Nine Faces Of Kenya

by Elspeth Huxley

  If a man is caught stealing, or if a theft is brought home to him, he is beaten and fined four times the value of the stolen property. The fine has to be paid by the relations if the man is himself too poor. Should a thief be caught a second time, or even suspected, he is tortured. A thong or bow-string is tied tightly round his head just above his eyebrows and ears, and the ends after being twisted are fixed to stakes in the ground. They are then beaten with sticks which makes the thong cut deeply into the flesh. Twigs are also thrust in underneath the thong, and water is poured over the man’s head to make the wound smart. After a couple of hours of this torture, during which time the wretched man has seen his houses and granaries burnt, his crops destroyed, and half his goats and cattle confiscated, he is released; but he bears the mark of the thong and is branded as a thief to his dying day.

  On the occasion of a third theft the thief is killed and his goats and cattle slaughtered. The animals are not killed in the ordinary way, but are thrown on their sides and cut or hacked in half. The mode of execution adopted is partial strangulation, after which the person is clubbed to death. Two thongs are tied tightly round the neck and pulled in opposite directions by about twenty people; other people then rush in and use their clubs.

  If a woman steals, she is severely beaten the first time, and on the second occasion she is tied up and thrashed with stinging nettles, her face and body being in a terrible state before she is released. The same treatment is meted out to children; and if goats enter the plantations they are also tortured with stinging nettles, which are thrust up their nostrils, into their mouths, and wherever they are most vulnerable.

  The Nandi A. C. Hollis.

  Honesty carried to extremes among the Wakamba.

  Another characteristic which was lovable and almost unbelievable was their inability to steal any inanimate thing. Theft of livestock was an honourable pastime; but things, at this period of their history, were sacred. To possess something to which they had no right was unthinkable. Such things had to be restored to their rightful owner. So thought a Mukamba tribesman who had been arrested and tried on a charge of cattle thieving, found guilty and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment which entailed his transfer to the central prison in Nairobi. On the way there, handcuffed and escorted, he bolted one night back to his own country, and took good care not to be caught again. Within a week a messenger brought in the handcuffs to me with an apology from the thief. He had had difficulty in sliding them off or he would have returned them sooner. To suppose that this was a gesture of defiance or bravado would argue a complete misunderstanding of their moral code.

  Lion in the Morning Henry Seaton.

  In colonial times enforcement of law and order became the function of the British. To the District Commissioner fell the delicate task of blending the old with the new.

  Outside the township boundaries, the Chiefs and Headmen administered their own tribes with the backing of the District Commissioner, who nevertheless interfered as little as possible. It was his job to see that the people ruled themselves and dealt out summary justice according to their own customs, which varied with their religion and history. For example, if a man killed another in a fight and there was insufficient evidence to bring a case of murder, it would usually be settled with a payment of “dia” or bloodmoney by the family of the survivor to the family of the deceased. The amount was fixed by custom, and the matter would be dealt with at a baraza or big open meeting called by the Chief. In such cases the Chief knew he had the backing of the District Commissioner, and if the people concerned refused to abide by the Chief’s edicts, he could appeal to the District Commissioner to intervene. Equally, any aggrieved person also had the right to appeal to the District Commissioner if he felt he had been unfairly treated, though this rarely happened. For a straight case of murder, the matter was reported to the Police or the District Commissioner, and the District Commissioner conducted the preliminary inquiries, writing down all the evidence in longhand. Among the tribespeople in the desert there was remarkably little petty crime. One man would not steal from another of the same tribe. His small daughter would be Perfectly safe herding the family goats out of his sight – unless some raiding party from over the border came her way. Rape was rare except in border incidents. Straight killings were not so rare.

