A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa Read online

  It was not until after eleven o’clock the next day, when the Maasai search party had found what was left of Ryall’s body and killed the lion, that his two friends could be persuaded to retrieve their own clothing from the carriage. They returned to Nairobi on the two-forty up train, properly dressed in khaki suits, boots, gaiters and sun hats, though still carrying with them the new red cloaks that had been lent to them by Mohammed Khan and which he insisted they keep as a memento of their adventure. In appreciation of his kindness they, in turn, insisted that he keep the skin of the lion.

  It was this Mohammed Khan who three years later, and now the owner of a successful grocer’s shop and general emporium in Nairobi, banded together with some chums (including, as it so happened, Mr Malik’s grandfather) to form the Asadi Club. As you enter the hallway of the club you will still be greeted by the lion in question. In deference to local African tradition the dead animal is pointing to the north – so that its spirit can find its way to the celestial hunting grounds – and the legend has grown up that as long as it stands guard, the club will continue to prosper. Mohammed Khan stuffed the lion skin himself and didn’t do a bad job – though after more than a hundred years of sentry duty the Kima Killer does look a little tired and, despite its lips being drawn back to reveal an impressive set of teeth, it appears to be not snarling, but smiling. On his own way through the lobby of the Asadi Club later that night, Mr Malik looked around him. Perhaps Harry Khan was right. Perhaps the place was looking a little shabby – but nothing some new chair covers and a lick of paint wouldn’t fix. He’d have a word with the manager, get a few quotes to put to the committee. As for the lion, though – no. The lion had to stay.

  7

  The giant tree falls, and the bush pigs eat its fruit

  There was, thought Brian Kukuya, something rather nice about being a government minister. He looked around the spacious room that served as his new office. High ceilings, wide windows, cool tiled floor. In front of the fireplace lay a lion-skin rug (or, to be zoologically precise, lioness-skin rug) of pale tawny hue. He’d had the walls painted to match it and was rather pleased with the result. The painters that his assistant Jonah had organized had really done a first-class job, not like the usual lackadaisical tradesmen you always seemed to get these days – no, not at all. But that is as it should be – nothing but the best for a minister of state. On the wall beside his desk was a discreet but impressive bookcase filled with discreet but impressive books, on the opposite wall a photograph of himself and the President, shaking hands and beaming at the camera. And after years of hustling and hustings, of constituency meetings and barroom meetings and back-room meetings, the Honourable B. Kukuya, Minister for the Interior, had at last reached the position he knew he deserved. Mind you, it had been a close-run thing. At the last minute it had been rumoured that Zakiya Mohutu was going to get the job and he would be left with the Ministry of Transport. Several favours had to be called in, several promises made. But in the end all had turned out well, and now he could afford to ease off a bit. He could relax. He could delegate.

  He pressed a button on his desk.

  ‘Ah, Jonah. What have you got for me today?’

  ‘Just a few letters to sign, Minister, then there’s that appointment at ten – it’s in your diary and I’ve put the briefing on your desk. Oh, and I just got a call from the PM’s office. This afternoon’s cabinet meeting has been postponed. The Swiss delegation’s running late again but the PM thinks he should see them anyway as soon as they arrive. Shall I phone the golf club?’

  ‘Thank you, Jonah.’

  Brian Kukuya leaned back in his chair and clasped his hands behind his head. Yes, there was something jolly nice about being a minister. Not that it was something anyone could do – no, not at all. Delegating, for instance. You had to be sure that the people to whom you delegated were up to the job. Which was why he felt lucky – no, not lucky, far-sighted was a better word – to have let Jonah Litumana keep his job as ministerial private secretary after the last minister had been forced to resign. It was important to have continuity, and to have someone who appreciated that a minister does not want to be bothered with details. Big-picture stuff, that was his job, long-term vision. But being in so senior a position had its minuses as well as its pluses. As Brian Kukuya was only too happy to explain to anyone who asked, and many who didn’t, he probably worked harder now than at any time in his life.

  ‘Can’t switch off, you see. Morning, noon and night – thinking, thinking.’

