Various friendly people had swum in and out of my ken (ridiculous phrase) among them the nice Honorary Consul of Israel. Born and bred in Nairobi, he was very much a city man, and very much concerned about my being alone with an African on the distant roads. He offered to find a safe driver. Joshua presented himself in the cocktail lounge of the New Stanley with a chit from the Honorary Consul, guaranteeing that Joshua was “reliable.” In local code, this meant that Joshua would not rape and/or rob me. Neither of those possibilities have ever seemed worth fretting over. Instinct, which I regularly ignore, told me that Joshua was not the man for the job.
Joshua was small, cordoba brown in colour, delicate to fragile, neat and clean. We sat on a bench by the wall while Joshua extolled his virtues. He was, first and foremost, “eddicated,” that implied higher pay than for an average driver. He had driven a Government Landrover throughout the Emergency (Mau Mau time) and lately had been driving a large American car for a tourist company in the city. I was not enthusiastic about Joshua; there was something finicky in him which I felt would not wear well, and I would have preferred a sturdier type. But I was scratchy with impatience to leave, three whole days in Nairobi were enough. Nairobi was bliss but it wasn’t Africa either. I was still searching for the Africa that I had come this weary way to find.
So I hired Joshua, despite the loud alarm bells of instinct, and told him we would leave at eight in the morning. My equipment for the journey was a large thermos filled with cold water, a flashlight, new khaki trousers and shirts, comfortable safari boots, the old straw hat, a fresh stock of paperback thrillers and goofy confidence.
Joshua arrived in black imitation Italian silk pipestem trousers, white shirt, black pointed shoes, black sunglasses in ornate red frames, holding a cardboard suitcase. The lobby of the New Stanley and the Thorn Tree café outside teemed with people going on or returning from safaris, or pretending to do so. The correct outfit was a deep sunburn, well-cut, much-worn, faded starched khaki trousers, long or short, a short-sleeved khaki bush jacket or shirt with ample pockets, old safari boots: new clothes betrayed the tenderfoot tourist. The tone was easy machismo; everyone had been eyeball to eyeball with a lion. African safari servants also wore khaki though rumpled and baggy, not Bwana standard. Departures were impressive and rather theatrical, especially if celebrities were about to venture into the bush. Mr Kirk Douglas and Mr Robert Ruark were leaving glamorously at this time. Joshua looked a comic cut; I looked sheepish. Only the dusty, beat-up, dented, patched Landrover looked right.
I expected Joshua to take the wheel and steer us out of Nairobi to the main Nairobi-Kampala road; gently but firmly, Joshua declined the honour. He could direct me better if I drove. We made the same noise as a tank. If there were any springs in this Landrover I didn’t notice them, even on city streets. To change gears I had to push or pull with might and main. Next to walking, the freedom of a car is my favourite way to travel, depending on the car. This heavy ancient vehicle was going to be a beast but between us, turn and turn about, we could rest from the effort. Slowly we wound uphill past fields and thick forest until we reached the eastern edge of the Rift Valley. Far below, as far as I could see, lay the golden plain ringed by blue mountains. It was true, it was there, and more magical than I had ever pictured it.
Happiness is a good deal better than the absence of pain. To me it feels as if the quality of my blood had changed, something new rich strong is pumping through my veins and exalting my heart, my lungs are filled with sunlit air, the world is too beautiful, I might easily spread my arms and fly. Seized with this happiness, now, I wished as often before that I could carry a tune and sing for joy but I can’t and if I started shouting, the only alternative, Joshua would think himself linked to a mad-woman. I stopped the Landrover to feast on the dream made visible. Joshua smiled with pleasure over the landscape of his country. That cheered me a lot; scenery gave us a common bond, we would get along as fellow travellers.
“You drive now, Joshua.”
“Look at that bad road, Memsaab.” The road corkscrewed in tight loops down the side of the escarpment. “Better I watch and tell you.”