  Within the township boundary it was a very different state of affairs. The population of the township at Marsabit was small, but the people were mixed. Outwardly it looked prim and neat, each plot carefully swept and cared for, each with its own clump of bananas and pomegranates and limes. But with many different people living cheek by jowl there was bound to be friction. There were the Goan and Indian traders, many of them with local wives, the half-castes who fitted in nowhere, the alien Somalis, the Pakistani carpenter and all his relatives, the Hindu tailor, the keeper of the little “hoteli” who hailed from Uganda, and old government servants who had been given permission to settle there. There were also those who by reason of some infirmity were unable to live the nomadic life in the bush and had been cast away in youth. This small but pathetic class had nothing and lived from day to day. It was small wonder that there were numbers of petty crimes as well as breaches of the peace and some bizarre litigation. Every District Commissioner had magisterial powers, and the cases that came before his court ranged from murder and manslaughter, being in the area without a pass, illegal possession of firearms, to cases such as one when he was called upon to lay down just what the client could expect from the local “Magdalene” in return for the shilling fee she had charged. He would have to listen to family wrangles, complaints about wild animals damaging crops, accusations that the Kikuyu dresser at the small dispensary withheld the magic of his sindano (hypodermic syringe) unless handsomely bribed; claims that the interpreter had accepted a bribe and given no value in return; or simply that the wells were running dry.

  To My Wife-Fifty Camels Alys Reece.

  The District Commissioner was almost everything to almost everyone.

  The DC was a man of many parts. Thrashed in his youth for daring to read Stalky & Co. in preference to Eric or Little by Little, admonished by no less than three Anglican bishops for his many small sins, while still young he left England to complete an education in Tasmania, but spent most of his time in and about his father’s stables. He became an exceptionally fine horseman. There hung on a wall of his house in Kitui a silver-mounted riding-whip engraved with the words “To one of my straightest riders”; it had been presented to him by the Master of the Kangaroo Hunt. In the closing stages of the Boer War he arrived in South Africa too late to see active service, so he declined any medals, and later joined the Constabulary where, for a time, he took charge of the audit department. With the retrenchment of English staff which soon followed the peace, he left that job, came up the East Coast to Mombasa and enrolled as a stock-inspector. Helped by an uncle, who was then Commissioner for Lands, he transferred to the administration with a background very different from that of the little Oxford boys with their logic. He was a top-class native administrator, and we were ready enough to tread in his footsteps.

  The routine was cast-iron. Up at dawn. If we were all three in the station at the same time, we took separate paths, each of us supervising a different activity: police parade, prison labour, new building, sanitary services. We went to the office or the courtroom from 9 am till 1 pm, and again from 2 pm till 4 pm. In the evening we went for a walk, each in a different direction, and when the sun went down we all met for drinks in one house or the other. The drinks never varied – five minims of liquid quinine followed by whisky and soda. On Saturday nights we dined together in some state, with immaculate table linen, glass and china. We sat long over a five-course meal with wine, coffee and liqueurs, talked of everything under the sun, went late to bed and lazed as long as we liked on the Sunday morning.

  On safari under canvas we all maintained the same high standard – no tin plates or iron mugs. If china got broken, what did it matter? In
actual fact I do not remember so much as one broken tumbler. To avoid the intense heat, all marching was done from the night into the day. Regardless of the length of the march, we had to be in camp and under canvas by 10 am. This sometimes meant striking camp at two o’clock in the morning….

  Every one of the twenty-four locations into which the Reserve was divided had to be visited once a quarter. The distances were considerable – a hundred miles to the north and eighty miles to the south, with a varying width of up to fifty miles. The transport was all done by porters, and we had a mule each which we could take into the fly-free areas. With a staff of three it was a fairly strenuous life, but when it fell to two, it was tough.

  Lion in the Morning Henry Seaton.

  When he came on a visit, a safari was a grimmer business. A scrap of paper left on a camp site, a slipping camel-load, a dull belt or an unshaven head among the Dubas [tribal policemen] would earn a searing rebuke. Turnbull strode along on seven-league boots, four and a half or five miles an hour, counting thirty miles a very modest day’s march, flinging over his shoulder scraps of NFD lore.

