When the Going Was Good

by Evelyn Waugh

  Someone took me to a marquee where we drank champagne. When I wanted to pay for my round the barman gave me a little piece of paper to sign and a cigar.

  We went back to Muthaiga and drank champagne out of a silver cup which someone had just won.

  Someone said, ‘You mustn’t think Kenya is always like this.’

  There was a young man in a sombrero hat, trimmed with snake skin. He stopped playing dice, at which he had just dropped twenty-five pounds, and asked me to come to a dinner party at Torrs. Raymond and I went back there to change.

  On the way up we stopped in the bar to have a cocktail. A man in an orange shirt asked if we either of us wanted a fight. We both said we did. He said, ‘Have a drink instead.’

  That evening it was a very large dinner-party, taking up all one side of the ballroom at Torrs. The young lady next to me said, ‘You mustn’t think that Kenya is always like this.’

  After some time we went on to Muthaiga.

  There was a lovely American called Kiki, whom I had met before. She had just got up. She said, ‘You’ll like Kenya. It’s always like this.’

  Next morning I woke up in a very comfortable bedroom; the native boy who brought my orange juice said I was at Torrs.

  I had forgotten all about Mombasa and the immigration officers.

  At the end of Race Week, Raymond and I left Nairobi and drove through the Rift Valley to Lake Naivasha. A bad road; red earth cut into deep ruts; one of the best roads in the country. On the way we pass other settlers returning to their farms; they wear bright shirts and wide felt hats; they drive box-body cars, in most cases heaped with miscellaneous hardware they have been buying at the capital; groups of Kikuyu, the women with heavy luggage on their backs supported by a strap round their foreheads; their ears are slit and ornamented; their clothes of copper-coloured skins; the men have mostly made some effort at European dress in the form of discarded khaki shorts or an old hat. They attempt a clumsy kind of salute as we pass, smiling and saying ‘Jambo bwana’, rather as children in England still wave their pocket handkerchiefs to trains.

  The scenery is tremendous, finer than anything I saw in Abyssinia; all round for immense distances successive crests of highland. In England we call it a good view if we can see a church spire across six fields; the phrase, made comic by the Frankaus of magazine fiction, ‘Wide Open Spaces’, really does mean something here. Brilliant sunshine quite unobscured, uninterrupted in its incidence; sunlight clearer than daylight; there is something of the moon about it, the coolness seems so unsuitable. Amber sunlight in Europe; diamond sunlight in Africa. The air fresh as an advertisement for toothpaste.

  We are going to stay with Kiki. She lives in a single-storeyed, very luxurious house on the edge of the Lake. She came to Kenya for a short Christmas visit. Someone asked her why she did not stay longer. She explained that she had nowhere particular to go. So he gave her two or three miles of lake front for a Christmas present. She has lived there off and on ever since. She has a husband who shoots most sorts of animals, and a billiard-room to accommodate their heads. She also has two children and a monkey, which sleeps on her pillow.

  It was lovely at Naivasha; the grass ran down from the house to the water, where there was a bathing-place with a little jetty to take one clear of the rushes. We used to swim in the morning, eat huge luncheons and sleep in the afternoon. Kiki appeared soon after tea. There were small, hot sausages at cocktail time. Once Kiki and I went for a walk as far as some ants, fifty yards up the garden. She said ‘You must just feel how they can sting,’ and lifted a very large one on to the back of my hand with a leaf. It stung frightfully. More than that, several others ran up the leg of my trousers and began stinging there.

  In Kenya it is easy to forget that one is in Africa; then one is reminded of it suddenly, and the awakening is agreeable. One day before luncheon we were sitting on the terrace with cocktails. Kiki’s husband and a General were discussing someone they had blackballed for White’s; Raymond was teaching chemin-de-fer to Kiki’s little boy; there was a striped awning over our heads and a gramophone – all very much like the South of France. Suddenly a Kikuyu woman came lolloping over the lawn, leading a little boy by the hand. She said she wanted a pill for her son. She explained the sort of pain he had. Kiki’s husband called his valet and translated the explanation of the pain. The valet advised soda-mint. When he brought it, the woman held out her hand but they – to the woman’s obvious displeasure – insisted on giving it directly to the child. ‘Otherwise she would eat it herself the moment she was round the corner.’ The Kikuyu have a passion for pills equalled only in English Bohemia; they come at all hours to beg for them.