I drove in second gear, tugging frantically at the wheel on the turns, not daring to raise my eyes for a minute and enjoy the view. I was pretty peeved with Joshua, depriving me of this, but perhaps it was regular form in Africa to have a lookout. The road straightened along the valley floor and I stepped on the gas, only to find that thirty-five miles an hour was our maximum speed. Never mind, I didn’t want to hurry. I wanted to see. The road felt almost European compared with West African roads though in fact it was a two-lane macadam surface, liberally flawed. Real cars flashed past us, an old Volkswagen overtook us with a waving hand and a grin, but there was little traffic.
Suddenly, to left and right of the highway, giraffes stood, in the poses that they alone achieve, enormous, sleek, polished dark brown hide marked into uneven rectangles and squares by narrow white lines, and observed the scene through their long-lashed eyes. My cup ran over on the spot. Now I had everything, the plain and the mountains and these perfect animals. “Oh nice,” Joshua said, and laughed with delight. I didn’t then suspect what I later became convinced of: Joshua had never in his life been farther outside Nairobi than the suburbs nor seen any wild animals until he saw those ravishing giraffes. It was all new to him as to me.
We bumped and clanked across the valley, shouting conversation. Joshua was a Kikuyu, the dominant Kenya tribe, reputed to be the most intelligent; he was also a Presbyterian. I don’t remember whether he went to a Presbyterian mission school or why he adopted that faith but he had it, earnestly. He could never steal, he explained, because of his religion, nor tell a lie. Having lied his head off about driving a Landrover during the Emergency; like a dope, I had believed that fairy tale.
Joshua was too young, twenty-three now; the Emergency lasted from 1952 to 1960. No African teenager ever drove anything anywhere, and certainly not Joshua starting at the age of thirteen. Transport is as essential as water to Europeans in Africa; they don’t entrust their valuable cars lightly to Africans. Joshua was not married and not tempted. African girls were silly, he shouted; the accompanying sniff reached me as a feeling rather than a sound, in the Landrover’s general uproar. He wished to get ahead; his ambition was to own a fleet of cars, his own rental agency in Nairobi. A genuine city boy with genuine middle-class dreams.
Three categories of road were marked on the map; thick red for major roads, thinner red for secondary roads, narrow yellow for outright disaster roads and, finally, a red hairline that must have meant a footpath between villages or maybe game tracks. We had turned north at Gilgil onto a secondary road and it was bad. This was the year of the great floods and there was plenty of mud to overcome; mud is for bogging down, dust is for skidding out of control. My aim was Barry’s Hotel at Thomson’s Falls and it was getting late. I began to worry, as I did every day thereafter, about daylight and distance. Worry is too mild a word. A knot started to form in my stomach around four o’clock and grew knottier and bigger every half hour. The sun set almost exactly at six. I doubted that I could cope with these roads in the dark; I could too easily imagine a breakdown and a long cold black night, waiting for a car to pass in the morning.
There was no traffic at all. Joshua, chilled in his white shirt and cowering as forest closed in both sides of the road, would cry out like a variation on Sister Anne, “How far now, Memsaab, how far?” During the afternoon, Joshua had invented two more excuses for not driving so I knew it was pointless to ask him to drive now that the going was tough. I gritted my teeth like a man and told Joshua to shut up; didn’t he have a sweater in his suitcase, well find it and put it on for God’s sake, we’ll get there when we get there. Which we did.
Our business arrangements had been made in advance. Joshua was to be paid for his services and a food allowance; I would pay for his room wherever we stayed. The amount of money was fixed by Joshua as I wanted a satisfied not disg
runtled helper. Someone had briefed me on money dealings: Africans were said to be feckless about money, you must never give them large sums at one time, they will have gambled or drunk up or otherwise lost it all by the next day; you dole out money and never under any circumstances do you loan it. Loans are the beginning of the end. Living on loans, the African feels he is working for nothing, he will not be paid any more nor does he intend to pay back; it becomes a shambles; stick to small regular sums, the only way. Joshua had four days’ advance wages in hand.
When we arrived at the hotel, a long verandah fronting a stone building, draped in greenery, I parked the car, told Joshua to bring my suitcase inside and fix himself up. I wanted a drink, several drinks, and a soft comfortable chair. My shoulders felt as if I had been carrying an iron bar on them all the way from Nairobi. I had signed in, said my driver would need a room, and settled by the fire with a large whisky, when Joshua appeared, grasping his own suitcase.
