I Dreamed of Africa Read online

  I was touched by the transformation which had occurred in the people we employed, who normally wore European clothes. Now dressed – or undressed – in their traditional style, they had emerged from their everyday working rags and deformed shoes as butterflies hatch from caterpillars. Slim and agile, proud and handsome, colourful and noble, free and nimble in the rhythm of the dance, I wondered at their resemblance to a flock of birds in the glory of their metallic courting plumage, flying and singing in unison.

  Unexpectedly, at high noon, in the middle of the celebrations, we thought we heard a noise of distant thunder. The earth almost seemed to tremble as before a quake. A haunting rumble of stamping feet advancing, and a song like the wind, coming in gusts: the deep-throated safari song of the Pokot people.

  On the west side, Ol Ari Nyiro bordered with the Pokot reserve. The Pokot had been remarkable in keeping their traditions for longer than many other tribes. Unlike the Kikuyu, the Meru and the Kamba, the Pokot traditionally are not agriculturalists, but a pastoral people, hunters and gatherers. They had known Ol Ari Nyiro since time immemorial. They were familiar with the water sources, the shortcuts through the hills, and the game paths.

  Their women were dressed in long skirts of soft hide, greased with a mixture of goat fat and red ochre like their faces and hair. They looked like terracotta statues, agile and feminine with their rows of brass bangles clasping thin wrists and ankles, and with brass rings hung from pendulous ears. Even their necklaces were the same rusty colour: made of leather and wooden or bone beads, they were piled one on to the other to circle a high, proud head like starched brown collars. Their breasts were greased and bare. Their heads were shaven at the sides, but reddish ringlets sprouted on top, like the crests of exotic birds or manes of wild animals, which gave a surprisingly feminine effect. The men were dressed sombrely in black shukas, knee-length, and sported long ostrich feathers on their small bird-like heads which were plastered with a mixture of dried dung and earth and painted blue and white. They always carried long spears, the oblong, razor-sharp blades protected with a sheath of tight skin.

  They snaked their way through the garden and sang as they danced. Their beauty and wildness silenced my European guests, and long into the night the guttural cries mixed, without interfering, with the whooping cry of the hyena calling to the moon from the hills.

  The house was now ready, and we started inviting the neighbours. There were not many left in 1975. Ol Ari Nyiro had been one of the last ranches to be settled: marginal land such as this was not considered suitable for cattle, and certainly not for agriculture. Only wildlife, it was thought, could ever dwell there. Ol Ari Nyiro bordered with the Buonajuti farm, Colobus, to the south, and with the Tugen and Pokot reserve from south-west to northwest on the Rift Valley side; with Lwonyek, a government ranch, to the north-east, and with Ol Morani on the eastern border.

  Ol Morani had belonged to Gilbert Colvile, an extremely wealthy, eccentric landowner of the early days, who lived on horseback, never had a proper house, befriended the Maasai, and was nicknamed by them Nyasore, ‘the Thin One’. Colvile surprised all when, in the forties, he married the young and beautiful Diana Broughton. She who had been involved in a notorious scandal following the murder of her lover, Lord Erroll, probably by her older husband, Sir Jock Delves Broughton, who later committed suicide. After a few years, Diana and Colvile were divorced amicably, and she married Lord Delamere. At his death, Colvile left Diana all his properties, including Ol Morani, and although she never lived there – there was never a suitable house on the ranch – at the time we acquired Ol Ari Nyiro she was still our neighbour.

  Ol Morani, which in Maasai means ‘the young warrior’ but is still known today by the old people as Nyasore, was eventually sold to a local co-operative, and many Turkana bought shambas there. Ol Morani was flatter, without the dramatic geographical features of Ol Ari Nyiro, like the Mukutan gorge, but it was lovely land, with acacia groves and open plains teeming with eland, zebra and giraffe. The children loved to go riding there, and often I would join them at noon with a picnic lunch.

