No Hurry in Africa

by Brendan Clerkin

  ‘I want lots of babies, because I am afraid they will not all survive infancy.’

  Around Nairobi, Western influence can be detected in the classifieds of the Daily Nation, in the section of the newspaper where people look for love. This was one I spotted (as I searched for a wife!):

  I am a 33 year old unattached devout Catholic woman, who would like to meet a devout Catholic man. Should be unattached, never married, passed O level’ exams or above, must be from Nyanza Province, to share love and life with. Should be 32–37 years old and business minded, financially stable, well groomed and good looking, ready for a HIV test, friendship, settle down in marriage soon and have children.

  I’m probably too young to apply for an interview, I thought, and I could hardly pretend to be financially stable.

  One day when I was drinking at a bar in Nairobi, a red-faced middle-aged man walked in, looking for all the world like a small farmer in rural Ireland. He was wearing a brown flat cap and sported a prominent moustache. Soon he was propping up the bar and being chatted up by the beautiful ‘Nairobi girls’—or prostitutes, as some might call them. Anyway, I had to satisfy my curiosity and walked over to talk to him. Within a few sentences, I was piecing together a picture in my mind.

  ‘Oh, you were once a priest?’ I speculated.

  By way of reply, he mumbled something vaguely negative.

  ‘You must know Fr. Frank and Fr. Liam in Kitui then.’

  It was a long shot, but the few hundred Irish people living in Kenya all seemed to know one another.

  ‘How do you know them? Sure I used to live with them,’ he responded.

  Suddenly he was more forthcoming. It turned out that he had indeed been a priest, and was stationed in Kitui Diocese. He eloped with an Akamba woman, quit the priesthood, and married her. I did not want to pry further.

  When I later told Fr. Liam about my encounter with him, Fr. Liam commented,

  ‘It happens, Brendan. There was another Irish priest in Kitui once, but he stuck it for only a couple of years. He ran off and married a nun.’

  There are many pitfalls and hazards for the novice missionary. When I gave Fr. Frank my account of Cecil’s wedding, he told me,

  ‘One of the Irish missionaries in Kitui, a number of years ago, was not familiar with all the checks needed in Kenya to approve a couple for marriage in the Catholic Church. He had just arrived from Ireland a short time before. The morning after one particular wedding that he performed, an angry Akamba man, a brother of the bride, stormed up to the mission house.

  “You have just married a man who already has two wives,” he reprimanded the priest. “This is his third.”’

  Easter Sunday was another opportunity for a missionary dinner; the jokes and tales came thick and fast, with punch-lines delivered in Swahili and Kikamba and even in Irish. There was much uncontrollable laughter at the exploits of our Kenyan friends. Yet, we gave our full attention when one of us recounted experiencing an Akamba custom for the first time, for even after over forty years living among them, the missionaries were still discovering new aspects to the people every week. The stories told at these missionary get-togethers were as unbelievable as they were true. Fr. Frank started the ball rolling that evening.

  ‘I buried a man yesterday. Half-way through the Mass, they were still busy banging away, nailing the wood together for the coffin.’

  ‘I can top that,’ Fr. Liam boasted. ‘Yesterday I was called out to banish a “genie” from a parishioner’s home. As I was blessing the home, sprinkling holy water on it, I became aware of a witch-doctor—I know the man to see—watching me. He disappeared, then returned a minute later and splashed a bucket of water over me! In retaliation, I suppose.’

  As the stories multiplied, a large orange full moon rose dramatically from beneath the horizon, almost as if it were a second sunrise. Just then, the electricity went off at the mission house, immediately followed by the usual loud cheer from the nearby boarding schools. We lit the candles, and pondered once again in the darkness whether it was rain or bandits that had cut the electricity to the whole village. Ah well, I thought as I drifted off to sleep, at least it will stop the fundamentalist preachers roaring their heads off, keeping people awake offering their cures for cancer over their loud-speakers.

  Shortly after midnight, I was awakened by blood-chilling screams coming from a home nearby. In all probability, a robbery was in progress. Were we going to be hit next? I lay awake half the night, with mounting fear. Eventually I fell into a fitful sleep; in my troubled dreams, the panga—the machete—figured prominently.

