Travels: Collected Writings, 1950-1993

by Paul Bowles

  THERE IS LITTLE of the much-touted non-violence of the Indian in the Sinhalese. It would be difficult, for instance, to imagine him adopting the strategy of satyagraha: his emotional responses are too much like our own. Fortunately he has a natural civility and a capacity for tolerance which have not yet been totally destroyed by his politicians. But he does not take kindly to the presence of Europeans in Ceylon – a natural reaction to centuries of exploitation by outsiders. The visitor who is not an obvious tourist making the traditional tourist’s pilgrimages to Anuradhapura, Polonnaruwa, Kandy and Sigiriya will find himself the object of a constantly repeated inquisition, conducted by complete strangers and in a manner not necessarily altogether friendly. “What do you want? What are you doing in Ceylon? Why have you come here?” The government’s attitude is similar; it loves to play tough with visitors, particularly American ones. I may have been lucky all these years, but the fact remains that no other government has happened to slap me into a concentration camp (the local euphemism is “screening camp”) for forty-eight hours because through a self-admitted technical error made by its own consular service my visa was not valid. Nor, save in Ceylon, have I ever been stripped naked by customs inspectors while their assistants fingered the seams of my garments. In the first instance they told me I was suspected of being an international spy. “But spying for whom?” I insisted “Spying for International,” said the camp’s temporary director (his boss was on holiday). In the second instance they were looking for sapphires and rubies. In both cases they went about their business impersonally and with deadly seriousness.

  Through all the years of Portuguese and Dutch occupation the interior of the country remained independent and hostile to invaders. It was only in 1815 that the British finally managed to conquer the last King of Kandy; the tradition of independence never had time to be totally extinguished. Spirit is not lacking, but the need now is for a program of internal cohesion, a rational attempt to achieve some kind of unity. There are other dangers to the autonomy of the country besides the obvious one of Communist domination. The more literary-minded Sinhalese used to say: “Ceylon is like a tear-drop falling from the face of India.” They don’t say it anymore. It is too likely to become a political truth. The fierce nationalism inspired by this realization engenders religious chauvinism under which Buddhists prosper at the expense of Hindus, Moslems and Christians; it also gives rise to discriminatory laws aimed precisely at the Tamils – the minority group from whose indirect retaliation via India Ceylon has the most to fear.

  Outbreaks of violence such as last year’s tragic massacre at Gal Oya or this year’s fatal Independence Day riots in the towns of the Tamil-inhabited northern and eastern regions thus become an inevitable concomitant of governmental policy. No one religious group is confined to any single section of the country; in each town you will find Hindu temples, Mosques, and both Catholic and Protestant churches as well as the sacred Buddhist vihara. Pilgrims to sanctuaries like Adam’s Peak and the unforgettable jungle shrine of Kataragama include members of all cults. For centuries it has been the custom of the land for divergent faiths to be practiced side by side in the harmony provided by mutual tolerance. The necessity of enforcing a continuation of this custom, and enforcing it at all costs, ought to be self-evident, if, any semblance of unity within the nation is to be maintained.

  Letter from Kenya

  The Nation, May 25, 1957

  MOMBASA

  I DON’T REMEMBER ever hearing of Kenya until I read Baroness Blixen’s stately book Out of Africa during the war; even after that all I remember about it was that there were people called the Masai who lived on the milk and blood of their cattle, and that lions, giraffes and zebras wandered loose over the countryside. Later, in England, I became conscious of Kenya as a place where the British consistently had themselves a rip-roaring good time; with the loss of India it had become the colony, the one land where British colonial tradition still existed in a relatively unaltered form. It took the recent local crisis with its sensational press reports to give me the desire to visit the country.

