The Ghosts of Happy Valley

by Juliet Barnes

  Kenya was the first white-settled colony to achieve African rule. Four months before independence Kenyatta had addressed a crowd of several hundred sceptical and nervous white settlers in Nakuru, his main theme being forgiveness on both sides. They still had a future in independent Kenya, he assured them – but they could, if they wanted, sell their farms. He had British financial backing: a £20 million land-resettlement fund to purchase farms for black Kenyans, with assistance from West Germany and the World Bank providing the balance.

  The launch of the ‘million-acre scheme’ saw more than that amount of land owned by 780 white farmers bought to settle approximately 35,000 Kenyan families by the end of 1971.

  No white farmers stayed on in Happy Valley. According to Richard Cox in Kenyatta’s Country (1965) the resettlement scheme in the area near Clouds, which lay at an altitude of 8,200 feet, was not going well. He describes it as ‘high, cold, sour land that forty years ago bankrupted its share of white settlers’ and was now blighting the Kikuyu’s maize, beans and potatoes. The co-operative milk scheme was accepting milk that had been watered down with muddy river water, and cows were dying because smallholders could not afford to dip them against ticks.

  Some European settlers foretold doom and gloom, and left Kenya for supposedly greener pastures: Australia, South Africa, New Zealand – even the UK if they were really brave. Those who stayed had to embrace change, often painful for them to watch, as African owners and politicians ran things their way, dividing up farms, leaving formerly beautiful old homes to fall into a state of disrepair.

  Most of Solomon Gitau’s life has been played out against this backdrop of rapid change in the decades since independence. Solomon’s ‘work’ is never done and nor is he paid by anybody to do it – yet he gets on with it as if his life depended on it. I had begun to understand this a little better, having read his handwritten autobiography.

  Solomon titles his story Born in Happy Valley. It’s a humbling tale of an unusual young boy’s struggles with poverty, cruelty and misunderstanding. Solomon’s father, Gitau, was a well-known freedom fighter who was killed by the British. Solomon’s family don’t even know where he’s buried. The Aberdares were his hunting ground: he was a deeply respected elder whom people nicknamed Nya Ndarua. After independence, Solomon explains, the area was named after him. But, Solomon says, Gitau was not his real father – a fact that does not endear Solomon to his older brothers.

  Mrs Gitau already had more than enough sons to support, but on 29 December 1959, Solomon was born in her small, circular, mud-walled hut. Solomon’s mother and elder brothers were full of hope and excitement back then in the 1960s as they set about building their grass-thatched hut on their newly allocated plot of land.

  Kenya was heading towards independence, Uhuru, which literally means freedom. Solomon writes how strongly this impressed itself on his young mind:

  It was a time when all the people were whispering: ‘Uhuru is coming’. Everybody was preparing for freedom . . . saying white men must return to their home because they had brought conditions of slavery to this country. People carried black, red and green flags or wore black, red and green robes. Political parties addressed different meetings, mixing truth with lies, like men wooing women. Politicians were shouting like bull lions. When I saw all this I asked my mother: ‘What is Uhuru?’

  She said: ‘No muzungu [white person] will be allowed to stay in Kenya. They killed your father. We shall take their houses and shambas [farms] and everything belonging to them.’

  I heard the name Kenyatta, son of Muigai. When he was appointed as the first Prime Minister of Kenya, people celebrated. They made beer. Now nearly all the women and men were drunk every day. I saw men and women stagger along the paths pissing, women walking with untied dresses, producing strange smells, men knocking women down on the way.

  I said to my mother: ‘I don’t like Uhuru, because I am afraid people will behave like this forever.’

  My mother whipped my buttocks and said: ‘You’re like a devil. Go home now.’

  As he grew older, Solomon was to remain out of step with his siblings and peers, irritating his mother not least with what she saw as his perverse interest in the natural world. He remembers from an early age watching colobus monkeys and marvelling at the forest in which they lived. As a result of his parentage and unusual interests, he found himself first being sent away and then running away from home, his young life already setting the pattern for regular future altercations with authority. After his mother died, his brothers united in opposing all that Solomon did – particularly his marriage to Esther Wairimu, the girl he loved. Having nowhere else to go, Solomon followed rural custom and built a small hut on his family land, where Esther raised the children while he went away to work. His life was to hit rock bottom when, one day, he had a message from home. The news was devastating: in his absence, his hut had been burnt down, chasing away Esther and their two small daughters.

