The Ghosts of Happy Valley

by Juliet Barnes

  Solomon’s ordeals with the authorities ended abruptly, bizarrely, when he met two artists, one of whom had first brought him to my house. He’d heard about these ‘tree ladies’ and found his way to their home. Astrid von Kalckstein, who initially seemed another glowering memsahib, listened to Solomon’s story on the back step, invited him in to talk more – and has ever since remained his friend and supporter. Then he met Astrid’s friend, Jean O’Meara, who also became involved with Solomon’s conservation projects.

  It puzzled me that two intrepid but harmless and elderly white lady artists, both slightly eccentric albeit ardent conservationists, who pottered about painting watercolours of the scenery and collecting shrubs to make homemade paper, could ‘protect’ Solomon. But he felt safer, he was gaining credibility, and maybe his enemies and the authorities imagined Astrid and Jean had powerful connections. Or perhaps they simply shied away from two ordinary people who were fearless in their honesty and integrity. After Jean’s death, just before I met Solomon in early 2000, Astrid continued to support Solomon’s projects. Then, after Caleb’s death, I had become involved too. By the end of 2000, having failed to drum up interest in his life story, I was to find myself supporting his causes instead.

  I leafed through a file Solomon lent me, containing stacks of letters and many old newspaper cuttings that he’d kept – a jumbled summary of his remarkable career. There was the letter to the Nation newspaper in February 1998 from my mother, appealing for help with Solomon’s efforts to save a dozen colobus monkeys: he was getting no joy from the Kenya Wildlife Service (KWS), even when he was up against two ‘foreigners’ buying the skins. There was a volley of concerned responses from groups and individuals, most of whom wanted ‘funding’, supposedly to help Solomon, but no financial assistance was forthcoming, apart from an advocate in western Kenya who sent a cheque to contribute towards buying Solomon a bicycle so he could get around faster. The same newspaper’s ‘Cutting Edge’ column commented: ‘Why is it that whenever we see a reader’s letter headlined Save Our Forests or Protect Our Monkeys . . . we just know it’s going to be signed by a mzungu?’

  Back in 1996, Solomon had first appealed to the KWS for help after sixteen of Happy Valley’s monkeys had been killed. He was told to feed the monkeys to keep them together for possible capture and translocation, but no assistance was forthcoming and nothing else was heard from them for over a year. It’s not as if Solomon has the money to buy endless bunches of bananas for monkeys – even now he has to quickly find somebody to buy a stack of his homemade paper just to find the cash to get his youngest child, a toddler, to hospital.

  Finally the translocation happened – albeit slowly and after fighting through the tangle of red tape that accompanies the required scientific research and co-ordination of such a project. From the initial site visit in mid-1998 it took a year and four months to move four groups of colobus, some of them to the acacia forest beside Lake Elementeita on Soysambu, assisted by an NGO called Wakuluzu Friends of Colobus Trust, to whom Solomon was very grateful. But many of the monkeys had been killed during the long wait. There was also another matter that left him embattled: he felt that a handsomely paid project researcher had turned her back on the fact that a cage left behind after the translocation was now being used as a trap.

  For a while the Nation ran regular articles on Solomon, praising the saving of Kipipiri’s endangered colobus ‘spearheaded by Solomon Gitau’. They published an article pointing fingers at the two foreign men, with a Dubai-registered vehicle, who were buying skins for between 300 and 500 shillings, as well as criticising KWS for their total lack of help. They quoted Solomon, saying how concerned he was about the twenty monkeys killed in only two months and asking why KWS were totally incapable of fighting the poachers.

  The many letters Solomon keeps in a plastic bag are a mixed collection: some are from people wishing to help, others from farmers asking him to remove colobus from their farms. There’s a circular letter, written by Astrid, telling the horror story of a female colobus monkey in a trap, unable to feed her baby, which starved to death; Astrid wrote this in the hope of getting funds to help Solomon, but an initial trickle of money soon stopped. There are endless pleas from Solomon to KWS, with notably few replies. One handwritten letter, by Sylvia from Sagana, wanted the names of the foreigners who bought the colobus skins because she could offer them leopard skins and rhino horn!

