“Have you ever heard about the blind leading the blind?”
“No, how can that be? If somebody is blind how can he be leading another fellow as well he is blind too?”
“We are going to find out, Joshua, day by day. Get your sweater now, it will be cold later.” And thought that before we were through no doubt I would bring him morning tea and tuck him in at night.
The road was never marked correctly on the map, perhaps because no one could draw all those twists and bends in the available space. This was the major road and the surface was quite good though very up hill and down dale with much braking and shifting gears. The scenery was always different, usually glorious, never dull or ugly and most of it has blurred out of shape in my memory. We had to take a turn-off to the left for Kericho and I instructed Joshua to keep his eyes open. Joshua couldn’t read a map, not that it made much difference; little to choose from and as time went on I realized the map was more a wistful estimate than a statement of fact. There was really no reason to believe any information, printed or otherwise, but one must have faith in something or founder utterly and I based my faith and my distance calculations on the hotel-inn-resthouse booklet, figuring that it was 66 miles to Kericho from Nakuru but if we missed the turn the next possible stop was Kisumu, 111 miles, and we would never make that before dark.
From another detailed map, which I must have stolen later off an old Africa hand, I see that it had been quite some drive, the road dipping and rising through immense forests with the Mau Escarpment, a 10,000-foot-high range of mountains, on our left and Mount Londiani sticking up 9,874 feet on the right and after the turn-off at Lumbwa, the road dropped down to 6,700 feet at Kericho with a vast spread of thick uninhabited forest to the east. I daresay it was spectacular and that when I wasn’t wrestling the Landrover I appreciated it.
Around 5 p.m. Joshua started his Sister Anne act. “Very cold, Memsaab, how far now?” I had told him the distances; whether correct or not, they were the best we had. He knew as well as I did that here, practically on the Equator, the sun set at six; he also knew it got cold in the late afternoon and much colder at night in these high altitudes; he knew as much as I did which wasn’t much and by the end of the day I was too tired to feel like playing Nanny. “Oh shut up, Joshua,” I said, concentrated on steering.
After a while, he said, “Where we going, Memsaab?”
“Kericho, I told you.”
“What is that place?”
“How in God’s name should I know? The hotel is called the Tea Hotel so I suppose they grow tea there or maybe just drink it. Think of something cheerful, Joshua, and do not ask me how far.”
We got in soon after dark, the hotel beaming like a lighthouse to guide us. A bossy Memsaab said she would attend to my boy, and I had time for a quick wash before dinner. I didn’t care about dinner and flopped into a chintz chair in the lounge—thinking wearily that it was wonderful how everywhere the English managed chintz and spoke of the lounge—and rang for a drink. The hotel Memsaab, returning, announced that I would be late as if being late for dinner was a felony. To placate her, I explained that I had driven from Thomson’s Falls and the Landrover was old and heavy, and therefore I was in need of whisky. The Memsaab melted and said I was a poor dear but why didn’t my boy drive. Out of loyalty to Joshua, I found myself lying; he’s not a driver, I explained, he’s along to carry luggage and do my washing and be my interpreter because I don’t speak Swahili, he’s more an indoor boy.
It would be repetitious to describe food; I blamed the absence of eating pleasure everywhere on the Memsaabs who taught the African cooks. The Africans did not eat what they cooked for us, whether by their own choice or for economy reasons. Thick custard sauce on tinned fruit was a special bane, as was thick brown gravy on indecipherable meat. Breakfast was the one satisfactory meal in East Africa though I will never comprehend the theory and practice of cold toast. There were a few other guests in the dining room but aside from murmuring good evening, if glances met, conversation did not occur. Talk at the tables was carried on in whisper voices. The general tone was that of a deadly respectable English provincial hotel. Inside, you hardly knew you were in Africa; outside the night sky told you exactly where you were.
No one else strolled on to the terrace. It was cold but that wasn’t why I hastened back to my snug room and drawn curtains. This was not the velvet embracing desert sky at El Geneina; this was infinite space. The idea of no boundaries, no end, is terrifying in the abstract and much worse if you are looking at it. The far-off stars were an icy crust; the darkness beyond the stars was more than I could handle. The machinery that keeps me going is not geared to cope with infinity and eternity as so clearly displayed in that sky. After sunset, the Africans jammed into their round huts and closed everything to keep out the night; if I understood nothing else about them, I understood that.
