Cairo to Kisumu

by Frank G. Carpenter

In Kenya Colony the East Indians complicate matters for the British government. They practically control the retail trade and, having grown rich and prosperous, have begun to raise embarrassing political issues.

I wish I could show you this old town of Mombasa. It began before Columbus discovered America, and the citizens can show you the very spot where Vasco da Gama landed when he came here from India shortly after he discovered the new route to Asia by the Cape of Good Hope. He landed here in 1498 at just about the time that Columbus was making his third voyage to America. Even then Mombasa was a city and Da Gama describes it. A little later it became the property of the Portuguese. The most prominent building in the town is the great red Fort of Jesus, built by the Portuguese in 1593, when the city was made the capital of their East African possessions. It was later the scene of massacres and bloody fights between Portuguese and Arabs. To-day the red flag of the Sultan of Zanzibar flies over the old fort, now used as a prison, admission to which is forbidden.

After the Portuguese were driven out the Arabs held Mombasa for many years, and it was an Arab ruler, the Sultan of Zanzibar, who owned it when the British came in. It still belongs to him in a nominal way. He has leased it to the British for so much a year, but his flag floats above John Bull’s ensign everywhere on the island.

Most of the population of Mombasa is African. Of the twenty-six thousand inhabitants, only about three hundred and fifty are white. There are people here from all parts of the interior, some of them as black as jet, and a scattering few who are chocolate brown or yellow. These natives live in huts off by themselves in a large village adjoining the European and Asiatic quarters. Their houses are of mud plastered upon a framework of poles and thatched with straw. The poles are put together without nails. There is not a piece of metal in any of them, except on the roof, where here and there a hole has been patched up with a rusty Standard Oil can. Very few of the huts are more than eight feet high, while some are so low that one has to stoop to enter them. They are so small that the beds are usually left outside the house during the daytime, and the majority of each family sleep on the floor.

I find this African village the most interesting part of Mombasa. Its inhabitants number over twenty-five thousand and comprise natives of perhaps one hundred tribes, each of which has its own dress and its own customs. Most of the women are bare-headed and bare-legged; and some of the men are clad in little more than breech cloths. Now and then one sees a girl bare to the waist, and the little ones wear only jewellery. On the mainland all go more or less naked.

It is amazing how these people mutilate themselves so as to be what they consider beautiful. The ears of many of the women are punched like sieves, in order that they may hold rings of various kinds. At one place I saw a girl with a ring of corks, each about as big around as my little finger, put through holes in the rims of her ears. She had a great cork in each lobe and three above that in each ear. There was a man beside her who had two long sticks in his ears; and in another place I saw one who had so stretched the lobe holes that a good-sized tumbler could have been passed through them. Indeed, I have a photograph of a man carrying a jam pot in his ear.

The most numerous of the natives here in Mombasa are the Swahilis. These are of a mixed breed found all along the central coast of East Africa. They are said to have some Arab blood and for this reason, perhaps, are brighter and more businesslike than the ordinary native. The Swahilis are found everywhere. They have little settlements in the interior in the midst of other tribes, and the Swahili language will carry one through the greater part of Central and East Africa. The British officials are required to learn it, and one can buy Swahili dictionaries and phrase books. During most of my journey I shall take a Swahili guide with me, or rather a black Swahili boy, who will act as a servant as well as guide.

Let me give you a picture of the Swahili women as I see them here. Their skins are of a rich chocolate brown and shine as though oiled. They have woolly hair, but they comb it in a most extraordinary way, using a razor to shave out partings between the rows of plaited locks so that when the hair is properly dressed the woman seems to have on a hood of black wool. I took a snapshot of two girls who were undergoing the process of hairdressing yesterday, fearing the while that their calico gowns, which were fastened by a single twist under the armpits, might slip. A little farther on Jack took a photograph of another giddy maiden clad in two strips of bright-coloured calico and numerous earrings, while I gave her a few coppers to pose for the picture. At the same time on the opposite side of the street stood a black girl gorgeous with jewellery. In her nose she had a brass ring as big around as the bottom of a dinner bucket, and her ears had holes in their lobes so big that a hen’s egg could be put through them without trouble. Not only the lobes, but the rims also were punctured, each ear having around the edges five little holes of about the size of my little finger. These holes were filled with rolls of bright-coloured paper cut off so smoothly that they seemed almost a part of the ear. The paper was of red, green, and blue and looked very quaint.