  By 1999, after the first successful translocation, an increasing number of local Kikuyu landowners were demanding financial recompense for damage the monkeys had done to their crops. They were in agreement with Solomon that the surviving monkeys should be moved, even if some of them were motivated by the prospect of a back-hander from any wealthy NGO they were hoping would become involved. But no funding was forthcoming. In early 2000 Solomon wrote a circular, which Astrid and Jean circulated among their friends. Solomon wrote passionately: ‘I term myself spokesman for the colobus monkeys for they cannot speak for themselves.’ He outlined the threats to these beautiful monkeys and begged people to help them.

  To try and raise enough money, a group of local artists and conservationists began meeting in Gilgil to discuss a sponsored cycle through the Malewa Valley, which runs from the Aberdares through the edge of Happy Valley to Lake Naivasha, also aiming to raise awareness among the young Kikuyu who lived in the area, teaching them more about conservation. There were only two black Kenyan members in the group: one was Solomon, who usually had grim reports at the meetings – three more dead colobus, another mother and baby who’d been stoned to death, snares, poisoned maize, even fires lit under trees to get rid of these ‘pests’. As he frequently pointed out, translocation was only a short-term solution. The bigger picture was about steady forest encroachment. His reports to the district officer and area chief had fallen on deaf ears.

  In between all his activities and trips into Happy Valley, Solomon also rescued and looked after snared monkeys, a tree duck with a broken leg and even a baby bongo which had lain next to its dead mother for three days. The latter is Kenya’s rarest antelope, still found deep in the Aberdares and a few other forests, but barely ever seen. Legally, Solomon was required to hand any wild creatures over to KWS, but by now his faith in the organisation had dwindled after too many occasions when he sought their assistance and failed to get any support.

  Solomon continued to monitor those creatures that survived and tried to motivate others into protecting them. In the late 1990s he had formed the Good Children Society, teaching youngsters – as Jean taught him – to make biodegradable bags out of dried maize stalks in which to grow tree seedlings. If cared for properly these could either be sold, or simply planted out for the good of the environment. Solomon encouraged his Good Children to clear up roadside rubbish, teaching by example, while also making homemade paper using a variety of plants, including maize husks, grass, papyrus and reeds. Overall, he preached respect for all wild creatures. The chameleon, for example, is often killed for bringing ‘bad luck’, or at best feared. Solomon taught his Good Children that a chameleon doesn’t bite, but in fact eats the flies that spread diseases. He proudly informed me that, at one primary school, he had twenty Good Children – out of 645 – the latter an incredible figure when you looked at the limited classroom space.

  Throughout all this, Solomon was dealing with another family tragedy. Since Caleb’s death, his beloved wife and soulmate, Esther, had never been well. Like Solomon’s supportive friend, the late Jean O’Meara, Esther had a weak chest and was prone to bouts of pneumonia. Just over a year after losing her son, she was admitted to Nyahururu Hospital, where she later died.

  Solomon, wracked by grief, had to deal with a substantial bill at the hospital – which he couldn’t possibly pay – and the hospital refused to release Esther’s body before the bill had been settled. As a result of such policies, there are bodies stuck indefinitely in hospital mortuaries all over Kenya.

  Esther’s family, albeit in a financial position to
help Solomon, refused – they had never condoned the marriage anyway. Meanwhile, Solomon’s European friends passed around the hat to enable him to bury his wife. His Kikuyu neighbours jeered at him: ‘We shall see his environment come and educate his children,’ said one. Another sneered: ‘He will get married to colobus monkeys and get them to make his hats.’ They were referring to Esther’s small but lucrative cottage industry: she had collected waste plastic bags and crocheted them into attractive hats, mats and baskets. Astrid had sold these at Women’s League and other functions to help Esther and Solomon pay the children’s school fees.

