Nine Faces Of Kenya

by Elspeth Huxley

  It was a scene as old as time, and was surely the closest one could hope to get to the anima mundi; the serene, uncorrupted soul of the world.

  Black Moon, Jade Sea Ian Meredith Hughes.

  In recent times, foreign aid has focussed on the people from whom Lake Turkana derives its modem name.

  The Scandinavians are good donors. They owe little to the developing world but give more per capita than anyone else. Like others, they make serious mistakes; no one has long experience in development. But unlike most, they study their mistakes and admit them. The Turkana disaster is described in excruciating, anguished detail in an evaluation report ordered by the Norwegian aid agency.

  The Turkana are cattle herders, numbering 220,000, who are especially susceptible to drought on their bare hills of northern Kenya. What they needed, the Norwegians decided, was a fishery. The first step was a handsome coldstorage plant, at a cost of $2 million, and a $20 million road to connect it to the nearest highway. All things being equal, the Turkana Fisherman’s Cooperative Society would sell Nile perch and tilapia to cities down south.

  But freezing the fish, from Turkana room temperature (about 100 degrees), took more electricity than the region could provide. After a few days, operators cut the power and created, as the Washington Post’s Blaine Harden put it, “Africa’s most handsome dried-fish warehouse.”

  Then, part of the lake vanished, the part where eighty per cent of the fish were caught. Norwegian planners had been thrown off by a temporary boom. “When we see a lake, we think in fairly static terms,” remarked an official from Norad, the Norwegian aid agency. “We see a lake, we assume it will be there for 100 million years.” In fact, the lake dried every few decades, whenever the Omo River from Ethiopia ran low because of the drought against which the fishery was supposed to protect the Turkana.

  But officials had already herded 20,000 Turkanas to the shores of the lake, where they were given nets, boats, and fishing lessons. They had lost their livestock – victim of overcrowding and disease along the inhospitable lake banks – and they were destitute. Like so many Africans in so many other such failed schemes, they turned to food aid.

  As a symbolic white elephant, the Norwegian research vessel Iji sits in the mud and, according to the donors’ report, “appears to be damaged beyond the possibility of repair.”

  Squandering Eden Mort Rosenblum and Doug Williamson.

  Dance, Diet and Adornment

  The dance was perhaps the supreme art form of the East African. Every important event had its appropriate dance: war, marriage, harvest and just enjoyment. This account is of a war dance held in 1907 by the Kikuyu.

  The performance began at 2.30pm. At that hour a lad suddenly burst, shrieking, through the crowd, and tore down the length of ground, crying out that a Masai raiding party were on them, and were sweeping off the cattle, etc. He then disappeared for good. After due pause, to allow this appalling news to go home, a young warrior appeared in a lather of sweat and in an exhausted state, who reported to the audience what he had seen when scouting. As he finished speaking, far down in the valley below was faintly heard the war song, which rapidly gained in volume of sound as the warriors mounted the winding path. They soon appeared from amongst the trees as a long single file, faultlessly accoutred and moving in a conventionally stealthy way. Each man kept perfect distance and step, and made exactly the same complicated gestures as his fellow….

  Finally the General Officer Commanding left the arena unobserved and took up a position behind the spectators at one end of the ground, in fact just behind us. Suddenly, at his shout, the wall of spectators broke and separated on his either hand, and down the slope he came like a whirlwind, a magnificent specimen of savage manhood, with his shield half raised and his spear poised, each of which he slightly raised still more as he sprang with a yell into the air at intervals of about thirty yards, by means of the peculiar trick previously mentioned of jumping vertically upwards from one apparently stiffened leg. Numbers of the warriors thus independently burst into the arena, and were received by the women with rounds of applause, which varied considerably in degree according to the popularity or the individual. Applause was given by the women throwing one leg forward and then inclining from the waist, whilst at the same time they feigned as it were to throw their handkerchiefs, in the form of a bouquet of leaves, to the favoured individual. As this action is done rhythmically by all, whilst at the same time they utter a compliment, the effect, as one looks down the encompassing wall of spectators, is most pleasing. When a woman has made her complimentary remarks anent the individual, she joins her fellows in uttering the peculiar cry of lu-lu-lu-lu-lu-lu, rendered as a descending scale, which has a liquid sound like water gurgling from a calabash. It much resembles the note of one of the native birds that greets the traveller in all directions in the freshness of the dawn in this part of Africa. Thus the dance ended, having lasted about an hour and a half.