The morning smell was roses and lilies and stocks. The garden grew everything English only bigger. Rose geraniums and passion flowers and trumpet vines and plumbago covered the walls of the hotel. The lawn was a triumph; in a country where any fool can grow orchids, a smooth lawn is the prize accomplishment. Below this Afro-English enclave, the tea gardens stretched in long neat rows of shining dark green bushes. Beyond the tea gardens, forest, and mountains. I asked the hotel Memsaab, Mrs Simpson, if I might stay on a few days. Travel for pleasure had worn me out. This benign Anglicized Africa was just the ticket for frayed nerves.
Joshua drooped in the passenger seat of the Landrover. When I said I meant to stay here for two or three days he drooped more.
“Isn’t your room nice, Joshua?”
“It is all right, Memsaab.”
“Do you find what you want to eat?”
“Yes, Memsaab.”
“Well, cheer up. You love tea, they should have first-class tea here.”
Joshua was bored, no getting around it. I didn’t have to arrange my trip to spare Joshua boredom. He ought to have some work to keep him busy and as a matter of fact he ought to do that work every day without being told. I said, “Clean the car, Joshua, inside and out. That’s your job, you know. Look at the windshield.” It was plastered with smashed insects. “Look at the floor.” Hunks of dried mud. “Buck up, Joshua,” I said.
In the afternoon, Mrs Simpson sought me out in my shaded deck chair. I put aside the paperback thriller with regret. Mrs Simpson parked on the grass, prepared for a comfortable chat. She began by a bit of probing. It was unusual, she said, for a woman to travel alone. Two unmarried teachers from Nairobi often came here during school holidays but of course they lived in Kenya. Perhaps I was on my way to visit friends? I sketched a noncommittal nod and that seemed to solve me.
“He’s a funny one, your boy.”
“Oh? Has he done anything wrong?”
“Oh no, he’s remarkably tidy and quiet. He’s more like a little old maid than an African.”
Poor Joshua, I didn’t see him giving that high tee-hee laugh or the belly bellow of Africans, nor did I imagine he could join cosily in the non-stop natter which is a universal African occupation. Perhaps he wasn’t bored; perhaps he was lonely.
“He looks younger than he is,” Mrs Simpson said. “I wouldn’t have taken him for thirty-three.”
“Thirty-three?”
“So he said.” To whom was Joshua lying and for what purpose?
“I’ve lived here twenty-seven years,” Mrs Simpson said. “My husband was a tea planter; I took this job five years ago when he died. And I don’t know anything about Africans, not their age or what goes on in their heads or why they do what they do or don’t do what they should do. The longer you live among them, the less you know. Now our cook, he’s been with me the whole time. He makes apple pie at least three times a week. He goes along perfectly for months, then all of a sudden he forgets everything, he cannot make apple pie, I have to start from scratch and teach him again. Then he sulks, as if I were asking him to do something extraordinary and impossible. They never tell us the t
ruth on principle. Every time they want extra leave, it’s a death in the family. I have a gardener who’s had at least twenty deaths in his family and I only keep him because he’s good with roses. But then he forgets too. You have to stand over them every minute, watching, reminding, nagging. It just about drives you up the wall.”
“Perhaps because it’s different from anything they do for themselves?”
“My dear, they don’t do anything for themselves if they can help it. The women do the work on their shambas and that’s not much; they grow a few vegetables and keep some chickens. They’re bone idle. God help this country when it gets Independence. The whole lot will simply lie down and sleep.”
“Will you stay after Independence?”
“Unless they kick us out. I wouldn’t want to live anywhere else. I haven’t bothered to go home since my husband died; England seemed so small and that awful climate, when we used to go back. I take my leave on the coast now. I haven’t set foot outside Kenya for seven years. But imagine what this country would be like if the population was Chinese instead of African. Those clever hardworking Chinese. It would be heaven on earth. Now I must go and make sure they serve tea properly. There’s no telling what they’ll do. One day they served all the teapots full of hot water, but forgot to put in the tea.”
