40s and 50s Memories
criminal court cases. I was briefly Chairman of a
league of fifty local football teams, mostly from
the tea estates, and negotiated successfully
with the Lands Office in Nairobi for a site for a
permanent stadium, which shows up on Google
Earth, close to the centre of Kericho.
Memorably, in early 1954 I was asked to take the
newly appointed, not elected, very first African
member of Legislative Council around my area.
His appointment looked trivial to outsiders
but was a move by the British government to
significantly breach the long-standing tradition,
dear to almost all the settlers, that Africans had
no place in Kenya politics. This was the little
crack at the top of the mountain that heralded
the avalanche of political change that was
complete within the next ten years.
As to recreation, the club offered such
entertainments as country dancing and amateur
dramatics as well as a 9-hole golf course, and
the local rugger team, which in my second year
included Peter Wheeler, former Cambridge
captain, travelled far and wide for matches.
With a group of friends I climbed Kilimanjaro -
much pleasanter coming back down than going
up to 18,000 feet, I have to say.
A second posting after nearly two years found
me living at 7,500 feet in forest country in
Maasailand, in a fortified camp on the fringe of
the area affected by the Mau Mau emergency.
Before my time there well-armed gangs had
been terrorising the spear-armed Maasai and
stealing their cattle but a British infantry battalion
had put a stop to that. Much of my work involved
patrolling the forest fringes to make sure such
hostile forces did not re-establish themselves.
After the enthusiastic and go-ahead Kipsigis
I found the Maasai hard to work with as they
were content to go on with their immemorial
cattle keeping - yes, but also stealing cattle from
other tribes and from European farmers, on the
excuse that all the cattle in the world belonged
to them anyway.
I ask myself 'Which was my bigger scare -
accelerating down a straight bit of loose gravel
road in an open-topped car when a giraffe
jumped off a bank straight in front of me, or
coming over a small rise in the lonely road
across the floor of the Rift Valley at night in a canvas-topped Land Rover to find we were in
the midst of a pride of about 20 lions? Alone I
would have made a good breakfast for a lion
cub - well, I think so, anyway! Fortunately my
driver had driven that road for twenty years and
revved the engine, banged and banged on the
outside of the door of the Land Rover, blew
the horn and edged forward and we got clear.
A very important change in 1956 was the first
Kenya General Election in which Africans could
take part, on a limited, males only, franchise.
I was embarrassed at only being able to
vote for a white candidate, but could at least
choose one who was working for inter-racial
accommodation.
While in Maasailand, on a visit to Nairobi, I
was fortunate to meet my future wife Beth,
a teacher appointed by the Colonial Office,
daughter of a legend in his lifetime, Warwick
Guy, who for thirty years had been a pioneer in
the improvement of African livestock in Kenya.
We were married during my next leave - and
are now a little short of our 60th anniversary.
After four years' service I was sent on a
year's course at Cambridge, having been sent
out direct originally. I recall classes in law,
language, community development and field
engineering. My most interesting assignment
was to write an extended essay on possibilities
for constitutional development in Kenya
which had to go to the Colonial Office. I can't
remember what I said, beyond urging much
greater African participation in government,
except that I ended with a plea for time for us to
help the Africans to catch up in education, local
government and economic activity. A second
tour of duty, starting in mid-1958, saw me briefly
in a Luo district of Western Kenya, on the edge
of Lake Victoria, before moving to a 'settled'
area based on the town of Nakuru, a posting
not to my taste as it mainly involved dealing
with white settlers and their local council. Many
settlers, but by no means all, wanted an end
to government support for African interests,
which had been a thorn in their flesh since the
beginning of British rule, and to move towards
independence as a white-ruled dominion in
the Commonwealth. I attended one settlers'
meeting where a white farmer complained that
he had only been granted a 99-year lease,
whereas he would consider a 999-year one
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