Out In The Midday Sun

by Elspeth Huxley

  We did not end on a sad note, for Margaret is not a sad person. When she laughs her eyes widen and flash, as African eyes so often do. She enjoys her work with UNEP, which co-ordinates and monitors conservation projects throughout the world. Unlike most officials of the United Nations and other international bodies, she does not relish jetting off to conferences from China to Peru. ‘There is no need. This is the headquarters, so all the experts come here.’ And she hates flying – London also, cold, grey and overcrowded.

  For six years running, Margaret was mayor of Nairobi. Her record of public work reads like that of an English upper-class do-gooder: commissioner of the Girl Guides, on executive committees of the Red Cross, of the National Council of Women, of the Commonwealth Fund for the Blind; social work in Pumwani; and one un-English title, Chief of the Burning Spear. Despite all this she is a down-to-earth person, bestriding two worlds and perhaps, as she grows older and like her father, going back more and more to her roots. In old age the M’zee encouraged tribal dancing, preferred his home at Gatundu and his estate near Nakuru to State House and, despite his perfect English, often talked in Swahili where Kikuyu would not do. In spite of all temptations to belong to other nations, he remained a Kikuyu man.

  Nairobi has become, it has been said, the tourist capital of the world. Probably this is too large a claim, but it is undoubtedly a-buzz with tourists. Traffic jams are awful, crowds close-packed like never-ending shoals of mackerel pursued by porpoises, high-rise buildings like rigid glittering flowers sprouting from a concrete earth. Some are imaginative, even fanciful, and make good use of colour, but too much use of glass for the tropics. Older buildings appear to have shrunk. The law courts designed by Sir Herbert Baker have retained their dignity, pressed in on as they are by buildings flaunting their angular modernity; but Torr’s hotel, once the last word in progress and importance, has become an insignificant little bank – architecturally speaking, that is. The old New Stanley has vanished beneath enormous accretions, and the Norfolk hotel, once so spacious-seeming and substantial, is now a self-conscious colonial relic trading in atmosphere, and jostled by the fortress-like towers of Nairobi University.

  And now there are even Listed Buildings. One is the old DC’s office; a squat, single-storey edifice in grey cut stone with the usual veranda. Many is the exasperated settler who has confronted the DC in this office, many more the wrongdoers who have come before him to be sentenced, and quite a few hopeful couples who have come before him to be married. Immediately behind this now historic monument had just arisen another huge tower block honeycombed with air-conditioned offices, a monument to Kenya’s major growth industry, bureaucracy – Nairobi’s provincial headquarters.

  Once you get away from the high-rise glitter, Africa re-asserts itself. Roads develop pot-holes, housing estates tail off into shanty-towns, little plots of maize spring up in every neglected corner. The population of the city now verges on the million mark, and all the time people keep coming. They do not, I am sure, believe the streets to be paved with gold, but when your father’s shamba can no more be sub-divided, when your crops have failed and drought has carried off your only cow, what else can you do but seek employment, which you rarely find, in the city? You and your growing family double up with a distant relative, or bivouac on what has been designated as an open space. Somehow or other you scrounge enough to eat. Quite often you take to crime. Scruffy mini-markets appear, illegally: booths roofed with sagging cardboard tucked away in odd corners that offer for sale little piles of beans or spices, sweet potatoes, pawpaws and bananas, snuff, bags of charcoal, plimsoles, T-shirts, all sorts of things – untidy, unhygienic. Come back a week later and it may have been bulldozed away, only to spring up elsewhere. By contrast, on the outskirts of the town Executive Houses are going up, smart two-storey affairs with garages. Opposite is a tumble-down rusty corrugated-iron shed leaning to one side and bearing a placard proclaiming it to be a Video Library.

  Nairobi might have been mistaken for an Indian town when I first knew it. Indians and their shops were everywhere. That has changed, but not altogether; there is still the Asian Bazaar, and a top layer of affluent and successful Asians. One, who kindly invited me to cakes and coffee at his home, is a High Court judge. Other morning coffee guests included a consultant dermatologist and a Sikh business tycoon, the latter an elderly gentleman clad all in white and with a fine white beard. He laughed as he said: ‘I have lost seventy-three million shillings in Uganda and six million shillings in Tanzania. And I am still a happy man.’