  Further inland, there were the Rumuruti settlers. One could meet them on Saturday at the Rumuruti Club. I have been always impressed by the British tradition of creating a club wherever they are, often in the most unlikely places. Rumuruti Club was a rambling group of wooden cottages, rather primitively built, in a clump of gum trees. It had a tennis court and a bar, and the liveliness and loud good spirits of the patrons made up for the shabbiness, which, after a few drinks, no one noticed. All the members contributed to support it in various ways – I think we paid the barman – and everyone brought some special dish for the parties. Old Land-Rovers arrived from nowhere and everywhere on Saturday afternoons, dusty or muddy depending on the season, children already fed and in pyjamas set to sleep on mattresses in the back. After some games of tennis and a few drinks, both settlers and their wives changed for the evening party. Long trousers – sometimes dinner-jackets – and long evening skirts substituted for the dusty khakis.

  Some of the people we met there were unusual and extremely interesting, and with those it was easier to make friends.

  One was Jasper Evans. He owned Ol Maisor ranch, where he ran cattle and many camels, and some inventive agricultural experiments, ahead of their time, were carried out on his land. I liked his quiet manners, unruffled gentle ways, and his philosophy of life. His house contained rare collections of books and beautiful old objects, although there were often tortoises or frogs in the bathtub, and a variety of wild pets surprised you by poking their noses in your bag. He was one of those people you do not need to meet often to feel easy and in tune with, and I like to think that we became – and still are – good friends.

  Then there were the Coles. The family had come to Kenya in the very early days, and Lord Delamere’s first wife had been Florence Cole, sister of Berkeley, Karen Blixen’s best friend. Hugh Cole used to come over often with Tubby Block’s son Jeremy, to join Paolo for a buffalo hunt. Then they remained for dinner, for the night and a couple more days, perhaps, in Kenya style. You never asked your guests how long they were going to stay; every visitor in the Highlands had travelled for uncomfortable hours or days to reach your home, and he could count on your hospitality – and you on his – for as long as happened to be the case, one night or one week did not make much difference.

  And there was, of course, Carletto. Our homes in Italy had been only a few miles apart, and here his ranch, Colcheccio, was about forty miles from Ol Ari Nyiro; by Kenya standards we were close neighbours. He had brought to Kenya the same conception of life which characterized his earlier days in Italy: his Pantagruelian passion for good food and drink, and his unparalleled hospitality. Carletto was a childhood memory and a link with the past, and it was uncanny that, in totally unconnected circumstances, we had ended up living so close in Africa with all the world to choose from.

  Soon, another event created an even stronger bond between us. It was at about that time that the telephone rang in Nairobi very early one morning, and I was told that Carletto’s wife, Chiara, had been killed in a car crash in Italy. She had been alone in the car, and had been suddenly blinded by black smoke drifting from tyres burning by the side of the highway: her car had been hit in the back by a lorry, and sandwiched against another invisible vehicle ahead of hers. It was one of those tragic chain-incidents: sixteen people were killed.

  Her death affected me deeply. Not only had I known Chiara for years and she had been a close friend, but Carletto’s had been the vehicle following ours that fatal night in Italy when Paolo’s wife had died. I shall not forget her slim bare feet coming towards me while I lay on the grass in the field where I had been flung from our crashed car. She had sat with me waiting for the ambulance, quiet and gentle, and in the months that followed, her constant presence at my bedside was a comfort in a time of bewilderment and soul-searching.

  She left three daughters, all of a tender age. The oldest was, at that time, a
t school with my stepdaughter Livia at Greensteds, in Nakuru. I offered to go and fetch her, so that she could travel back to Italy in the company of some friends due to leave that night. I was so distressed that I could not trust my driving, and went in a taxi. Just before the turn-off to the school, a grey lorry, coming at full speed, lurched from the opposite side of the road and headed straight for us. My driver swerved to the right, and missed it by a few inches. The solid grey mass slid past me as in a nightmare, and we ended up in a ditch on the wrong side of the road. I turned my head: Ugandan registration, the driver probably asleep or drunk, the lorry never stopped and hopped away in a mad zigzag through the pot-holes, like a sinister ghost. Sweat soaked my driver’s shirt. Drained, he put his head on the steering-wheel in silence. If I had been driving in my upset state, I would by now be dead.