  Solomon spoke about this incident on our first Happy Valley safari. I was exhausted from a long day of terrible roads, but was suddenly compelled to listen to him above the noise of the Land Rover: his voice shook and he leaned forward suddenly. I glanced at him and saw his face was streaked with tears. ‘I can still not believe this,’ he said – and from what he had been saying, it seemed there might have been some kind of family connection to this horrifying event.

  He changed the subject suddenly: ‘They remember the white people in their names, you see!’ Solomon pointed as we passed various signs to Mawingo DC’s office, Mawingo Clinic and Mawingo School. Mawingo is Kiswahili for ‘Clouds’.

  I looked without enthusiasm at the unappealing and noisy jumble of Mawingo town, wondering how far we still had to go. A matatu – Kenya’s answer to public transport, which involves cramming as many people as possible into a minibus and transporting them at terrifying speed to ensure maximum profit – with ‘Heaven can wait’ painted in large letters across its rear was hooting for passengers. It waited impatiently outside the Lady Diana Hotel, from which the distorted shouts of a rap artist issued vigorously. This wasn’t the infamous Diana, Lord Erroll’s mistress, but the beloved and beautiful princess from the same country as those earlier colonials. Previous generations of British royals are generally revered in Kenya, the late Princess of Wales above all.

  None of this untidy, tin-roofed sprawl would have existed in Idina’s day: today’s fast-growing town of Mawingo was probably still under forest, or certainly under a dairy herd.

  We turned left at Mawingo. Finally there remained a track that would have been easier to navigate on foot, the red forest soil slippery after rain. On our left the denuded hills and valleys receded upwards into the dark hulk of Kipipiri. The soil continued to bleed into the streams and rivers, its rich nutrients leached by deforestation.

  A few miles on, Solomon pointed right towards a bicycle track, insisting that I drive down it. Less than a quarter of a mile later we halted before padlocked gates, through which I could see a dark avenue of towering eucalyptus trees, a glimpse of a mossy roof, covered with the cedar-wood tiles known as shingles, and a grubby white wall.

  ‘That is it – Clouds House!’ Solomon said triumphantly.

  ‘Will we be allowed in?’ I began, but Solomon, to whom few obstacles are insurmountable, scaled the barriers and vanished while I sat in the car, barely able to believe this was it: Clouds! Could we really get any closer? I hardly dared share Solomon’s optimism.

  Africa teaches patience: hours of waiting allow time to observe and prepare. The afternoon was warm, but something made me shiver. I’d struggle to find my way out of the confusing maze of tracks and roads without Solomon. What if he never came back? That was a ridiculous idea: this place was spooking me into fearful imaginings.

  I was comforted by the gentle grunts of cows and bleats of sheep in neighbouring fields. Pedestrians passed by: women bent under the weight of piles of firewood, men of various ages ambled up, cast their eyes over my Land Ro
ver, and either wandered on or sat down nearby to wait and see what would happen next. A man rode up on his bicycle, but leapt off when he saw it was a white woman in the stationary vehicle. He pushed his bicycle past extremely slowly to get a longer look. Everyone greeted me politely, some asking where I came from and where I was going. Barefoot children in ragged, ill-fitting school uniforms shouted: ‘Howareyou!’ It was a statement rather than a question.

  Clouds, lying on the south-western shoulders of Kipipiri, isn’t in Happy – or any other – Valley. The valley proper is on the other side of Kipipiri, the River Wanjohi (Kikuyu for ‘river of beer’) bisecting it. The Wanjohi – which white settlers pronounced the ‘One-Joey’, but Kikuyu residents today pronounce ‘Wan-jaw-he’ – once an ice-cold, crystal-clear river into which early settlers introduced trout, has become increasingly sullied thanks to deforestation, as torrential rainfall spews topsoil into its waters.