  He had started his career as a station-master; done a bit of buying and selling, invested in a posho mill and in a cotton ginnery in Uganda, and gradually built up an empire, mainly in the shape of mills. One day, driving down from Eldoret, he stopped at a saw-mill whose European owner did not shake hands or ask him into the house. The Sikh drove back to Eldoret, arranged matters with the bank, returned and said to its owner: ‘I have come to buy your saw-mill. I will pay you £20,000.’ This time he was invited into the house. ‘It was a good investment,’ said the Sikh.

  Are Asians, I asked, better or worse off now than in colonial times? The High Court judge shrugged his shoulders. ‘The upper millstone has become the nether millstone. It does not make much difference to those in between.’ He recalled regulations that had formerly prevented him and his kind from buying land in the white highlands, and the exclusion of Asians from the higher ranks of the civil service. ‘We had little choice but to become duka-wallahs.’ Nevertheless, I suggested, he seemed to have done pretty well. ‘I was lucky. The gods watched over me. I used to tell the Europeans with whom I worked that my loyalty was suspect because I was not white, although Kenya did not have a more loyal subject. Still equally loyal, I am not black. I do not know. What I do know is, I do not want any other home than Kenya.’ In the past, whites made Asians feel inferior; now, blacks make them feel insecure.

  Eboo’s filling station in what was then Delamere Avenue used to be a familiar landmark, where one filled one’s tank before embarking on the up-country run. It had been swept away but its proprietor, now Sir Pirbhai, is to be found near at hand in a handsome air-conditioned office high up in one of the tower blocks. He came to East Africa from Bombay when he was five years old. Now in his eightieth year, he is president of the Ismaili community, who acknowledge the Aga Khan as their spiritual head, not only in East Africa but in Europe and the USA as well. It used to be a big event when the Aga Khan himself paid a visit to Nairobi and was weighed in gold and diamonds, amid much rejoicing. As he was a portly gentleman the proceeds were considerable, and all were devoted to the welfare of the local Ismaili community, mainly by providing schools and hospitals. The Ismailis looked after their own. The current Aga Khan no longer comes to be weighed in jewels, but Ismaili traditions carry on. Both millstones, it seems, have left a good deal of grist un-ground.

  One of the more vociferous settler politicians in pre-uhuru days was an Irish garage-owner in Eldoret, Tommy O’Shea. Sir Pirbhai employed a pleasant and efficient secretary. She is a daughter of Tommy O’Shea.

  Until you get out towards the shanty-fringes, prosperity oozes from Nairobi’s pores. The ample, well-paid staffs of umpteen embassies and agencies dispensing aid are here established with all their local minions, schools for their children, shiny cars – over one thousand Swedes alone come and go. As for government Ministers, under Ministers, Permanent Secretaries, Assistant Permanent Secretaries, and of course all the members of the National Assembly, their muster runs into many thousands. No wonder Executive Suits are advertised in the newspapers. The current status symbol is a video, or rather several videos. I met an English girl who was here on a visit to a school friend, the daughter of an important Minister, who told me, rather breathlessly, that her Kikuyu host had a video in every room. He also breeds orchids, has a herd of pedigree Jerseys and is a connoisseur of wine. Dachas at the Coast or beside Lake Naivasha, shopping at Harrod’s, children at British boarding schools and, of cours
e, Swiss bank accounts, are common form among members of this upper crust.

  Corruption, I was told by almost every European I met, is rife, from Ministers taking their cut of foreign contracts to post office clerks fiddling stamps. A Provincial Commissioner has built a million-pound hotel at the Coast. Bank managers have acquired large ranches and farms. The President has set his face against all this, so far without noticeable results. ‘Here it’s called corruption,’ said a cynic. ‘In Europe, it’s called commission.’