“Memsaab?”
“What’s the matter, Joshua?”
“Where shall I go?” It had a biblical ring; Ruth among the alien corn.
I gave Joshua the first of ceaseless lectures, informing him that he spoke Swahili, he was surrounded by his own countrymen, he could use his voice, he could ask anyone who worked in the hotel where drivers’ rooms were, he could then ask these same people any other questions which might occur to him. He could not ask me because I did not know, nor was it my business to know, I was extremely tired since I had been driving all day, and I wished to rest in peace. He had no duties except to find his room which should not be too heavy a task, and appear again at nine in the morning but not before. “Buck up, Joshua,” I said sharply.
What a lovely Africa this is, I thought, watching rainbows flicker in mist from the plunging river. Giant ferns along the banks glistened with dew. I could taste the air; we were high up, 7,680 feet it said in the hotel lobby. Far off to the east a huge white cone, shining like moonstone, hung in the sky: the snow cap of Mount Kenya. Beside the bridge over the river, an African was carving an elephant; it was identical to the elephants for tourists at Fort Lamy. How did they get the word, from West to East or vice versa, to stylize the shape of elephants? I asked the African where he had learned to carve an elephant this way. He shrugged. It was the moment for Joshua, interpreter.
Joshua was sitting on the verandah steps, looking refreshed and peculiar. He wore his pointed shoes and black city socks, well pulled up, a clean short-sleeved white shirt, the sunglasses and tiny khaki shorts: his safari outfit. I led him to the bridge and told him my question. After a surprisingly long conversation, Joshua reported, “From his fadder.” Where then did his father learn? More long talk. “From his fadder,” Joshua said.
“You mean you’ve been talking all that time for him only to say three words? What else did he say, Joshua?”
“That’s all, Memsaab. Just his fadder.”
“Swahili must be a very funny language if it takes so long to say so little.”
“Very funny,” Joshua agreed.
Apparently Joshua was not going to be any more active as an interpreter than as a driver. Arguing about Swahili wouldn’t get me far so I suggested that Joshua collect some food as I planned to picnic at Lake Nakuru, a National Park, and drive on to Kericho for the night.
While waiting for Joshua, the hotel manager gave me a needed Landrover lesson. I had forgotten to ask how to push, pull, lift, tug the small second gear that puts the Landrover into four-wheel drive. Now I felt equipped for the worst though the gear was brutal but together Joshua and I would surely be able to move it into position.
“You drive this morning, Joshua.”
“Better later, Memsaab,” Joshua said and nipped smartly into the passenger seat.
The mornings were always easier no matter what the road because the daylight-distance phobia hadn’t engulfed me. We made the forty-four miles to Nakuru in two hours, quick work, and I stopped for petrol. Petrol stations were infrequent. Whenever I saw one, I behaved as if I had come on an oasis in the desert and drew in to replenish the tank and check the oil and water and tyre pressure, though we carried two jerry cans of petrol and one of water. Joshua sat and watched while I jumped out to make sure the air gauge was properly read, the oil gauge properly wiped and inserted and inspected, the petrol actually filling the tank.
“Really, Joshua,” I said crossly, “You could take care of this.”
“Better you, Memsaab. These boys obey you more.”
The African Ranger at the gate of Lake Nakuru Park warned me about water-logged side tracks. It would be wiser to leave the Landrover on the main track and walk to the shore. After driving far enough to feel alone in darkest Africa and therefore ecstatic, I parked the Landrover on a reliable piece of stubble-covered ground, got my kit together, sandwiches, thermos of cold tea, Field Guide to the National Parks, binoculars and said, “Ready, Joshua?”
Joshua stared at the squashy track and wrinkled his nose. “Very bad mud.”
“Are you coming or not?”
“Memsaab, they got lions?”
“No,” I said with authority, having read the Field Guide, which stated that lions were rare hereabouts.
“I watch the car. Some man could come stealing your clothes.” I much preferred to be by myself but thought it would be an awful bind if we had to circle East Africa without getting Joshua’s fancy footwear dirty.
