Passion for Kenya

Another great friend was given the task of expanding the passion fruit juice industry throughout Kenya, from small holdings to large holdings. A modern juice extraction plant was built, at enormous expense, by a Swiss investment company. It was an excellent idea. Passion fruit is a delicious fruit. It grows quite prolifically in a wide range of climates.

Kenya and the whole of East Africa, Uganda and Tanzania. Right down through Mozambique, Malawi and Botswana, Zimbabwe and into South Africa; could produce enough food, of all description, to feed the world with their range of climates, if organised properly. But to give Africans with very meagre holdings enough incentive to grow a cash crop, rather than subsistence farming is difficult, and to change an understandable mindset even more so. They must be given individual attention so their welfare becomes your responsibility - a big job and long-term investment.

So growing a passion fruit plantation, seemed to us, to be a very pleasant occupation in which to take part. The size of the financial reward depended entirely on the size of the financial input, as with anything. With any farming venture, there is always the added, dreaded factor, of the unknown and the least expected. My father never wanted me to be a farmer of any description. He’d been a farmer all his working life and he maintained farming was littered with disaster, destitution and bankruptcy. He’d lived through the Great Depression, and the first farm he owned had been abandoned by its previous owners. Nevertheless, with the exuberance of youth, it seemed to us, the way of life it offered was far better than living in London with no money.

My father gave us all the land we needed, the river gave us the water, and our house in Clapham and a bank in Nairobi gave us the finance. There were three markets for the fruit. The biggest and the best looking were packed into little boxes surrounded by tissue paper and sent to Europe by aeroplane. They were in the supermarkets all over Europe, at the same time as being consumed by the residents of Nairobi, who were the second market. The third, and possibly the most important, because it underpinned the whole venture, was the pressing of the fruit for their juice. No waste. What could be better?

It took a year to set it all up and to build ourselves a little wooden house near to the plantation. The wooden house was prefabricated by the sawmills our great friend Gwynne’s father owned in the forest directly above us in the Highlands. Each prefabricated piece was 7ft high x 10ft long, with door or window spaces as you wished; it was possible to build a house, or room, as big or small as you liked. To make it look as though it was not prefabricated, my wife and my mother thought of turning the whole thing inside out. Then we nailed bark planks, which had been cut off the trunks in the first place, to the outside. It looked as though it had grown up out of the land.

Years before, between the two wars, there’d been a European house built nearby, and in their garden were planted a little group of five jacaranda trees. Here we were, more than fifty years later, doing exactly the same thing, starting from scratch. Those jacaranda trees were beautiful, they glowed a deep, blue-purple in the evening light, and a soft, mellow, inviting shade all through the harsh, heat of a dry African day. They represented to us, a symbol, a beacon of hope and continuity. As it turned out, they were a bright, bright flashing beacon, not of hope and continuity, but of doom and disaster.

***

During that year, we lived in a wing of my parent’s home, which was exactly where I was brought up all those years ago. I had come home. Not only in the sense of where I lived as a child, and brought up through adolescence, but a spiritual home, somewhere I belonged, a profound sensation of satisfaction, being contented with myself. I don’t remember ever discussing our situation with my wife. I never asked her if she was happy, if she was happy with the same things that made me feel so contented. I don’t think anyone would have done so. Only your behaviour would signify how you felt. We both loved dogs; we had an assortment of five of the most adorable four-legged friends imaginable. Whenever I drove the five minute drive to the plantation, they’d never asked if they could come. They’d fling themselves into the back of my open one-ton truck, all eagerly looking forward over the sides, long pink tongues hanging out, tails wagging. Then, without fail, at the end of the short avenue of old pepper trees, planted by the same people who’d planted the group of five jacaranda trees, they’d hurl themselves out of the moving truck. They’d dash in front, leading the way down yet another drive, built by the same people, to the plantation. Quite often, while dashing along, one of them would pick-up a thorn in their pad. He or she would come grinding to a halt, pick up their paw and look back at me, tongue falling to one side. I’d have to stop the truck, get out, kneel down, all the others shoving their wet noses in my face, take out the thorn. I’d rub the pad better, as Ahdiga did for me, and they’d all charge off before I’d had a chance of getting back in the truck.