  After a time Kiki made a sudden appearance before breakfast, wearing jodhpurs and carrying two heavy-bore guns. She had decided to go and kill some lions.

  So Raymond and I went to his house at Njoro.

  One does not – or at any rate I did not – look upon farming as the occupation of a bachelor. The large number of bachelor farmers was, to me, one of the surprising things about Kenya. Raymond is one, though perhaps he is more typically bachelor than farmer. I spent about a fortnight with him off and on at Njoro; sometimes he was away for a day or two, sometimes I was. A delightful if rather irregular visit. His cook was away all the time. There was a head boy called Dunston who spent most of the day squatting outside cooking bath water on a wood fire. I learned some words of Swahili. When I woke up I said, ‘Woppe chickule, Dunston?’ which meant, ‘Where is food, Dunston?’ Dunston replied, ‘Hapana chickule, bwana,’ which meant, ‘No food, my lord.’ Sometimes I had no breakfast; sometimes I found Raymond, if he was at home, sitting up in bed with a tin of grouse paste and a bottle of soda water, and forced him to share these things with me; sometimes, if the telephone was working, I rang up Mrs Grant, the nearest neighbour, and had breakfast with her. We used to lunch and dine at the Njoro golf club or with the neighbours; very friendly dinner parties, Irish in character, to which we bounced over miles of cart track in a motor van which Raymond had just acquired in exchange for his car; it was full of gadgets designed to help him capture gorillas in the Eturi forest – a new idea of Raymond’s, prompted by the information that they fetched two thousand pounds a head at the Berlin Zoo – but was less comfortable than the car for ordinary social use.

  The houses of Kenya are mainly in that style of architecture which derives from intermittent prosperity. In many of them the living-rooms are in separate buildings from the bedrooms; their plan is usually complicated by a system of additions and annexes which have sprung up in past years as the result of a good crop, a sudden burst of optimism, the influx of guests from England, the birth of children, the arrival of pupil-farmers, or any of the chances of domestic life. In many houses there is sadder evidence of building begun and abandoned when the bad times came on. Inside they are, as a rule, surprisingly comfortable. Up an unfenced cart-track, one approaches a shed made of concrete, matchboarding, and corrugated iron, and, on entering, finds oneself among old furniture, books, and framed miniatures.

  There are very few gardens; we went to one a few miles outside Njoro where an exquisite hostess in golden slippers led us down grass paths bordered with clipped box, over Japanese bridges, pools of water-lilies, and towering tropical plants. But few settlers have time for these luxuries.

  ‘Boy’ and Genessie, with whom I spent a week-end, have one of the stately homes of Kenya; three massive stone buildings on the crest of a hill at Elmentaita overlooking Lake Nakuru, in the centre of an estate which includes almost every topographical feature – grass, bush forest, rock, river, waterfall, and a volcanic cleft down which we scrambled on the end of a rope.

  On the borders a bush fire is raging, a low-lying cloud by day, at night a red glow along the horizon. The fire dominates the week-end. We watch anxiously for any change in the wind; cars are continually going out to report progress; extra labour is mustered and despatched to ‘burn a brake’; will the flames ‘jump’ the railroad?
The pasture of hundreds of head of cattle is threatened.

  In the evening we go down to the lakeside to shoot duck; thousands of flamingo lie on the water; at the first shot they rise in a cloud, like dust from a beaten carpet; they are the colour of pink alabaster; they wheel round and settle farther out. The head of a hippopotamus emerges a hundred yards from shore and yawns at us. When it is dark the hippo comes out for his evening walk. We sit very still, huddled along the running-boards of the cars. We can hear heavy footsteps and the water dripping off him; then he scratches himself noisily. We turn the spotlight of the car on him and reveal a great mud-caked body and a pair of resentful little pink eyes; then he trots back into the water.

