to find out something about the country he is about to see, or who has just been there and wants to find out more about a country that has pricked his curiosity. In a national memorial to the dead of both world wars in Canberra there is a set of stained glass windows each of which depicts a separate virtue of the fighting man: Courage, Endurance, Loyalty, Fortitude, Valour and so on. Among them is a window depicting Curiosity. I had never before thought of this as a virtue: in fact, as children we were told that it killed the cat. Not so, it seems, in Australia; and it was refreshing to see this quality, the attribute of children and journalists, so enshrined.
My second hypothetical reader is the Young Kenyan with only a sketchy knowledge of his country’s past, its peoples and its potentialities. Most of us share this ignorance of the land we live in; we stick to our patch. I am not thinking of facts learnt at school, but of the people who lived here before us, where they came from, what they did: not just the great and famous but also the humble and obscure. Kenya is a country of great diversity of peoples, cultures, races, customs and tongues, each with its own identity yet all linked together like the necklaces of beads that not so long ago provided the country’s currency, and now adorn many supple necks. The Swahili living on the coast, heir to centuries of Muslim tradition and Arabic culture, may know little of the lives of nomads of the northern deserts; the sophisticated government minister or international banker of Nairobi has little in common with the peasant woman trudging to a roadside market with the produce of her shamba on her head or back. All are part of the mosaic which evokes the Kenya of today.
I have divided this anthology, as its title indicates, into nine sections, each devoted to one aspect of what was formerly, and for thousands of years, an anonymous part of a mysterious continent; then partially a Portuguese conquest; then a British colony; and finally a sovereign republic. The arrangement is by subject rather than chronology, which I hope is more convenient for the reader, who can pick and choose according to his interest, whether it lies in wildlife or exploration, in poetry or in war. Inevitably, the
subjects sometimes overlap.
I must emphasize what this anthology is not. It is not a political history, or any other kind of history, as such. Aspects of history come into it of course, but I have tried to steer clear of politics. Politics, that is, in the narrow sense of polemics revolving round the issues of the day; in the wider sense, all the major events of history are, I suppose, rooted in political decisions made by conquerors and kings, by priests and parliaments, even by philosophers and scribes. But chronicles of dead and decided issues, however compelling in their day, are, save to professional historians, as stale as old cabbage leaves twenty, thirty, forty years on.
I have tried, so far as possible, to select extracts only from first-hand accounts – “I was there”, either as actor or as eyewitness. This has not always been possible, but it has remained the aim. For this reason I originally ruled out the subject of pre-history on the grounds that fossils cannot write, and that a subject so complex and disputatious must lead the layman into dangerous waters. It was pointed out to me, however, that recent discoveries which support the theory that here, in East Africa, is the likely site of the origins of mankind and his immediate ancestors, are too important to be left out. I cannot attempt to set these discoveries in their pre-historical context, but fortunately members of the remarkable family who have made or inaugurated them – Dr Louis Leakey, his wife Dr Mary and their son Dr Richard – have described them in vivid and popular as well as in scientific terms. I have therefore included as a prologue extracts which describe three of their major finds at the moment of discovery.
When compiling an anthology about a country one ought to be able to define it, but until recent times this was impossible. Today’s Kenya was formerly just part of eastern Africa, unpartitioned, boundless and, from a European point of view, unexplored. Not until 1895, when a British Protectorate was declared, did it receive a name, then British East Africa; not until 1920 did it become Kenya. Since the first records began, around AD 100, the story of today’s Kenya was the story of the coast, colonized by Arabs and Persians probably in the seventh and eighth centuries, conquered by the Portuguese at the start of the sixteenth century, reconquered by the Arabs and ruled from Zanzibar, then taken over by the British when the “opening up” of the interior began. Following millennia when life went on more or less unchanged, and such changes as occurred went unrecorded, changes of revolutionary proportions were telescoped into roughly seventy years. As from the eggs of crocodiles buried in the sand, a modern state emerged complete with all its limbs and brains and senses, to hurry down to the dangerous and uncertain waters of today’s capricious world.
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