During the fruiting season, three times a week, I’d take a ton of fruit, packed in little boxes with tissue paper, to the shipping agents in Nairobi. They’d take the load, with many others, to the airport. I’d also make other journeys into Nairobi with full sacks, to the fruit market, to the grocers around the city, and to the juice factory. Often, after the deliveries, we’d go to the cinema, then to one of the many excellent restaurants. Sometimes we’d drop in on our great friends, Peter and Jo in Karen, or to Gwynne, in Limuru. Limuru stood at 7500 feet so we often drove through deep fog and darkness on the way back to our little wooden house on the floor of the Great Rift Valley. Then the greeting ceremony, with our joyful, laughing, four-legged army of the most faithful friends, all dog owners would know about.

On the way in to make my deliveries I’d always pass the main house, where my parents lived, say hello and drop off whatever fruit they needed. It was after one of these occasions, My mother told me later, she’d said to my father, ‘Surely you must agree he’s doing well now.’ He said, ‘Yes, but I’ve seen it all before, something unexpected will come along, and knock him for six.’ Oh Dear, Oh Dear, how right he was. In a few weeks time, not only would I be knocked for six, I’d be knocked out of the game entirely.

We’d lived exactly a year in our little house, and apart from my childhood up to the age of nine, I’ve described earlier, that was the best year I can remember I’d ever lived. I can’t speak for my wife because I now know she never wanted to leave England in the first place. That indelible picture, that clear crisp snapshot of shining round, rolling tears, welling up in her dark-brown eyes, and flowing down her cheeks, when saying goodbye to my Aunt at Gatwick Airport, will always remain with me till the day I die. What was about to happen would knock most people off course forever.

***

The first event, however, was not the car crash. The car crash was a calamity of its own... what was about to happen, would set it up.

We were late back home, our usual evening out, and on opening the front door, a sea of jumping, smiling, laughing, licking, pink-tongued dogs confronted us. My mother’s four, as well as our own. In the middle of the sitting room was a mound of the most extraordinary collection of things; clocks, silver teapots, cutlery, copper-ware, ornaments, a mad burglar’s hoard, bundled-up in a carpet. Our cook-house-man suddenly appeared, looking fraught and worried. He said in Swahili, ‘Your parents had to leave their house, your lorry is full of their things and they’re staying at the club in Nairobi.’ There was so much to ask him, but he couldn’t articulate what was going on. It was obviously too late to go to the club now, we’d go first thing in the morning.

They were in the dining room, peacefully having breakfast together. My father, reading the newspaper, my mother mixing her honey with the butter, as she always did, before covering a torn-off corner of toast. My father said, ‘Oh hello Mennit, what are you doing here?’ I just looked at him, jaw hanging. He went on, ‘We’ve been chucked out, I’ll ring Gichuru, next thing.’ James Gichuru and he got on really quite well. I’m not sure why, or what had brought them together in the first place, but James Gichuru had been the Minister for Defence in Jomo Kenyatta’s first cabinet. Most unfortunately, he’d fallen for the lure of that delicious amber liquid, usually distilled in Scotland. Although no longer actively a Minister, he was still well respected, but any business, other than chit-chat, had to be conducted before 11 o’clock in the morning.

The whole issue of land ownership, in all newly independent countries in Africa, is a very sensitive area for anyone to tread, even if you’d owned land legally for years. Jomo Kenyatta, before he became president, and the British Government both realised, the change from European to African ownership must happen quite quickly but in an orderly fashion. The British Government would compensate farmers for agricultural land but not for cattle ranching. Ranching was much less sensitive an area as most of the tribes, primarily, wanted their agricultural land, and ‘The White Highlands’ in particular, given back to them. The Europeans had taken it from them, as they saw it, and they wanted it back. They weren’t going to pay anything for it, it was theirs. If the British Government wanted to pay something to the British farmers, then that was up to them. All the agricultural land had good regular rainfall and was fertile. The ranching land, the plains, had no permanent source of water. Nobody then, other than perceptive, imaginative and entrepreneurial Europeans, such as my father, could make any use out of it.