Joshua was mooning about like a displaced person in a refugee camp. I asked if he liked to read. He said he did without enthusiasm, so I turned over yesterday’s thriller, upset because Joshua was not enjoying himself.
“Don’t you think it’s pretty here, Joshua?”
“Yes it is pretty, Memsaab, but I think we go on safari not sit down in one place.”
That infuriated me. “It is my safari, Joshua, and perhaps I wouldn’t be so tired if I didn’t have to do all the driving.”
“These roads are too bad, Memsaab. If I make an accident then I will have much trouble. You see that Bwana and Memsaab go away this morning; they take one African boy with them but the Bwana is driving.”
“Why did you tell Memsaab Simpson that you were thirty-three?”
“When?” Joshua asked with amazed innocence.
“Listen Joshua, I intend to have a good time on this safari and if you aren’t having a good time just don’t complain about it.”
Joshua looked at once hurt and haughty. I left him feeling that our relation had all the earmarks of a marriage made in haste and repented at leisure; but if he couldn’t do anything else at least Joshua could change a tyre should the occasion arise and I hadn’t learned any Swahili beyond yes no please thank you Jambo.
We started off on friendlier terms the third morning because Joshua was excited by the thriller and wanted to talk.
“What those spy men are after, Memsaab? Diamonds?”
“No.” I didn’t see how I could explain the fundamental idiocy of spying, real or fictional, and besides couldn’t remember the story, being absorbed in the next one. “They’re after each other, I think.”
“Already two killed,” Joshua said, awed. “Very bad job. Those spy men must get much money for such bad jobs.”
With me and only me staunchly gripping the wheel, we drove to Eldoret, to Tororo across the Uganda border (somewhere, long ancient crocodiles basked, then slid into the water), to Jinja where the Nile pours out of Lake Victoria, and on to Kampala. Joshua said at once and with reason that Nairobi was far better.
“Okay, Joshua, I agree. But I’m going to look at it as soon as I get a room. Do you want to come along?”
Joshua condescended to accept the invitation. There wasn’t much to see; it was a sloppy unfinished sort of town, more African than Nairobi. I fell into a temper over the heat. What did they mean by having such a rotten climate? Kampala stood at four thousand feet altitude, not sea level, and Lake Victoria was near by, the second largest body of fresh water in the world (cf. the World Almanac), and ought to cool the air. I was indignant to be sweating again.
“Makerere University is here,” I informed Joshua. “It’s very grand, it’s the university for all of East Africa.”
Joshua grunted. We drove past the campus, mock Elizabethan and ivy-covered, ridiculously like an African version of Bryn Mawr. I was feeling quite enlivened by this joke when we came to a long line of trees where suddenly thousands of bats filled the sky, flapping blindly and squeaking, hanging on the trees like vile bunches of grapes. A bats’ sanctuary. Joshua cried out in disgust and clamped his hands over his hair which was at most a half inch long and offered no room for bats if it is true that they wish to nest in human hair.
“What place is this?” Joshua cried. “In a city such things! We have no dudus like that in Nairobi!” Dudu is Swahili for insect.
“I don’t like them either.”
“Go on, Memsaab, drive quick before they come to us!”
I had stopped, repelled—bats being an unfavourite form of life—but fascinated by this strange migration. Why here?
“Drive quick!” Joshua ordered, on the verge of panic.
“Listen Joshua, I know when something is dangerous and when it is not,” I lied. “So stop acting like a fool.”
However, since Joshua seemed not only in a panic but about to cry, I thought it better to move on.
“How long we stay here, Memsaab?”
“We’ll leave tomorrow. I have to mail some letters and get some money.”
We queued together in the crowded main Post Office; Joshua held a picture postcard carefully twixt thumb and forefinger. I longed to ask who would receive this greeting from afar—did he have a family, a bosom friend—and dared not invade his privacy. Everyone around us smelled like West Africa, that appalling musky stink. I was unprepared for the shock after deodorized Kenya, and shuddered with distaste. Joshua took out his handkerchief and held it openly to his nose.