  CHAPTER 17

  TO HELL’S GATE AND BACK

  AFTER EASTER, I RESOLVED to seize the opportunity to explore more of Kenya before returning to voluntary work. So I headed off by myself with the intention of spending around a fortnight camping in a number of places in the Great Rift Valley. Camping would be the best option, I imagined; all the cheaper hotels in Kenya seemed to double up as brothels. I always discovered evidence of this dual function throughout the night, when I could clearly hear business being conducted on the other side of the thin walls.

  The Rift Valley is the geological fault line that runs from Lebanon, down the Dead Sea, the Red Sea, Ethiopia, Kenya, Tanzania, and as far as Lake Malawi in the southern end of Africa. In millions of years’ time, East Africa will become separated from the rest of the continent, geologists claim. However, when anyone speaks of the Great Rift Valley, the classic image in people’s minds is that part of it that stretches for the 250km or so north of Nairobi.

  My first destination was Lake Naivasha, over fifty kilometres to the north of the capital. Lake Naivasha used to be the heart of the ‘Happy Valley’ hedonism, where predominantly upper-class English settlers regularly engaged in interminable drink and drug fuelled, partner-sharing orgies. These decadent colonials launched the reputation of Kenya as being a playground for the privileged, especially in the years between the two world wars. This abruptly ended when Lord Errol was mysteriously gunned down in his Buick late one night in 1941, generating much unwelcome publicity and a medley of conspiracy theories. Lord Errol was the most alluring of them all, a prolific philanderer who happened to be the premier peer of the British Empire at the time.

  A sensational court case ended without a conviction. Theories abounded about who could have done it, from any number of jealous husbands, to British agents sent to assassinate the alleged fascist sympathiser. Whoever was responsible, it meant the Rift Valley orgies of self-indulgence were over. Tales of aristocratic debauchery did not go down well in the England of ration books; this was the time when England was at the lowest ebb in World War II. The life and times of the cast of ‘Happy Valley’ are well depicted in the book White Mischief by James Fox.

  My own interest in this part of the Rift Valley and in its recent high-living history was sparked by a remarkable old boy who had visited Nyumbani one afternoon. A bald, sprightly octogenarian white man introduced himself to me. He told me his name was Rudolf, and was the owner of a company selling medicinal plants to Nyumbani. I suggested that he wait in the shade with me until someone came to look after him. He had eccentric written all over him—and all the more interesting for that. He told me that he grew up at Lake Naivasha during the 1920s and 30s, in the ‘Happy Valley’ period, and had lived his whole life in Kenya. He was softly spoken, with traces of a Germanic accent.

  ‘My parents, they were descended from Italian and Austrian nobility,’ he asserted with pride. ‘They sailed to Kenya to shoot game on safari and ended up staying for good. Back then, the waters of Lake Naivasha were Kenya’s main airport, for all the hydroplanes on the Imperial Airways route between Southampton and South Africa.’

  Once Rudolf had started reminiscing, there was no stopping him. As a young man, he was a witness to the rampant shenanigans among the aristocrats and adventurers of his parents’ generation; the drinking, the drugs, the wife swapping. He had seen it all. I was pretty sure he was not making
it up. When I implied that he might have joined in, he denied it—but I was not entirely convinced. Later, when I read Fox’s book on Lord Errol, I became certain he knew what he was talking about.

  It was after this encounter that I made up my mind to spend some time in the Rift Valley. Rudolf had persuaded me that there was a lot more to it than the wife swapping of bygone days. Today, Lake Naivasha is one of only a handful of enclaves left in Kenya with a sizable white farming community. Rudolf informed me that the second biggest foreign currency earning industry in Kenya is (would you believe?) flowers. These are all grown on the white-owned farms on the lake’s southern shores, and exported fresh overnight to Europe.

  On arrival at the lake in the late afternoon, the bus dropped me off near a campsite on the southern lakeshore. At a checkpoint along the way, the bus conductor had told us in Swahili,

  ‘I will give a few shillings to the policeman for tea.’