  With a Prehistoric People W. S. and K. Routledge.

  Broadly speaking, diet had, and has, two separate bases: milk and blood, the staple of cattle/camel owning nomads, and cereals and pulses, the staple of the cultivators. Meat, as a rule, was common to both groups but for the most part eaten only on ceremonial occasions; cattle, being currency, were too valuable to be killed just for a meal. As regards wild animals, customs varied. The Dorobo (more correctly Okiek) lived mainly on their flesh. Many peoples prized especially the flesh of elephants, falling avidly upon it and eating it raw. The Maasai shunned the meat of almost all wild animals. Some African delicacies did not appeal to European tastes.

  At the next village I went ashore for some food. A native had killed a crocodile the day before, and it was now being cooked. The man who killed it was the hero of the village; he looked very happy, for the feat conferred on him the rights of manhood, and he could now be married. I made the usual sign of hunger, and the kind-hearted natives pressed on me the best they could offer. Crocodile intestine cut open and baked in the ashes of a wood fire is esteemed the greatest delicacy in the Pokomo bill of fare, and a supply of this was at once offered me. I pointed to some old Indian corn cobs beside the fire, and signed to them that I should prefer some of these. The natives appeared a little hurt at my low tastes, and pressed the crocodile’s guts so warmly upon me that I felt bound to accept them, and grin with gratitude, if not with pleasure.

  The Great Rift Valley J. W. Gregory.

  That night I drank my first bowl of blood. It had been brought over from the next manyatta and was slightly congealed, but Orip, a daughter of the house, had kept it for me. She mixed in a little milk and offered it to me with a grin. I sealed off my sensibilities and shut my eyes. It slid down my throat in a rush and I was wiping my beard, smiling and saying how good it was. I did not mind it at all really, but I did find the soup Orip had made pretty nauseating. Pieces of offal were cut and boiled together with the goat’s chopped but unwashed stomach. The result was a hot green morass with oily blobs floating in the steam. Stomachless soup was fine for me but like chips without vinegar for the Shangalla. I stuck to tea and milk.

  Another Land, Another Sea Stephen Pern.

  The supposed dietary habits of Europeans could be no less disconcerting to Africans.

  It is a curious fact that most Nandi women think that Europeans eat Nandi girls. I think the idea started when, some years ago, Dr Mann of Kisumu, under whose care a Nandi girl died, held a post-mortem examination in the mortuary and took some anatomical specimens home with him for diagnosis at his leisure. This was observed by some of the dead girl’s friends, who at once jumped to the conclusion that the mortuary was Mann’s private larder and that a particularly delicate morsel was being taken home for the evening meal.

  Eating people isn’t wrong.

  I have a corporal in my company who is a Manyema, and this tribe practise cannibalism insofar as they eat their enemies, thereby gaining the enemy’s strength. When this man returned from patrol yesterday he shouldered arms w
ith his left hand level with his belt and to my amazement I saw five other black hands stuck in his belt. I asked him the reason and he said they were for his supper, explaining that the fingers are the tenderest part of a man. I made him bury the hands and told him I would talk to him today. He obviously did not think he had done anything wrong. I searched the Army Act in vain for any offence of that nature. This moring I had him up and told him that he must not in future mutilate his enemies. I then asked him about cannibalism; he tells me that the fingers are the most succulent, adding: “But the best of all is the buttocks of a young girl.”

  Kenya Diary 1902–1906 Richard Meinterzhagen.

