inspected by a group of curious younglions. The officer in charge was insisting to his men, â Donât worry. Tony said these lions were really nice.â We dispersed the lions and got the police inside the fence as quickly as we could.
We were always invited to official celebrations in Garissa or Madogo, our District HQ, and made a point of attending them. I had to sit through many a sports day and even more speech days in the searing heat â once I was the only European at a district commissionerâs event to mark Independence Day. I made some great friendships then that lasted for many years. One such was with Noor Abdi Ogle, a young Kenyan-Somali, an assistant game warden. Over the years Noor and I had some terrifying adventures together. He would help us during the worst of times and I accompanied him on some fairly hair-raising anti-stock-theft and poaching patrols. He was incredibly tough and hard, one of the bravest men Iâve ever met. A couple of patrols I went on with him ended in heavy gunfire and Noor never ducked or even flinched. As a result his men would follow him anywhere. A few years later he was fired: twenty-three elephant tusks and sixteen prisoners in his custody had gone missing. He hadnât been paid for six months. He survived the scandal to become an MP a few years later, but died young of diabetes, the curse of so many Africans. It was a great loss to me.
Occasionally one of us would have to go to Nairobi for some administrative reason. Almost always it was me and I quite welcomed the break. George hated Nairobi and Terence was such a stick-in-the-mud that he only left Africa once in his entire life. I loved it in the bush at Kora but every now and then I liked to go to Nairobi for some fun. I loved Nairobi in those days but only for a short while. I would let errands stack up until a trip became necessary, then head off to the big smoke and indulge myself. After living such a quiet life on such a bland diet for so long, I invariably got sick after a few days of late nights and hard living. Changes in altitude can also bring on malaria so trips toNairobi usually took much longer than they should have done. A lot of Georgeâs money was spent at Cooper Motors where I would drop off a Land Rover for a bit of care and attention. There was never much left for beer.
When I was in town I would always meet up with Mike Wamalwa. A young professor at Nairobi University, he had been to the LSE and Cambridge. He was a scion of a very political family from western Kenya. Mike was a brilliant speaker, in public and private, and, married to the spectacularly beautiful daughter of Foreign Minister Njoroge Mungai, he was half of one of the great power couples of the time. Their marriage had been a terrible scandal as Gathoni, a member of the Kenyatta family, was Kikuyu royalty and he was Abaluhya. Intertribal marriage was almost as shocking as interracial marriage had been years before.
Mike and I had a madcap idea in the mid-seventies: we would import that period icon Mateus Rose to Kenya. With another friend, Ben Ngâanga, we managed to bring in a shipment of the weirdly shaped bottles that everyone used to make into candlesticks and got it past Customs with the minimum of fuss. It wasnât so easy to find a buyer, though, and we ended up drinking most of it before we could sell it. I used to take Mike to the Aero Club at Nairobiâs Wilson airport, which, in those days, was a bastion of white supremacy. In later years, after he had become one of Kenyaâs youngest MPs, he would return the favour by taking me to Parliament where the only white face belonged to Richard Leakeyâs brother, Philip. Once, Mike introduced me to the then vice president, Daniel arap Moi, in the restaurant at Parliament. Moi had a startling presence even then. He shook Mikeâs hand, saying, â And what are your plans, young man?â Mikeâs nickname was kijana, or young man, but
We were always invited to official celebrations in Garissa or Madogo, our District HQ, and made a point of attending them. I had to sit through many a sports day and even more speech days in the searing heat â once I was the only European at a district commissionerâs event to mark Independence Day. I made some great friendships then that lasted for many years. One such was with Noor Abdi Ogle, a young Kenyan-Somali, an assistant game warden. Over the years Noor and I had some terrifying adventures together. He would help us during the worst of times and I accompanied him on some fairly hair-raising anti-stock-theft and poaching patrols. He was incredibly tough and hard, one of the bravest men Iâve ever met. A couple of patrols I went on with him ended in heavy gunfire and Noor never ducked or even flinched. As a result his men would follow him anywhere. A few years later he was fired: twenty-three elephant tusks and sixteen prisoners in his custody had gone missing. He hadnât been paid for six months. He survived the scandal to become an MP a few years later, but died young of diabetes, the curse of so many Africans. It was a great loss to me.
Occasionally one of us would have to go to Nairobi for some administrative reason. Almost always it was me and I quite welcomed the break. George hated Nairobi and Terence was such a stick-in-the-mud that he only left Africa once in his entire life. I loved it in the bush at Kora but every now and then I liked to go to Nairobi for some fun. I loved Nairobi in those days but only for a short while. I would let errands stack up until a trip became necessary, then head off to the big smoke and indulge myself. After living such a quiet life on such a bland diet for so long, I invariably got sick after a few days of late nights and hard living. Changes in altitude can also bring on malaria so trips toNairobi usually took much longer than they should have done. A lot of Georgeâs money was spent at Cooper Motors where I would drop off a Land Rover for a bit of care and attention. There was never much left for beer.
When I was in town I would always meet up with Mike Wamalwa. A young professor at Nairobi University, he had been to the LSE and Cambridge. He was a scion of a very political family from western Kenya. Mike was a brilliant speaker, in public and private, and, married to the spectacularly beautiful daughter of Foreign Minister Njoroge Mungai, he was half of one of the great power couples of the time. Their marriage had been a terrible scandal as Gathoni, a member of the Kenyatta family, was Kikuyu royalty and he was Abaluhya. Intertribal marriage was almost as shocking as interracial marriage had been years before.
Mike and I had a madcap idea in the mid-seventies: we would import that period icon Mateus Rose to Kenya. With another friend, Ben Ngâanga, we managed to bring in a shipment of the weirdly shaped bottles that everyone used to make into candlesticks and got it past Customs with the minimum of fuss. It wasnât so easy to find a buyer, though, and we ended up drinking most of it before we could sell it. I used to take Mike to the Aero Club at Nairobiâs Wilson airport, which, in those days, was a bastion of white supremacy. In later years, after he had become one of Kenyaâs youngest MPs, he would return the favour by taking me to Parliament where the only white face belonged to Richard Leakeyâs brother, Philip. Once, Mike introduced me to the then vice president, Daniel arap Moi, in the restaurant at Parliament. Moi had a startling presence even then. He shook Mikeâs hand, saying, â And what are your plans, young man?â Mikeâs nickname was kijana, or young man, but
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