  I landed, not at the Nairobi airport, but in classical fashion, coming from the Indian Ocean into the harbor of Mombasa. Between the north-east and the south-west monsoons Mombasa is one of the hotter cities, and the British of Kenya, unlike those left in India, Ceylon and Malaya, seem to think it more sporting to do without punkahs or fans of any sort. (The mention of air-conditioning would be lèse-majesté). So you sleep under mosquito canopies hung in small ovens. The city is attractive and spacious; for some indefinable reason its main streets remind me faintly of the shopping district of Miami Beach. The population, however, is infinitely more cosmopolitan. At this season the cafés and markets are full of groups of Arab traders from the Hadhramaut and Socotra and Oman, fierce-faced brown men with daggers in their belts, squatting, waiting for the wind which will propel them homeward in their ancient-looking dhows. They speak classical Arabic, and hopefully offer to sell their double-edged, razor-sharp daggers for a thousand shillings. (They come without passports, and make a good deal of money in the interior selling on credit to unsuspecting Africans, and then applying physical intimidation to collect exorbitant prices for their goods.) Mombasa is more Asian than African in feeling. The shops are run by Hindus and Moslems who speak Gujarati or Punjabi, depending on which part of India they come from. But everyone – Africans, Asians and Europeans – speaks Swahili. Not to know this lingua franca makes you feel very much out of things; it is essential for communication between African and European, African and Asian, and most important of all, between Africans from different regions of Kenya itself and from across the border of the neighboring countries. It is phoneticized in both Roman and Arabic script; recently the government has begun to accept telegrams written in it.

  The Sultan of Zanzibar claims ownership of the entire coast of Kenya to a depth of ten miles, as well as a multitude of islands. These claims are recognized by the British to the point of their being willing to pay him 16,000 pounds a year rental and interest for the land, and to use the official title “Colony and Protectorate of Kenya.” Such things may not be of much interest at the moment in Kenya, but they are in Zanzibar, and the day when the question of autonomy for Kenya begins to be discussed, it will obviously become a matter of importance. Who will get what, and how?

  In today’s local press an article headed “Man-Eaters Kill 43” caught my attention. I half expected the piece to be an account of cannibalism, but it was only about lions. Yesterday one of them wandered into Likoni, across the harbor from Mombasa proper. Two were surprised walking in the streets of a Nairobi suburb, where they were amusing themselves eating the residents’ dogs; the police had to shoot them. If you want to shoot a lion for sport, it will cost you twenty pounds for the permit, and at least another ten pounds to have the hide cured.

  NAIROBI

  THERE IS ONLY ONE other city in all of Kenya besides Mombasa, and that is Nairobi, the capital. The bus trip took a little more than eleven hours, and was not uncomfortable. Most of the time the road is a ribbon of bright red earth cutting straight over the slopes and across the plains. A car a mile ahead is a small puff of red dust. Overhead is the characteristic intense sky of the tropical highlands, whose brightness emphasizes remote details at the horizon. The giraffes are for the most part unmoving; in the distance they look like enormous wooden toys. The zebras and deer are more likely to be frisky. It was in the few dreary villages where the bus stops along the way that I saw for the first and last time some shops run by Africans. Not one in Mombasa, not one in Nairobi. At the lonely spot the bus stopped and took on a few Masai passengers: the women heavy with coils of wire wound around their necks and vast wheels of it weighting down their ears, the men carrying beautifully wrought spears. They paid their fare, the bus started up. A few miles further on, in a place without a sign of habitation, they pressed the buzzer and the bus stopped. They got out in leisurely fashion, pausing in the doorway to drink casually
from a bead-encrusted gourd. The language of the Masai reveals their Nilotic origin; they are generally considered to be a “backward” group, almost militantly uninterested in Western ideas and inventions. In this they differ spectacularly from their next-door neighbors, the Kikuyus, who are impressionable and desirous of assimilating a maximum of European culture. With the understanding of how the Western mind works goes political canniness: by fomenting a full-scale revolt they have managed to make themselves the focal group in this era of their country’s history, for they think in national as well as in tribal terms.

