The Serpent in Happy Valley

By SIMON RAVEN

MANY qualities arc commonly imputed to colonial settlers, among them industry, greed, courage and obstinacy; but during the ten months odd which 1 spent as a soldier in Kenya 1 found that by far the most interesting was guilt. Guilt of a specialised and oddly slanted kind, certainly, but all the more fascinating for that. My own dealings with settlers were mostly social, so that it was on a social level—a level of eating and drinking--that I observed this phenomenon. But a man's attitudes in his . pleasures are, if anything, more revealing than those he displays in business or official func- tions, and I therefore make no apology for treat- ing the matter against a background of frivolity.

Let us, then, consider that most significant of Kenyan institutions, the Muthaiga Club. Situated in a wealthy suburb of Nairobi, the Muthaiga Club is the summit of the settlers' social aspira- tion. As a serving British officer. I was auto- matically an honorary member and was there- fore inclined to treat the privilege lightly; but I soon discovered that the waiting list for mem- bership proper was almost endless, that fees and subscriptions were portentous, that the process of election was grudging to the point of inquisi- tion. To admit junior British officers to the club was, in truth, a notable act of hospitality, for colonial officials and locally-born young bucks of comparable standing would not be elected for many years, not until they became formidable in rank or estate. To belong to the Muthaiga, to sleep there when you visited Nairobi for a week- end, was to have obtained, as it were, the letters patent of Kenyan nobility. And for this reason men who seldom came to Nairobi more than once a year, men from the coastal plains or the distant borderlands of Uganda, jostled and intrigued and paid heavy sums in money for a place. Nor, having done so, were they denied amenity: the bar, the longest in the colony, was stocked to meet the most outré or extravagant request; the service, provided by squads of white- robed Africans, was immaculate; the rooms, pub- lic or private, were comfortable, spacious; even, if you discounted the ubiquitous trophies of the chase, elegant; and the food was various and exquisitely prepared.

All of which was balm to the souls and bodies of exiled Europeans, such as I counted myself. One could eat, drink, sleep as civilised men understood the functions. But here lies the point. Most of the Kenyan members, the farmers and settlers, did not care for these refinements; having paid enormous fees to belong and being on one of his rare visits to Nairobi, the average settler misused this magnificent place of enter- tainment in order to do juSt what he did every day at home—to drink gin or whisky from six till ten p.m. and then to go drunk to a plain dinner accompanied by water (`No oysters or fal-de-rols for me, old man; just steak and veg.'). Every effort had been made by the committee to provide a club that would have done credit to London itself : and no pains were spared by the members to assert themselves, constantly and aggressively, as simple men of pioneering tastes who would have none of such decadence.

And yet they were proud of the Muthaiga and wished it to remain exactly as it was. The elab- orate dishes and fine wines were untouched save by 'foreigners' (e.g., visiting Englishmen) and the soft-living city-dwellers of Nairobi itself, never- theless the whisky-swilling 'pioneer' contingent, wholly contemptuous of such luxury, boasted of i all over East Africa ('Why, man, some of them even eat snails'). Nor is the clue to such equivoca- tion far to seek. For on the one hand the settlers were terrified of being looked down on as 'colonials,' as ignorant, unmannered bumpkins who knew nothing of the world, and they were therefore anxious to exhibit luxuries and refine- ments to match any in the West: but on the other hand they despised those who valued such deli- cacies.

The whole affair finally resolved itself into four simple propositions. First. a settler was as good as any of your Europeans and could meet them on their own ground (i.e., the Muthaiga Club). Second, a settler was much better than any of your Europeans, because he was con- temptuous (though not ignorant) of their effete habits and cultures, and preferred a rough, tough, adventurous life and a, cuisine consisting of con- venient essentials, such as whisky followed by tinned luncheon meat. Third, he was fortified by such customs and sustenance to maintain a firm and unsentimental attitude toward the native African, who was himself a simple man and respected unsophisticated usage. Last, it was the European's over-elaborate and over-leisured habits of entertainment and, by extension, of thought that led them to take up uncalled-for liberal attitudes toward African questions.

A compact view, one might think, and consis- tent after its fashion. But the essential flaw in these propositions reveals the curious brand of 'settler' guilt. For if pioneer ways were the purest and the best, then why erect—and covet—the ultra-smart Muthaiga Club in direct contradic- tion of those ways? Clearly, there was a guilty doubt lest the 'European' might, after all, be right-- and right about African questions as well as about food and drink. And equally clearly, guilt might be temporarily and in part assuaged by entering the halls of luxury and false en- lightenment and there defying the tutelary Lares --by wearing tattered drill trousers and insisting on raw spirit and coarse food.