  For instance, a casual observer at the Sandringham Country Club this afternoon might think he was playing golf; afterwards it might appear that he was relaxing in the bar, enjoying a drink. But really he would be thinking, thinking, working, working, all the time.

  He glanced down at the desk. Ah yes, the letters. Though he was sure that age and experience had improved his long-term vision, the Hon Brian Kukuya had to admit that the years had done little to improve his day-to-day sight. He was at that time of life when arms seem to get shorter, lights dimmer and print smaller. He was also at a position in life when he was particularly conscious of his appearance. Oh, he didn’t mind an expanding waistline and he didn’t mind a few grey hairs – his wife told him they made him look distinguished and his mistress told him they made him look trustworthy – but spectacles were out. Last month he had heard about some exercises to counteract the effects of age on eyesight and had asked Jonah to order the book on the internet. Any day now he would start doing them – if he could read them, that is. But it didn’t really matter. Jonah always provided a verbal summary of anything important, and he could still see well enough to know where to sign the letters that Jonah put in front of him. He picked up his pen. Only four letters this morning and, judging from the colour of the paper, a couple of departmental memos. He signed each document with care – you had to be careful if you were a government minister – and dropped them into the out-tray. His finger again moved to the button on his desk.

  ‘All right, Jonah. You can send Mr Khan in now.’

  Since leaving Kenya in the sixties the Khan family had prospered. Harry Khan and his two brothers had seen the family firm diversify from the retail business his grandfather had founded into hotel and restaurant franchises and, more recently, into shopping centres. With his good looks and affability, Harry had naturally moved to ‘front of house’, leaving his brothers to look after the management and accounts. It was Harry who took the investors to lunch, it was he who ran the seminars, it was he who looked after the franchisees’ wives. He was very good at looking after the franchisees’ wives.

  ‘Mr Khan, delighted to see you.’ The minister waved him to a chair with open hand. ‘Please, sit down. So, how do you find our country?’

  Harry flashed him a wide white smile.

  ‘Kenya will always be the jewel of Africa for me, Minister.’

  ‘How long since you were last here?’ Having glanced at Jonah Litumana’s briefing, the minister was well aware of the answer to this question – but small talk was small talk.

  ‘Too long,’ said Harry Khan. ‘But last time, that was a family thing – my mother, you know, she wanted to come back and see what the old place looked like.’

  ‘Of course, I remember now – you were born here. You are as Kenyan as I am. But first, tell me – everything all right at your hotel?’

  ‘Those guys at the Hilton always look after me just fine.’

  ‘Good, good. If there is anything you need – the manager is a personal friend of mine, you know.’

  ‘You are too kind, Minister.’

  Harry Khan looked around the room.

  ‘Nice place you’ve got here. I hear you haven’t been in the job very long. Your predecessor – he resigned, am I right?’

  ‘Indeed so. Personal reasons. Very sad.’

  ‘That’s not exactly what I heard. Wasn’t there something about it in the Evening News – that “Birds of a Feather” column?’

  ‘So you’
ve come across Dadukwa, Mr Khan? Then let me assure you that the whole thing is based on nothing more than imagination and innuendo.’

  ‘But some of that imagination and innuendo, it must be coming from pretty high up, right?’

  The smile on Brian Kukuya’s face slipped a millimetre.

  ‘You are indeed well informed, Mr Khan. And you may rest assured that the government, and I as Minister for the Interior, take all such leaks – such threats to national security – seriously. Very seriously. I have made it clear that any information leading to the unmasking of this unpatriotic scallywag will be well rewarded. It was one of my first directives. You have been reading it, this column?’

  ‘No, not exactly. I met a few guys last night; they filled me in on what’s been happening.’

  ‘That would have been at the Asadi Club, I suppose?’

  Harry Khan smiled.

  ‘You too seem well informed, if I may say so, Minister.’

  ‘It is my job to know what is going on. Anyway, you may be interested to know that the Evening News will soon be closing down.’

  ‘Is that right?’

  ‘Yes – some technicality with its registration, apparently. I don’t know if you ever heard of a certain fire in 1940? It started in the office of the then Military Secretary. You may have heard of him – Lord Erroll?’

