I wanted to read this book after seeing a film version, which my husband and I both enjoyed. It’s based on the author’s childhood in Kenya just before WWI, where her father was attempting to start a coffee plantation. Literally out in the middle of the bush- nobody else for miles around, a long rough journey by oxcart to reach the place. The story is about how they lived rough at first, then built a house and put in the coffee seedlings. Their difficulties in getting labor to help- most of the people from tribes nearby didn’t understand what they were trying to do, couldn’t comprehend the instructions (language barrier), had varying priorities and expectations about getting paid for their work (cultural differences), etc. Theft and intertribal conflicts were a constant problem. Differences between the Kikuyu and Masai, and a few other tribes they encountered. Eventually some other Europeans came out to develop land on other plots nearby, so they had neighbors of sorts.
The landscape is described beautifully, the encounters with wildlife (especially hunts for leopard and buffalo, a pet dik-dik, a giant python that supposedly swallowed a child) are interesting. The attitudes not so much- there were frequent remarks about how the natives had not improved themselves or their land in thousands of years, and praising the Europeans for turning the country into something productive- discomfiting. Sad to read about how the tribesmen would bring their injured and sick in once they heard one of the neighbors was a nurse- but the ailments were often beyond her skill level or limited supplies. Most intriguing and also what makes this book a bit difficult, is that it’s written from the child’s viewpoint- apparently she was only five or six at the time, so you have to wonder how much is embellished as I can’t believe she recalled all those conversations so precisely. But then there is so much you have to gather by reading between the lines. Notably the love affair between two of the neighboring adults- one whose husband was usually absent, away on hunting trips. I think I picked up on what was going on with that much better in the film than reading the book! where you only get the half-understood comments the little girl heard from the sidelines.
The illustration on my book’s cover is amusing- because while the narrator did often go out riding in the bush with one of her father’s employees accompanying, she had a short fat white pony, not a dark horse. Later in the book she has to live with friends of the family (her father enlists and her mother goes to help with the war effort at a hopsital) and rides a different horse- but this one is also white! And just like another reviewer has noted, this reader was also left wondering what was behind the boomklops– was it really a bird the man wanted to show her, or something sinister?
At the end of this book, I’m really interested to not only read the sequel, but also Out of Africa again. I recall that Karen Blixen wrote a lot about the differences between the Kikuyu who worked on her farm, and the Masai she often interacted with. I’m curious now how that description compares to Elspeth Huxley’s of the same.