One inevitable result of the Mau Mau emergency in Kenya was an increase in govern- ment organisations of every kind, some of which did an excellent job. But all of these still centred round the two oldest—the Colonial Ser- vice and the Kenya Police.

Before the emergency, both bodies had been held in esteem; but by the time the Mau Mau revolt was running down, while the Colonial Service remained more or less reputable, the Police had attracted odium and contempt. It was all a matter of recruitment. The Colonial Service, compelled by ever-increasing commit-

ments to make temporary appointments and to advertise short-term contracts, was nevertheless careful to offer these either to old 'Africa hands' or the more presentable of their sons; with the result that their new auxiliaries had some know- ledge of Africa and were disposed. provided their authority went unquestioned, to treat Africans fairly. The Police bestowed their con- tracts altogether less discriminately and attracted some of the riffraff of England and the Colony. Young men turned up as 'Inspectors' (to receive generous salaries and to command large bodies of native policemen) who had often never been out of England--and, what was far worse, the sort of young men who had been kicked out of their university for drunken driving or were in trouble in their home town for cashing bad cheques. In common with 'white trash' every- where, they were eager to find someone—any- one—over whom they could claim superiority. The native African was the ideal victim for this purpose. Africans were wrongfully arrested, prisoners and suspects were beaten up.

In 1956 I was attached to a company of English soldiers which was stationed near a village in the foothills of the Aberdare Mountains. It was an important village, the seat both of the local District Officer, an old and unusually civilised Kenya number with an emergency Colonial appointment, and of the local Chief Inspec- tor of Police, an Irishman called Lynn Flynn, who was of the 'old' and regular school of policeman and was liked by us well enough. I should explain that 'Chief Inspector' was the lowest 'commissioned' rank in the Kenya Police. 'Inspectors,' of whom Lynn Flynn had several under him (all of them 'short contract' men) scattered round the locality, were considered as being on probation; as Lynn Flynn made very plain, to be reckoned only as the equals of our own sergeants. He therefore suggested that any of his Inspectors who had business with us (in- formation about Mau Mau and the like) should be entertained, if at all, in the Sergeants' Mess. This did not at all suit the temporary Inspectors' amour pro pre. In their dealings with other units of the army they' had often contrived to bluff their way into Officers' Messes and they did not like being excluded here.

Now, the pride of our Officers' Mess at this time was an African cook, whom we paid out of our own pockets and who had once cooked in Government House itself. Thence he had been dismissed by some busybody for being discovered drunk; but we had argued that any good cook must be expected to drink, and since he carried the recommendation and the security clearance of our own District Officer, we had engaged him. And had no cause to regret it. He could improvise a bouillabaisse out of the dreariest tins, he knew all about the use of cream, brandy and wine, and he had a knack of making even the skinny local chickens seem plump and tender. True, he not only got drunk at night but also behaved louchely with the village women; but artists of his calibre, we said, must be allowed some moral licence— and in any case (this rather inconsequentially) he was a great favourite with the men, who called him 'Randy Dad.'

So no one was at all pleased when Lynn Flynn went off on a course and the morning after his departure an Inspector--his stand-in--drew up in a Land-Rover and said that he had come to arrest our African cook. On what charges? we asked. Charges, he said, need not be specified —under Emergency Regulation So-and-So. What about a warrant? Not needed—under Emergency Regulation So-and-So. But—this was Army ground, WD property, and unless he could show a warrant authorising him to enter and make his arrest, then he should now leave at once before he was thrown off. . . . First round to us. The Inspector drove away radiating high-frequency malevolence, while Randy Dad beamed and started to prepare an extra-special lunch.

The next day the Inspector was back, armed with a warrant apparently signed by everyone from the Provincial Commissioner downward; and Randy Dad was taken away, a sad little figure in the back of the police Land-Rover, to be charged, so the Inspector in his triumph was indiscreet enough to tell us. with raping a girl in the village.

That night the District Officer was to come to dinner. He had especially asked for Randy Dad's Supreme of Chicken cooked in pâté de foie and was vexed when given a corn-beef hash. We ex- plained what had happened, but he sulkily refused bridge and left at once. The next morning he reappeared : he had been questioning the local men and women, it seemed, and discovered that the Inspector had been badgering them for any information such as would make our poor old cook suspect of complicity with the Mau Mau. They hadn't given it, for they had none; but after the fashion of Africans being questioned by a white man they had politely agreed that the Bwana was no doubt right. This had given the Inspector his excuse for his first attempt at arrest. Thwarted, he had then used bribes and threats to induce a black girl who was known to have granted her favours to Randy Dad to say that she had in fact been raped': hence the high-powqed warrant.

