Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Safari in the Age of Kenyatta

2006; Volume: 25; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1353/hem.2006.0032

1548-4815

Lawrence H. Martin,

American and British Literature Analysis

Safari in the Age of Kenyatta Lawrence H. Martin In April of 1953, as the Hemingways were about to leave for Europe en route to Africa for their safari, Jomo Kenyatta, the future president of the Republic of Kenya, was on trial in a British colonial court in Kapenguria, charged with inciting the Mau Mau uprising that had been terrifying the country since 1952. Found guilty, he was sentenced to prison at hard labor for seven years Murray-Brown, 297–321).1 Like the popular revolts and wars of national liberation that swept Africa after World War Two in places such as the Belgian Congo, Algeria, and Rhodesia, the Mau Mau rebellion was the inevitable result of European expropriation and colonization. The Crown Protectorate of British East Africa, dating from 1895, is an illustrative case. The British-built Mombasa-to-Lake Victoria Railway (of Maneaters of Tsavo fame),2 partially completed in 1901, brought settlers to the interior of Kenya (Huxley 69), leading to the apportionment of prime coffee-growing areas to whites in the so-called White Highlands and, at the same time, the early formation of black reservations, the Native Reserves. By 1948, over a million Kikuyu were confined to 2,000 square miles of native homelands, while 30,000 white farmers held 12,000 square miles of productive farmland (Kanogo 8–9).3 Representative government was heavily weighted toward white and Asian advantage. Early attempts to resist colonial domination through such moderate means as the Kikuyu Central Association's program of civil disobedience or the East African Trades Union Congress boycotts, proved ineffective. By 1951, the Kenya Africa Union began to agitate for national independence, and violence soon followed (Mboya 21 ff.). [End Page 101] What began as isolated instances of guerilla terrorism grew widespread, and the accounts of killings—such as those that Hemingway mentions in Under Kilimanjaro—generated fear beyond their actual strategic importance, especially because the weapon commonly used was the all-purpose farm implement the panga, the African version of the machete (Maughan-Brown 38–39). British response to the actions of the Land and Freedom Army, as the fighters styled themselves, was massive. During the uprising over 50,000 British soldiers were involved, including the King's African Rifles (of whom Hemingway wrote admiringly in Under Kilimanjaro), supported by air and naval forces (Macphee 133). Killings by the Mau Mau began in numbers early in 1953 with the notorious massacre at Lari, and by early 1954 the British army was deeply engaged in anti-guerilla warfare, as well as in capturing Kikuyu wherever they were found and confining them by the thousands in prison camps. Casualties—the figures are disputed—in 1953 and 1954 include over 11,000 Mau Mau killed, but fewer than a hundred soldiers and police dead, and nearly a thousand rebels legally executed. Official records show that contrary to common belief very few white settlers were victims of the Mau Mau, but that the deaths of Kikuyu colonial loyalists were far more numerous (Rinehart in Nelson, ed., 29). Against this background and almost exactly at these dates, Ernest and Mary Hemingway went on their safari, arriving in Mombasa on 27 August 1953, staying in the field from 1 September 1953 until 21 January 1954, and departing Mombasa on 10 March 1954 (Reynolds, Chronology 122–125). They went partly to satisfy Ernest's longing, expressed twenty years earlier in Green Hills of Africa, to return to Africa when he had the leisure to stay as long as he liked, and partly to carry out a contract with Look magazine, which had purchased the rights to coverage of the safari. Moreover, the Hemingway party was granted permission to hunt in a game reserve normally closed to sport shooting for, as Michael Reynolds points out, the colonial government "was determined to keep them supplied with abundant animals and ample photo opportunities" (Final Years 267) in an effort to downplay the Mau Mau threat and demonstrate that Kenya was safe for visiting sportsmen and tourists. For five months the Hemingways lived, hunted, took photographs, observed wildlife, and interacted with the local people and colonial officials mainly in Kenya but also in Tanganyika...