  Solomon ignored his neighbours’ remarks. He hand-wrote the latest chapters of his story in a new exercise book. The Black Days told his heartbroken story of Esther’s death. This book is dedicated ‘to the children born in this country, who will grow up and ask where have all the trees and animals gone?’

  Esther’s burial was attended by a large crowd of Kikuyu well-wishers and friends, and a few family members, as well as some of Solomon and Esther’s European friends. Solomon used the occasion to move forward with his usual indomitable spirit, opening an educational conservation centre in her memory: The Esther Wairumu Memorial Conservation and Field Study Centre. People listened quietly as Solomon talked in broken English about how deeply Esther had loved animals and the environment, how she had worked alongside him tirelessly, as well as involving herself in other voluntary work, including starting the Rural Women’s Crusade to empower other women to assist in various ways. These included feeding and clothing children whose mothers were alcoholics or drug addicts. Esther had also bottle-fed various wild orphans brought home by Solomon. Throughout the ceremony the plump brindled dog called Hippo wandered through the gathering. Solomon’s Good Children from his ‘Kindness Clubs’ sang songs they’d made up, including a touching one called ‘Mother Esther’. Some of the children read out poems. The occasion was a moving and generous celebration of a life well lived.

  We planted trees in Esther’s memory. As I scooped up the rough dry earth with my hands and patted it around a sapling African olive, an iridescent blue starling alighted on a nearby bush, regarding me with its yellow beady eye as if contemplating my work. I stood up and sighed. In rural Kenya the elderly tend to be revered, looked after by their extended families, imparting wisdom and wonderful stories to their grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Esther would never grow old, nor would she see her children’s children.

  A shadow passed over us, making me glance up. A large eagle was circling overhead, dark against the blue sky. The starling flew away.

  14

  Tales of Torture and Many Cups of Tea

  Solomon has remarkable courage when it comes to picking himself up and carrying on with life. Our explorations of Happy Valley continued, although our missions diverged: while I hoped to find out more about Ramsden, and his reportedly large and interesting house, Solomon had a broader agenda. On our next safari, we took the road from Captain, turning right after a short distance on to the ‘shortcut’ to Clouds, which probably took longer because it was so rough. We passed a gloomy stone house on a ridge, stark naked to the winds, all its trees and hedges slashed into spindly stumps. The sign at the bottom of the drive said ‘Ihiga Primary School’.

  ‘That was David’s house,’ Solomon said. As I took a photograph a blast of wind blew from behind, whipping my back before obscuring the road up to the house, engulfing the dry trees and the exposed house in a cloud of dust.

  ‘The spirits are saying no,’ Solomon muttered.

  A little further up the dusty road we stopped to talk to a man on a bicycle who Solomon vaguely knew. I suspected that Solomon also wanted to be seen in a Land Rover, especially one driven by a white woman. There remains a myth in Happy Valley, indeed in most of rural Kenya, that white people bring money with them – vast amounts of it. This in spite of the fact that today’s moneyed crowd, mainly black politicians, own all the glitzy palatial dwellings, surrounded by security gates and electric fences and are watched vigilantly by minimally paid guards. Sometimes there are even walls topped with slices of broken glass, in case anyone wishes to shred their hands and feet trying out that particular route in to steal whatever it is the wealthy Kikuyu bigwigs are protecting so fiercely.

  The cyclist had such vast, brown, triangular and protruding teeth he couldn’t close his mouth. He was the adult education officer, well enough respected to order a random passer-by to take over his bicycle so he could get a lift with us. We crossed the S-bend of the Kimuru River, known as daraja tatu, literally meaning ‘three bridges’. Back in the 1920s someone had worked out that the easiest way to cross the ravine was actually twice – at its narrowest places, which were on the bends. So originally two smaller bridges were built out of vast logs to convey the settlers and their belongings up to Kipipiri and on to Happy Valley from Gilgil. These old bridges were still navigable on foot, but now a newer concrete one had been added (in 1972, Solomon said). The map actually labelled the Kimuru River as the Olokoronyo. Solomon explained that this was a Maasai name, another reminder that the Maasai had been here first – the Kikuyu came later, with the white settlers. This and many other rivers that rise in the Aberdares and Kipipiri flow into the main rivers, the Wanjohi joining the Malewa, which feeds Lake Naivasha. Flying over the whole area once, I could see that it was cut by many steep gorges, a few of which still provided forested refuge for colobus monkeys. But the sacks of charcoal on the backs of bicycles and the roofs of matatus tell the story of the fate of these trees and warn of their future.

