Kenya, the Colony

You may disagree, but I think myself a poster boy for the Great Depression. I was fifteen when the collapse came—about to be sixteen in a few weeks. I had my first job in January 1930. The American economy and mine continued in an unhappy state until I—we—were rescued by British war orders in the billions of dollars in 1939. I endured the whole damn thing—‘29 to ‘39.

To put a little zing into my life, in September, 1935, I boarded the SS Chincha for two trips—seven months—New York to Mombasa, steering that sturdy freighter seven days, 8 AM to 5:30 PM. When the Bo’sun looked at Ed Foley’s body and then at my skinny frame, he said: “Jack, you go to the bridge.” (We were the two cadets.) For that they paid me a munificent $30 a month. We made every port on the south and east coasts of Africa to Kenya. Whew! What a change! Low on the totem pole as that job was, it changed my life. I hated its limitations but loved the ship.

We visited four ports in the Union of South Africa, then a British Dominion; two in Mozambique, Portuguese since 1500 when Vasco da Gama ousted the Islamo-African trading civilization he found there; Zanzibar, an Omani Sultanate—replete with British advisor in control; Tanganyika, former German colony, British-ruled under a League of Nations mandate and lastly, Kenya, also British.

Africa still fascinates me. As we approached Beira, Captain Arthur Lee asked two Quaker missionary doctors on board to examine my infected foot. They warned that I required an operation immediately. Sans penicillin, I faced blood poisoning and a gangrenous future such as took the lives of sons of President Coolidge and Maine Governor Brewster. I was in the hospital for two days.

The Beira government hospital was a dappled sanctuary of cool. Shaded by tall trees, it was further protected all around from the wicked rays of the tropical sun by a covered and screened veranda. Accompanied by the steamship agent, I hobbled in on the arms of two sixteen year old black boys who met me at the door. They sat me down, undressing me to balls-ass naked, then attired me in hospital-issue pajamas amid a chatter of critical comments I was sure, but could not understand. That afternoon, via chloroform, I was put to sleep by a white Portuguese doctor and half dozen black aides in an operating room no bigger than a modern American apartment’s clothes closet. Next day I was reexamined and went back to the ship. After a couple of day’s rest, I was back at the wheel to the next port.

Mombasa. This beautiful old island town, smallish, fought over for centuries by the Portuguese and Arabs, was owned then by the English. All of the East African coast had experienced Arab trade, incursion and culture since pre-historic times. The language spoken there is Swahili—meaning “of the coast.” Apparently the Arabs never mustered armies great enough to penetrate the continent. Instead they ruled narrow areas of the seacoast and easily protected coastal islands. Zanzibar is such an island, as is Mombasa.

In 1935 the town had a population mix of black Swahili in Arab dress, brown and black Indians clothed in the style of their homeland and white British in theirs. That mix made the place the epitome of exotica for me. On Saturday I wandered the island from the docks at Kilindini where the mainland can be seen across the harbor, to the palm studded beaches and the basin for that most enduring servant of the Indian Ocean, the dhow.

Lolling around there leaning against a stone pillar, I espied two turbaned Arabs of a most unusual complexion. Their skin was a shade of that of the white race—pink—but so burned as to be tinted with brown and burnished red, indicating many hours spent at sea unprotected from the sun’s blistering rays. Their rheumy, sun-damaged eyes seemed at ease in the brilliant light I could barely endure. As they talked, they took pinches of snuff. That midday they stood at leisure in the full sun, seemingly without a thought of shade for which I yearned, even under the thickness of my new pith helmet which I had purchased in Shankar Dass’s store in Dar es Salaam. I moved about only under the impetus of my intense curiosity and my fascination with the scene. The whitewashed red tile-roofed buildings, the sand and water all returned reflections painful to the eyes. Extravagantly beautiful flowers grew everywhere as though strewn about by a fairy's hand. Even the trees bloomed.

Half a dozen dhows were tied up to ancient docks, their cargoes little different from those they carried a thousand years before: dried fish, crudely finished ceramics, salt. At no great distance I watched two half-naked men load a few hundred pounds of cargo into an open vessel. Most of it I could not identify. They hefted heavy burlap bags on to their backs, walked the plank gangway and once positioned, let their burden fall into place on the dhow. Those bags contained some powdery material, as small white puffs of the contents escaped as each bag fell from their shoulders into its niche in the bowels of the vessel. There were also great amber-colored balls of hardened gum, which were dropped on board and rolled into position among the other cargo. This I found to be gum Arabic, which exudes from graceful acacia trees, those beautiful flowering thorn trees which grace African deserts and meadowlands.


That was my introduction to Kenya, British colony. In 1895, the Liberal cabinet of Lord Rosebery decided to maximize the value of Kenya and Uganda to the British Empire. They believed those colonies, particularly the latter, a potential gold mine capable of producing a cornucopia of minerals and agricultural products for British commerce. Since Uganda was six hundred miles from Mombasa, the nearest port, a railway would be necessary. So it was, that construction of “The Lunatic Line” railroad, was started in 1896.

And there, my children, with those thousand words allotted me, I must leave you, as my third grade teacher used to tell us, “my tale to resume one day, if you behave.”