  ‘Oh yeah. The white guy who was murdered, right?’

  The minister nodded.

  ‘Most unfortunate. No one was hurt in the fire, but an awful lot of government records were destroyed.’ The minister turned to look out of the window. A jacaranda tree was just coming into bloom. ‘Where was I? Oh, yes, the Evening News. After my predecessor’s unfortunate demise my assistant thought it might be prudent to conduct an audit of newspaper registration documents – just routine, you understand. As I’m sure you know, Mr Khan, all organizations need to be registered – for tax reasons, health and safety regulations, that kind of thing. Unfortunately, he could find no such document in the government records.’

  ‘Don’t tell me – it was one of those that got burned in the fire. But they’d have their own copy, right?’

  ‘Yes, you’d think so, wouldn’t you? They came up with some excuse, a burglary or something – just last week, they claim. But I ask you, what kind of burglar would steal a company registration document? No, it’s quite clear that all this time they have been operating as an unregistered company – completely illegal, of course. We’ve tried to help. We’ve given them two weeks to produce the document or shut down. Such a shame – just after they’ve had their offices refurbished and redecorated and everything. But we really have no choice.’

  ‘I guess not, Minister, I guess not.’ Harry Khan nodded towards the fireplace. ‘Nice rug.’

  ‘Yes,’ said the minister, looking down at the skin of the lioness, legs splayed, mouth showing teeth that though somewhat yellow were nonetheless fearsome. ‘She’s quite old too – over fifty now. Shot on the first of February 1956. Does that date mean anything to you?’

  Harry Khan shook his head.

  ‘Can’t say it does.’

  ‘You have heard of Elsa, Mr Khan?’

  ‘Elsa – you mean Elsa the lioness, Joy Adamson, Born Free, all that stuff?’

  The minister smiled.

  ‘I see you remember your Kenyan history, Mr Khan. And you no doubt recall that the reason Joy Adamson brought up Elsa and the other orphaned lion cubs was that her mother had been shot – by her husband George, in fact.’ He gazed down at the flattened form. ‘Ah yes, poor Elsa’s mother. I, um, acquired her after George Adamson died – that was after Joy was murdered, of course. He was murdered too – by poachers, they say.’

  ‘Right, another lucky lion skin. Seems quite the thing round here.’

  ‘Lucky?’

  ‘That’s what they think at the Asadi Club. They’ve got a lion skin too – not a rug like that one, but a stuffed one. Not in such good condition either, but I guess it’s even older than yours. Anyway, according to club tradition, as long as the lion’s OK, the club’s OK.’

  ‘Oh, what a quaint idea. But tell me, Mr Khan, what brings you to Nairobi this time? Visiting family again?’

  Harry Khan leaned forward in his chair.

  ‘No, Minister – and hey, call me Harry – this time it’s business, straight business.’

  ‘Business? Tell me more.’

  ‘As you may know, our company is quite a big player in the shopping centre game over in the US; mostly eastern seaboard, but we’re moving into the west – San Diego, Seattle. After my last visit here, I got to thinking. Maybe we could use some of the lessons we’ve been learning over there, over here.’

  ‘I wonder, Mr Khan, could you be a little more specific?’

  ‘I’m talking megamalls, Minister. I’m talking one-stop. I’m talking food, clothing, entertainment. I’m talking thirty, forty, fifty thousand square metres of air-conditioned retail space with car parks to match – maybe residential too. We’ve been looking at the market here in Nairobi pretty closely. We think now could be the right time.’

  ‘What you propose sounds most interesting, Mr Khan, but surely this is simply a commercial venture? I don’t quite see –’

  ‘Where you come in? The way I look at it is this – and correct me if I’m wrong here, Minister. We’re talking about a large investment. I won’t bother you with the details of finance and stakeholders and all the boring stuff, but we’re talking – OK if I use US dollars? – we’re talking millions, tens of millions, maybe even nine figures.’

  The minister sat back in his chair.

  ‘Go on, Mr Khan.’