  “That tree over there – Lebbi in Somali – they make camel bells from it…. Never turn aside for a few twigs of thorn: bash straight through. It’s quicker in the end.” Suiting action to word, he ducked down and, with a noise of ripping cloth, forced his way through a dense thicket of wait-a-bit thorn. Half an hour later he suddenly bent down, picked up a pellet of dry goat-dung and, with the air of a connoisseur, bit it in two. “H’m – Aulihan, Rer Afab, I should think – 1949, and a hard Jilaal [dry season].”

  Hanging from his mouth was a handkerchief, the well-chewed corner of which he sucked to keep his mouth moist. Neither he nor any member of his safari might drink water during the march, though milk at manyattas was permitted.

  I said, “You know, I find myself liking these Somalis.”

  “Oh, you do, do you? Then I must keep an eye on you. And if ever I find them liking you, you’re out.”

  “Anyway, I’m learning their language.”

  “Certainly: no harm in that. In fact, so you should. Start by learning a few civilities: they always make a good impression. Common phrases like ‘Good day to you, madam’ … ‘If you please, my dear fellow’ … ‘Thank you very much’ and ‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t know it was loaded’.”

  It was important to anticipate, and to be well briefed upon the particular subject which engaged his interest. One month it would be cattle sales. “Why haven’t the Rer Musa section of the Abd Wak filled their quota? That headman needs chasing…. The Rer Farah Jibrail sold a lot last month: find out if it was their own stock, or came from Somalia.”

  Another month, he might be interested in the hide and skins trade, for the NFD produces the best goat-skins in the world, needed for the manufacture of kid gloves. Then at every small trading centre he would inspect the hides store, drying-racks, grading, washing and cleaning arrangements, stock books and receipts.

  “This bloody fellow … Haji Abdulla – just look at his grading! Call that a second-grade skin? Cancel his licence!”

  Off he strode, fuming, through the bush. Twenty minutes later he suddenly remarked, “There’s nothing like an occasional, resounding injustice: does all the good in the world!” And, after another twenty minutes silence, “That poor beggar, Haji Abdulla…. Not his fault at all, really. You can give him back his licence in a couple of months, but don’t tell him you’ll do it.”

  But he amply compensated for all the trials of a safari by his company in camp in the evening. Stretched out in a canvas chair, a whisky and water beside him, witty, erudite and scandalous, he discussed anything in the world, from Stravinsky to mountaineering, from camel-breeding to Shakespeare.

  It was gratifying to discover that he had his weaknesses. Bumping along in the front seat of a lorry, he saw a flock of guinea-fowl beside the road, and commanded the driver to halt. It was not enough that the lorry should be stationary and the guinea-fowl walking: or that the lorry should be slowly moving and the guinea-fowl stationary. Both had to be standing still before he would venture a shot. Resting a battered 12-bore on the lorry door, he took careful aim and discharged both barrels. Away flew the birds, with an indignant squawk and a feather or two fluttering down.

  It was the one subject on which Turnbull had no sense of humour. “A bit high, I think, sir,” I said.

  “Yes,” he replied, “I must take a finer sight next time.”

  “Paid to persuade people to do what they didn’t want to do.”

  Samburu’s problems were typical of the over-grazed, over-crowded pastoral areas of Africa. In the past, disease and tribal war had kept the cattle-population down to the carrying capacity of the land. We were doing our best to abolish both: with the result that the grass was eaten and trampled away, and the rain, instead of restoring it, washed away the top-soil.

