Echoes From a Distant Land

by Frank Coates

  Suddenly, it was agreed. Sam would attend preparatory school in Nairobi. After that, he would go to university in New York.

  CHAPTER 9

  1917

  Kinangop Academy — the impressive stone building with its high clock tower on Protectorate Road hill — was originally an orphanage for white children, but since the turn of the century had been developed into a secondary school for white children from poor families and gifted Indians and native Africans.

  Sam found that life at the academy was nothing like he’d imagined it. He expected the pursuit of academic excellence would be paramount, which was the situation he sorely needed if he were to meet the minimum academic requirements for entry into New York University. In fact it was excellence in sport that appeared to be Kinangop’s most important objective.

  The academy had long suffered the stigma associated with its charitable past. It was a situation every member of the teaching staff appeared determined to eradicate by setting high academic standards, but more importantly, by demonstrating Kinangop’s superiority on the playing fields. They were therefore highly motivated to find among their students those with good sporting abilities, and to encourage them to try out for team selection.

  It proved to be both a benefit and a disadvantage for Sam. He was at least a year older than his classmates and this, coupled with his fine physique, brought him to the attention of the sporting staff.

  While he was walking home to his dormitory one afternoon, the sports master imposed upon him to make up the numbers in a practice match. Sam tried to excuse himself by saying he knew nothing about rugby.

  ‘Well, there’s nothing much to know,’ the sports master said. ‘And you’re big enough. Look, if someone gives you the ball, all you have to do is put it under your arm and run down the field with it.’

  Sam did as he was told and scored a try with two boys hanging from his shirt-tails over the last ten yards. The master convinced Sam to sign up with the squad for the upcoming game against Goodswood Old Boys.

  Kinangop Academy had not beaten their arch rivals since foundation, but thanks to Sam’s dashing play on a flank, they won the very next game against Goodswood.

  After his rugby success, he was drafted into several other sports teams, making his mark on the athletics field, where he won medals in high jump, the hundred-yard dash, the mile and field hockey. However, it was his expertise at rugby — which he soon loved with a passion — that made him the most popular boy in school and a favourite among the masters.

  Of course, this all meant that Sam had less time to spend studying. His immediate task was to quickly catch up to the other students in almost every subject, but Ira told him he would have to do better than that. He had to finish in the top three to have a good chance to win selection for a place at NYU.

  Although Sam had a gift for languages and was fluent in Kiswahili, Kikamba and English, and had a smattering of several other tribal languages, he struggled with Latin.

  ‘If Latin is a dead language, why do we have to learn it?’ he asked his tutor, Mr Maxwell.

  ‘Because it is the root of many other European languages,’ he said.

  ‘Will I need to know any of these foreign languages if I win my place at New York University?’

  ‘Not really. I imagine they only teach in English.’

  Sam suggested Latin was therefore a waste of time, and not worth worrying about.

  ‘Hmm,’ Maxwell said. ‘You know, Sam, in education we sometimes find gifted students in particular fields of study. We may find an excellent mathematician, a poet. But a true scholar is one who can master the complete field. You’re quite an athlete, Sam. An all-rounder. You’re good in many track and field events and you do very well in the decathlon. Are there any of the decathlon events that you don’t enjoy?’

  ‘Yes, sir. I don’t like the high jump.’

  ‘Why?’

  Sam shrugged. ‘I can see that running and throwing things can be useful, but jumping over a bar … I don’t know if that’s ever going to be needed.’

  ‘I see. Do you know who won the decathlon at the Stockholm Olympics in 1912?’

  ‘Yes, sir. It was Jim Thorpe.’

  ‘Correct. He was an American Red Indian. Quite an outsider, even in his own country. Yet the King of Sweden called him the world’s greatest athlete when he handed him the gold medal for the decathlon. Now, Sam, imagine you’re in the decathlon and Latin is the high bar. Are you going to lose the gold medal — your chance to win a place at New York University — because you can’t see a need for the high jump?’