  ‘Like I say, it’s a pretty big wad. It’s going to be big for Nairobi, and what’s good for Nairobi is good for Kenya – right? That’s why I’m here. I thought I should start by getting the advice of someone high up, someone at the top. There’s going to be money in this for a lot of people. That’s why I came to you.’

  ‘I see. And this … er … advice?’

  ‘What I’m looking for is local knowledge. People who know how the system works, people who know the people who know the right people. For instance, the first thing we’re going to need is a site.’

  ‘Site?’

  ‘A building site. Somewhere to build – somewhere big, somewhere central.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the minister. ‘Well, I happen to know that there will be tenders out soon for redevelopment of some of the area around Kibera –’

  ‘Kibera – isn’t that the slums? With all respect, Minister, I’m not sure that’s quite the place for a five-star retail facility.’

  Brian Kukuya smiled.

  ‘We prefer to call it “unofficial housing”, Mr Khan. But I think I can see your point. Something a little more central?’

  ‘Right. So what I’m really asking is that if you do get any ideas, you give me a call. Like I said, for the good of the country.’

  ‘I think I understand you, Mr … Harry. Yes, I think I understand you perfectly.’

  It has sometimes been said that Kenya is not so much a nation as a collection of tribes. When nineteenth- and twentieth-century European invaders decided to carve up Africa, the borders between their agreed spheres of influence were not decided by nature or (strange thought) by the people who actually lived there. They were decided by merchants and soldiers and men with maps in the faraway capitals of another continent. The border between British East Africa and German East Africa was a straight line with a small kink round Mount Kilimanjaro. The border between British East Africa and Italian East Africa similarly owed more to geometry than geography. The result of this is that even today the Maasai of Kenya have more in common with their brother Maasai of Tanzania than they do with their fellow Kenyan Kikuyus, and the Cushitic speakers of the north converse more easily with their Ethiopian cousins than with their Swahili-speaking coastal compatriots.

  The Hon Brian Kukuya was a Luo man and, if you could have delved into his soul, you would find that
his loyalties were to his family, his tribe and his country – in very much that order. Had you been able to delve deeper still, you would have discovered that even above loyalty to family was a great love of and concern for the well-being of Brian Kukuya.

  ‘Ah, there you are, Jonah. You have shown Mr Khan out? Now, tell me, is there any more news about the Evening News?’

  ‘Ha ha, news about the news, Minister. The Minister is most clever and amusing.’

  Yes, thought Brian Kukuya, he supposed he was.

  ‘How is your – our – little plan going? I suppose there is no chance that the editor will be able to produce this certificate of registration?’

  ‘None whatever, Minister. You may be sure of that. I have taken care of it. It is already in my personal possession.’

  ‘Good, good. That will certainly be a thorn removed from the flesh of the government’s side.’

  ‘A most poetic and apposite analogy, Minister.’

  Apposite? Poetic? Yes, perhaps it was.

  ‘Well now, I have another little matter I would like to discuss with you.’

  By the time Jonah Litumana had left the minister’s office, he knew about the minister’s brilliant plan for a new megamall in Nairobi and was in no doubt that the building of this edifice would be good for the country, the city and the people. It would also be good, he was quite sure, for the minister. And he was sure that with a little constructive meditation he would think of just the right spot to build it.

  8

  If the rock falls on the melon or the melon on the rock, it is not the rock that is smashed apart

  Benjamin Ikonya had grown up on a small family farm many days’ walk from Nairobi and been just sixteen when he first came into Mr Malik’s employ. He liked looking after Mr Malik’s garden. He liked the morning ritual of first selecting and cutting some twigs to bind to his broom handle, then sweeping the lawn clean of the night’s fallen leaves. He enjoyed mowing the lawn, and pruning the shrubs and bushes. He especially liked making and lighting the bonfire outside the front gate every afternoon (small bonfires are the main rubbish disposal system of Nairobi, and give the city its special smell). For the first time in his life he had his own room, with electric light and running water, and three meals a day. And he could send money home and still have enough left over to buy bonbons and Coca-Cola – every day, if he wanted.