Story of the Month

Extract from one of the stories in ”Nowt At All Like Home”

giving a slice of the expatriate life in Kenya in the mid 1960’s

Ruhio, a Kikuyu from close to Nyeri in Central Province was almost twice our age but content to be termed our “house-servant” and cook. Some expatriates still used the colonial term “house-boy” with all its baggage of superiority and subservience but by and large we managed to avoid that - even though it unlikely that Ruhio would have cared either way. He especially enjoyed it when we had guests and he could demonstrate his prowess in the kitchen, puffing and blowing and hissing through his teeth but producing excellent food and bringing it to the table (always) wearing his dark red serving fez and white gloves.

It was almost as though we adjusted to his routine rather than the other way around, although it soon became apparent that there were one or two ways in which we were different from his previous employers. After a peaceful first night in our new home for example we were awakened very early the next morning by a knock on the steel door that separated the bedrooms and bathroom from the other rooms in the bungalow and Ruhio’s deep voice intoning “chai bwana, chai memsahib” over and over again like a mantra. I took the tray of tea but made it clear with some difficulty that this was not something we expected as part of our morning routine. Instead we soon found a much better one. Close to seven o’clock on six mornings a week we would hear “Blackaface tayari bwana” and know that breakfast complete with piping hot Kenya coffee would be on the dining room table waiting for us. He was incapable or so it seemed of pronouncing breakfast any other way – all of which is a clear reminder many years on, of the fact that he had very limited reading and writing ability in either English or Swahili. His lack of understanding of written English was best demonstrated by the way he would invariably stack the tinned goods upside down in the kitchen cupboard. His shopping list was always verbal.

One early evening not long after we had settled in, he found us (possibly with gin and tonics) on the veranda watching the last few shafts of sunlight leave the pink-fringed lake on the southern side of the township and managed make it clear that someone was at the kitchen door wishing to speak to us. A tall and good looking young man who introduced himself as Samuel told us in slow but very respectable English that he was looking for a job as a “garden boy” and more to the point that our “house boy” Ruhio had said that until he found somewhere else to stay he could share a part of his servants’ quarters at the back of the property. Through Samuel, (or Samwelli as Ruhio always called him) who we hired immediately, we were able to communicate a little more easily with our cook. I still have a note from Samuel which he wrote on a torn off sheet of his ever-present exercise book with a list of translated words or phrases and (in capital letters) at the bottom ‘YOU TEACHER ME ENGLISH AND I TEACHER YOU SWAHILI’. He helped me along, but I fear he absorbed much more English than he was able to teach me Swahili.

As for my work, that can only be described as substantial. If I had come out to Kenya with the naive idea that I would be mainly applying the knowledge I had acquired over five years at university in what I may have regarded as my area of (limited) competence, I was soon disabused of that notion. Much of my time in the provincial capital Nakuru was spent managing the people and the processes involved. This was as it had to be as I was after all “Officer in Charge”, but I was ridiculously unprepared for what that meant.

At the peak, I was in charge of three graduate level field controllers, five or six supervisors and at least seventy field enumerators collecting information out in the “field” all over the country. Every enumerator had a bicycle and every bicycle had a monthly bicycle allowance paid in cash! The field supervisors had motorbikes (which were a nightmare as accidents did happen and the bikes broke down regularly). The regular travelling (on safari) for me and the field controllers was serviced by three Land Rovers and two other vehicles totally unsuited to the terrain. We had four drivers which fortunately included Muteti who was by far the best and the one I always made sure was driving me around on dirt roads in the rain. In addition, up to six clerks were employed in the unit in Nakuru, coding and classifying the farm economics data as it came in. It was soon apparent that I was, to a varying degree, responsible for each and every one of them! My Italian secretary resigned three days after I started and one of my first tasks was to find a suitable (African) replacement which was much easier said than done.  

For reasons best known to those involved at the time, we were predominantly employed in carrying out a massive year by year sample-drawn survey of the economics of small-scale farming mainly on the new land settlement programme. More was to come but as part of the Independence agreement and funded by the UK Government, the World Bank and the West German aid programme, over a million acres had been transferred from large-scale European farmers to small scale Kenyans. Even though I knew little I had doubts from the outset about the wisdom of embarking upon a survey on such a scale. It was soon apparent to me that the capacity of the parent ministry to handle the data and to turn it into useable analysis was extremely limited. I also realised that we were flooded with information of variable quality which even included hundreds of measurements of cropped acreages so that we could calculate productivity.  