  We all laughed knowingly. It took only a few minutes to pitch my tent beneath a sturdy tree on the smoothest part of ground away from the water’s edge. There were small wavelets soothingly lapping up over the pebbles.

  I recalled Yeats’ line about ‘lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore’

  It was an inspiring scene. As evening evaporated into night over the vast lake, enclosed by the two imposing escarpments of the Rift Valley on either side, I could hear the call of exotic birds in the growing darkness and the sound of other unidentified creatures all around. I had heard there was a good chance of hippopotamuses wandering around the outside of the campsite at night. At least, I hoped they would remain on the outside. Hippos live under water during the day, and graze on land at night.

  I woke before dawn the next morning, looking forward to an adventurous day ahead. For breakfast, I rustled up a bit of fruit and bread I had bought in the nearby village the day before. I was biting hungrily into a sandwich in the half-light when a monkey bounded past, apparently intent on stealing my belongings. As I jumped up to chase him away, his friend grabbed the sandwich straight out of my hand. Those creatures were proving very cute at creating distractions. As I peeled a banana, another monkey suddenly swiped it from behind, leapt up the tree, and threw the peel back down onto my head. I was being bullied by monkeys of all things!

  I had risen before dawn in order to cycle through the long red canyon known as Hell’s Gate, beside Lake Naivasha. I was going to test the theory that the best chance to see game animals is in very early morning and towards dusk. I entered Hell’s Gate to find myself alone; it was still too early for any other visitors, who might arrive later. I found myself in a dramatic landscape of hot steaming springs amid towering columns of red volcanic rock, with vultures circling overhead. It was even more dramatic later in the day, when the searing daytime heat was ripped apart by a thunder and lightning spectacular. Few places on earth more deserve the name ‘Hell’s Gate,’ I thought. Back in 1883, a pioneering German explorer called Gustav Fischer had his entire party of porters massacred by Maasai warriors in this place. Fischer himself survived, however, and later returned to Germany with his tale. His name is commemorated in Fischer’s Tower, a red volcanic column about a hundred feet high.

  The very name of the place was the main reason that attracted me to explore Hell’s Gate. It lived up to its other reputation, too; a great place to see a wide variety of African wildlife. The canyon was filled with animals. I dismounted from my hired bicycle from time to time to watch the eland leaping, zebras grazing, ostriches cantering—and the inevitable bickering baboons. The playful warthogs were my favourite; they are very comical in their ugliness. I did not spot a cheetah or a leopard; maybe they spotted me first, and I was happy enough about that because I was the only human around. I sat on the grass, alone amidst near perfect silence, inhaling the beauty of the scene.

  At the far end of the canyon, several Maasai men were busy taking a shower underneath a warm waterfall that seemed to spring from the earth on top of one of the cliffs. The hot springs and waterfalls are heated by the Rift Valley volcanic activity. Four months earlier, an earthquake measuring 6.8 on the Richter scale hit the Rift Valley, causing even more chaos than usual in Nairobi. I asked the Maasai about the cheetahs and leopards. One of them spoke Swahili and quite good English.

  ‘A couple of weeks ago,’ he told me, as he boiled an egg using water from a hot spring, ‘a shepherd near Naivasha stepped into the darkness with only a wooden spear to fight off a leopard that was hunting his goats. The man was very nearly eaten himself when the leopard attacked him—but he is still alive today.’

  For the next fortnight—it was now the second half of April— wherever I visited in the Rift Valley I practically had it to myself. There is hardly a tourist in all of Kenya around that time of year, apart from a slow trade at the Mombasa beaches. After a couple of days spent relaxing around Lake Naivasha, I journeyed by bus on to Lake Nakuru National Park, over fifty kilometres further north of Naivasha and one of the best game reserves in the country. The park officials would not accept my genuine Kenyan resident’s card, but took my slightly doctored student’s card instead for discounted admission.

  Darkness was approaching as I searched for a suitably flat and secluded position to erect my tent at the designated camping spot within the Park. Waterbucks were obliviously munching nearby. I could just about make out Lake Nakuru itself, the soda lake world famous for its flamingo population. I convinced myself I could detect in the fading light a streak of pink on the distant shoreline. That would be tomorrow’s excitement. Before that, however, a more familiar drama was unfolding, the performers a troupe of baboons.