  Weeks after the end of the school year, when most of the students and staff had gone home, Sam remained in his dormitory awaiting word from New York University regarding his application for entry.

  He reclined on his bed, arms folded behind his head, staring at the chipped paint on the ceiling, recalling the excitement of graduation night. The Nairobi evening had been warm for that time of year and the small assembly hall had been filled to overflowing with students and a large number of parents and friends. The graduating class of 1919, in caps and robes, had been seated in the front rows. Sam had come top of his class in all subjects except Latin, where he came second, and had been made dux of the academy. The applause had been overwhelming and Sam had been pleased, but the prize he wanted more than anything was his NYU invitation. Mr Maxwell, who was the coordinator for such matters, had said he’d heard nothing.

  ‘How long will it take, Mr Maxwell?’ Sam had asked.

  ‘It could be weeks.’

  ‘I’m not being invited because I missed top mark in Latin, isn’t it, sir?’

  ‘Not necessarily, Sam. Patience. These things take time.’

  But the days had stretched into weeks. Sam had grown increasingly concerned.

  There was a knock at the dormitory door and a moment later Mr Maxwell was standing there in the doorway.

  Sam was immediately on his feet, studying Maxwell’s face. He somehow knew he’d received news from New York.

  ‘The academy’s received this letter from NYU,’ Maxwell said, pulling an envelope, already opened, from his jacket pocket.

  His teacher’s expression gave nothing away. Sam was afraid to speak. He stood there with his fists clenched by his sides and his eyes on Maxwell as he solemnly unfolded the letter and made a show of studying the contents.

  ‘This time, a second in the high jump was good enough,’ his teacher said as his face creased in a broad smile. ‘Sam Wangira … you’re going to America.’

  A few days after receiving his invitation to enrol at NYU, Sam caught the train to Nyeri to visit his village. He told his family he would be leaving Igobu, and British East Africa, for a long time.

  Sam explained he would study in America, at a university in one of the world’s largest cities. His father nodded but remained silent. Sam could see he was unable to comprehend the news, but was too proud to ask the questions that must have filled his mind.

  Word spread through Igobu. It was received with shock and consternation by the older generation in the village. Soon the whole community heard the news and large delegations came to Igobu to commiserate with his family. They spoke to his father in soft voices and glanced at Sam as if he were already dead. The old people came with sad eyes and blessed him for luck.

  When it was time to leave, Sam’s father embraced his son in a bear hug. He then held him by the shoulders at arm’s length, and stared into Sam’s eyes for a long time. Sam feared he’d find disappointment behind those stern eyes. He’d hoped for approval. In the end he found neither. It was impossible to know what was in his father’s mind. Finally, Kungu dropped his arms and went to his hut.

  Sam completed his farewells without seeing his father again.

  Sam stood at the door of his rail carriage. Below him on the Nairobi Station platform were scores of his classmates, there to wish him bon voyage.

  It wasn’t Sam’s first train journey. During his two years at Kinangop Acad
emy, he’d made rail journeys home to Igobu for term holidays, but this time was different. He was about to travel over three hundred miles to the Indian Ocean, and Mombasa, where he would board a ship to take him to the other side of the world.

  He was surprised at the turnout and wondered why so many had come to see him off. His journey to New York had obviously captured everyone’s imagination. Most of the white boys’ mothers had been sent ‘home’ to the British Isles for their births and regularly returned there for leave. Since the outbreak of the Great War, however, they’d been confined in British East Africa. Sam was the first of them to escape; perhaps this was the reason he had become a celebrity. He wouldn’t admit even to himself that his teachers and classmates admired and genuinely liked him; nor that this was the real reason they’d come to see him off.

  The students and teaching staff all agreed that Sam’s scholarship to New York University was a triumph for the Kinangop Academy, and his sendoff was therefore a cause for great celebration. The tearful farewell at Igobu was forgotten in the jubilation of his school friends; and Sam was even more excited when a loud blast on the steam whistle signalled the train’s imminent departure and Sister Rosalba appeared.