  For many, hopes that burgeoned with uhuru have gone sour. The bwana has merely changed the colour of his skin, not shared out his possessions. He still drives around in a great big motor car while you trudge or, if you are lucky, pedal on a clapped-out bicycle. Even the ownership of land, the supreme prize of uhuru, has often disappointed, because hopes were built on dreams and not on ecology. Every year the schools release a flood of youths and maidens seeking employment which many cannot find; over half its population is eighteen or under, and no economy could absorb so many newcomers, certainly not this one. Twenty years ago at independence, the population numbered about eight million; in 1985 it topped the twenty million mark. Such an upsurge of people must overwhelm the resources of an ill-endowed country (no oil, no minerals and a lot of desert). One might vary Oliver Goldsmith’s couplet to:

  Ill fares the land, to hast’ning ills a prey,

  Where men accumulate and means decay.

  So – will an explosive situation explode? Should the question rather be not will, but when?

  There was a badly bungled coup that failed in 1982, but such coups are more in the nature of attempts by one faction to grab power from another faction than peasants’ revolts. To succeed, revolts must be planned and organised, and the Government’s toleration does not extend to revolutionary groups and plotters. That form of freedom cannot be afforded. Kenya is a one-party state.

  And then, African reactions are not always those which Europeans expect. Extremes of wealth and poverty may stoke fires of resentment, but it could be that Africans may tolerate, even admire, the achievements of their fellows whose life-style has come to equal, or even surpass, that of their former rulers. The man whose only wealth consists of half a dozen goats might applaud, and not condemn, the distant cousin with his Volvo, his video and his Swiss bank account. He has made it. Luck is not for everyone. Shauri ya Mungu – God’s affair. Inshallah.

  I asked an elegant young Englishwoman in jodhpurs who looked in to discuss some matter with my luncheon hostess whether she lived there at Langata, or was out from England on a visit. ‘Actually, my husband is a two-year wonder,’ she replied. A two-year wonder is a man or woman to whom the Government has granted a permit to work in Kenya because he or she commands some skill not yet possessed by any Kenya citizen. They come on two-year contracts to conduct many projects funded by foreign aid. All over the country you find them: engineers, surveyors, irrigation experts, plant breeders, entomologists, economists, veterinary researchers, experts on every kind of subject, coming from Europe, from America, from Japan. Steam jets erupting from the hill Eburru are being harnessed to generate electricity. Major irrigation schemes are on foot in the Tana valley. Ethologists from a Californian university are studying the social behaviour of a troop of baboons. This project has run into trouble because the habitat of the baboons, part of the Coles’ Kekopey ranch, has been divided into ten-acre small-holdings, and small-holdings planted with crops do not go with baboons. One of the team of baboon-watchers, an attractive young lady, is looking for somewhere to translocate (move) the baboons; sad to say, no one wants them. They are a very special troop because they have been so thoroughly studied, and their social relationships worked out. It is said that the local Maasai derive entertainment from watching these daft white people watching the baboons.

  I paused by the roadside to look over the haunt of the baboons and the whole Valley and saw a great change. A wide flank of the escarpment, where it slopes to meet the Valley’s floor, was speckled no longer with grey-green leleshwa shrubs and flat-topped thorn trees, but with tin roofs that winked in the sunshine like spangles spread out on a pale cloak below. The tin roofs are for catching water, but in times of drought the tanks run dry and all the sheep and goats and cattle die. This was to happen soon after my visit, when a stench of rotting flesh hung over the Valley and vultures were so bloated they could scarcely fly.

  In 1965, when she was eighty, Nellie sold what was left of her farm to eight of what she called her old retainers, men who had worked for her for some forty years. Her farm had shrunk by then to fifty acres, but she still had the house, nothing much to look at but comfortable and fairly sound, with its lovely garden. She had the sheds and stores that go with a farm, twelve acres of fertile irrigated market garden, some river frontage, and a ram pump with its attendant piping and storage tanks. There was also an orchard, a cattle dip, an irrigated lucerne paddock and some pyrethrum (an ingredient of insecticides – harmless except to insects). She sold it all for £900. She could have got three or four times as much for her property; several Africans had already come up the hill to make reasonable offers.

