Nine Faces Of Kenya

by Elspeth Huxley

  In 1947 Mr Peter Greensmith, equipped with no more horticultural training than war-time service in the Royal Navy could afford, walked with mounting gloom from the station along Government Road. Dusty, shadeless, unkempt and filthy – he remembers human excreta and a dead dog – the place stank.

  Mr Greensmith’s disgusted inclination was to take the next train back to Mombasa and never set foot in the place again. But he had the promise of a job with a firm of nurserymen. Some years later, he answered an advertisement, secured a junior municipal post and, remembering his dreadful first impression, resolved to do his utmost to brighten up the city.

  Before long, he found himself in charge of its all but non-existent parks. I don’t know when he started on the bougainvillaeas, which today give Nairobi half its character, these and the jacarandas and hibiscuses: horticulturally it’s a bougainvillaea town. And now he revealed not only the greenest of fingers, but a talent for making plants play tricks. Bougainvillaeas and bignonias are creepers and before that had always crept, or climbed rather, clinging to veranda-posts, trees, roofs, walls, anything. Mr Greensmith obliged bougainvillaeas to stand on their own feet, like standard roses, and bignonias to creep about on the ground like a vetch; hence the glories of Princess Elizabeth Way. The idea of turning bougainvillaeas into standards came to him, he says, in a flash one day when he noticed a creeper that had been snapped off in a storm.

  Besides the major city park, umbrageous and set with flowering trees, little parks have sprung up in odd corners; every roundabout bulges with creepers and succulents, every verge with trained, obedient shrubs. No wonder the mayor, Alderman Charles Rubia, and his councillors are proud of what has been done.

  Forks and Hope Elspeth Huxley.

  1978

  It was mid-morning and the open-air pavement terrace attached to the New Stanley Hotel was crowded with tourists dressed for Africa. Bush-shirts and sun hats banded with leopard skin of synthetic garishness were everywhere in evidence. Cameras and binoculars dangled from sun-tanned necks. German, French and American voices rang in the air. Out on the street was parked a convoy of zebra-striped Volkswagen vans. The smell of safari – of tented bush, of elephant, of hippopotamus, of lion – suffused the bright morning. Noisy traffic choked the broad expanse of Kenyatta Avenue. Fashionably dressed blacks streamed along the pavements, the men carrying briefcases, the women swinging handbags. Nairobi vibrated with cosmopolitan splendour. A crippled beggar, his knees padded with foam rubber, his hands encased in sandals, crawled nimbly on the periphery of the terrace. “Jambo … jambo …” The waiters, smartly dressed in white and green tunics, kept him at bay. A thorn tree, rising centrally from the terrace, threw a dappled green shade across the metal tables.

  Without asking if they could, two Americans came over and sat down at my table. They were an oddly contrasting pair. One was well over six foot tall, slope-shouldered and concave-stomached. His hair, frizzed and teased out in “Afro” style, formed a dark, woolly halo; his skin, bronzed and toughened by exposure to the sun, was leathery in appearance. The other was at least six inches shorter and anaemically white. He had lank, shoulder-length hair. His pale blue eyes, unfocussed and restless, hinted at a kind of semi-idiocy. The tall one produced a roll of cigarette paper and a packet of loose tobacco.

  “Got any stuff on you, Stan?” The idiot boy drummed his ivory-coloured fingers on the table.

  “No,” Stan said, carefully sprinkling tobacco down the length of the paper.

  “And even if I had I wouldn’t let you score off me. You smoke too damned much, Andy.”

  “I feel awful, Stan.” Andy’s parted lips drooled as he watched Stan manipulate the tobacco.

  “I’m not surprised,” Stan said. “What sort of crap were you on last night?”

  “They were only mandies, Stan.”

  “You’ll kill yourself one of these days,” Stan said. “But I’m not going to pay your funeral expenses.” He ran his tongue down the edges of the paper and sealed the tube. “Why do you do it? Why do you feed yourself all that shit?”

  “I get bored easily, Stan. I need a lift….” He waved at two black girls. They came over. They sat down.

  Stan lit the cigarette. He put his arm round the neck of the girl sitting next to him. “Why aren’t you out and about looking for work, sweetie?”

