Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

Three thousand miles from Port Said and more than six thousand miles from London, Mombasa is far below the latitude of the Philippines. It is just about a day by ship north of Zanzibar and thirty days’ sailing from New York.

So far, most of my travels in Africa have been in the sands, with only a patch of green now and then. I was close to the Sahara in Morocco, and I travelled many hundreds of miles over it while in Algeria and Tunisia. In Tripoli my eyes were made sore by the glare of the Libyan wastes and their dust blew across the Nile valley during my stay in Egypt and the British Sudan. The Arabian desert was on both sides of us as we came down the Red Sea and its sands several times covered the ship. We had the rockiest of all deserts in southern Arabia while that of Italian Somaliland was not any better.

Here at Mombasa we are in the luxuriant tropics where the surroundings remind me of Solomon’s song. All nature seems joyful. The rain has conquered the sun and there are mosses, vines, and trees everywhere, The shores of the mainland are bordered with coconuts, we have mighty baobab trees loaded with green scattered over the island, and even its cliffs are moss grown.

A jungle of green on a foundation of coral, Mombasa is only a mile or so wide and three miles in length, but it rises well up out of the sea and is so close to the continent that one can almost hear the wind blow through the coconut groves over the way. On the island itself the jungle has been cut up into wide roads. There is a lively town with a polyglot population at one end of it, and the hills are spotted with the homes of the British officials. The island has two good harbours, a little one and a big one. The little one, which is in the main part of the town, is frequented by small craft. The big one could hold all the ships that sail the East Coast, and the people here say it is to be the great port of this side of the continent. The larger harbour is called Kilindini, a word that means “the deep place,” It has only a few warehouse sheds and a pier above it, the main settlements being across the island four miles away.

It was in Kilindini that I landed, and that under difficulties. Our ship was anchored far out and our baggage was taken ashore in native boats. Finding the main quay was crowded, I had my boatman go direct to the custom house and let us out on the beach. The custom house is a little shed about big enough for one cow situated so high up above the water that our trunks had to be carried out upon the heads of the Negroes. The water came up to their middles, but nevertheless they waded through it and brought both us and our baggage to the land. The customs examination was lenient. The officers looked through our trunks for guns and ammunition and warned us that we could not hunt elephants and hippopotami without a two-hundred-and-fifty-dollar license. A little later the natives again took our trunks and lugged them about a quarter of a mile to the top of a hill, where we got the cars for Mombasa.

The word “cars” savours of electricity or steam. The cars I took were run by men. Here in East Africa human muscle forms the cheapest power. The wages of the natives run from five cents a day upward, while in the interior there are many who will work eight or nine hours for three cents. The result is that the trolley cars are propelled by men. Each car consists of a platform about as big as a kitchen table, with wheels underneath and an awning overhead. In the middle of the platform there is a bench accommodating two to four persons. The wheels run on a track about two feet in width, and each car is pushed from behind by one or more bare-legged and bare-headed men who run as they shove it up hill and down. There are such car tracks all over the island, with switches to the homes of the various officials. There are private cars as well as public ones, and everyone who is anybody has his own private car with his coolies to push him to and from work. At the beginning and closing of his office hours, which here are from eight until twelve and from two until four, the tracks are filled with these little cars, each having one or more officials riding in state to or from the government buildings.

Kilindini harbour, or “the deep place”, is connected with the town of Mombasa by a mile-long tramway, the cars of which are pushed by native runners. Mombasa is the chief port of Kenya Colony.

In this African village there are 25,000 natives, representing perhaps a hundred tribes, each with its own dress and customs. All, however, are eager buyers of the gaudy print cloths in the bazaars of the Hindu merchants.