In those far-off days before Microsoft and Apple and laptops, all data was coded and acceptable code sheets were converted into punch cards. These were (eventually) fed into a massive main frame computer beast which occupied much of the basement of the Treasury building in Nairobi. Perhaps because the Ministry of Land Settlement was suspicious about what we were doing, every piece of summarised farm level data was produced in duplicate so that every now and then we sent down a Land Rover full of paper bundles which were dropped off in the ministry. Quite what if anything they did with it, I was never able to find out! If we had missed dropping off an instalment would anyone have ever noticed?

The vast amount of travelling that it was necessary for me to do through much of the Rift Valley and adjacent provinces took me regularly westwards towards Lake Victoria and up to the rolling agricultural lands of the Uasin Gishu and Trans Nzioia Provinces. On my first stay in the run-down Lake Hotel in Kisumu shortly after my arrival, I saw the biggest rat I have ever seen in my life casually crossing the floor of a very sparsely peopled dining room but on the same safari, I also enjoyed what was to be the first of many comfortable nights at the Kitale Club. To the North- East an early familiarisation safari with Charles Mangua, the senior graduate field controller, took me over the Equator and back into the Northern hemisphere for the first of many times and to Thompson Falls (soon to be re-named Nyahururu), over to the wild and often cold heights of the Kinangop and on to Nyeri and beyond. Work travel was often dusty and hot and tiring and always full of challenges but fascinating at the same time. I had an early lesson in learning how to decide which tasks to do first and even in learning to recognise that they would never all get done.

Despite Saturday morning work (divided either side of coffee and samosas at Rita’s Curry House) I never caught up. Had I not had other more important things in my life I could quite easily have worked seven days a week, twelve hours a day!

Fortunately, there was much more to life for two young expatriates than our respective work environments. On a normal day (if such there was) and if I was not on safari somewhere, I was able to pick up Elaine at the Kenya Farmers Association office where she had found work in the Insurance department, do some shopping as necessary and still be home an hour so before darkness fell close to six-thirty every day of the year. There would usually be time for a walk with the dog, perhaps a chat with Samuel about garden work and usually a drink on the veranda as the African night closed in on a blood-red sunset or purple-hued rain clouds approached from the West. Now and then it was straight to the Club for football for me and tennis for the memsahib. In part of the dry season, cricket was Saturday afternoon or Sunday and otherwise we explored as far and wide as we could in our faithful and hardy Beetle. 

We soon found we had many friends and this increased markedly when we got involved with the Nakuru Players as there were many nights of convivial rehearsal at the theatre, greatly assisted by the fact that we had our own theatre bar. Elaine started it by joining the chorus of the pantomime during our first Christmas season and then we were both involved in a number of plays including ‘Witness for the Prosecution’, ‘The Inspector Calls’ and ‘My Three Angels’ and one more pantomime (when I was daft enough to write, co-produce and tread the boards in Dick Whittington). 

In the panto, I was able to break new ground in a significant way by casting the first ever African in a Nakuru Players show. Godwin Wachira, a local journalist did well as the town crier in what could have been an intimidating experience with an otherwise whites-only cast. I swear I could hear two generations of Nakuru and district colonialists turning in their respective graves! Thankfully, Godwin did not let his stage debut hold him back; becoming a respected writer for the Nation newspaper and publishing a novel based on the Mau Mau period.

 ‘My Three Angels’ was to be of special off-stage dramatic significance that included a famous former freedom-fighter in a walk on role. Such were the times that outside work we had limited social contact with local Kenyans although we soon established cordial relations with our immediate neighbour Achieng Oneko. He was one of the big names of the Independence struggle and had been interned at Kapenguria with Kenyatta and four others from 1952 to 1961 for alleged support for the Mau Mau movement. When we first arrived as new neighbours to Achieng and his wife Jedida and the children, he was a big wheel in the new government, rewarded by Kenyatta with the Ministry of Information, Broadcasting and Tourism. Although as a busy minister we saw little of him, this was to change somewhat within the space of a year when he followed his mentor Oginga Odinga in the creation of the socialist opposition party The Kenya People’s Union.