  My heart still pounding, adrenalin flowing, I found Luisa waiting for me in the dormitory, dressed in her best school uniform. She did not know that her mother had died. Mute, Livia stood by her, and she offered me a little posy of flowers. When I bent to kiss her, her large brown eyes bore deeply into mine, and I could see she knew. Livia had the uncanny gift of seeing things before they happened. Holding Luisa’s hand and my flowers, I walked out in the afternoon sun shivering, and it took all my self-control not to crumble. Carletto was totally heartbroken by Chiara’s death, and despite his cheerful ways he never truly recovered.

  16

  Buffalo’s Revenge

  … buffalo … he found to be … vicious when wounded, always seeking to kill a wounded man.

  Bartle Bull, Safari

  The early days in Laikipia are studded with adventures. On 6 February 1977, I entered in my diary:

  Today at Enghelesha a buffalo killed one of our people. His name was Malinge, and he belonged to the tribe of Tharaka. He was a good friend of Emanuele and the day of the ngoma he had guarded our house. He was a kind man, hardly older than a boy. There were three walking in the bush. He and Cypriano and another man of the Security. The buffalo went straight for them. His horns perforated Malinge’s throat and lungs. He pushed him for over fifty metres and then he vanished in the bush. Luka came to tell us at the time when we were going in for dinner, and Paolo went out immediately with Colin to look for the buffalo.

  He was a large male with horns still red with blood, a leg wounded by one of the snares made by the new settlers at Colobus: hence the blind fury and aggressiveness. Malinge lay in a pond of blood, his eyes already dry which Paolo could not manage to close. Colin sat on a rock next to him, addressing him gently in Swahili. A side of Colin which I shall not forget. Paolo said Malinge’s face was serene, as if he were smiling. Our Fundis went today to make his coffin.

  But tonight he is still there, outside, covered with a blanket, surrounded by fires to keep away the hyena, until the police arrive tomorrow to check, as demanded by law.

  There is an ominous feeling about the telephone ringing at unexpected times, too early in the morning or too late at night, as if it could only forecast tragedies.

  Shortly after settling in Ol Ari Nyiro, one early morning in Nairobi I received a radio-call. It was an extremely bad line. The only words I could understand, above the crackling of static, made enough dramatic sense: ‘Paolo … accident … buffalo … Nairobi Hospital.’

  I rushed to the hospital and with the help of Renato Ruberti, a well-known neurosurgeon who, as a friend, was always our hospital contact, we organized everything and set to wait. It is so draining, waiting without knowing, speculating about the worst, that when finally Paolo arrived I was almost surprised to see him alive. Under his usual tan he was pale from loss of blood, his eyes looked bluer in his dirty unshaven face, but he grinned up at me and lit a cigarette. Colin, who had driven him down, uncovered his thigh: an ugly gash, caked with blood, gaped in his slim leg, where the buffalo horn had penetrated deeply, missing the vital femural artery by less than an inch.

  The wounded buffalo had come for Paolo before he could manage to fire. He had thrown his useless gun away and had hung on to the buffalo horns to try to divert them from goring him. Realizing he would not be able to hold on for long, he had loosed his grip and had run for cover. But he had tripped on a dry branch, and had fallen face first on the dust. The buffalo had come for him from behind, and had tossed him up in the air before Mirimuk the tracker could manage to shoot.

  In the several weeks he had to spend in hospital, Paolo’s room became a sort of meeting-place. A few rooms from Paolo’s, there was Peter Faull, a professional hunter who had been mauled by a lion. His face was covered in bandages, but he could walk, and often he joined the other visitors for a drink.

  Among the first to come was Philip Leakey, who brought Paolo a pile of rare Africana books, some old first editions, to read in bed. A nice thought, and I remember taking Meinerzhagen’s Diary home to read. It described a Kenya which had disappeared, when rhino were so common they were considered pests, and people were still few. In the very beginning, to fill the time while looking for the place he was dreaming of, Paolo had met Phil, and they had become partners in a cattle venture in the Nguruman. The Nguruman was in Masai territory, north of Lake Magadi, and a fantastic wild place of great beauty.