  I had bought enough fruit and bread in Nakuru town to satisfy me while I would be in the Park. As I made preliminary inroads into my rations, I became aware of what I imagined to be an extended family of baboons edging closer all the while. I did not feel in any way threatened; the young and the females were grooming each other and seemed to be in a playful mood. It is fascinating to observe how a clan of baboons has a sentry system with males encircling the females and their young.

  All at once, I came under co-ordinated attack from four or five males, a classic smash-and-grab raid on my sandwiches. I had taken trouble to conceal them, but these baboons were more up-front and aggressive than the monkeys of Naivasha. Their tactic was intimidation, hence the numbers. They took every morsel of food I possessed. My token resistance proved as futile as a sand-castle resisting the incoming tide. These were real vandals. They entered the tent and strewed my clothes all over the place. Nancy had been right to warn me about them.

  Still reeling from their shock tactics, I was left standing clutching my one solitary sandwich in my hand. The largest baboon advanced on me, snarling. I threw it to him in fright. This seemed to signal a general retreat, mission accomplished. To an observer, the whole scenario might have looked quite funny. For me it was beyond a joke! I was going to have to go hungry for maybe twenty-four hours. Save for a rumbling tummy, it did not bother me at all. I had become kind of used to going hungry in Kenya from time to time.

  In the middle of the night, I was startled out of my slumber by loud rustling sounds very near the tent, far too close for comfort. I was picturing a lion about to pounce on the tent and devour me, or envisaging a rhino charging with its horn and trampling the tent while I lay inside. I stayed on my back, perfectly motionless, too terrified to make a move or create a sound. I did not want to excite its attention, whatever it might be.

  Minutes passed, time stretched out interminably, and my nerves grew taut. Eventually I peeped out with one eye though a gap that I noiselessly established in the front of the tent. Through the veil of darkness, I could just make out a hyena and, worse still, at least three buffalo only yards away. I knew the latter could be among the most dangerous animals in the bush; and I recalled Akamba stories about the viciousness of the trap-jawed hyenas. After an eternity, they moved away. I could breathe again.

  Early next morning, the orange sun
was setting aglow the eerie mist that was levitating off the soda lake. Nobody else was about, except for a Peace Corp volunteer who had arrived before dawn in his jeep. I had met twenty-six year old Glenn the day before in Nakuru town, and we arranged to go together to view the flamingos. For hours, we were rewarded with an unforgettable spectacle; a vast bright pink carpet of maybe two million long-legged flamingos spread around the edge of the lake. We tried to think of a collective term for the birds; we settled in the end for a ‘blush’ of flamingos.

  These birds, the so-called ‘lesser’ flamingos of East Africa, were mainly breakfasting on the algae soup that forms on the surface of the lake. Nakuru’s soda lake is an alkaline brew with a high volcanic ash content. These soda lake waters are poisonous to virtually all other creatures, thus protecting the birds from predators like the hyena. I was most surprised by the din that they created, a loud ceaseless nattering as they conducted their noisy early morning business. We watched with pleasure their characteristic running take-offs, and gradual descents as they came in to land. It resembled a vast flamingo airport. It was a truly wonderful sight.

  After three hours or so, we dragged ourselves away from one of Nature’s most colourful spectacles. Our departure was delayed by Glenn’s jeep becoming entrenched in the soft silt at the lake-shore, but we had the rest of the day to revel in the wildlife of the Park. We were mentally ticking off the species: the rare black rhinoceros, the Thompson’s gazelles, the giraffes towering above the acacia trees, the herds of buffaloes and zebras, the comedy of warthogs mating … and wildlife I never even knew existed before. It was absolutely exhilarating to observe such diversity. Sometimes, it resembled an untouched Garden of Eden, or maybe the concentration of animals being rounded up for Noah’s Ark. They were nearly a bit too easy to find at times. Sometimes, I was conscious that the animals of Lake Nakuru Park are enclosed, like a humongous outdoor zoo.