  Again the enchanting contradictions of Kenya life; a baronial hall straight from Queen Victoria’s Scottish Highlands – an open fire of logs and peat with carved-stone chimney-piece, heads of game, the portraits of prize cattle, guns, golf-clubs, fishing-tackle, and folded newspapers – sherry is brought in, but, instead of a waistcoated British footman, a bare-footed Kikuyu boy in white gown and red jacket. A typical English meadow of deep grass; model cowsheds in the background; a pedigree Ayrshire bull scratching his back on the gatepost; but, instead of rabbits, a company of monkeys scutter away at our approach; and, instead of a smocked yokel, a Masai herdsman draped in a blanket, his hair plaited into a dozen dyed pigtails.

  I returned to Njoro to find Raymond deeply involved in preparations for his gorilla hunt; guns, cameras, telescopes, revolvers, tinned food, and medicine chests littered tables and floors. There was also a case of champagne. ‘You have to have that to give to Belgian officials – and, anyway, it’s always useful.’

  That evening I dined with the Grants. They had an English-woman staying with them whose daughter had been in the party at Genessie’s. It had been arranged that we should all climb Mount Kilimanjaro together; this plan, however, was modified, and, instead, we decided to go to Uganda. I wanted to visit Kisumu, so it was decided that they should pick me up there on the following Sunday. Next day I watched Raymond loading his van, and that evening we had a heavy evening at the Njoro club. Early the day after, I took the train for Kisumu.

  I was going second class. My companion in the carriage was a ginger-haired young man a few years older than myself; he had an acquaintance with whom he discussed technicalities of local legislation; later this man got out and we were left alone. For some time we did not speak to each other. It was a tedious journey. I tried to read a copy of Burton’s Anatomy of Melancholy which I had stolen from Raymond’s shelves. Presently he said, ‘Going far?’

  ‘Kisumu.’

  ‘What on earth for?’

  ‘No particular reason. I thought I might like it.’

  Pause. ‘You’re new in the country, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I thought you must be. Kisumu’s bloody.’

  Presently he said again: ‘What have you seen so far?’

  I told him briefly.

  ‘Yes, that’s all most visitors see. They’re delightful people, mind you, but they aren’t typical of Kenya.’

  Two or three stations went by without any further conversation. Then he began getting together his luggage – a kit bag, some baskets, a small packing-case, and an iron stove-pipe. ‘Look here. You won’t like Kisumu. You’d far better stay with me the night.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Good.’

  We got out at a station near the Nandi escarpment and transferred his luggage to a Ford van that was waiting some distance away in charge of an Indian shopkeeper.

  ‘I hope you don’t mind; I’ve got to see my brother-in-law first. It isn’t more than thirty miles out of the way.’

  We drove a great distance along a rough track through country of supreme beauty. At cross roads the signposts simply bore the names of the settlers. Eventually we arrived at the house. There were several people there, among them a man I had been at school with. Until then my host and I did not know each other’s names. There was an Italian garden, with trimmed yew hedges and grass, balustraded terrace, and a vista of cypresses; in the distance the noble horizon of the Nandi hills; after sundown these came alight with little points of fire from the native villages; the household was playing poker under a thatched shelter. My host transacted his business; we drank a glass of Bristol Cream and continued the journey. It was now quite dark. Another very long drive. At last we reached our destination. A boy came out to greet us with a lantern, followed by an elderly lady – my host’s mother-in-law. ‘I thought you were dead,’ she said. ‘And who is this?’

  ‘He’s come to stay. I’ve forgotten his name.’

  ‘You’ll be very uncomfortable; there’s nothing in the home to eat and there are three swarms of bees in the dining-room.’ Then, turning to her son-in-law: ‘Belinda’s hind-quarters are totally paralysed.’

  This referred, not, as I assumed, to her daughter, but, I learned later, to a wolfhound bitch.

