The Book of Secrets (6 page)

The simple quiet of a town early in the morning — the gentle slap of the cool air, the sun just beginning to warm itself over the hilltops and trees. There is the very occasional clink of utensils — reticent, as if the woman frying vitumbua or tambi in some dark interior of a house is wary of shattering the peace — the yelp of the dog Bwana Tim, reputed to have been abandoned or lost by a European traveller, the angry protest or whine of a loose iron roof. Corbin would walk into his office next door and occupy himself for a while with the odd piece of correspondence or report, or even an unread newspaper. Then, with the sun a little higher up, he would go on a stroll through the town as it prepared to go about its business. “Jambo!” he would call out to someone.
“Jambo, bwana!” would come the reply. Sometimes he stopped at the little canteen for a cup of sweet black tea with ginger, which he liked but would not admit to Thomas, who looked after his cooking. The stall was owned by a man called Baruti, meaning “gunpowder,” and the strong-flavoured tea was famed among travellers, who would gather there for refreshment and news.

He relished these early moments of the waking hours, without the bustle of activity, the irritating little petitions from the people that so often stumped government regulations and which would soon clutter up his day and take everything out of him.

3 July, 1913

… Indians came to petition for permanent status for the town. I told them the town plan would have to be approved by the Land Office, who were likely to recommend changes to the present plan. They were agreed in principle. Prepared memo. Man from Voi arriving 7th.

… Trying hard to get rupee balance right.… Thomas has dysentery. He has the annoying habit of singing “Once in Royal David’s City” unceasingly.

There were no European settlers in the area, but the occasional travelling party, if it cared to stop, was welcomed, and indeed escorted into the village by the children and met with an askari. Once a family of Boers with two servants passed through on horseback and ox wagon, returning from German East, disappointed at their reception there by people they had taken for their kin (they left some German newspapers, which the
ADC
read with much interest); and weeks later a similar Boer family stopped for refreshments on their way into the German colony. At another time two Irishmen came away from a foray across the
border with two ox wagons full of sisal bulbils in sacks, stolen from the thriving German plantations.

Kikono was situated close to where the seasonal Kito stream dipped southwards before meandering back north and away. To the east, in an area heavily wooded with shrubs and thorns, was the station of the
MCA
on a ridge that marked the beginning of the Taita hills. Somewhere else, Corbin was aware, was a French mission. The town of Taveta, which had grown because the
CMS
(Church Missionary Society) had set up there after being told to leave Moshi by the Germans, lay to the west, and in the distance along the road could be seen Kilimanjaro, Queen Victoria’s present to the German Kaiser. In the south was shrubbery and the Taru desert, and the Pare Mountains were dimly visible directly in the southwest. It was a beautiful country. There were forests, lakes, and craters, and hills overhung with blue mist. And there were plenty of animals.

Some ten miles away from Kikono, beyond a gauntlet of thorn and bush that had to be hacked through, on a crag a thousand feet high, stood the
MCA
station overlooking a vast territory. Its buildings of wood and iron stood out strikingly in the distance as one approached from the town. At its lonely, high perch it seemed to have the appearance of having fought off the bush forest and kept it at bay. The only way in, as you approached from Kikono, was to round the hill and come from behind.

On Sundays a handbell announced service in the mission; its peal ringing merrily through the countryside greeted Corbin as he climbed up the low rise on the beaten path. He was in the company of a curious, wonderstruck crowd of people, the more ragged of whom he had picked up on the way, the better dressed having descended the hill to escort him in. Behind him, as always, followed Thomas. This was their first visit to the
MCA
station.

SEND US, O ENGLAND, YOUR MEN
said a wooden plaque
hanging from the gate and decorated with a painted floral border. England had sent two women instead.

Miss Elliott and Mrs. Bailey, who had been waiting for him, welcomed Corbin anxiously and served him a drink of water. The place was truly an oasis, he observed. The compound was swept and tidy, and large trees provided shade. There were several modest buildings to one side, but the main building, where the two ladies had rooms, stood prominently apart. Immediately after he had drunk the water he was taken to where the service was to be held, under one of the trees.

A hundred or so converts, many in European-style attire, sat attentively on the ground. An equal number, perhaps more, of curious onlookers stood some distance away in the sun. Deacon Kizito conducted, leading with a sermon in English: “So he bringeth them into their desired heaven.” He then spoke in Swahili with a peppering of Taita words. A boy in shorts and tucked-in shirt gave a five-minute discourse in Taita. A group of children sang, first in English and later in the local dialect. Finally Miss Elliott got up and announced the day’s schedule of activities.

After the service Corbin was shown around the station — the hospital, the school and workshop, the staff hostel, the chapel. There were fruit and vegetable gardens. The Sunday school had thirty students, whom he left in the hands of Miss Elliott, as she recited Longfellow, to take a tour of the surrounding area with the deacon.

Corbin returned for lunch and tea with the missionary women. Thomas had been found useful in the kitchen and had even helped in the teaching that day. The deacon disappeared for some work.