  Eventually a youngish Kikuyu man with a slight limp approached from the other side of the gate, accompanied by Solomon who wore a triumphant grin. I walked over as they came out of a side gate. We shook hands – his handshake was limp – and introduced ourselves. He was Paul, second son of Mzee Nuthu, owner of the house.

  ‘You can leave the car and walk inside to tell my father your business,’ said Paul.

  The swelling crowd of spectators on the other side of the gate all assured me they would look after my car. For a fee, I suspected.

  We walked through a chilly avenue of towering gums, these non-indigenous trees serving as a reminder of the pale stranger who’d had them planted. At the end of the dark, damp tunnel we emerged between two solidly square gatehouses with decaying roofs. Their faded elegance retained a beauty of its own. We were facing what seemed an enormously long, low house with no resemblance to any photograph of Clouds I had seen. A white-haired Kikuyu gentleman who spoke perfect English received us in the gentle sunshine, and after introductions to various members of the family, whose usage of English deteriorated considerably as we got down to the grandchildren, he looked at me shrewdly and said: ‘Well?’

  I tentatively explained my fascination with old houses.

  ‘What do you want to see? This is my home now,’ he said with a tolerant smile.

  There were some old roses growing along the edge of the house: did Idina once supervise her shamba boy planting these? Of course, I longed to see the house – inside and out – but it seemed rude to ask. I had sensed his displeasure at what I guessed were the discourteous attitudes of previous visitors.

  ‘May I see the front of the house?’ I asked hesitantly. In up-country Kenya the ‘front’ of a house is where the veranda, garden and view are. You usually approach from the ‘back’, where you drive in and leave your car. Orchards and vegetable gardens are at the ‘back’. At this point so were we.

  Mzee sombrely led the way around the outside of the house, smiling suddenly and broadly when I admired his fruit trees.

  ‘This is my own orchard,’ he said fondly. ‘The original fruit trees were around the back.’

  I’d heard that Lady Idina loved her fruit trees, and continued to tend her more tropical varieties when she finally moved to the lower-lying, hotter Kenya coast in her latter years.

  The old house seemed to watch us through dark grimy windows: eyes from the past. It emanated decadence and decay, tinged with sadness. The front of the house, in grey stone, was suddenly recognisable as the Clouds in old photographs. A tangle of overgrown weeds and scrambling Kikuyu grass had blurred the edges of the old stone steps and terraces. An untidy barbed-wire fence had been erected just below the steps to keep cows out of the cabbages, beans and potatoes that now covered Idina’s once flourishing flower beds. Solomon was ecstatic to see the mununga tree that he pointed out (younger and smaller) in the old photograph of Clouds reproduced in the battered copy of White Mischief, which he suddenly produced from deep in his coat pocket. An evergreen belonging to the mahogany family, with a pale greyish-brown trunk and generously leafed crown, the attractive mununga grows up to 30 metres tall and is often planted in gardens for shade. Watching out of the corner of my eye as Solomon hugged it to measure its girth, I attempted to woo the old man: ‘Do you grow high-altitude mangoes?’

  ‘Mangoes could not grow here!’ he replied.

  ‘My mother grows them in her garden at over 7,000 feet above sea level, so they might survive here?’

  ‘I have not seen one of those, but I’d like to try . . .’ He was warming to me now, even if he was still a little wary of Solomon. I’d already observed that Solomon’s colobus and forest ardour wasn’t going down well with Paul.

  Storm clouds were brewing, the brief play of sunlight on the sagging roof had vanished and it was time to brave the slow road home.

  ‘But you may not leave,’ the old man said regally, ‘until I give you permission!’

  ‘May I have your permission to leave?’ I asked, a touch nervously. Were we going to be allowed to leave this strange old house – ever? An icy wind swept through the dark tunnel of eucalyptus, hissing at us threateningly as it rustled the waxy leaves.

  ‘Yes, you may leave,’ said Mzee Nuthu, with a sudden twinkle. Then he added: ‘You are welcome to return – you can come to sleep for a night!’

  ‘Thank you, I’d love to visit again,’ I replied, realising that this was indeed an honour.

