THE CAPITAL OF KENYA COLONY
Nairobi is the capital and administrative centre of Kenya Colony, one
of the most interesting and prosperous of Great Britain’s African
possessions. It lies three hundred and twenty-seven miles from the sea in
the very heart of British East Africa, about halfway between the Indian
Ocean and Lake Victoria. It is situated on a plateau at an altitude
higher than Denver, with mountains in sight far above any we have in
Colorado.
When the sun is just right at Nairobi, I can get a glimpse here of Mt.
Kilimanjaro and I can plainly see the peak of Mt. Kenya. Kilimanjaro is
about a hundred and fifty miles distant and Kenya, as the crow flies,
not more than one hundred miles. It is from Mt. Kenya that Kenya Colony
is named. Mt. Kenya is one of the giants of the African continent, and
is only three thousand feet lower than our own Mt. McKinley. It is a
dead volcano and is supposed to have once been three thousand feet
higher than it is now. The great peak, seamed with no less than fifteen
glaciers, is a mass of rocks covered with snow, but the lower slopes are
heavily wooded with forests of cedar, camphor, and bamboo. Above the
woods are pastures fit for sheep, while in and below them are all sorts
of wild game, including lions and elephants, and even rhinoceroses and
hippopotami.
In some respects Nairobi reminds one of our frontier towns of the West.
The high plain upon which it is situated has a climate in which white
men can live and work the year around, and farms are springing up almost
everywhere.
The city is comparatively new. Fifteen or more years ago it had hardly
a house. To-day streets have been laid out over an area ten miles in
circumference and hundreds of buildings of tin, wood, and stone have
been erected. The chief building material is galvanized iron, which is
so prevalent that Nairobi has been nicknamed the “tin city.” There are
no saw mills or planing mills worth mentioning, as the forests have not
been exploited, and about the only lumber available is that brought from
the United States and Norway and landed at Mombasa. The ocean freight
rates are heavy, and in addition there is the cost of bringing the
lumber to Nairobi by railroad. Hence the galvanized iron, which comes
here in sheets from England and Belgium. Almost all the buildings are of
iron, put up just as it comes from the factory, giving the whole town a
silver-gray colour. The post office is of iron, the depot has an iron
roof, and the same is true of the governor’s offices. Many of the houses
have iron ceilings and iron walls, and the chief retail business section
is a collection of one-story iron booths, open at the front, in which
Hindus stand or sit surrounded by their goods. My hotel is half iron. The
government treasury near by, a shed not over fifteen feet square, is of
tin and has a tin roof. I could chop it to pieces with a butcher knife;
and the only sign of policing about it is the Negro who, gun in hand,
stands outside guarding the door. The office of the land surveyor is of
tin, and so are the police headquarters and the house where the supreme
court is held. The more fancy dwellings are now being painted, and some
stone and brick buildings are rising.
The Nairobi of to-day is largely cow pastures. It is a city of
magnificent distances. All the places of importance seem to be several
miles from each other and the patches between are often grazing ground.
The houses are of one and two stories, and are scattered along wide
streets which run for an indefinite distance out into the prairie. The
chief ways of getting about are on foot, on horseback, or in jinrikishas,
the last being by far the most popular. The jinrikishas are much like
those used in Japan, save that they are larger and wider. I am told
they are made in America. They are pushed and pulled by black Africans,
two to each vehicle. One man goes in the shafts and the other pushes
behind. They are each clad in a single cotton cloth which flaps back and
forth as they run, exposing their nakedness. The streets are unpaved and
frequently masses of dust. Along many of them eucalyptus trees have been
planted and have grown so rapidly that most of the roads are now shaded
by this mournfully drooping foliage.
The population of Nairobi is about twenty thousand, of which only a
tenth are Europeans. Of the remainder, about a third are Asiatics from
Hindustan, and the others are the queerest Africans one can imagine.
I speak of them first, because they are everywhere; one stumbles over
them on the street; they wait upon him in the hotels; they carry burdens
for him and clog his footsteps when he goes outside the town. Many of
them wear dirty, greasy cloths not more than a yard wide and two yards
long. They hang them about their shoulders and let them fall down on
each side, so that they flap this way and that in the breeze. Some wear
breech cloths, and not a few are bare to the waist. In the early morning,
when the air is still sharp, many of these people, clad in red flannel
blankets, go stalking along with their legs uncovered to the thighs. I
have already spoken of the ear plugs. Some have the holes in the lobes of
their ears so stretched that I can put my fist through them. The loops
are so long that when a man takes out his ear plug he hangs the loop of
skin over the top of his ear to prevent its catching on something and
tearing. The loop looks just like a leather strap about as wide as one’s
little finger nail. I have handled many of them, twisting them this way
and that to be sure they were genuine.
