As Kenya is in the news today with regards to its questionable recent elections, it triggered a few memories that I thought I'd share from the season when my family lived there.
I was going to open with a Karen Blixen quote from 'Out of Africa' which depicts the old colonial African image from a bygone era. But I will resist and tell you about the Kenya I remember.
It was the early 1980's and President Daniel arap Moi was in charge. We lived in Lavington, a pretty suburb of the capital city, Nairobi. Dad had a 4 year contract working for the Kenyan Power and Lighting Company. (We used to call it the 'Power & Lightening Co' or 'Power & Darkness Co' because of the high number of power cuts.)
The photo above and those below show the Rothschild giraffe centre which is now a luxury hotel and wildlife centre. ( https://www.safari.com/giraffe-manor/ ) In my day it was a wildlife sanctuary in the grounds of a grand house. I remember attending a talk about the increasingly rare Rothschild giraffes in town and then later on going out to the house to see them. (If I can find it I will post the photo I have of myself clambering up a stone pillar to escape an angry warthog!)
Just as there is political unrest in Kenya today, so too in the time that we lived there the leadership of the country was also challenged.
At midnight on Sunday, 1 August 1982, a group of soldiers from the Kenya Air Force took over the radio station 'Voice of Kenya' and announced that they had overthrown the government. The soldiers tried to force the Air Force fighter pilots to bomb the State House at gunpoint. Apparently the pilots pretended to follow orders on the ground but once airborne they ignored them and instead dropped the bombs over Mount Kenya's forests.
Hezekiah Ochuka, a soldier from the second lowest rank in the Kenyan military, ruled Kenya for about six hours before escaping to Tanzania. After being extradited back to Kenya, he was tried and found guilty of leading the coup attempt and hanged in 1987.
My memories of the failed coup came mainly from the adults around me chattering about what went on the night before. In the morning the radio station was back in government hands and the news was of a failed coup. I think Dad went to work as usual but there was tension and fear in the air.
Something much more tangible that I do remember was New Years Eve,1980. Mum and Dad were debating what to do to celebrate New Years Eve and had decided that they might go out for dinner and dancing at the Norfolk Hotel in town. I don't know what changed their minds but in the end they decided to stay at home and invite some friends over.
We were all outside enjoying the warm night air, candles lit, drinks, music, chatter, when at 8.30pm there was a large boom in the far distance that shook the ground and left a strange empty silence in the air. We listened for a second or third boom but there was nothing. Slowly the evening noises returned. Dad thought it might be a power station blowing under the strain of all the electricity being used on this evening of celebrations! But as there was no power cut to back his theory up the boom remained a mystery. The crickets returned to their humming, the frogs to their calling and a million mosquitos resumed their buzzing sounds! Life returned to normal. We continued with our celebrations and had no idea what had just taken place.
The boom we had heard was a bomb that destroyed a huge part of the Norfolk Hotel, killing 20 people and injuring 80. An Arab group claimed responsibility, saying it was in retaliation for Kenya allowing Israeli troops to refuel in the capital en route to rescue 100 hostages being held by pro-Palestinian hijackers at Entebbe Airport in Uganda. It was no coincidence that the Norfolk Hotel was the chosen object for destruction as it was then owned by the Block hotel group of Russian Jewish background.
On December 23rd 1980, Muradi Akaali booked a room at the property. Keeping to his room for the duration of his stay, he set up a bomb in his hotel room that he evacuated prior to the explosion. The bomb went off at 8:30pm on the night of December 31st, destroying the whole western wing of the property.
Looking back it seems unbelievable that my parents were very nearly at that very hotel on that very evening. A tiny twist in fate and my life may have unrolled very differently. The next day in the newspaper I saw horrific images of the devastation caused in the dining room, blood and body parts everywhere!