  Dinner with the Sultan of Zanzibar.

  The Palace itself was built in a style I came to call tea-planter’s manorial. As we were foreigners, we ate in the European manner, with cutlery, rather than our right hands. European appearances, however, were only knife-deep. First of all the banquet was an all-male affair. The servants who brought in the food were pitch-black and later in the day I was to pick up the insistent whisper that they were still slaves in all but name, and eunuchs to boot. The only hints of feminine presence were odd glimpses I caught of saffron-coloured faces with large black eyes made larger and darker by a liberal use of mascara, peering curiously and furtively at our table, then vanishing as they caught my eye. The food too was far from European and of a kind that I had never encountered before. As might have been expected in the Sultan’s palace, it was the best the island could produce.

  The main foundation of the meal was rice. It was accompanied by fish, mutton and, above all, a supremely roasted chicken. The fish and the mutton as far as I remember were not exceptional but the chicken course deserves a paragraph to itself. First of all, however, there was the rice. The savour of it is still with me. I was from a country where rice is eaten as a matter of course at all main meals. Moreover, I had just come from the greatest rice countries of the world, Japan, China, the Straits of Malacca, India and Ceylon – yet I had never eaten rice like it. The first experience of anything in life, just by virtue of being first, has a unique impact. I was to eat similar rice in Mombasa, in the ancient Arab port of Lamu and in Dar-es-Salaam but it never compared to that first experience in Zanzibar….

  The person mainly responsible was a young German chef in Nairobi who had not only been to Zanzibar but cooked in Persia as well. He mentioned five elements that were of fundamental importance to the success of the dish: patience, time – from start to finish in his estimation you could not do the dish in less than twelve hours – rice consisting only of unblemished grain, water with a considerable content of chalk and a wood fire. The royal household of Zanzibar was so full of servants, to say nothing of a harem full of idle women, that time and patience could not have been lacking, and this would explain why the rice served there was so good. I can understand that the modern cook’s impatient imagination might boggle at the preparation and the labour involved, just as I am convinced that once a gourmet tried such rice he would insist on having it again and again. For the truth is that in cooking as in all other problems of living, short cuts are retrogressive, leading only to increasingly barbaric solutions. In the kitchen, the longest way round is still the shortest way to the perfect dish.

  I learned how this young chef would get his assistants to select each grain of rice specially some twelve hours before cooking the dish. Any grain that was in the least bit damaged or mis-formed was rejected and when the collection was complete the rice was washed thoroughly twice. I reminded him of an Italian kitchen proverb: “Wash your face, wash your hands, wash your feet but never wash rice because rice is not proud.” He dismissed this with scorn as another example of how the Mediterraneans undercook everything from beef and lamb to rice and pasta. He went on to explain that the twice-washed rice was placed in a flat dish, just covered with water and layers of white clean linen pressed into the dish to protect it from dust. On top of the linen some rock salt was put, both to keep the linen pressed down firmly on the rice and also to impart its own savour, through the damp cloth, to the grains. So dedicated a cook was he that he preferred one form of rock salt to all others – it was gathered in an Asiatic desert and it gave the dish, he claimed, something no other salt could. Two hours before cooking, the rice was extracted from the dish and washed again, parboiled until it whitened and then drained. The rice was then put, in layers, in a large iron pot – in Persia the pot is of copper – and each layer covered with small lumps of butter or ghee, until the pot was about three-quarters full. It was then covered again with several folds of dry cloth, in order to absorb and seal in the steam. It was most important, he said, that the lid of the pot should be made to fit so that no steam could escape.

  The rice was then cooked over a wooden fire, not only from underneath the pot but also by charcoal placed on the lid. The great secret was to ensure that the rice was cooked at a constant temperature. He said that a dedicated cook in Persia would not allow even an earthquake to distract him from attending in person to this phase of the operation. Patiently, squatting by his fire, he would watch the flame, one minute encouraging the heat by fanning the coals with a palm leaf, the next damping it down with a dash of water and constantly renewing the live coals on the lid. All this lasted about an hour and when the lid was finally removed one would see that the rice had risen to the brim, white and light as snow in the middle and at the sides just faintly bronzed, with each grain of rice doubled in size. It was then ready to be served, steaming and fragrant. And that, precisely, is how the Sultan offered it to us in Zanzibar.