After the penultimate My Three Angels show – in which I had one of the three main roles, we invited quite a few cast members back home for spaghetti bolognaise and beer. This coincided with what looked and sounded like a full-scale political rally next door at Oneko’s place which went on long after our guests had left. Elaine, meanwhile, developed what could have been indigestion but turned out to be appendicitis and was both uncomfortable and almost sleepless as drums drummed and Luo dancers ululated into the night sky until the early hours. 

Despite all this she went off on the Saturday morning for a hair appointment only to find that her pain became acute. I was contacted at work and we both went in search of our local doctor “Bunny” Griffiths, who once tracked down to the bar of the Rift Valley Sports Club, confirmed immediately that the appendix was the problem and an early operation was necessary. Even though we had a small local hospital, no surgeon with suitable experience was available on that day and we were advised to travel to the main Nairobi hospital as soon as possible!

Following Bunny’s advice to “go straight away but try to avoid bumps en route” we packed a bag and beetled off taking the reverse journey to that we had taken for the first time approximately one year earlier. Bunny returned to his place at the Club bar. Showing the forbearance and tolerance that was to be one of the mainstays of a long-running marriage, my wife decided that subject to what the surgeon had to say “the show must go on” and that I should return the 100 miles back to Nakuru in time to be on stage at 7.30 pm. The surgical staff said that the operation would be done “sometime this evening” and clearly not wanting me around, advised me to keep in touch but to go away and come back next morning. This I did. 

The sold-out last night of the show went well and my fellow cast members helped me through my distraction. The operation was successful, and the medical bulletin was good. I had a few beers and (the political rally having ended) slept like a baby. Next morning, I was at the hospital (once more) by 10 am. The patient recovered well and within a week and a half her boss was pressuring her to come back to work. The next time she visited the very same hospital was for the joyful delivery of our first child in September 1968.

The Christmas of 1966 was our second and last one as Nakuru residents as much to our disappointment, I was transferred to Nairobi for the last six months of my contract. We had a kikapu (basket) full of rafiki (friends) and irreplaceable insights into the past, present and rapidly changing world of this part of Africa. Although my Kenya safaris were far from over, as after leave back in Yorkshire we returned to Nairobi and my new job in the University of East Africa for a further two years, the life in Nakuru had been the shared-experience core of so much of what was to come. Ruhio and our border collie friend joined us in Nairobi. 

One late October day at work miles away from base still comes back to mind when I think of the special nature of our early time in Kenya. I was on safari with Charles and had stayed overnight at The White Rhino hotel in Nyeri. Charles had stayed with “a lady friend in town” but collected me with our driver Muteti sharp and bright and talkative at 8 am.  

We spent all that day (as we had much of the previous day) visiting small farm settlement schemes in places with exotic names and strong colonial connotations; Ol Joro Orok, Wanjohi, Kipipiri, Ol Kalou, Mweiga, Amboni and more. This was in the main, the highland of the original European settlement where extensive farming had given way to small farm development, cooperative marketing and the appeasement of the Kikuyu clamour for land. We sat under trees, checked area measurements and discussed data collection problems with our enumerators, placated settlement scheme managers and doled out bicycle allowances. We snacked on bananas and roasted maize and scribbled in our notebooks as the sun lost its heat. Back over our shoulders the glory of the second highest mountain in the whole of the continent emerged through the clouds. As the air cooled and the light returned to the early morning clarity, we started our dusty, bumpy way back to Nakuru.

Away to the West the late afternoon clouds had moisture in them – the first rain of the “short rains” and after a few miles, large globular drops began to hit the land and dusty roads that had been dry for months. Charles lit a cigarette and cursed. I slid open a dirty window of the Land Rover and breathed in that special moistened-dust perfume. Muteti looked happy. He was probably thinking that it was also raining on his family farm in the village. As we approached the fertile lands of Dundori and less than an hour from home, the rain heavy rain stopped and Charles cheered up and sang Kikuyu songs his mother had taught him. There was about half an hour’s light left in the sky and between the long shadows every bit of vegetation seemed to be more alive.  

I was dropped off at my up-country home just after full darkness fell like a black shutter. There was a light in the lounge window and I could see Ruhio busy in the kitchen. As I opened the door the outdoor Africa smells in my nostrils and brain were replaced instantly by that of roast chicken. “Chakula tayari” announced Ruhio with a big grin. I kissed my lovely wife, said hello to the dog and helped myself to a very cold beer from the fridge.