IN MOMBASA
Mombasa is the terminus of the Uganda Railway as it comes down from Lake
Victoria. It is the port of entry for all the sea-borne trade of the
seven provinces of British East Africa, or Kenya Colony, as it is now
called, Uganda, and adjacent territory. It is on an island halfway down
the coast of East Africa and just below the Equator, where old Mother
Earth is widest and thickest. If I should stick a peg down under the
chair in which I am writing into the old lady’s waist, and then travel
westward in a straight line I would soon reach the upper end of Lake
Tanganyika, and a little later come out on the Atlantic Ocean just above
the mouth of the Congo. Crossing that great sea, I should make my next
landing in South America, at the mouth of the Amazon, and, going up the
Amazon valley, I should pass Quito, in Ecuador, and then drop down to
the Pacific. From there on the trip to the peg stuck in at Mombasa would
comprise sixteen or more thousand miles of water travel. I should cross
the Pacific and Indian oceans, and the only solid ground on the way would
be the islands of New Guinea, Borneo, and Sumatra.
Three thousand miles from Port Said and more than six thousand miles from
London, Mombasa is far below the latitude of the Philippines. It is just
about a day by ship north of Zanzibar and thirty days’ sailing from New
York.
So far, most of my travels in Africa have been in the sands, with only a
patch of green now and then. I was close to the Sahara in Morocco, and I
travelled many hundreds of miles over it while in Algeria and Tunisia.
In Tripoli my eyes were made sore by the glare of the Libyan wastes and
their dust blew across the Nile valley during my stay in Egypt and the
British Sudan. The Arabian desert was on both sides of us as we came
down the Red Sea and its sands several times covered the ship. We had
the rockiest of all deserts in southern Arabia while that of Italian
Somaliland was not any better.
Here at Mombasa we are in the luxuriant tropics where the surroundings
remind me of Solomon’s song. All nature seems joyful. The rain has
conquered the sun and there are mosses, vines, and trees everywhere, The
shores of the mainland are bordered with coconuts, we have mighty baobab
trees loaded with green scattered over the island, and even its cliffs
are moss grown.
A jungle of green on a foundation of coral, Mombasa is only a mile or
so wide and three miles in length, but it rises well up out of the sea
and is so close to the continent that one can almost hear the wind blow
through the coconut groves over the way. On the island itself the jungle
has been cut up into wide roads. There is a lively town with a polyglot
population at one end of it, and the hills are spotted with the homes of
the British officials. The island has two good harbours, a little one
and a big one. The little one, which is in the main part of the town,
is frequented by small craft. The big one could hold all the ships that
sail the East Coast, and the people here say it is to be the great port
of this side of the continent. The larger harbour is called Kilindini, a
word that means “the deep place,” It has only a few warehouse sheds and
a pier above it, the main settlements being across the island four miles
away.
It was in Kilindini that I landed, and that under difficulties. Our ship
was anchored far out and our baggage was taken ashore in native boats.
Finding the main quay was crowded, I had my boatman go direct to the
custom house and let us out on the beach. The custom house is a little
shed about big enough for one cow situated so high up above the water
that our trunks had to be carried out upon the heads of the Negroes. The
water came up to their middles, but nevertheless they waded through it
and brought both us and our baggage to the land. The customs examination
was lenient. The officers looked through our trunks for guns and
ammunition and warned us that we could not hunt elephants and hippopotami
without a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar license. A little later the
natives again took our trunks and lugged them about a quarter of a mile
to the top of a hill, where we got the cars for Mombasa.
The word “cars” savours of electricity or steam. The cars I took were
run by men. Here in East Africa human muscle forms the cheapest power.
The wages of the natives run from five cents a day upward, while in the
interior there are many who will work eight or nine hours for three
cents. The result is that the trolley cars are propelled by men. Each
car consists of a platform about as big as a kitchen table, with wheels
underneath and an awning overhead. In the middle of the platform there
is a bench accommodating two to four persons. The wheels run on a track
about two feet in width, and each car is pushed from behind by one or
more bare-legged and bare-headed men who run as they shove it up hill
and down. There are such car tracks all over the island, with switches
to the homes of the various officials. There are private cars as well as
public ones, and everyone who is anybody has his own private car with his
coolies to push him to and from work. At the beginning and closing of his
office hours, which here are from eight until twelve and from two until
four, the tracks are filled with these little cars, each having one or
more officials riding in state to or from the government buildings.
[Illustration: Kilindini harbour, or “the deep place”, is connected with
the town of Mombasa by a mile-long tramway, the cars of which are pushed
by native runners. Mombasa is the chief port of Kenya Colony.]
[Illustration: In this African village there are 25,000 natives,
representing perhaps a hundred tribes, each with its own dress and
customs. All, however, are eager buyers of the gaudy print cloths in the
bazaars of the Hindu merchants.]