What the Inspector did not know, and what could hardly have occurred to anyone so ignorant and so base, was that the local Africans held their District Officer in some reverence and affection, if only because he spoke their language fluently, and fell over themselves to tell him any news they thought he would be grateful to hear. So the Inspector's attempt to revenge himself on us through our stomachs was speedily squashed. What became of him I have no idea, as I left the district a few days later. But it was just this

combination of malice, stupidity and bad dealing on the part of 'short-contract men' which afflicted the Kenya Police throughout the Emer- gency.

The 'new' racecourse in Nairobi is some two miles out of the city proper, up the Ngong Road and beyond the cemetery. The surroundings are attractive, the course itself is well laid out, and the arrangements for eating and drinking com- pare more than favourably with those at the Ally Pally or Hurst Park. The racing itself, how- ever, gives less cause for satisfaction. Despite a positively Augean clean-up in 1954, despite the unquestionable integrity of the stewards, there remains an impression, so strong as almost to amount to physical presence, that there is something about Nairobi races incurably and in- alienably wrong.

There could, of course, be several very simple reasons for this. The horses are none of the finest, and African stable boys are no more scrupulous than any other kind. The wealthy settlers who predominate among the owners, having spent their youth and maturity in a rough and ready 'frontier' atmosphere inimical to moral or financial refinement, are often less delicate in their 'arrangements' than the stewards might wish. And then there is the matter of the jockeys. For professional jockeys, Kenya can be very near the end of the line; they may have been warned off in England. Australia, India and Hongkong before arrival, and be somewhat less than pre- dictable. But none of this entirely accounts for the leprous state of racing in Nairobi.

Late in the summer of 1955 I attended Nairobi races with an advertising manager from the city, famous for his poker and his knowledge of form. But the form, as always in Nairobi, was totally unreliable, and so, being heavily down after the first five of the seven races, I selected a horse for the sixth by the ancient pagan method of waiting to see which was the last to defecate before they left the paddock. This animal duly obliged at long odds, cleared my previous losses, and left me a nice sum of 'up-money,' all of which I de- cided to risk on the last race. Feeling that the old gods, by so kindly arranging the omen for me, had done all that could be expected of them for one day, I reverted to the Christian faith and chose a horse called Holy Roller. My advertising chum was sceptical and remarked that Holy Roller's jockey, whom I'll call Addy Bates, had only just recovered from a terrific bout of DTs. Not to mention, he added, that he was thought to be wanted on charges of fraud and bigamy in Lourenco Marques.

From the start of the race a horse called Naivasha Boy took up and maintained a lead of some five lengths; Holy Roller never got within three lengths of him and at the post he was a clear second to Naivasha Boy—who was cheered in with some enthusiasm since his jockey, a cheeky little African, was a favourite with spec- tators both black and white.

'Well,' 1 said, 'it was worth a try.' And started towards the car park.

'I shouldn't go just yet,' my chum said. 'There might be an objection. Addy Bates is a great one for objecting.'

'He can't object,' I said, 'the black boy went right ahead at the start and neither Addy nor anyone else got within a mile of him.'

'All the same . . .,' my friend said. And at that moment the loudspeaker announced an objec- tion.

'They won't allow it,' 1 said. 'They can't. Addy must be warming up for another go of DTs.'

'He could always say something happened at the start,' my friend said. 'It was a bit of a mess. And in any case I rather think you'll find that Addy will now get the race.'

And so it was. Naivasha Boy was disqualified (the alleged reason for this being obscured by a sharp cackle from the loudspeaker), Holy Roller was declared the winner and I had picked up a very pleasing sum.

'And now,' I said, 'perhaps you'll explain?' People here are rather keen on keeping the blacks in their place.'

'Meaning no black jockey can ever win a race?'

'Oh no. It's quite all right for black jockeys to beat white ones. But if a white one raises an objection ... that means a white man is accusing a black of cheating. And if a white man does that, he num: be upheld as a mere matter of face. In this case, I expect Addy cooked up some story about the start of the race—and he just had to be believed. There's still a few jockeys, mostly amateurs of course, who are too sporting. . . . But with a man like Addy Bates, to object is standard procedure—unless he'd happened to back the African himself. . . But what the hell are you moaning about? You won money, didn't you?'

And there was a lot, of course, in that.