  The students cleared a path for her and she stood before him with pride and sadness in her eyes.

  ‘Sister Rosalba,’ he said. ‘Why … you’re here!’

  ‘Yes. I’m sorry I missed you at Igobu. The bishop called me away. But now I am here.’

  ‘You didn’t have to come all this way …’

  ‘Maybe I just-a want to make sure you go,’ she said with a smile.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  ‘Oh, it’s-a nothing. I took the donkey wagon to Thika.’

  ‘No … I mean, thank you for giving me this chance. I could never have passed the entrance test to Kinangop without you. And university would have been impossible.’

  ‘If you owe anybody thanks, it is God for giving you that wonderful brain.’ Tears brimmed in her eyes.

  The whistle screeched again, and the train jerked forwards.

  ‘Now go,’ she said. ‘And don’t forget to write to me.’

  Sam stood on the carriage step, waving to all as the train gathered speed. Soon Sister Rosalba and his school friends were lost from sight.

  Sam had never felt more alone.

  Sam had seen the lake at Naivasha, but the blue vastness that ran from the ring of white stone buildings of Mombasa town to rendezvous with the sky was terrifying in its immensity.

  As the train snaked down from the hills above the island, Sam watched the Indian Ocean’s intricate colours blend from pale green near the shore to deep blue beyond the broken white line along the reef. Every feature of the land and the town seemed to invoke the sea. Nearest to the wharf, where a flotilla of boats and huge ships sat among a swarm of bustling watercraft, the buildings were clustered around the shore like bees in attendance on the queen. From there, the paths and roads fanned out through lesser buildings set in clusters of greenery until, at the place where the long ribbon of the causeway anchored the island to the land, there was nothing but jungle and a thick mat of mangroves that swallowed whole sections of the silvered iron rails.

  Later, after he’d gathered his various woven bags together and collected his ticket from the agent’s office on Vasco da Gama Street, he stood on the dock with the black steel shell of the SS Madura looming above him. He felt so insignificant: he was a child again, holding his mother’s hand as they stood below Kirinyaga, the mountain where God dwelled and which dominated the sky above him. People with eager faces lined the railing overhead. They seemed completely at ease, even pleased to be there.

  He followed others up the gangway, which swayed, and something odd fluttered in his stomach. He clutched the handrail, but the feeling persisted. Even while standing on the deck, high above the water, which had now turned into a monolithic sheet of silver-blue, the world beneath his feet had become unnervingly indeterminate.

  A food hawker moved along the deck offering passengers a selection of hot snacks from a box hung from a strap around his neck. Sam was staring into the water thirty feet below him when the whiff of curry pies brought a rush of bile to his throat. He vomited copiously over the railing.

  As the Madura steamed north, Sam became increasingly unwell. His seasickness hardly ever left him. He lost weight and his sallow eyes retreated into their dark-ringed sockets. The brief ports of call — Mogadishu, Port Said, Naples — were mere respites between debilitating purges. At Marseille, Sam was almost incapable of walking. He left the ship and staggered into a waterfront hotel.

  A bearded man sat at the bar with a glass half filled with a milky liquid. Sam watched as he lifted the glass to his lips and drained it. Sam’s stomach heaved, but only the bitter taste of the bile reached his mouth.

  He leaned against the doorframe; the room, the bearded man and the woman behind the bar became blurred.

  ‘Merde!’ the woman muttered when she noticed him in the doorway. Wiping her hands on a cloth, she came around the end of the bar towards him. ‘S’il vous plaît venez à, monsieur.’

  Sam took a step forwards and his knees buckled. The woman caught him under the arm.

  ‘Êtes-vous malade?’ she said, helping him to a table.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Sam said in English as he slumped into the chair. ‘I don’t speak French.’

  ‘Are you ill?’ she repeated with only a trace of an accent.

  ‘I … don’t know. I just feel … very weak.’

  ‘Un moment,’ she said and taking the bottle from in front of the bearded man she poured a measure into a glass and added water. The mixture turned milky. ‘Drink,’ she commanded.