[Illustration: In Kenya Colony the East Indians complicate matters for
the British government. They practically control the retail trade and,
having grown rich and prosperous, have begun to raise embarrassing
political issues.]
I wish I could show you this old town of Mombasa. It began before
Columbus discovered America, and the citizens can show you the very spot
where Vasco da Gama landed when he came here from India shortly after
he discovered the new route to Asia by the Cape of Good Hope. He landed
here in 1498 at just about the time that Columbus was making his third
voyage to America. Even then Mombasa was a city and Da Gama describes
it. A little later it became the property of the Portuguese. The most
prominent building in the town is the great red Fort of Jesus, built
by the Portuguese in 1593, when the city was made the capital of their
East African possessions. It was later the scene of massacres and bloody
fights between Portuguese and Arabs. To-day the red flag of the Sultan
of Zanzibar flies over the old fort, now used as a prison, admission to
which is forbidden.
After the Portuguese were driven out the Arabs held Mombasa for many
years, and it was an Arab ruler, the Sultan of Zanzibar, who owned it
when the British came in. It still belongs to him in a nominal way. He
has leased it to the British for so much a year, but his flag floats
above John Bull’s ensign everywhere on the island.
Most of the population of Mombasa is African. Of the twenty-six thousand
inhabitants, only about three hundred and fifty are white. There are
people here from all parts of the interior, some of them as black as jet,
and a scattering few who are chocolate brown or yellow. These natives
live in huts off by themselves in a large village adjoining the European
and Asiatic quarters. Their houses are of mud plastered upon a framework
of poles and thatched with straw. The poles are put together without
nails. There is not a piece of metal in any of them, except on the roof,
where here and there a hole has been patched up with a rusty Standard
Oil can. Very few of the huts are more than eight feet high, while some
are so low that one has to stoop to enter them. They are so small that
the beds are usually left outside the house during the daytime, and the
majority of each family sleep on the floor.
I find this African village the most interesting part of Mombasa. Its
inhabitants number over twenty-five thousand and comprise natives of
perhaps one hundred tribes, each of which has its own dress and its own
customs. Most of the women are bare-headed and bare-legged; and some of
the men are clad in little more than breech cloths. Now and then one sees
a girl bare to the waist, and the little ones wear only jewellery. On the
mainland all go more or less naked.
It is amazing how these people mutilate themselves so as to be what
they consider beautiful. The ears of many of the women are punched like
sieves, in order that they may hold rings of various kinds. At one place
I saw a girl with a ring of corks, each about as big around as my little
finger, put through holes in the rims of her ears. She had a great cork
in each lobe and three above that in each ear. There was a man beside her
who had two long sticks in his ears; and in another place I saw one who
had so stretched the lobe holes that a good-sized tumbler could have been
passed through them. Indeed, I have a photograph of a man carrying a jam
pot in his ear.
The most numerous of the natives here in Mombasa are the Swahilis. These
are of a mixed breed found all along the central coast of East Africa.
They are said to have some Arab blood and for this reason, perhaps, are
brighter and more businesslike than the ordinary native. The Swahilis are
found everywhere. They have little settlements in the interior in the
midst of other tribes, and the Swahili language will carry one through
the greater part of Central and East Africa. The British officials are
required to learn it, and one can buy Swahili dictionaries and phrase
books. During most of my journey I shall take a Swahili guide with me, or
rather a black Swahili boy, who will act as a servant as well as guide.
Let me give you a picture of the Swahili women as I see them here. Their
skins are of a rich chocolate brown and shine as though oiled. They have
woolly hair, but they comb it in a most extraordinary way, using a razor
to shave out partings between the rows of plaited locks so that when
the hair is properly dressed the woman seems to have on a hood of black
wool. I took a snapshot of two girls who were undergoing the process of
hairdressing yesterday, fearing the while that their calico gowns, which
were fastened by a single twist under the armpits, might slip. A little
farther on Jack took a photograph of another giddy maiden clad in two
strips of bright-coloured calico and numerous earrings, while I gave her
a few coppers to pose for the picture. At the same time on the opposite
side of the street stood a black girl gorgeous with jewellery. In her
nose she had a brass ring as big around as the bottom of a dinner bucket,
and her ears had holes in their lobes so big that a hen’s egg could be
put through them without trouble. Not only the lobes, but the rims also
were punctured, each ear having around the edges five little holes of
about the size of my little finger. These holes were filled with rolls of
bright-coloured paper cut off so smoothly that they seemed almost a part
of the ear. The paper was of red, green, and blue and looked very quaint.
[Illustration: The coast Negroes of East Africa are often Swahilis,
descendants of Arab traders and their native wives. They have a dialect
of their own and pride themselves on being more intelligent than the
pure-bred Africans.]
[Illustration: The Uganda Railroad plunges the traveller into the
blackest of the Black Continent, where the natives seem people of another
world. The few clothes they wear are a recent acquisition from the white
men.]