40s and 50s Memories
and Kenya was now 'internally self-governing',
with Britain only responsible for defence and
external relations. Almost all my expatriate
colleagues in the provincial administration took
this as the signal to depart, but I wanted to stay
and help with the transition, and this suited our
family's situation as well. I took up a post in
Nairobi as an assistant secretary, responsible to
African superiors: deputy secretary, permanent
secretary and minister. I was chiefly involved in
filling the gaps left in the district administrations
with new young African officers appointed
willy-nilly as they arrived back from study in
the United States, the 'Mboya Airlift', as it was
called. Within a month or so Independence Day
passed completely peacefully - despite the
Duke of Edinburgh's quipping to Mr Kenyatta
something like, 'Are you quite sure you want to
go ahead with this?' just before the stroke of
midnight.
I hadn't been in my new post more than a
few weeks when I heard my secretary say
to a colleague, 'Can you make out what that
machine-gunner is doing on the roof over
there?' There were co-ordinated coup attempts,
allegedly with Russian support, in Tanganyika
(independent in 1961, now to change its name
to Tanzania), Uganda (independent in 1962),
and Kenya (independent in 1963). All were put
down with British military help. Ours was an
attempt by my own African minister to oust the
Prime Minister, Jomo Kenyatta, but because
my minister had massive electoral support he
continued in office nonetheless. (Least said,
soonest mended!)
I stayed on in that post for a year, and being
in Nairobi took the opportunity to learn to fly,
having caught the bug from having had to do a
number of duty flights in light aircraft, and over
the next eight or nine years chalked up 150
hours, including a great deal of cross country
work and several routine flights for the local
flying doctor service (AMREF). It was not me
but a trainee colleague who collected a vulture
through her windscreen while practising her
'circuits and bumps'. My own most exciting
moment was while taxiing from the Maasai
Mara game lodge to the airstrip, rather too fast,
having a buffalo burst out of the dense bush
by my left wingtip and keep just ahead of my propeller while it tried to accelerate as I tried to
slow down. This was an interesting experience
for my family who were on board.
Leafing through the small ads (in the Official
Gazette positions vacant section) I made the
fateful decision to apply for a post as a lecturer
in the Kenya Institute of Administration, thus
setting the course of the rest of my working life.
Within a very few weeks I was established at
the Institute, furiously involved in editing the
first volume of the institute's journal. While I
was absorbed in this task there occurred only a
couple of miles away the first of a long string of
political murders, in this case of an Indian trade
union organiser of communist sympathies.
My next task was to administer a one-off
course for African Diplomatic Service recruits
from countries all over the continent, funded
by the Carnegie Endowment and conducted by
a British diplomat from the High Commission.
That happily over, I started a series of so-called
Senior Management courses for African officers
who suddenly found themselves with weighty
responsibilities as District Commissioners
(there were 40 districts) or as provincial heads
of professional departments, such as education,
agriculture or public works. It would be fairer
to say it was a middle management course,
in the construction of which I was guided by
a committee largely from the private sector
in Nairobi, such as the Chairman of the local
Shell branch and the personnel manager of
the power company and also had the help of a
Ford Foundation adviser. The ministers of the
new African government gave wholehearted
support by coming regularly to give evening
talks, including the great Tom Mboya as minister
for Economic Planning and Development, and
the present President, Mwai Kibaki, whose little
boy, incidentally, went to school with our Chris.
These courses proved very popular and I ran
nearly twenty of them, for 12-15 participants
each time, both men and women, over a five
year period before deciding to move on, proud
that I felt I had helped 250 or more people
develop their own ways of coping with the
heavy responsibilities they were suddenly
faced with. I need to mention that in all this time
after Independence we never felt fully secure,
and worried about whether Kenyatta might be
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