  The reason for her decision was that she could not bear to leave the country knowing that her old retainers, those eight Kikuyu with their families, would be turned off the farm and have nowhere to go. The Government was pondering various schemes to re-settle squatters displaced by the sale of their former employers’ farms, but these foundered on the difficulty of finding alternative land. Nearly all Nellie’s white neighbours had already gone by the time she sold, and in every instance the new African owners had turned all the former squatters off the land. They had their own families to consider. The men of Nellie’s group were too old to find employment.

  Some of Nellie’s friends attempted to persuade her that she was in no position to sell her only asset for considerably less than a song. But she was adamant; and so was the bank, which would advance to her old retainers no more than £900. So Nellie packed up, had a large bonfire, paid her debts which mopped up most of the £900, packed her possessions into two large wooden boxes to go by sea, said her goodbyes and, with her last two remaining dachshunds, set out to start a new life on a quinta – a small-holding – in southern Portugal.

  It was with sharp misgivings that I went back to the farm. I had spoken on the telephone – the number was the same – to Benson Karanja, a son of Karanja her former cook. Benson undertook to arrange a meeting with the old retainers, including his father, all of whom were still alive. Pamela Scott, living still at Deloraine, kindly drove me up the track from Njoro to the old farm. The twin thorn trees that had guarded the approach had gone. So had the garden, as was to be expected. You cannot eat roses and delphiniums. All around was maize.

  And there they were, all eight of them: Karanja wa Kinoko the cook, Karanja wa Mokorro the herd, Kariuki the fundi, Manvi the gardener, Mbugwa the house-parlourman, and three others, wrapped in ancient overcoats and shapeless sweaters and using the old Kikuyu handshake, each person gripping the other’s thumb. We sat on wicker chairs in an open-sided shed which was the first stage of a projected poultry house. Children came to look on, and drifted away again; at intervals a drunken man appeared and shouted incomprehensible remarks which were ignored.

  Mbugwa was the spokesman. His face was still bony, his eager manner had not left him, nor his intelligent, rather monkey-like expression, nor his stutter, nor his wide smile. ‘There is one important question,’ he began, ‘that we wish to ask. Where is your mother buried, and when did she die?’ After I had answered, he made a little speech. They would like to say that they were grateful for the gift of the land. No other Europeans in the district had arranged for the old people to stay on after the sale of the farms. The squatters on this farm were envied. They had security, and honoured the memory of Mrs Grant. It was a set speech but I think he meant it, and wished that she could have heard.

  The old bungalow, naked without its creepers, was unused, and had alm
ost crumbled away. On the site of the garden, a new house had appeared. Built of cedar planks, plaster-board and corrugated iron it was no mansion, but neat and well equipped with electrical appliances: colour television, video and other signs of affluence and modernity. This was Benson’s home where he lived with his wife and three small children. His wife brought us tea and a plate of big, juicy tomatoes, while the children sat in semi-darkness glued to the television screen like children the world over. First we were given sports, then a comedy chat show, then a quiz. I wondered what they made of it all. Benson gets the cassettes in Nakuru, paying twenty shillings for a hire of forty-eight hours.

  The farm is divided into small plots, each not more than two or three acres, and bursting with the children, grandchildren and other relatives of the old men and their wives. Everyone grows maize, a few pyrethrum; goats and scrawny cattle wander about. The borehole’s pump broke down and has not been repaired, so women carry water from the river as they did fifty years ago. The indigenous trees have gone. Had we built our house on the site we had chosen, we should have looked across the river on to regiments of pine trees standing stiffly in rows, planted by the Forest department.

  Clearly Benson could not sustain his life-style on a few acres of maize. He runs a pick-up, is elegantly clad, a member of the Rift Valley Sports Club with its tennis and squash courts, swimming pool and excellent food; goes often to Nairobi on business trips, and is about to embark on a tour of Israel organised by the Kenya Farmers’ Association. He grows wheat, he told me, on rented land with hired machinery, and has various trading interests; his father was a great trader too.