[Illustration: Nairobi, on a plateau higher than Denver, is the
administrative centre of Kenya Colony and a healthful place for white
men. Farms are springing up about it, and there are already 2,000
Europeans in this African outpost.]
[Illustration: “My room at the Norfolk looks out on a stable yard where a
baby lion as big as a Newfoundland dog is tied up. He is much too playful
to suit me and, besides, he roars at night.”]
[Illustration: In Nairobi the popular way to travel is in jinrikishas
much like those of Japan but sometimes made in America. Two good-natured
Negroes man each one and sing a monotonous song as they trot uphill and
down.]
The African smell is everywhere. It burdens the air of the market places,
and I verily think it might be chopped up into blocks and sold as a new
kind of phosphate. The natives cover themselves with hair oil and body
grease, and the combination of this when it turns rancid with the natural
effluvia which exhales from their persons is indescribable. Some of the
blacks smear their faces with a mixture of grease and red clay, and cover
their hair with the same material, so that they look more like copper
Indians than Africans.
These Africans do all the hard work of Nairobi. They are hewers of wood
and drawers of water. I see scores of them, carrying baskets of dirt on
their heads and bundles of wood on their backs and pushing and pulling
carts and wagons through the streets. Most of my trips from one place to
another are made in two-wheeled carts hauled by wire-bedecked natives.
The retail business is done by East Indians, as is also the case at
Mombasa. I am told this is so in every settlement on this part of the
continent. The Hindus have made their way along all the travelled
routes, until their little stores may be found in every large African
village. They have trading stations upon Lakes Victoria and Tanganyika.
They are very enterprising, and as they live upon almost nothing they
can undersell the whites. They sell cotton of bright colours and of the
most gorgeous patterns, wire for jewellery, and all sorts of knickknacks
that the African wants. They deal also in European goods, and one can
buy of them almost anything from a needle to a sewing machine. Here at
Nairobi there is an Indian bazaar covering nine acres which is quite
as interesting as any similar institution in Tunis, Cairo, Bombay, or
Calcutta. The stores are all open at the front, and the men squat in them
with their gay goods piled about them. These Hindus dress in a quaint
costume not unlike that of the English clergyman who wears a long black
coat buttoned up to the throat. The only difference is that the Hindu’s
trousers may be of bright-coloured calico, cut very tight, and his head
may be covered with a flat skullcap of velvet embroidered in gold.
Moreover, his feet are usually bare.
But Nairobi is a British city, notwithstanding its African and Asiatic
inhabitants; the English form the ruling class. They are divided into
castes, almost as much as are the East Indians. At the head are the
government officials, the swells of the town. They dress well and spend
a great deal of time out of office hours playing tennis and golf, which
have already been introduced into this part of the black continent.
They also ride about on horseback and in carriages, and manage to make
a good show upon very low salaries. Allied to them are the sportsmen
and the noble visitors from abroad. A scattering element of dukes,
lords, and second sons of noble families has come out to invest, or to
hunt big game. They are usually men of means, for the prices of large
tracts of land are high and it also costs considerable money to fit out
a game-shooting expedition. In addition, there are land speculators, who
are chiefly young men from England or South Africa. Dressed in riding
clothes, big helmet hats, and top boots, they dash about the country on
ponies, and are especially in evidence around the bars of the hotels.
There are but few white women here. Some of the government officials have
their wives with them, and now and then a titled lady comes out to hunt
with her friends. I met three women who had themselves shot lions.
Nairobi has English doctors, dentists, and lawyers. It has one
photographer and two firms which advertise themselves as _safari_
outfitters. These men supply sportsmen with tents, provisions, and other
things for shooting trips, as well as porters to carry their stuff and
chase the lions out of the jungles so that the hunters may get a shot at
them.
It seems strange to have newspapers under the shadow of Mt. Kenya, and
within a half day’s ride on horseback to lion and rhinoceros hunting.