  “I want a beer,” she said, pouting petulantly. “I’m tired.” She was a strange-looking creature. The lobe of her right ear was missing – it looked as if it had been bitten off; her knees were patterned with blotched pink patches; a scar crossed one of her cheeks diagonally.

  “Beer makes you fat, sweetie. It’s bad for business. I don’t get turned on by fat chicks. Not even by fat black chicks.” He pulled her truncated ear. She scowled, shaking off his embrace, and snapped her fingers at a passing waiter. She ordered two beers.

  “I’m not paying for two beers,” Stan said.

  “I’ll pay for my own,” the other girl said. Disdainfully, she flung a handful of coins on the table. She muttered something. Both girls laughed.

  “What did she say?” Stan asked.

  “Nothing.”

  Stan grabbed her wrist. “I want to know.”

  “She said that mzungus (white people) are all the same.”

  “Where’d you pick them up?” Stan asked Andy.

  “She’s a friend,” Andy said. “I got lots of friends.”

  “Yeah …”

  “I got lots of friends,” Andy said. “Lots and lots of friends.” His eyes roamed the terrace. “Everywhere I go I make friends …”

  But Stan was not listening. He was looking speculatively at me.

  “From distant parts?”

  I nodded.

  “What kind of currency are you carrying?”

  I told him.

  He clucked his tongue. “Sterling … that’s not so good. Still, I could give you eighteen shillings to the pound.”

  I said I preferred to change my money legally.

  He laughed. “Hear that, Andy? The guy says he prefers to change his money legally.”

  “The guy’s a sucker,” Andy said.

  Stan leaned towards me. “How about a woman?”

  “Not now, thanks.”

  “A boy?”

  “You deal in those too?”

  “I deal in most things – currency, dope, women, boys. I’ll fix you up with anything you want. You could say I’m one of the pillars of the tourist trade in these parts.”

  “They allow you a work permit for that?”

  Stan’s laughter echoed across the terrace. “Hear that, Andy? The guy wants to know if we have work permits.”

  Even the girls were amused.

  “We’ve got friends,” Andy said. “We’ve got lots and lots of friends. When you got lots of friends like we have you don’t need a work permit.”

  “In a place like this,” Stan said, “you can get away with murder if you know the right people. Money talks in this country.”

  “Lots of friends,” Andy said. “We’ve got lots and lots of friends.”

  “Business must be good.”

  “Booming,” Stan said. “The only comparison is Jo’burg. Nairobi is the finest city north of South.”

  North of South Shiva Naipaul.

  Circa 1980

  The sky was a hot clear blue. Not a promise of a drop of rain that August.

  The drought had taken a heavy toll in the park. The ground was a deep dusty brown, bare and parched. Dried bits of grass stuck forlornly out of the numerous cracks like pleading tongues out of hell screaming for a drop of water. Dry leaves shed by the thirsty trees ran rustling in front of the light breeze. This city, in a desperate effort to keep itself beautiful, had watered the more delicate flowers planted like oasis islands at various points over the dirty brown park.

  The vast park quietly shimmered in the oppressive sun. The boat-house sat sadly hunched over the shoulder of the lake, the dirty muddy water lapping softly at its withdrawn
feet. Up the hill to the west the red-tiled roof of the cathedral was visible half-hidden among the tall dark blue gums, the gaunt walls giving it an appearance as ominous as the castle of Count Dracula. Among the trees higher up the hill, there were more modern fortresses, the ministerial offices, towering over the aged blue gums with youthful impunity, hundreds of glass windows winking at the park below. Across the park from the ministerial offices was the city itself, lying low, a dormant dragon growling with clogged-up traffic. The huge highway stretched taut between them restrained the city from intruding on the park.

  From the park grounds, if one lay facing east, one looked up straight into the frowning faces of the parliament and city hall clocks. Every hour on the dot the two struck suddenly together, regulating the tired city’s pulse and reminding the park loungers just how many hours they had wasted lying idle, pleading with them to get up and be useful. Mostly the pleas went unheeded. But every now and then a misplaced person rose with a start, squinted up at the clocks’ accusing fingers and, brushing grass and dust from his bottom, slunk defeatedly across the highway into the city maze. Others shook their heads defiantly at the insistent clocks, cursed them loudly and, facing the other way, went back to sleep. These were the insolent few. If they had anywhere to go at all, they did not want to go there.

