Travels with Myself and Another (27 page)

“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 Kirk’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.”

“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.