  THE CLIMB up from the lowlands is so gradual as to be unnotice-able; if it were not for the coolness in the air you would refuse to believe you had climbed 5,500 feet. But the sudden emergence of a large and very modern city in the wilderness is something of a shock. All at once you are in England; amber fog-lights glare above the endless streams of traffic, and you find yourself reflecting that there is nowhere for all these cars to be going, nowhere for them to be coming from, in the middle of this desert. Nairobi covers an enormous area, and a car is considered a “necessity”.

  In the hotel the first thing I noticed was that my room was a cage. Every window fitted with stout iron bars. Even the door has bars running from top to bottom and the bolt is fitted to a metal frame enclosing the bars, so that even if the paneling should be broken through from the outside, the room could still not be entered. The thoughts engendered by this sight were not pleasant. It is impossible not to recall the hideous tales of tortures and slow deaths inflicted upon the Europeans by the Kikuyus, as told me by the English passengers on the ship coming to Kenya. “No one will have a Kikuyu any more as a servant,” they assured me. On this score at least they obviously were misinformed. My own room boy is a Kikuyu, as are several of the waiters in the dining room.

  I determined not to mention the word Mau Mau to anyone while I was in Kenya, and I have not. Nor have the English ever used it while talking to me. The trouble would appear to be the most usual way of referring to the activities of the Kikuyu nationalists which resulted in the great retaliatory campaign by the British – just the trouble.

  I ask an Englishman: “Just what was the cause of all the trouble here?” The reply is not always the same on each occasion, but it always has the same vagueness and lack of imagination, and is expressed with uniform inarticulateness. “Russian propaganda,” “free schools,” “sudden upsurge of savagery within the tribe,” “difficulties over ownership of land,” and even “Egyptian interference” (via Radio Cairo), figure among the causes offered me. Not one answer has come near to anything like: “dissatisfaction with the policy of racial discrimination,” or even: “poverty,” or “hunger”. These last, of course, are reasons given by the Africans. However, if the British and the Africans do not concur on causes, they seem to be in agreement as to the eventual results of the present situation. The British are generally gloomy about future prospects for their rule in Kenya; the Africans in spite of their appalling predicament, are confident of their own ultimate victory.

  THE MINIMUM WAGE for Africans at present, the wage in the hope of earning which they flock to Nairobi, is 82½ shillings a month, which equals $2.75 a week. (A 20-shilling monthly rent allowance is also accorded.) Of the relatively few Africans who have jobs at all, the vast majority work for the minimum wage. (Food is not cheap in Kenya.) Members of the Kenya Federation of Labor were unanimous in assuring me that no Asian earns less than five hundred shillings a month. The English, of course, make even more than they would back in England. “Equal pay for equal work” is one of the Federation’s aims, but it will not be the first to be achieved. For the “emergency” is still in force (although the British insist that Mau Mau is a thing of the past), and the emergency means that any African can be picked up at any moment and imprisoned without trial in one of the vast detention camps, or arbitrarily deported from wherever he is to the reserve. Late in March Mr. Lennox Boyd announced in the House of Commons that Africans are being arrested in Kenya this year so far at the rate of 3,000 a month.

  Nairobi’s residential districts for Africans, called locations, were already designated before the “trouble” as the only places where Africans could live; they are well outside the city in desert land, and all of them are surrounded by massive fortifications of barbed wire. No attempt is made to give them the appearance of anything but what they are: concentration camps whose gates happen at the moment to be open. If you are on some of the higher slopes of the Royal Nairobi National Park, you can see in the far distance the dismal stretches of some of these locations, baking in the sun of the waste land, and it is impossible to avoid having the sentimental reflection that the wild animals of Kenya fare better than its human inhabitants.

