Travels with Myself and Another (26 page)

Nairobi weather is the best you can get, like Cuernavaca, about a mile high in the tropics. A radiant warmth that produces energy and hope instead of dripping sweat and headaches. Everyone looked sunburned, bright, well-dressed, pleased with life. Everyone was going somewhere briskly. Stylish shops and gleaming cars. Jacaranda and flame trees and royal palms and dense dark green trees, perhaps live oak, much favoured by small birds. Narrow garden strips down the middle of clean streets, fountains of bougainvillea, white, purple, crimson, peach, and hibiscus and oleanders. A beguiling little city that felt rich and happy, made to order for white residents and high-class tourists. In the money-spending centre, Europeans crowded the streets, leavened by Asians; Africans were sparse on the ground, squatting beside pavement mats to sell tourist trinkets, hawking newspapers and lottery tickets, begging from polio-gnarled legs, driving taxis, fetching and carrying.

They were very different from their relatives in West Africa, not as cheery and idle, not dressed in eccentric tatters. The social structure was clear at once: Europeans, Asians, Africans (“black” being abusive here); First, Second and Third Class citizens. Perhaps I felt the supremacy of white skin in this British colony with more force because I had just arrived from independent African states where white skin was carefully unassertive. I had no reason to believe these white overlords were not decent and just but I wished the Africans looked less subdued. Always delighted to grab any privileges I can get, I don’t like the sense of being privileged by law. I mistrust power for myself and everyone else, especially power bestowed by race, creed or colour. This works both ways; I hadn’t been overjoyed by bootlicking where the blacks ruled.

My immediate need was clothes. Shopping for a short while in a new place can be fun; otherwise shopping is a drudgery maintenance job. Asians ran the shops. Their eagerness to please and their efficiency brought tears to my eyes. I bought everything I needed in no time. Unlike the poor fly-ridden markets of West Africa, the big Nairobi market overflowed with luscious fruits and vegetables, and stalls where one could buy armfuls of tuberoses, agapanthus, iris, roses, cornflowers, chrysanthemums, lilies for a few shillings. I chose a giant bunch of pink carnations to decorate my unlovely little room. The three races jostled in the market, no shortage of Africans here. Suddenly I realized there was no noxious human stench. We all smelled however we did and inoffensive. Yet these Africans certainly didn’t have nice bathrooms at home and piles of Lifebuoy soap. Relief from body odour had to be another blessing of the climate.

In a new cotton dress, my hair properly washed, I nerved myself to call on Mr Whitehead and break the news that I didn’t want an elegant safari complete with white hunter. Rich people thought it dashing to kill the beautiful animals in comfort and safety; dozens of Africans to manage the camp work like well-trained outdoor butlers and a white hunter to shoot any animal that might endanger the paying customer who hadn’t shot straight. Photographic safaris were more sporting because you have to get closer for a good camera shot than for a good rifle shot; but I hadn’t used a camera since the Box Brownie of my childhood. It was also possible and pleasant to go on safari in the game parks, camping out, guided and informed by a white hunter who served the same purpose as the scholar-lecturer on culture tours. I wanted none of any of it. I knew exactly what I wanted: hire or buy a secondhand Landrover, pick up a driver to share the work and act as interpreter, and set forth alone to explore East Africa.

There was a road map, put out by the Shell Company of East Africa; if there were roads, why couldn’t I drive on them? There was a small booklet, listing inns, rest houses and hotels throughout Kenya, Uganda, and Tanganyika. I didn’t mean to camp in the wilds, having neither the experience nor the equipment; I meant to move along marked roads from place to place, stopping in ordinary hostelries. My goal would be the game parks. What’s wrong with that? I asked Mr Whitehead.

He looked grave. He hesitated. “Nothing,” he said. “In principle. Only it’s not a good idea. Not really.” This was my first visit, he said, and Africa was different, things didn’t work the same out here, he wouldn’t like his wife (sister, daughter, I forget which) to make such a trip. Having survived West Africa, I saw no reason to be spooked by lovely tamed East Africa. Mr Whitehead may have thought I was a lemming in human form and though I was of no interest to his company, he couldn’t have been more helpful, introducing one of his white hunters with a Landrover to rent. The white hunter said his vehicle had done sixtyfive thousand arduous miles and wasn’t in what you’d call mint condition. The engine started, it moved; I asked no more. Unfortunately, said Mr Whitehead, he could not loan a driver, all of theirs were occupied on safari.

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 disgruntled 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.