THE VANISHING PEOPLE
OF THE RED OCHRE
The ground is called
laterite and is a clay which has been enriched with Iron and aluminium that has
been developed over long periods of time by the heavy rainfalls and the intense
heat. Sometimes the material is rock hard but when scuffed by vehicle wheels it
becomes a choking red dust. The iron is the origin of the redness is a rusty
colour. – Jack Hill.
FOR a long time, I have
been writing and talking about our East African DNA. Most Europeans will tell
you of their love for their Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania history’s past is “in
the blood.” I have always interpreted that the critical element in the DNA is
red dust which we breathed in, swallowed it with the raging wind or soaked our
bodies with it helped along by those gorgeous rains. I have always loved that
red dust from as long as I can remember growing up, first in the city of
Nairobi and then in semi-rural (to start with) Eastleigh and its neighbouring
environs. We walked mostly barefoot and if had the tennis shoes on then was probably
a hole in each sole and the cardboard pieces had moved. I can still taste that
dust on my lips and in my hair.
I there are distinctly four
types of non-African people and I will focus mainly on Kenya. 1. Those who
chose to stay and have flourished. 2. Those who left begrudgingly but will
never forget. Many return to Kenya regularly for a holiday or for a refill of familiar
natural beauty, of life in miniature of days that used to be and being shrouded
by the scents and aromas of familiar things and familiar places. They visit
their former homes, rural properties and catch up with eternal friends who are
also on the lists of the vanishing. They miss Kenya every day. They shout the
loudest when they watch a Kenyan runner winning on TV. Why not? They will
always by the white tribe of Kenya. 3. There are those who left and will never
forgive the African for claiming back his country and making exiles of so many who
had invested so much of their lives though first, second and third generations.
4. There are those who have cut the umbilical cord and have erased Kenya from
all of their memory but bear no ill feelings towards anyone.
I am a child of the War
years, WWII, that is. Already I have lost too many friends of my age group. In
20 years, I doubt if there will be anyone left who was born in the 1920s,
unless they make it to 100. Along with them, we will lose some of those born in
the 1930s and 1940s unless COVID takes them sooner.
In 40 years, there may not
be anyone left who lived with us, grew up with us, worked with us, hunted and
fished and picnicked and loved Kenya the way we did. It was always going to be the
case of a broken-hearted melody.
Aha! I would hand over the collective
works of our Kenya lives to the young adults (children of ex-Kenyan migrants of
all colours) who live in Canada and have some idea about what their parents and
grandparents’ lives were like in that distant poetic land. A few live in the UK
and yet others are strewn all over the world, especially southern Africa. A few
live in Kenya; once were children, now grandparents and basking in the twilight
of their lives.
While I still have my
marbles, I dedicate my next book: The Vanishing people of the Red Ochre to
anyone who was born there lived there or even visited there and has never
forgotten my Mother Country.
In the meanwhile, I will
sing her song, dance her beat, drink her juices, tea and coffee, and sup on
feasts that often seem only faint distant memories when we were once free with wind
in our hair, gentle breezes (kindly ghosts of Kenyans who died long ago)
caressing my cheeks and TV screen in my brain is alight with those awesome
memories of the children of the red ochre growing up shrouded by my mother
Kenya.
Tell me quickly, why you
miss Kenya. My book will be published in a couple of months. God Bless.
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