Over tea they sat in the Mission house, on the verandah. Immediately below them was a drop of rock, bush, and trees. The countryside presented to their view was dull, languorous, and hazy in the afternoon heat. There were large stretches of thorny
bush; mountains covered the horizon towards the west; a forest in the east looked black and impenetrable. Somewhere in the distance there was a play of lightning, a few quick strikes, and then came the muffled roll of thunder. For some moments they were preoccupied by the sight of a dusty trail — Masai youths herding cattle.

At length Miss Elliott stirred. “If there ever was an Eden …” she said.

“What do you mean?” demanded her older companion severely.

“Surely Adam must have walked here in these very plains and hills, in this region of the earth …”

“Before he was expelled to Europe?”

They had a curious relationship — the plain Miss Elliott, frail in mind and body, it seemed, though obviously not in faith, and the stern, protective Mrs. Bailey, who might have bounced bar brawlers in another life. She had served with her husband in West Africa, then, after his death there, she joined the floundering Mission of Christ in India, where she met Miss Elliott. The two decided Christianity could be served better in Africa.

They discussed the fact that the Mission had no following in Kikono. The women felt bitter about it, this town impregnable to their attentions, which nevertheless their Mission had had an unwitting hand in founding.

“The Indians are half-savages,” Mrs. Bailey observed, beginning an explanation she had obviously thought out conclusively and in detail.

“And therefore worse,” said her companion. “You can do nothing with them.”

“Gone too far the other way, she means. At least the African you can mould. But the Indian and the Mussulman are incorrigible in their worst habits and superstitions. They will always remain so.”

“As Bishop Taylor said, ‘The African yearns for our top hat and elastic-side boots, but the Indian will never let go his dhoti and will forever remain half-naked.’ ”

At this juncture his own Indian cook with the very Christian name Thomas arrived, in his parson’s black, and Corbin got up to go.

14 August, 1913

Fortnum & Mason hamper arrived, all intact. (Thank you, Mother.) … socks and darning needles — where
do
mine disappear? — cards from: Ken, Robbie …

Ken: Do I want a post in Nyasaland? No — but, Oh for a day by the sea with a g&t! (Mombasa Club.)

I suppose it’s all right for Thomas to take Sundays off for services at
MCA
.

Governor’s Memoranda for PCs and DCs (1910)
 (Promotion of Officers, page 20)

Junior Officers are required to pass an examination in Swahili and law, and only those that have passed will be eligible for promotion. But whilst proficiency in native languages, a sound knowledge of law and of the local ordinances and regulations, and skill in topography, will form important qualifications for promotion, the main tests will be the success of officers in their dealings with the general public.

“It has been a festival,” wrote Alfred Corbin when it was over, “at the end of which a young man with the preposterous name of Pipa (meaning barrel) is in the lockup for creating a disturbance — and could very well be charged with spying, if I had a mind to do it. The Indians are sulking at this outcome — and my cook, for entirely different reasons, seems determined to poison me.”

It had begun innocently enough.

“The King’s representative is invited to our festival,” the mukhi Jamali said. He had come with the invitation the week before, wearing a new blue-and-white embroidered cap, the kofia, perhaps in anticipation of the event. “Everywhere, they are invited and come,” the mukhi added.

“Why, mukhi, I would be offended if you did not invite me,” Corbin told him. “I would be delighted to attend.”

And so he had gone.

Eight men dancing round a tent pole, each with an eighteen-inch stick in his right hand, the left holding onto a long red or green
ribbon which descended from the top of the pole. To the steady, seductive beat from the tabla and dhol, the intermittent screechy wail of the harmonium, and a rich Kathiawadi voice from the old country revelling in the happy occasion, the eight men weaved in and out past each other around the pole, over and over, in a movement as regular and intricate as the mechanism of a timepiece. And as they went swinging past each other they brought the middle of their sticks together in a sprightly click. The men wore loose white pyjamas and long shirts, coloured sashes round their waists, bands round their heads. Their shirttails went flying as they danced.

As the men danced past each other in ever smaller circles, their red and green ribbons wove a checkered sheath around the pole, until finally the eight limbs of the dance, the loose ends of the ribbons, were so shortened the men stood shoulder to shoulder, beating time with the sticks. Then the process reversed as the men spiralled outwards and the ribbons unwound.

At the back of the festival tent, called the mandap, Alfred Corbin stood beside the mukhi, in casual shirt and trousers and somewhat dazzled by the celebrations. The air was laden, a heady mix of strong perfumes and sweat, incense and condensed milk, and dust stamped through the mats after a long day. Boys raced about, babies wailed, old folk sat quietly in their corners, sherbet servers beseeched people to drink. And in all this chaos, the uninterrupted drumbeat in the background, the sharp, regular clicking of the dancers’ sticks, which made him flinch, the dancers’ dizzying motion, the weaving and unweaving of the checkered sheaths.

As he stood watching, a garba dance got under way with much excitement: a whirling circle of joyous, brightly clad women, nose studs glinting, bangles jingling. The garba enacted the first conversions of the community from Hinduism, several centuries ago in Gujarat, he was told. Corbin saw in it a flower opening
and closing. The women, bending forward, clapping hands, approached the centre, then with a snap of fingers stepped back into the spinning circle. Corbin wondered if it was appropriate to stare and turned away his gaze.