Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

The Kikuyu looks upon the females of his family as so much available capital. If a man has fifteen or twenty wives, he is supposed to be rich beyond the dreams of avarice. I hear that many of the chiefs have a dozen or more, and that since the British have begun to exploit the forests, the more industrious of the native men have been rapidly increasing their families. A good girl, large and healthy, will bring as much as fifty sheep. A maiden is supposed to be ready for sale at twelve years, and twenty dollars in cattle or sheep is an average price. For this sum the woman should be large, well formed, and fairly good looking. Homely or lean girls go cheap and often remain single, in which case they have to work for their parents. A man may pay down ten sheep and agree to bring in the balance from month to month as he and his wives earn the money for them. He goes into the woods and cuts down trees, being paid so much per stick. If he works hard, he may make three or four dollars a month, and if, in addition, he has several women to help him, his income may be doubled or trebled.

In such work the men cut the wood and the women carry it on their backs to the market. They are loaded up by their husbands, a piece of goat skin separating the rough sticks from the woman’s bare skin, and the burden being tied on by a rope of vines which rests on the forehead. In addition to this goat skin on her back, the woman usually has an apron or skirt of skin tied about the waist and reaching to the knees and sometimes below them. A strong, lusty girl can carry as much as two hundred pounds of wood in this way, and her husband does not scruple to pile on all she can take.

In coming from the plains over the mountains into the Great Rift Valley I rode for miles through the woods and had a chance to see what the British Government is doing to save the forests.

The wooded area of Kenya extends over three thousand two hundred square miles, of which the tropical forest covers about a hundred and eighty-three square miles, the remainder being upland or highland, containing valuable trees. Transportation facilities are so limited, however, and much of the country is so little known that the British have only made a good beginning in exploiting the timber resources and in scientific forestry work.

Lumber is high. Leaving the Kikuyu hills, one finds that there are woods all the way to the ridge known as the Escarpment and they extend for some distance down the sides of the Rift Valley. Here in the valley itself the country is mostly pasture and there is no timber of any account. In the forest region above referred to the woods are thin, and in many places the original growth has been cleared by the Kikuyus. The government is now prohibiting their practice of burning the wood, and doing all it can to save the trees remaining and to build up new wood lands. I met at Naivasha an Australian, one of the heads of the forestry department, who told me that the government had nurseries at Mombasa, Nairobi, Escarpment, and Landaivi. Near Mombasa they are setting out teak trees, while at Nairobi they have planted a large number of acacia and eucalyptus trees, imported from Australia. The eucalyptus grows well at Nairobi. I saw trees there seventy-five feet high although they were only five years old.

The forest manager told me he was labouring under the greatest of disadvantages in his efforts to raise new trees. He said he had to fight not only the natives, but also the monkeys, baboons, and other wild animals. The woods are full of monkeys, among them a dog-faced baboon which grows as big as a ten-year-old boy. This creature barks like a dog and acts like a devil. It watches the planting, then sneaks in at night and digs up the trees. If seeds are put in, it digs them up and bites them in two, and if the trees should sprout it pulls the sprouts out of the ground and breaks them up and throws them away. As a result, the nurseries have to be watched all the time by men with guns in their hands. If the men have no guns the baboons will jump for the nearest tree and grin from the branches, only to return to their devastating work as soon as the watchmen go away. If guns are brought out, the animals realize their danger and run for their lives. These monkeys also dig up the Indian corn planted by the Kikuyus, and are said to be far worse than crows and blackbirds combined.

At one of the stations between Naivasha and the Escarpment I saw a half-dozen Nandi, including two women. The men were almost naked, save that they wore cloaks of monkey skins with the fur on and strips of cowskin about the waist. The women had on waist cloths and blankets of cowhides tanned with the hair on. These blankets were fastened over one shoulder, leaving the arms and half of the breasts bare. The Nandi were walking along the railroad track, and were closely watched by the station agents, for they are great thieves, and the British have had trouble with them because they steal the bolts and rivets which hold the rails to the ties, and even climb the telegraph poles after the wire. The native men are crazy for iron. They can use the bolts and rivets for slingshots to brain their enemies. All the iron they have had in the past has come from digging up the ore and smelting it, so you can imagine how delightful it is to a Nandi warrior to pick up a fine, death-dealing iron bolt all ready for his sling. The Nandi live northwest of Naivasha, on a plateau which contains iron deposits, and they make a business of mining and smelting. Since the railroad has been built, they have come down from time to time and raided the tracks, and the British have had several little fights with them to drive them off.

These Nandi are among the bravest of the African natives. They are much like the Masai, delighting in warfare, and ready to fight at the least provocation. They are more civilized than the Kikuyus, and do considerable work in iron and leather. They have cattle, sheep, and goats, while a few do some farming. Like the Masai, they bleed their cattle and drink the blood hot, sometimes mixing it with their porridge. After bleeding, they close the wounds so that the cattle grow well again. They are good hunters and have large dogs with which they run down the game, so that it can be killed with spears. They also trap game by digging wedge-shaped pits and covering them over with grass. They have donkeys to carry the iron ore from the mines to their furnaces, where they turn it into pig metal.

I understand that the Nandi live about the same as the other natives about here. They have circular huts of boards roofed with thatch. Each hut has a fireplace in the centre on each side of which is a little bed consisting of a platform of mud built along the wall of the hut. The people sleep on the mud, using round blocks of wood for pillows. The children sleep with their parents until they are six years of age, when they are shoved off into a smaller hut outside built especially for them. The Nandi believe in witches and medicine men, and have a sky god to whom they pray every morning and to whom they sacrifice when times are hard.

Nearly all of these Africans believe in witch doctors. The Wakamba, whose country I passed through on my way to Nairobi, not infrequently kill the women of their tribe when they are charged with witchcraft, and there is a record of something like forty having been murdered this way within the last few years.