“Don’t do that,” I hissed.
Speaking through his handkerchief, Joshua said, “These people are sweating dirty. They smell too bad. I don’t know these people. In Kenya people are not smelling like this.”
“Put your handkerchief away, Joshua. Breathe through your mouth, like me.”
In the close heat of this city and in this horrid body odour, which I had happily forgotten, I began to feel sick; Joshua handed me his postcard and some pennies and fled. So my nose was not racist, after all; what a relief. And furthermore I would honourably refrain from reading the address on Joshua’s card.
The people in the Post Office looked reasonably well dressed and many were fat, a sure sign of prosperity. They were really black with a purple plum sheen, unlike Joshua, blacker than any Kenya Africans I had seen. The smell could not derive from skin shade; it had to be diet. The European assistant hotel manager said the locals lived on bananas and fish. Hopefully Joshua would disdain the food here as he disdained everything else; it would be too dreadful if Joshua started smelling Ugandan. Plans.
A man in the hotel bar said I ought to go and see old Tom Popper. Old Tom was a card, a character, kept a black harem and spawned dozens of black kiddies, dirt poor, farmed tea more or less, the Memsaabs wanted him deported, he was a disgrace to Britain, letting the side down as far as it would go. On the other hand, old Tom had lived in Africa for forty-five years and there was nothing he didn’t know about the country and the blacks (pejorative). Here, draw you a map. Thank you, sounds fascinating . . . The white man gone native is a central figure in Africa fiction and, as Michelin says, vaut le voyage.
Alan Moorehead’s splendid book, No Room in the Ark, tempted me to visit Traveller’s Rest, an inn at Kisoro, whence one climbed mountains hoping to sight the rare gorilla, a vanishing species. Alan had done it and made it seem, in writing, highly vaut le voyage. And of course Queen Elizabeth Park, for elephants. I studied the map. A rundfahrt of southwestern Uganda appeared to be possible, mostly on red lines. I had lost some confidence in red for major roads but curiosity is stronger than scepticism.
I said, “All right, Joshua, I’ll get us out of Kampala but then, by God, yo
u drive.”
Joshua had a real stunner this time. He regretted that he could not drive in Uganda as his licence was no good here, the tone of voice suggesting that he had anyway driven himself to the bone in Kenya.
“You might have told me in Nairobi.”
“I did not know you coming to Uganda, Memsaab. I think it is safari in Kenya.”
So it was all my fault. I had tricked this simple creature far from home into an alien land and now I expected him to drive. Joshua was lying. When the three countries were British colonies, they formed a genuine common market: all for one and one acceptable in any other. It passed belief; I was carrying, at sizable expense and some psychological strain, a fellow whose only service was to lift my suitcase in and out of the Landrover, night and morning.
“You know what you are, Joshua?”
“Memsaab?”
“You are a Bare-Faced Go-Away Bird.”
Joshua’s face closed. It is a special African look. The face and the eyes turn to wood. The face actually looks deaf. They have gone off to some distant place, you cannot reach them. They must have perfected this withdrawal over centuries; it is protection against insult or worse. Joshua obviously thought that I had been swearing at him. Swearing is prelude to the full crazy-mean-European syndrome; in less enlightened times, no doubt swearing led to beating. I steamed with anger; how dared Joshua treat me like Simon Legree when I had in fact been his Nanny.
“And furthermore, Joshua,” I said, rather high-pitched, “Shit.”
The word, so very bad in the mouth of a Memsaab, had no effect. Possibly Joshua didn’t know it and I didn’t know the Swahili equivalent. We clanked along, always sounding like a tank, in glacial silence.
This was dust country. Sometimes the dust was beige, sometimes brown, sometimes red. Joshua was not a backseat driver, he was a front-seat groaner and gasper. He gasped for peril, when I took a curve faster than I meant to, or skidded in dust, or slammed into a pothole at full force. He groaned for discomfort, heat and dust. I had resolved to ignore this and did, up to a point, at which point I snarled at him, saying that if the passenger was not content he could always get out and walk.
Travels with Myself and Another Page 23