AT MAU MAU 'FRONT'
Terror Lurking Outside Hotel
This is the third in a series by Jack Scott Sun writer on the Mau Mau war in Kenya.
May 11, 1953
NYERI, Kenya –At one time during World War II when the Canadian troops had moved through Antwerp it was possible to take a street car from the heart of the city to within a hundred yards of the front lines. The Mau Mau battle front in Kenya is reached as prosaically. You take a bus. If it happened to be the one I took to this focal ( point of the trouble, 95 miles to the north of Nairobi, ' you might have a very low opinion of what is, in fact, a shooting war. '
'Silly Native Trouble'
There were 14 of us aboard, including the driver and the attendant, both of the Kikuyu tribe from which the secret society of the Mau Mau originated. They wore the red fezzes with which the white people in Africa are prone to adorn monkeys and servants.
There were five women, ail of them of advanced age, in the bus. Four of them were wives of up-country ranchers and farmers what is known as the "White Highlands." They were returning after holidays in England.
The fifth woman was from Port Elizabeth in South Africa. She was perhaps 75, one of those resolute old ladies who love to travel, and she was determined to visit "Treetops," which is near here.
This is the "bungalow" built in the boughs of an immense fig tree where guests stay all night (Queen Elizabeth was there on the night her father died) to study the jungle animals at the salt lick below.
The old lady was "damned," she said forthrightly if she'd let a "little silly native trouble" keep her from her visit. . When I next saw her she had not only survived the Mau Mau but had, in fact, spent an evening in the tree and reported sighting 132 elephants, 12 rhinoceros, a leopard and two giant hogs.
He Got No 'Blighters'
The other passengers were men from Nairobi and the seacoast town of Mombasa who had volunteered for short periods as farm guards.
One was an agent of the Allis-Chalmers tractor company, a man who had clearly rescued his World War II uniform from an attic trunk. It fitted him like a tight girdle across the middle and the seat.
He carried a hunting rifle and said he hoped he'd "get one of the dirty blighters." When I saw him later he reported sighting nothing, but said he'd had the best holiday of his life.
From the outskirts of Nairobi, speeding along the rust- red dirt roads which will become impassable In the rainy season, we were in the reserves of the Kikuyu tribe.
It is beautiful country, bracing In atmosphere and mild in climate because of the altitude, and with rich, deep, terraced valleys. For miles along the way you run through corridors of banana trees with the fruit hanging heavy and bright green under the dry fronds.
Here you may see for your--self the very root of Kenya's race problem and the cause of Mau Mau. The land is good. The British colonists are only saying the truth in their claim that it is often better then that of the white man.
Tribe Faces Famine
But it is desperately, shockingly over-crowded. In many parts there are more than 500 people trying' to scrape a living off one square mile of soil.
The land is not only all that the Kikuyu has, it is the very basis of his pagan religion.
As long ago as 1922 the first internal organizations had been formed among the tribesmen to work for a better deal. Mau Mau is merely a violent perversion of that campaign.
Today the situation has never been worse. Thousands of Kikuyu who left the reserves for the cities or who became "squatters" on white-owned land or In the forest areas are now returning to the tribes. One district commissioner assured me that if the trek continues many Kikuyu face outright famine.
From the windows of the bus, too, you see how pathetically short a distance the Kikuyu has come from his primitive state.
Some of the Kikuyu leaders, notably Jomo Kenyatta, now awaiting his appeal from a conviction and seven-year sentence for counselling the Mau Mau, are educated, literate men. But here in the reserves you are looking at things pretty much as they've been for centuries. The Kikuyu still lives in his round mud and wattle hut so familiar in movie travelogues. He still believes in the evil eye, the taboo, the oath, the curse, the magic of the medicine man known as the "Mundu Mugo."
This, at any rate, you have been told by the colonial officials back in Nairobi. You begin to believe it when you see how the Kikuyu male treats his women, for here is the sure sign of a society that has stood still.
If it weren't so tragic there would be something comical in the sight, mile after mile, of Kikuyu men lying under shade trees, nibbling on blades of grass as they keep an eye on their hump-backed cattle and scruffy goats, while the tiny Kikuyu women do the back-breaking labor in the open fields, bent over from the waist and poking at the ground with the curved blade of the one, single agricultural tool, the machete known as the panga.
In my time in Kenya so far I've not seen a single adult Kikuyu woman whose head is not creased by a deep and calloused welt above the forehead. This comes from the thongs of a harness by which the women of the tribe carry cruel loads that would be rejected by an intelligent mule.
As our bus sped along we saw thousands of women trudging in the dust along the road, some of them of advanced age, stumbling under the burden of great bundles of firewood, sacks of maize that would weigh up to 200 pounds, sometimes with two stalks of bananas bending their thin backs.
It is an impression that makes it hard to think of the Kikuyu male as anything but a slob.
It is late afternoon when you reach Nyeri. Here there is much activity. Under the trees there are military tents, jeeps and armored cars painted a bright cream color.
On the Nyeri golf course bordering the road a prison compound has been built just opposite the fifth green. As you go by you see a group of army officers in their baggy shorts holing out while a hundred black prisoners peer at them soberly through a tangle of barbed wire.
The drive makes it hard to believe that there is really a war going on and when you have checked into the Out-span Hotel it seems impossible.
There is a sign on the reception desk reading, "Please unload and keep your firearms with you," The slim receptionist packs a .38 on one attractive flank.
But when you have checked into your room you feel as if ycu were about to start a holiday rather than cover a rebellion.
The windows of your room are flung back. There are gardens beyond them, the red and purple vine of the bou- gainvillea climbing brightly over everything. The trees are filled with birds,. some of them with yellow heads and long, ribbon-like tail feathers. The air is cool and scented.
Only a 6ign on the wall re minds you that in the thick forest beyond lurks a savage and swift-striking enemy. The sign to headed "Security" and reads:
"In the event of trouble the following information is given.
"WATCHMEN. There are night watchmen with yellow turbans for identification.
"ALARM. This will be given by gong, thunderflash, siren or shot.
"LADIES. In the event of alarm ladies will remain in their rooms. "MEN WITH FAMILIES. Remain with them.
"UNATTACHED MEN. These should proceed (not necessarily by the most direct route) to the bottom of the stairs by the reception office with firearms, torches and dark coats." And then possibly you stare for a long time at the distant forest before you go down to dinner.