  Further along the road our passenger alighted at another old house, now Malewa Primary School. It was the house of Columbus, Solomon said, and the area had also kept the name of Columbus.

  Survey maps made in 1947 by the RAF marked this area as Colobus Farm, with two houses belonging to Ori and Vetri. The map marked ‘David’s’ house as belonging to Davies.

  A teacher came out and introduced himself. He told me he was writing a book on the Mau Mau. ‘It’s called Kimathi,’ he said. Could I find him a publisher? His face had been badly scarred and damaged in some past accident. In Kenya there are an unnerving number of road accidents, but also many small children are burnt by fires in the centre of the hut, as Solomon himself had been. Solomon’s earliest memories go back to when he was just a toddler; he vividly recalls the excruciating pain he felt when his unsympathetic brothers rubbed car grease into his burns. If this teacher had been burnt, it looked as if somebody had tried to repair the damage with a pitchfork. Plastic surgery isn’t an option in rural hospitals: if it were, how many could afford it anyway?

  We were joined by a lady with a bad squint and an elderly man with his leg amputated at the knee. I was beginning to wonder if this was actually a nursing home, until I realised I was playing Pied Piper to hundreds of staring children who had silently streamed out of a classroom behind us. The mad-eyed woman introduced herself as the English teacher, requesting that I give the children a lesson in English – there and then in the barren playing field behind the school, where Solomon, the education officer, the teacher-writer, the one-legged man and now she and several hundred children stood watching me expectantly. Her English was so poor that I decided I could at least let her pupils hear some mother-tongue English spoken, so I told them about being a writer, that my job was not high earning, but that I’d followed my dreams. My words were punctuated by frequent cries of ‘Yes!’ One brave little girl had managed to get close enough behind me to stroke my hair, so strangely pale and smooth to her.

  ‘I would like to read your book!’ said one bright-eyed boy in his very best English.

  We bumped on past several dried-up dams. One, fed by a seasonal stream, had a puddle of water and a pair of coots dabbling about in it.

  ‘These used to provide water for cows and many wild animals too,’ lamented Solomon. ‘They were made by Gordon, and this is his house.’

  ‘Gordon?’ I queried, wondering if he was an in-law of Lady Idin
a Gordon, as she was when she first came to Kenya . . .

  I followed him to a solitary stone tower, three storeys high – evidently built for fortified protection during Mau Mau, but now badly cracked. (Bubbles Delap later told me it had been very similar to the fortifications built at Rayetta.) Only one wing of the actual house remained: dusty, grey stone and surrounded by rubbish. Its austere, featureless windows and doors looked very 1950s – purpose built with minimal funds.

  Today’s owner of the tower and slice of house, Silas Karoga, had a few scrawny chickens and one skinny old cow who looked as if she wouldn’t even make good biltong. The wind picked up the dust and blew it through the corridors of dead maize. Silas’s very large, hungry-looking family had spilled out from the bottom of the tower where they evidently lived, crammed in. The wooden stairs in the tower had rotted so there was no upper section now, and the house, what was left of it, was for the chickens and cow. The children were dressed in rags, but their smiles were broad, even before we gave them sweets.

  We drove on to the small, tin-shack town of Machinery, where we stopped at an earth-floored shack called the Destination Café. The lady owner, introduced to me as Mama Maina, who helped Solomon with his colobus projects, offered us ugali (maize meal) and sukuma wiki (an accompaniment of a green, leafy vegetable, although the name actually means ‘push the week’ – referring to the plant’s ability to go on pushing out leaves against all the odds, feeding the five thousand).