Nevertheless, Nairobi has three dailies, which also issue weekly
editions. They are all banking on the future of the town and all claim
to be prosperous. They are good-sized journals, selling for from two to
three annas, or from four to six cents each. They have regular cable
dispatches giving them the big news of the world, and they furnish full
reports of the local cricket, polo, tennis, and golf matches. As for
the advertisements, most of them come from the local merchants and some
are odd to an extreme. One of to-day’s papers carries an advertisement
signed by a well-known American circus company which wants to buy a white
rhinoceros, a giant hog, some wild dogs, a wild-tailed mongoose, and a
bongo. Another advertisement, one made along farming lines, is that of
the Homestead Dairy, and others state that certain merchants will outfit
hunters for shooting. There are many land sales advertised, as well as
machinery, American wagons, and all sorts of agricultural implements.
Nairobi has several hotels, the accommodations in which are comfortable.
I am stopping at the Norfolk at the upper end of the town. It is a low
one-story building with a wide porch in front, separated from the dirt
street by a picket fence, and shaded by eucalyptus trees through which
the wind seems to be ever sighing and moaning. The charges are three
dollars and thirty-three cents a day, including meals, but I have to
have my own servant to make my bed and run my errands. I have a room at
the back with a fine view of the stable. A German sportsman next door
has a little cub lion, about as big as a Newfoundland dog, tied in a box
outside his window. During a part of the day he lets the baby lion out,
and ties him by a rope to one of the pillars of the porch. The animal
seems harmless, but its teeth are sharp, and it is entirely too playful
to suit me. Besides, it roars at night.
[Illustration: To be a Swahili, a professing Mohammedan, and boy to a
white man give three strong claims to distinction in African society.
This chap is proud of his white men’s clothes and will steal soap to wash
them.]
[Illustration: Many Europeans have taken up farms in the vicinity of
Naivasha, where the flat, grassy land is suitable for sheep. Though
almost on the Equator, the altitude of more than 6,000 feet makes the
climate tolerable for white men.]
[Illustration: John Bull designs his public buildings in Africa with a
view to making an impression on the native. His Majesty’s High Court of
Kenya Colony, sitting at Mombasa, administers both British and Koranic
laws.]
The horses are fairly good here, but the charges for them are steep. When
I ride out on horseback it costs me a dollar and sixty-five cents an
hour, and the carriage rates are still higher. The best way to get about
is in the jinrikishas, using the natives as beasts of burden, but for a
long ride over the plains horses are necessary.
The heavy hauling of this part of East Africa is done mostly by the
sacred cattle of India. I mean the clean-cut animals with great humps
on their backs. They are fine-looking and are apparently well-bred.
Some of these beasts are hitched to American wagons brought out here
from Wisconsin. I saw such a team hauling a Kentucky plough through the
streets of Nairobi yesterday.
Indeed, I find that American goods are slowly making their way into
these wilds. American axes and sewing machines, and American sowers and
planters are sold by the East Indians. The drug stores carry our patent
medicines and every market has more or less American cottons. The wood
cutters are using American axes, but they complain of the flat or oval
holes made for the handles. They say that a round hole would be better,
as the natives who do the wood cutting are very clumsy and the handles
snap off at the axe. If round holes were used, heavier handles could be
put in and the Negroes could make them themselves.
Nairobi promises to become one of the railroad centres of this part of
the world. It is the chief station between the Indian Ocean and Lake
Victoria, and a road is now proposed from here to Mt. Kenya. The Uganda
Railway goes through some of the poorest country in the colony, and the
Mt. Kenya road will open up a rich agricultural region which is thickly
populated by tribes more than ordinarily industrious. The railroad shops
are here, and the employees have a large collection of tin cottages for
their homes. The headquarters of the railroad, where the chief officers
stay, are one-story tin buildings. The telegraphic offices are connected
with them.
Both railroad and telegraph are run by the government. The telegraphic
rates are comparatively low. Far off here in the jungles of Africa one
can send messages much more cheaply than in the United States. A message
of eight words from here to Uganda costs thirty-three cents, and one can
telegraph to London about as cheaply as from New York to San Francisco.
This is so notwithstanding the difficulty which the linemen have to keep
up the wires, which the jewellery-loving natives steal. During the Nandi
rebellion, forty-odd miles of it were carried away and never recovered,
and in one of the provinces adjoining Uganda, above Lake Victoria, the
natives are so crazy after the copper wire there used that it is almost
impossible to keep the lines in shape.
Another serious danger to the telegraph is the big game. The giraffes
reach up and play with the brackets and pull the wire this way and that.
At Naivasha the hippopotami have once or twice butted down the poles,
and I hear they have been doing considerable damage to the lines along
the coast near the Tana River. In the heart of Uganda the monkeys have a
way of swinging on the wires and twisting them together, which stops the
transmission of messages, so that the way of the lineman is indeed hard.