Another very distinct memory I have of Kenya is of the whole family, all 6 of us, squeezed into the Volvo Amazon, driving out of the suburbs of Nairobi and into the Ngong hills to find the perfect spot to watch the Marlboro Safari Rally. This iconic race happened once a year. As far as I could tell any car could enter the race as long as it had 4 wheels and could drive fast. The aim seemed to be to go as fast as you could across a network of Kenyan roads and not destroy yourself or anyone else in the process.
We had to choose our viewing point with care because this was the kind of thing we were aiming to see!
The Marlboro Safari Rally was a typical picture of life in Kenya. Life was exciting and slightly dangerous. It took innovation and creativity to survive.
I won't bore you with too much detail but will just say that even my Primary school was unusual as it was filled with the children of missionaries, charitable health organisations and coffee plantation owners. Many of my classmates had parents who worked for MAF. It was a thrill to hear their parents talk about flying food and medical supplies to the most remote parts of the country.
Then later I moved on to secondary school where strangely enough a friend of Freddie Mercury from the band 'Queen' was my English teacher. It didn't mean anything to me back then because I'd never heard of the band or the singer.
I will always remember my first school assembly at this particular school because it was so shocking. The headmaster announced that sadly one of the pupils had died from a snake bite. Its not the kind of thing you expect to hear in your school assembly!
I never met Emanuele Gallmann but I feel like I know him through his mothers writings. Kuki Gallmann wrote 'I dreamed of Africa' and her descriptions of the Veneto area around Venice, Italy and then her subsequent life in Kenya have carried me through many a winters day in England.
"The world of crowds and Europe is far and alien. Does Venice really exist, and the evening fog from sleepy canals drift over the ancient palaces? Do the swallows still dart to their nests under the eaves of my grandfather's abandoned home in Veneto?" Kuki Gallmann
There are so many tales to tell about Kenya but I will save a few for future posts. Kenya plays a role in my life even though we left so many years ago. It is the reason I love African wildlife and studied Zoology at University. I still read Kuki's books and so many of the great African wildlife documentaries are filmed from the game parks in East Africa.
I am considering going to hear Saba Douglas Hamilton of the charity 'Save the Elephants' speak in Dorking in a couple of weeks time. The Douglas Hamiltons are part of the old network of families living in Kenya. Bohemian artistic wildlife loving; of French/Italian/Scottish descent. Family friends of the Gallmanns and Saba possibly may have been in the same school, a year above me.
(Below - Oria Douglas Hamilton and Saba.)
Mirella Ricciardi - Saba's Aunt probably took the photo above. She was a photographer by profession and it is her photograph of an African child that inspired a painting that hung in my brothers bedroom for years!
In recent years I have come across some of her beautiful photos of her brother-in law, Ian Douglas Hamilton, Saba's father.
I read this in the book she co wrote with he husband Lorenzo ... ( African Rainbow)
" My life in Africa has taught me much. It has put me in a position both of advantage and disadvantage. Because of it I have learned to appreciate and respect the simple formula of survival, and my values have been altered. But with it has come a growing inability to communicate, a malaise born perhaps from overexposure to such varying lifestyles. I have now become more of a spectator than a participant. White people born in Africa are foreigners everywhere, a common denominator that somehow seems to link them."
As a child myself born in Africa I can identify with feeling a foreigner everywhere. Even here in England the land of my ancestors I am continually reminded I don't belong by the car insurance companies who like to know if I was born outside of the country and how long I have permanently lived here. A question I cannot easily answer as I keep leaving and it currently stands at 9 years in England!
So finally I think I will give in and write those words of Karen Blixen (Isak Dineson) that I threatened to write at the beginning. They are so iconic and I can't resist using them as an ending to this post.
“If I know a song of Africa, of the giraffe and the African new moon lying on her back, of the plows in the fields and the sweaty faces of the coffee pickers, does Africa know a song of me? Will the air over the plain quiver with a colour that I have had on, or the children invent a game in which my name is, or the full moon throw a shadow over the gravel of the drive that was like me, or will the eagles of the Ngong Hills look out for me?”
A tribute to Kenya. May you be governed well. Good luck with the elections!