  The aromatic fumes irritated his eyes, but the woman stood over him, arms crossed, so he took a mouthful. A surge of blood rushed to his brain and his throat constricted. An involuntary gasp escaped his burning lips.

  The man at the bar mumbled a disparaging grunt.

  ‘More,’ the woman said. Her voice was threatening, but she had a pleasant face and when he glanced up at her, she smiled. He finished the drink, and warmth spread from his belly through his whole body.

  ‘You are off the Madura,’ she stated.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Looking for a room?’

  His eyes roamed around the hotel, from the stained timber glasses cabinet above the black marble bar to the half-dozen circular tables to the carpeted staircase. It hadn’t occurred to him until that moment, but here was a perfect haven from his torture on the ship. Here he could find his feet. Here he could perhaps finally get some sleep.

  ‘A room?’ he said.

  ‘Oui. I have a nice room for you. Two francs.’

  The Madura could sail without him. He had long ago lost his enthusiasm for New York. In fact, he detested the name. New York and his dreams of adventure and education had been the cause of his interminable suffering.

  ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘A room.’

  ‘Come, I show you,’ she said, and led the way to the stairs.

  She glanced back and found Sam still fixed to his seat.

  ‘Come. You can get your things later.’

  Sam’s legs were leaden and he leaned on the table while he got to his feet. His heart thumped and his face burned as he followed the woman’s shapely bottom up the stairs.

  On the landing, the threadbare carpet under his feet began to rise and fall in great waves like someone had hold of the end and was shaking loose the dust.

  He heard the woman say, ‘Quelle?’ just before his head hit the floor.

  Sam awoke in a small but pleasant room lit by the yellow light of a paraffin lantern on the bedside table. His head ached and the cramps that had pinched his gut for many days were worse, but he had none of the last weeks’ debilitating nausea. As the fogginess of sleep cleared, he realised his bunk was steady; and with a sigh of relief he remembered that he was no longer on board ship.

  The door to his room opened and the woma
n from the bar peeped in.

  ‘Ah,’ she said, entering. ‘You wake up.’

  Sam noticed the woman had an armful of clothes, and at the same time realised he was naked under the sheet and light blanket. The clothes she carried were his. She noticed his expression and smiled.

  ‘All clean now,’ she said and then made a face. ‘Pooh! How you stink. Do you think I would let you sleep in one of my beds when you stink like a donkey? No. Now you are all clean. How do the English say it? From top to toe.’

  A number of questions flew into Sam’s head, most of which he thought it best not to ask, but one of them was important. ‘What happened to me?’

  ‘Maybe I should have given you the bouillabaisse before the absinthe, yes?’

  ‘I fell …?’

  ‘Boof!’ she said, making a gesture with her arm. ‘Like a tree. You are very heavy. Joel, he helped me, but he is useless after four absinthes.’ She shrugged. ‘Don’t worry, he didn’t see your pee-pee.’

  She laughed at his expression, then disappeared with a promise to return with the bouillabaisse.

  Her name was Paulette, and Sam guessed she was about forty, though as she was white it was hard to tell. She told him that she and her absent husband, Aubin, owned the bar, but that she managed it because he was at sea for ten months of the year and in any case, she was the one with the bar-keeping experience.

  She was a full-figured woman, with short hair, wide hips and a dimple in each cheek when she smiled, which was often. She could chat for an hour about the characters who came through the hotel door; and she was not the least embarrassed to reveal some of the amorous exploits of her years working in London’s pubs when a young woman, fresh from school with only a smattering of English.

  Within days Sam was feeling much better, thanks to the bouillabaisse and the pleasure he found between Paulette’s ample white thighs. She was full of vigour and laughter in bed, not to mention endlessly fascinated by Sam’s body, which she insisted he place close to the lamp so that she could study his veins and the tight springs of his pubic hair. She would lick him and tease him until he was ready to explode, but on the occasion when his lust drove him to a quick climax she patiently tutored him on the ways that a woman preferred to be bedded.