  Cars brayed on the highway. Brakes shrieked. Ambulances wailed away, racing against death. Half a kilometre away trains whistled urgently. Time to go. Go where? The park people were there to stay. They had arrived. The sounds were sounds from another world.

  On the stroke of one the dam burst. A flood of hungry office workers gushed out of the ministerial offices, and in a furiously ravenous torrent swept down the hill. They came in armies.

  Time had once again thrown the floodgates open. They swarmed down the hill into the park, past the first icecream man, round the lakes to the eastern exit. The second icecream man blocked the only way on to the highway, determined to make a sale today. The swarm swirled round him and over him and away. Today, like yesterday and the day before, not one bar of icecream was bought by the hungry ones. Once across the highway, the waves disintegrated into individuals and dispersed. Some rushed for the meat-roasting places down River Road, others joined the queues at the numerous fish-and-chip joints where they dutifully swallowed soggy fried chips with watered-down ketchup. In a few seconds the thousand-or-so-strong swarm had been swallowed up by the yawning concrete jungle. With its usual idle curiosity the sleepy park witnessed this spectacle. The park waited. In an hour the tide would return.

  The parched park was almost dead, alive only with a few idlers and the dust-raising wind, the dry fallen leaves scampering to hide from the hot breeze which, like the hungry humans, blew down the narrow path, across the highway and into the humming city. The icecream man’s bell still rang lonely and unwelcome like a lost leper’s warning bell.

  Under the gnarled bare trees, in fact anywhere there was the slightest shade, a few men lay half awake hiding from the tormenting sun. A shaggy, thin man sat under a shrub, scratching numbers and letters on his black dry skin with a used match. By his side were the two oversize fruit baskets he had been selling from all morning and which he would resume hawking after the lunch break. Now he scratched his head with the matchstick and tried to balance the morning’s sales. He mumbled to himself, cursed and, rolling up his trouser legs, continued writing on his thigh. Finally he flung the stick away and, wetting his palm with saliva, violently erased what he had scribbled. Then he fell unceremoniously on his back and covered his rough bearded face with two bony hands.

  On the lake a couple of men paddled vigorously in two small hired boats. A few others sat on the cement bank, unshod feet swinging only a few inches above the dirty grey water and, ignoring the icecream man’s cries, watched the boaters. With undivided interest they witnessed every move, every paddle stroke. Some sat alone muttering to themselves. Those who sat in twos or threes communicated only in monosyllables. Every day the same watchers watched the same rowers move their boats over the lake and under the bridges; every day unconsciously reacting to the maxim that spectating is the next best thing to participating.

  Meja Mwangi Incident in the Park. From An Anthology of East African Short Stories, ed. Valerie Kibera.

  1987

  Foreigners who know Kenya tend to like it. Compared to most of its neighbours, they say, Kenya is paradise. It is pragmatic, generally efficient, and a pleasant place to visit. I arrived at Jomo Kenyatta Airport in Nairobi after leaving the Organization of African Unity summit in Addis Ababa. A policeman tried to hustle a handout, but he was polite and his uniform was clean. He scurried away when I suggested that importuning the public was bad form.

  At the summit, Kenya had joined the chorus in demanding total isolation of South Africa. But I was back to reality. A lilting voice on the public-address system announced, “Olympic Airways for Johannesburg is boarding at gate number four.”

  In the comfortable hotels, lavish restaurants, and immaculate game parks, life can approach the idyllic. I visited a friend in the Ngong Hills, and hiked around the neighbourhood. Gardens were lush and the unmistakable African air was soft and peaceful. Night fell, and I flicked on what I thought was the light. A bloodcurdling howl arose, sending every neighbour within earshot leaping for his elephant gun. I had turned on the burglar-bandit-Mau Mau alarm.