  The youngest of the three Leakey brothers, Philip was very creative, with uncommon ideas. Once, in our early explorations, we went to Nguruman with the children, and stayed in a camp Phil had pitched close to a river, where huge fig trees grew. He had built a guest-house on the top of these enormous trees, and he showed it to us. It was a fascinating series of passages and rooms at different levels, from tree to tree, as in a child’s dream of an enchanted tree-house, and it said more about Philip than words could. He knew and loved plants and things growing, and had a way with them. Very tall and still slim like all the young Leakeys, he had a peculiar, intent way of looking you straight in the eye, and a faint rakishness which made him quite attractive. He became one of the few Kenyans of European origin to become a Member of Parliament. He was the first of the Leakeys I met.

  The Leakeys were one of those families whose members were all exceptional, one way or another. Louis and his wife Mary, Philip’s parents, were world-famous palaeontologists. Their discoveries of early man in Tanzania and northern Kenya are historical and immortal. To my regret I never met Louis as he died in 1972, but it was through Philip that we met Mary, and later Richard.

  In 1976 Philip invited us to join him in Tanzania at his mother’s camp, close to Olduvai Gorge, and I spent with Paolo and Emanuele some intriguing days visiting her digs as guests of Philip. She had just discovered footprints belonging to a remote ancestor, embedded in stone by the side of a stream, little wandering tracks which I found unbelievably touching. Mary shared her tent with thirteen dalmatians, her favourite dogs, a fact which made me like her immediately as it reminded me so much of all the dogs which always filled our house in my childhood. She was a person of great character, strong-willed, and with the irresistible charm and attractiveness of a versatile intelligence and ready wit. I liked her immediately and have never forgotten that first encounter.

  I had met the eldest brother, Jonathan Leakey, the first time I had travelled to Kenya, when Paolo and I were visiting Lake Baringo. We had gone to the snake park which belonged to Jonathan, where he extracted poison from snakes for serums. There was a small commotion at the gate and a group of people came forward carrying a large bag in which something heavy moved, and Jonathan was there. ‘Do you want to see?’ he asked me, and opened the bag a bit, enough to expose the hugest snake I had ever – yet – seen in my life: a python. It was thicker than an arm, and looked powerful. It was possibly one of the first snakes outside a cage I had ever seen, and even though snakes were to become so familiar to me later, I always remembered that first incident.

  Paolo was not a good patient. Being confined to bed made him restless, and it was only the company of our new friends, and the entertainment provided by their stories, which made those weeks bearable. On that occ
asion I discovered for the first time the strength and value of the bond of solidarity which links people in Africa, where dramas and unusual accidents are taken for granted; flocking to an unfortunate friend’s bedside with books and flowers, smuggling in good old whisky, is an established habit.

  In Africa most of the time is spent outside, and Laikipia was the ideal background for walking, running and riding. After he recovered Paolo began to develop a passion for archery. He pursued it as one would a philosophical doctrine, as what was needed was the capacity to free the mind from any interference and to concentrate on the target. Aloof and isolated in a world of silence, it was no longer important – Paolo used to tell me – that the tension should be released with the arrow. It was in curving the bow, focusing all senses, that he found its meaning, and I realized years later that this was Paolo’s meditation in those days. He ran through the bush, a bow slung across his shoulder like an ancient warrior, an image of freedom moving in my memory; looking back now, I can see that those early days in Laikipia were possibly the happiest of my life. Yet if I had had the awareness which years and sorrows have given me now, I would have appreciated even more the unusual privilege of discovering Africa from the inside in a place so spectacular as Ol Ari Nyiro.

  17

  Emanuele’s Two Fathers

  Wer reitet so spät durch Nacht und Wind?

  Es ist der Vater mit seinem Kind.*

  J. W. Goethe, Erlkönig

  One day in Nairobi a dusty Land-Rover appeared on my drive. It was covered in parcels and assorted luggage and camping gear. From it emerged Mario. He had a beard and shoulder-long hair; nothing was left of the smart playboy I had married, who drove a Ferrari and dressed in the Via Borgognona. He wore battered jeans and a T-shirt, and he had driven his way through Africa in that car with a girlfriend and her child. He spoke of Buddhism and philosophy, of sailing, and he was going through a period of spiritual awakening. He had crossed the Atlantic Ocean on his own, and now spent most of his time in Antigua and the Caribbean. I liked the change, as it was a growing.