The trees here were yellow acacia, fever trees, very tall with bright yellow trunks and branches and small feathery jade green leaves. I squelched along quietly and two tiniest antelopes, not much larger than rabbits, leaped across the track. They were reddish with diminutive horns and butterfly ears and I hoped I could remember them long enough to look them up. The advantages of an experienced African safari driver were all too apparent; such a man would know everything, explain what the animals were doing, and have no anxiety about his shoes. He might even take a turn at the wheel.
Through the trees I saw zebra grazing and held my breath in wonder and delight. I would never be able to go to a zoo again, I would feel too sorry for animals kidnapped from where they belonged. And the poor animals would never again look right. The brief interlude at Waza in Cameroun, giraffes on the Nairobi-Kampala road and this herd of zebra had already shown me the difference between the imprisoned and the free: the shine of their coats. And the movements, the grace of everything they did when living as they were meant to. I was seeing animals for the first time, before I had seen sad copies of the original creation.
At the shore, thousands of flamingoes lifted off and spread in a coral pink streamer against the sky. The sound of flight was like tearing silk. Then the streamer dropped, farther along the lake, and the birds trekked head down, eating; others relaxed on one leg. A field of rosy feathers. Out of three and a half closely printed Field Guide pages, giving the names of birds to be seen here, I recognized only egrets and pelicans and herons. Charming names. Bare-Faced Go-Away Bird which emits “a series of deep bleating calls and wild ringing chuckles.” What could be better? It was a world of birds and they looked newly made, standing at ease or pecking on the lake bed, taking flight into the brilliant emptiness of the sky as if for pleasure. A short spin round heaven.
A fallen tree trunk was not too wet, just enough to dampen my trouser seat. I settled with binoculars and lunch. On the far side and at the far end of the lake, the land rose in high rocks, studded with candelabra cactus. The water was very blue, marshy by the shore. I ate sandwiches and listened to the silence beneath the steady insect hum of Africa and thought perhaps I was going to have daily attacks of happiness because here it came again, the sensation of being airborne. Canaries flew in shoals through the fever trees, and bigger yellow birds, possibly weavers. Doves sang their sweet mournful song. Those coloured flashes in the leaves might be bee-eaters or sunbirds. So much to see, so much to learn, and no help at hand except the Field Guide to the National Parks. At least I could identify the diminutive antelopes as K
irk’s dikdik and finished my lunch and weighed the dampness on my bottom against the pleasure of a cigarette here, lit the cigarette and watched a parade of greyish monkeys cavort among the treetops.
If only I knew more, if only I were more capable: I ought to be camping with a tent and walking slowly through the acacia woodland to glimpse the animals before they glimpsed me. Instead I looked at my watch and it was 2.30 and daylight-distance had to be considered. Still I moved quietly on the track, hoping for more visions and again saw the herd of zebra now joined by visiting friends, small antelopes with a black stripe along their tan sides and neat black horns spiralled to a point, and a short black tufted flicking tail. I disturbed them and they ran, bouncing as if the earth was a trampoline. This was all far more beautiful and exciting than anything I had seen in the museums of the civilized world, and music never gave me such joy. At last and for once I had actually found what I was seeking.
The Landrover was turned so that the passenger seat faced the track. Joshua sat therein, with the door open, his knees crossed, one foot swinging languidly outside. He held a miniature teacup and saucer in his left hand and as I stared, transfixed, he lifted the cup, his little finger curled, and sipped daintily. It struck me with the force of revelation: a Kikuyu Presbyterian pansy. Joshua turned and said graciously, “Jambo, Memsaab, you have good time?”
“Jambo, Joshua, very good.” I busied myself looking up the small antelopes in the guide book while Joshua stowed the remains of our picnics and his china ware: Thomson’s gazelles. But how could I have guessed, I didn’t even know African pansies existed. When you thought of all the clamour about black men lusting for white women and white women lusting for black men due to their massive virility, it was even funnier. What I could absolutely not do was have a fit of giggles.
“Want to drive now, Joshua?”
“I dunno this road, Memsaab.”
Travels with Myself and Another Page 22