  Kenya grapples with its identity with a blend of pain and panache that only Africa can manage. It is a modern state, with the trappings of high technology. But in 1987 the cold chamber at Nairobi’s morgue held a man locked in an ancient tribal conflict. Silvano Melea Otieno, a highly respected Kenyan lawyer, died of a heart attack in Nairobi. He was a Luo. His wife is an aristocratic descendant of Kikuyu chiefs. When she ordered the body buried in family ground in the Ngong Hills, Otieno’s family objected bitterly. The body had to be buried in Luo territory, where survivors could make sacrifices. Luos did not leave their dead to wander alone in the bush.

  The case went to the high court. Each day, Luos in traditional dress sobbed and danced outside the courtroom. Each evening, an anchorman in coat and tie reported the news on national television.

  Squandering Eden Mort Rosenblum and Doug Williamson.

  Mombasa

  A Picture of Paradise.

  Mombasa has all the look of a picture of Paradise, painted by a small child. The deep Sea-arm round the island forms an ideal harbour; the land is made out of whitish coral-cliff grown with broad green mango trees and fantastic bald grey Baobab trees. The Sea at Mombasa is as blue as a cornflower, and, outside the inlet to the harbour, the long breakers of the Indian Ocean draw a thin crooked white line, and give out a low thunder even in the calmest weather. The narrow-streeted town of Mombasa is all built from coral-rock, in pretty shades of buff, rose and ochre, and above the town rises the massive old Fortress, with walls and embrasure, where three hundred years ago the Portuguese and the Arabs held out against one another; it displays stronger colours than the town, as if it had, in the course of the ages, from its high site drunk in more than one stormy sunset.

  The flamboyant red Acacia flowers in the gardens of Mombasa, unbelievably intense of colour and delicate of leaf. The sun burns and scorches Mombasa; the air is salt here, the breeze brings in every day fresh supplies of brine from the East, and the soil itself is salted so that very little grass grows, and the ground is bare like a dancing-floor. But the ancient mango trees have a dense dark-green foliage and give benignant shade; they create a circular pool of black coolness underneath them. More than any other tree that I know of, they suggest a place to meet in, a centre for human intercourse; they are as sociable as the village-wells. Big markets are held under the mango trees, and the ground round their trunks is covered with hen-coops, and piled up water-melons….

  Out of Africa Karen Blixen.

  Life with a Hindu family.

  When I was there, the National Museums of Kenya were conducting a salvage operation on a Portuguese ship ly
ing at the bottom of the sea just off the fort. People from several nationalities took part in this endeavour; divers went down from a special vessel anchored in the bay and at the fort rooms were set aside to catalogue and preserve the artefacts.

  I came to know a Welsh girl attached to this operation and she introduced me to the Hindu family with whom she was staying, which led to my being invited to share their vegetarian meals at midday and in the evening and they also arranged for me to sleep at the temple of the Hindu Union. This family lived in the old town of Mombasa, in a house off an alley off a sidestreet off the main thoroughfare. As one pulled the bell cord outside their secretive yard gate they operated a system of pulleys from upstairs to unlatch the door. Passing through the courtyard and up the open-air stairs, one found oneself in a higgledy-piggledy but airy first-floor flat with rooms leading off in every direction, a kitchen, a scullery, various sitting rooms and bedrooms. The father, a prosperous businessman, was often away in Nairobi or Kisumu or abroad, but mother was the calm centre of the family, cooking mouthwatering meals and bringing up three teenage children. In one of their rooms they had an ashram, a little corner with figures of divinities in front of which they lovingly placed small offerings of food and flowers. This was not done from a sense of duty or to placate fate, but more out of gratitude for the blessings of life.

  At the temple where I slept there was also an altar with various deities which was just as lovingly looked after by the priest. Every morning at ten past five and every evening at dusk he was joined by other residents of the temple and members of the Hindu community outside for a service of bell ringing. This was an energetic affair accompanied by the blowing of a conch horn into all four compass directions and on the first morning, when it started in the courtyard just outside my bedroom, I nearly fell out of bed. The evening service was a more sociable gathering; families arrived well before time and the women sat on the floor for a chat while their children played around the goddesses and in the courtyard. My abiding memory of these services is that they were happy celebrations of the end of the day.