  So legions of experts – experts on grass and experts on water, experts on soil and on animal husbandry, experts on tsetse-fly and experts on ticks – were called in to adjust the balance of nature, rather as a horse-coper adjusts a lame horse’s trot by giving the sound leg a knock. Back they went to their offices to write recondite memoranda on how to do it; but they could agree on only one thing, that nothing useful could be done until the Samburu got rid of their surplus livestock. So along came the experts in marketing and slaughtering, experts in converting cows into blood-meal and bone-meal, hides and glue and meat-powder and biltong, to tell us how most efficiently we could kill off all the cattle their veterinary colleagues were diligently keeping alive. Holding an uneasy balance between experts was the DC, expert in nothing in particular, but paid to persuade people to do what they didn’t want to do.

  What they didn’t want to do with most conviction was to cull their cattle.

  Hear the Turkana Chief Mfupi Kone on the subject.

  “We can’t have grazing-schemes here,” he declared, his ostrich plumes nodding defiantly as he emphasized each point. “We have no grass. Can cattle eat stones? Perhaps English cattle can.” (Loud cheers and laughter.) “Ours can’t. And if we had grass,” he concluded with triumphant logic, “then we wouldn’t need grazing control.”

  Uncomfortable words came, too, from the Samburu Lepara-chao. “We have no farms, no crops like other tribes. We have no salaries, like you people. All we have are our goats and our cattle. We live on goat mutton and cow’s milk, and sell a few steers to pay fines and taxes. If you take away our goats, what shall we eat? If you take away our cows, where shall we find milk? If you take away our steers, how can you expect us to help the Government? We love to collect cattle as white men love to collect money. Why don’t you get rid of all your surplus money? You like to keep it in the bank: our cattle is our bank. If you want to double our taxes, don’t beat about the bush, but say so. Perhaps we shall agree. But don’t tell us we’d be better off without our cattle.”

  “Old man,” said Robert Chambers, exasperated, “wouldn’t you rather have a hundred good cattle than two hundred living skeletons?”

  “I’d rather have a thousand, starving till God gives us grass. If a man has a lot of cattle and some die, he still has plenty left. But if a man has few cattle and some die, how will he and his family live? How will he buy wives for his sons or pay their fines when they steal cattle? You are young.” (This, with a benign and patronizing glance at Robert.) “How many cattle have you got in England? We hear you never have droughts there: just wait till you see one here, when all the calves die, the cows dry up and there is only goat’s meat to keep us alive.”

  “Old man, if you get rid of all your useless stock, which do nothing but consume grass and water, the remainder will have enough grass and water even in a drought.”

  “That may be true in England,” said a squeaky voice from the back row, “but things are different here. We like to play safe and have a lot of cattle, so that some are still alive at the end of the dry weather…. And what’s all this about grazing-fees? Are we to
pay for our own grass?”

  The Desert’s Dusty Face Charles Chenevix Trench.

  Plus ça change …

  A shika kamba was the small boy who walked ahead of a team of oxen to guide them. This shika kamba (of the Nandi tribe) grew up to start a small primary school, and his son Paul won a bursary to the University of Arizona to study range management. On his return with his degree he was posted to the North, with the task of persuading the nomadic tribes to take part in range management schemes. He found that this was by no means as easy as it was in the United States. “Our trouble here is people,” he said. “Instead of co-operating, they quarrel all the time among themselves, especially the Somalis. They will not follow instructions given them for their own good.” It all sounded very familiar. If one closed one’s eyes it might have been Glenday, Reece or Turnbull speaking. Same problem, same response.

  Out in the Midday Sun Elspeth Huxley.

  Eight Pokot elders mho had condemned a sorceress to death by stoning – tribal lam – were sent by the District Commissioner to be tried for murder – British lam – in the High Court. The judge acquitted them on the grounds that they had acted in self-defence. The DC reports the sequel.

  Presently a distant chant arose and, as it grew louder, I could hear the ringing of a thousand ankle-bells. Across the plain, in a wide arc, they came, singing and prancing, three steps forward, one step backward. Shields waving, spears aloft, their bodies, limbs and faces smeared with white clay – they looked like a cohort of ghosts dancing in the daylight.