  I could have the pleasure of Idina’s room, I was told with a wry smile. He knew the house’s history: he’d read White Mischief too. I smiled back, but I did wonder what that might be like: to brave eleven hours of darkness inside a house which felt haunted all the way from the gate? I’d noticed there were no power lines.

  Elizabeth, the daughter of the house, who had accompanied us on our grand tour, put a large bag of pears into my hands. ‘What year were you born?’ she asked. At my reply she clasped my hand and said: ‘So! We are age mates! Which church do you attend?’ Solomon had receded into the background, and I couldn’t think of a tactful reply, but luckily she seemed to forget the question, and asked how many children I had. Luckily I could answer this one honestly: ‘I have two!’

  She beamed: in rural Kenya a childless woman is cursed indeed. ‘I have four,’ she told me proudly.

  Thanks to this unusual day out, Solomon had managed to inspire me with his own enthusiasm for Happy Valley. I’d glimpsed the bigger picture, from its history to its present: a kaleidoscope of extraordinary scandals, tragedies, grievances and conservation issues. I began to read more about it, puzzled that the Erroll murder hadn’t been solved: why not? If I looked deeply enough into the history of the whole area, would I find any clues about what really happened to him? I felt almost possessed by it all. And yes, I was definitely going back for a night at Clouds!

  3

  A Night at Clouds

  ‘Welcome to Clouds!’ said Mzee Nuthu with a genteel incline of his white-haired head. ‘You are the first white lady to stay here for many years!’

  I felt deeply honoured to be an invited guest to the Clouds of the twenty-first century, where the gates remained locked and curious visitors were not necessarily welcomed. I stood on an unkempt sprawl of bright green Kikuyu grass by the back entrance and imagined the infamous Lady Idina receiving her guests right here: although allegedly in Idina’s time you came for drink, drugs and sex, and stayed much longer than planned. The back lawn would have been manicured then too: laboriously cut and weeded by some underpaid, hard-working Kikuyu servant.

  I was about to get inside Clouds! The Clouds of all the incredible stories. And now perhaps I was about to discover some more about it all.

  What would Idina have said? Clucked disapprovingly, I suspect. Going to stay with an African family just wasn’t done in her day. But then again Idina was, by all accounts, liberal and eccentric in so many ways that, had she been around today in the early twenty-first century, she may well have joined us on this curious mission.

  Paul had opened the gate and signalled me to drive up t
he avenue on to the soft green grass behind the house. The mzee, Elizabeth, his first-born son Peter, who is a teacher, and half a dozen children who gazed at my pale complexion in horrified fascination, were there to welcome us as if we were old friends.

  I had brought cigarettes, newspapers and a high-altitude mango tree seedling for the old man, metres of material for Elizabeth who’d said she enjoyed sewing, sweets and biscuits for the children, and tea and sugar for the house – and of course I’d come with Solomon.

  Three-quarters of a century ago, had I been a guest of Lady Idina’s, I might have brought a bottle (or case) of good claret, and most certainly a man or two, but definitely not a black one. At Idina’s X-rated parties, the guests were expected to have swapped spouses or partners certainly by the end of the weekend, if not by nightfall on the first day. Blowing a feather across a sheet held over the table was a popular after-dinner method of divining who was to sleep with whom. Then, it was rumoured, there was the choosing the keys game, using the numbered keys to each locked room. Ending up in Idina’s bed at some point of the day or night was apparently par for the course for male guests.

  I still had cold feet about sleeping here . . .

  ‘Let us proceed to Lady Idina’s rooms,’ said the old man solemnly, although humour spilt from his eyes.

  We walked through a wide entrance where a car lay disintegrating, all four tyres cracked and flat. There was a volley of hysterical barking from inside a wooden structure on legs, no bigger than a rabbit hutch. ‘We need dogs here – for security,’ explained Paul. It’s an African thing, locking up dogs all day so they are insanely ferocious by the time they are let out at night, and will attack intruders. Animals aren’t beloved pets (unless you’re Solomon, who has a fat, brindled dog called Hippo – originally rescued by Esther from a neighbour who’d been badly mistreating it) and it’s something I’ve never been able to get used to.