  I was invited to visit some African homes, and this gave me the opportunity of inspecting several locations. In Pumwani Location, in a standard room of nine feet by seven, lived a family of five; there was not even room for a chair or table between the two sleeping-boards which filled the entire space. Next door, in an identical cubicle, lived four unmarried men. There is no point in dwelling on the hopeless dirt and squalor; under these conditions there is no alternative to filth. The rent on each room is 26 shillings a month, payable to the government. In Ziwana Location a woman was living with her twelve children in only slightly larger accommodations. Makadara Location seemed a little less crowded; my host here told me that the government provides the foundations of the huts (since Africans are not allowed to own land in the cities) after which the residents must build the rest themselves at their own expense. Notwithstanding this, they still must pay 32 shillings a month rent for the regulation one-room dwelling. The lease is for ten years, after which the constructions are pulled down, again at the builder’s expense, and the property reverts to the government with no compensation paid to the builder-resident.

  What must be borne in mind is that, apart from those who lost their lives in the recent hostilities and the 44,000 who still crowd the detention camps, most of the educated African citizens of Kenya are included in the 100,000 Africans who live in the Nairobi locations. To be allowed to remain there, even under these intolerable conditions, is a privilege which may at any moment be withdrawn, while to be obliged to return to the reserves is tantamount to being deprived of all means of earning a living. The Africans carry pass-books in Nairobi. It is a constant sidewalk phenomenon, the sight of a policeman examining the pass-book of a worried-looking African. It is interesting to note that the two institutions of the location and the pass-book are used in identical form and called by the same names in the Union of South African to enforce apartheid.

  A glimmer of hope can perhaps be found in the fact that for the handful of Africans employed in the Civil Service and the High Commission services, the principle of equal pay for equal work does apply. But the request that all Africans be given the same recompense as Asians and Europeans for doing the same work is not one which is likely to be heeded as long as the authorities have absolute power over the Africans’ physical movements.

  IN A HOTEL BAR I asked one cynical British government employee whether the March elections for members of the Legislative Council had in his opinion been what is ordinarily called “free elections.” His answer: “I suppose so, as free as in any other police state.” Then he added quickly: “I really must learn to keep my mouth shut!” However, Tom Mboya, the General Secretary of the Kenya Federation of Labor, considers the elections a step in the desired direction, even though less than ten per cent of the Africans in the country were qualified to vote. On the official side of the Legislative Council the members are all British civil servants appointed to their posts. On the unofficial side the members are elected according to a “parity” system which provides sixteen posts to be filled by Europeans (who number 45,000) and sixteen by non-Europeans (who make up the rest of the 6,000,000 people in Kenya). As if this were not already derisory, there is a further breakdown of the non-European posts, eight going to Africans (ne
arly 6,000,000) and eight to Asians (about 150,000, of whom 25,000 are Arabs, the rest Indians).

  The eight African members, having been duly elected, decided unanimously to refrain from participating in government, thus forming what amounts to an opposition. Participation, they feel, would be a tacit acceptance of things as they are. Their principal concern at the moment is to replace the Lyttleton Plan, a compromise measure passed in 1954 during the crisis, with some sort of guarantee that the country will remain under the administration of the Colonial Office in London. The Lyttleton Plan’s great danger is that it leaves the door open to cabinet government (that is, home rule) in Kenya. Under present conditions self-government could result only in the establishment of a regime in which the local European colonists would be free to legislate openly in favor of total African subjection, thus ending all possibility of evolution toward democratic government.

  Immediately after the March elections the eight elected African members to the Legislative Council issued a press statement defining their position. A section of this reads: “We do ... hereby declare that the most urgent and immediate need is toos-ecure constitutional reform in the Legislature giving everyone effective and real representation, to which end it is our intention to direct all our efforts and energies. We are firmly and unequivocally opposed to any system which serves as a device to secure for certain people permanent political and economic domination of other sections of our community in Kenya.” The statement is signed by Tom Mboya (Naibori), Oginga Odinga (Central Nyanza), Masinde Muliro (Nyanza North), Bernard Mate (Central Province), Arap Moi (Rift Valley), James Nzau (Akamba Constituency), Ronald Ngala (Coast Province) and Laurence Oguda (Nyanza South).