So that’s how my father still had his land. He’d brought water to it from a long way away. No one but him would have thought of bringing water to his ranch from the source he did. Water is a very precious commodity anywhere in Africa, so to move it from one piece of land to another requires a strictly observed water permit. The Officer arrived to see the source from which the water was to be taken. He just laughed at my father’s scheme, and gave him permission there and then. The source was a small swamp of about five acres well within the boundaries of the forestry commission and unused by anyone other than the forest animals and birds. He found it completely by chance; it was his exploratory instinct that took him there.

The very first thing he did was to build a hide for us children to come with him in the evenings to watch the forest animals. Waterbuck, Buffalo, small diker, a profusion of bird life, and even on occasion, although it must have happened every night, a leopard. How exciting it was to be with him. The Cook was told to make sandwiches and little buck steaks, a thermos of tea, and then we’d set off in single file. No talking, as quietly as possible, through the forest, to the flat plateau above, that so unexpectedly contained the small swamp. Then into our beautiful newly constructed, almost invisible, little hide.

All this incredible excitement could only happen three days a month, before, at, and after, full moon. So it was only once in a blue moon, all the conditions were perfect. The water he took from the swamp made no difference to the conditions of the marsh in any way and he was able to water, through a system of enormous round stone tanks, thousands of his cattle all over the ranch. Each herd, of around two hundred head, mustn’t graze too close to each watering point, as too many cattle gathering together in any one place creates a dust bowl. All this development required careful management and had been going on ever since I could remember. And yet my brother and I were sent away to school, away from something we loved, away from where we belonged.

***

By this time, the late 1970’s, Jomo Kenyatta, was getting old. But being the ‘Father of the Nation’, replacing him was impossible to contemplate. However, there were rumblings, and sometimes the rumblings were more than just a tremor. He dealt with them ruthlessly. But it was after one of these rumblings, he, Jomo Kenyatta, made a rabble-rousing tour of the whole country. His speeches weren’t thought through, they were off-the-cuff, saying whatever the people wanted to hear. Does that sound familiar, about any politician anywhere? Of course it does. I don’t think he really meant to use the phraseology that was construed to mean the Europeans should now be forced to relinquish their ranchlands for 50 shillings an acre, less than 50p now, about £2 then, but that’s how it came about. My father was approached by a Cooperative based in the town of Limuru, in the heart of Jomo Kenyatta’s tribe land, to sell his home ranch to them for £11,500. He hadn’t thought about it, let alone approached anybody. As far as they were concerned a refusal wasn’t an option. They’d collected the money from all the shareholders and The President said they could have it. The Chairman told all the shareholders he had paid Mr Mayers the money, so they could now occupy the house and farm.

So to return to my parents peacefully having breakfast at the club. My father spoke to James Gichuru before 11 o’clock. ‘Disgraceful,’ he said with real anger in his voice, ‘I’ll speak to Charles immediately.’ Charles, was Charles Njonjo, The Attorney-General, a very clever and powerful man. But even he found very quickly that he had to tread extremely carefully in this particular case. We had an appointment to see him in just a few days. In his outer office waiting with us, was the entire cooperative committee, dirty clothes, hands in pockets, leaning against the walls, lolling in the armchairs, with an air of insolence. My father and I and our lawyer were called into the main office. The whole committee shuffled in with us and loosely settled themselves in all the available chairs in the same insolent manner. Charles Njonjo came in from his inner office, he looked at them for a moment and said with a voice that could cut-glass, ‘Get out.’ They straightened up, hands from pockets, momentarily looked awkward, briefly turned to each other, and quickly shuffled out. He looked at my father and said with real feeling, ‘I’m very sorry about what has happened.’ My father said ‘Thank you.’ Njongo then said, ‘I can get your house back for you, but I’m very sorry to have to say, although it’s completely within your right to refuse, if you don’t let them have your land,’ he paused, looked down, then looked up, and said slowly, ‘you could be in great danger.’ A long silence followed. He, looking at my father, and my father, looking at him. We all rose together, shook hands and filed out.