  First catch Your Eland Laurens van der Post.

  Adornment of the body was a major African art. Angela Fisher spent seven years recording the ingenious forms of ornament devised by different peoples.

  Samburu girls like to wear many strands of loose beads rather than the flat collars favoured by their neighbours the Maasai. The beads are gifts from admirers, and by the age of fifteen or sixteen the girls should have collected enough to invite a proposal of marriage. It is held by Samburu men that women do not have enough beads until their chin is supported by their necklaces.

  To show that they have given birth to their first son, Rendile women of the northern desert wear their hair in a cockscomb made from mud, animal fat and ochre. This permanent fixture is constantly repaired, and will be worn until the boy is circumcised or until a close male relative dies, when the head will be shaved. Highly prized necklaces of doum palm fibres bound together with strips of ochred cloth are received at marriage. When elephants were numerous these necklaces were made of hairs from an elephant’s tail.

  Before imported glass beads were readily available in any quantity jewellery was made sometimes of iron and clay but mainly of bone, horn, hair, wood, roots and seeds. Ostrich eggshells were chipped and rounded into beads, a process used in Kenya since at least 7,000 BC.

  Turkana men say of a lovely woman: “It is the things she wears that make her beautiful.” When a young girl is ready for marriage she covers her body with ochre and fat, and wears an elaborate bead pendant necklace and an ostrich feather in her hair. An ostrich eggshell belt holds up her long beaded skirt.

  Clay is traditionally used by Turkana men to fashion their elaborate hairstyles. The hair is twisted into small plaits which are covered with clay and shaped into a bun on top of the head. Status is shown by inserting ostrich feathers into holders of cow gut or macramé, which are placed in the hair while the clay is still wet. The hairstyle may take up to three days to perfect, and is meticulously re-made every three months.

  Africa Adorned Angela Fisher.

  One of the aims of the early Christian missionaries was to persuade the local people to substitute European forms of clothing for their own. Sometimes there were setbacks.

  One day an old woman came to see me, with whom I had a lengthened conversation, leading up to the one thing needful. I deeply sympathized with the old creature, for her tiny apron was almost worn out, and I thought of how she m
ight appreciate a garment to cover her nakedness. I measured her for a loose gown, and asked her to wait while I made something for her. The scissors were soon plied on a piece of calico and the garment cut out. Having a little hand sewing machine I was not long in running it together. Seeing that she was getting impatient I tried to interest her in the machine while the cloth was being fed to the needle as quickly as possible. To make her garment more pleasing and acceptable, I trimmed it with a band of red turkey muslin. A button-hole was worked at the neck, and a showy brass button of good size was attached, and the garment was then ready to be worn.

  I enshrouded the old dame with the surplice, and as soon as it was buttoned on her she ran off at full speed, never stopping until she vanished from my sight among the bushes. There, as the sequel proved, she divested herself of the garment, threw it to the winds, and went home in the happy nude state to which she had been accustomed all her days.

  In the Heart of Savagedom Rachel Stuart Watt.

  Illness and Death

  The prevalence of spirits.

  The seasons, and all major events in life, are controlled by spirits. At the coast before the great rains, cattle will sometimes be taken down to the water’s edge and sacrificed at dawn to the rising sun. As their blood mingles with the white surf, prayers are said for the blessing of rain. All along the coast there exist caves in which prayers are still said to numerous malign or benevolent spirits. The priest or spirit healer stands in a shaft of light under a hole in the roof of the cave; lifting his arms in prayer he is bathed in soft light, and benefactions from the spirit world flow through him, bringing ordinary men and women hope.