  We went up to the house – a spacious, single-storeyed building typical of the colony. I made some polite comment on it.

  ‘Glad you like it. I built most of it myself.’

  ‘It is the third we have had in this spot,’ remarked the old lady. ‘The other two were destroyed. The first caught fire; the second was struck by lightning. All the furniture I brought out from England was demolished. I have had dinner prepared three nights running. Now there is nothing.’

  There was, however, an excellent dinner waiting for us after we had had baths and changed into pyjamas. We spent the evening dealing with the bees, who, at nightfall, had disposed themselves for sleep in various drawers and cupboards about the living-room. They lay in glutinous, fermenting masses, crawling over each other, like rotten cheese under the microscope; a fair number flew about the room stinging us as we dined, while a few abandoned outposts lurked among the embroidered linen sheets in the bedrooms. A subdued humming filled the entire house. Baths of boiling water were brought in, and the torpid insects were shovelled into them by a terrified native boy. Some of the furniture was carried out on to the lawn to await our attention in the morning.

  Next day we walked round the farm – a coffee plantation. Later, a surveyor of roads arrived and we drove all over the countryside pointing out defective culverts. During the rains, the old lady told me, the farm was sometimes isolated from its neighbours for weeks at a time. We saw a bridge being built under the supervision, apparently, of a single small boy in gum-boots. Poor Belinda lay in a basket on the verandah, while over her head a grey and crimson parrot heartlessly imitated her groans.

  The surveyor took me to the station for the afternoon train to Kisumu – a town which proved as dreary as my host had predicted – numerous brand-new, nondescript houses, a small landing-stage and railway junction, a population entirely Indian or official. The hotel was full; I shared a bedroom with an Irish airman who was prospecting for the Imperial Airways route to the Cape. Next day, Sunday, I went to church and heard a rousing denunciation of birth-control by a young Mill Hill Father. The manager of the hotel took me for a drive in his car to a Kavirondo village where the people still wore no clothes except discarded Homburg hats. Then Mrs Grant arrived with her party.

  We drove to Eldoret and stayed at one more house, the most English I had yet seen – old silver, family portraits, chintz-frilled dressing-tables – and next day crossed the frontier into Uganda.

  There was nothing, however, to mark the frontiers of the two territories. We crossed sometime during the morning and arrived at Jinja in the late afternoon.

  At Jinja there is both hotel and golf links. The latter is, I believe, the only course in the world which posts a special rule that the player may remove his ball by hand from hippopotamus footprints. For there is a very old hippopotamus who inhabits this corner of the lake. Long before the dedication of the Ripon Falls it was his practice to take an evening stroll over that part of the bank which now constitutes the town of Jinja. He has remained set in his ha
bit, despite railway lines and bungalows. At first, attempts were made to shoot him, but lately he has come to be regarded as a local mascot, and people returning late from bridge parties not infrequently see him lurching home down the main street. Now and then he varies his walk by a detour across the golf links and it is then that the local rule is brought into force.

  There were several big-game hunters staying in the hotel, so that there was not room for all of us. Accordingly I went off to the Government rest-house. These vary in range from small hotels to unfurnished shelters. At Jinja there was a bedstead and mattress, but no sheets or blankets. I had just made a collection of the overcoats of the party when we saw a black face grinning at us from below the hotel steps. It was Dunston, hat in hand, come to report the loss of Raymond. He and the neighbour who was joining his gorilla hunt had gone on in a car, leaving Dunston and the native driver to follow in the van. Somewhere they had missed the road. Anyway, here was the van with the rifles and provisions and ‘Hapana bwana de Trafford’. Dunston wanted orders. We told him to take bwana de Trafford’s blankets to the rest-house, make up the bed, and then wait for further instructions. Meanwhile we wired to Eldoret, Njoro, and Nairobi, reporting the position of Raymond’s lorry. I do not know whether he ever found it, for we left next morning for Kampala.

  Here I said good-bye to my companions and established myself at the hotel. I was becoming conscious of an inclination to return to Europe and wanted to get down to Albertville and the Belgian air service as soon as I could.