We drove back to our lawyer’s office to sum up. A small adjustment could be made to their offer. They would have to pay something for the passion fruit plantation and our wooden house. My Parents would retain the main house with its garden and surrounding acres, but most importantly and urgently, we needed night and day security to establish our ownership of the Family House.

While all this was going on, my mother, my sister-in-law and her two children, had disappeared off to the coast, to stay with my Aunt Ginger. In view of what Njonjo had warned, my father wanted my wife to go too, but she refused. The house was vacated without any damage, so when everything from our little house and the back of my lorry was put back in place, it didn’t look as though anything had happened at all. Our day and night ‘Guard’ consisted of twelve men in uniform with rifles, and a Sergeant. Our Sergeant was the smartest Sergeant you’ve ever seen. His uniform was dark air-force blue, with razor-sharp creases down the front of his trousers, his gaiters and belt shining white. The buckles and badge of gleaming brass, the toes of his boots, such a bright, deep black, they caught the sun as he marched about, barking orders to his men. This little pantomime went on for about a week. I don’t know if it served any purpose, but at least we were safe. My wife and I drove down to the valley floor, from the main house to the plantation, to pay wages to all the workers, for the last time. In the same way we’d made a pitch to show our ownership of the big house, I suppose they did the same to show their ownership of the plantation and the rest of my father’s land. During the payout, a swarm of screaming, yelling young men descended upon us, tearing open the neat boxes of fruit and ripping open the sacks, ready for the Nairobi deliveries. They wildly crammed whole fruit into their mouths so the juice and seeds spurted out over their faces. The workers were terrified, they didn’t know whether to run away or stay for their last weekly wage. Without a word between us, we acted as though nothing was amiss. Our headman’s heart was pumping so hard you could see it heaving through his chest. I gave him the money for each person, and he handed it out. He was very brave to stay. It seemed to take an age to finish. I locked the door of the store in which I was standing to do the payout, and they immediately smashed it open. We climbed back into the truck, with all the screaming shouting young men, waving their pangas (long knives) in the air, and slowly drove away.

I started this agonising tale with what was going to happen in about two months time. You can see clearly now how the sequence of events came about. To be waiting for the butcher on that beautiful day, on the 29th of June 1976, to drive north through the little ramshackle, wooden town of Rumeruti and the beginning of years of traumatic despair.

In the time-honoured phrase, ‘life goes on’, it does go on, but it so often does so in a manner that’s cruel beyond measure. About 18 months after the car crash, my little wife and I were well ensconced with our marvellous new friend Marriott, in her small mews house in Notting Hill Gate, West London. One evening, after her usual delicious, simple supper and a bottle or two of red wine, the telephone rang. I picked up the receiver, there was a long echoing silence, a feeling of dread came over me. A soft, distant, fragile, small voice said, ‘Hello Darling, Daddy’s had a stroke, he’s in Nairobi hospital.’ I weep when I remember that far away, fragile, soft little voice. Somehow, we were there, at my father’s bedside, the next day. The stroke could not have been crueler to a man like my father. A man with such life and vitality, such humour, everyone remembers his laugh, such gentleness, such strength, so many ideas, so full of thought, everything taken away. He couldn’t speak, not even a murmur, he couldn’t think, he couldn’t feed himself. He couldn’t walk, he had no coordination, he couldn’t even control his bowels and bladder. And yet, with his whole character taken away, he was left with his physical life, and the ability to feel terrible, agonising, contorting pain. We didn’t know then, but I’m pretty certain I know now, after 18 exhausting, emotionally draining months for my poor mother, he died in such awful, dreadful agony of a massive heart attack. As it was happening, he was trying to tell the doctor, by pointing to the side of his stomach, but actually he was trying to point to his chest. My mother was with him in the Mission Hospital above the Kedong Valley, holding his hand as the last embers of his life faded away and he was finally, still.