Nine Faces Of Kenya, Page 3

As luck would have it, the end of that dry season was signalled by a scattering of brief showers. Large raindrops splashed onto the newly fallen ash, leaving tiny craters as on a miniature moonscape. The clouds passed; the promised downpour was yet to come. The carpet of ash was now in perfect condition for taking clear impressions: less rain and the ash would have blown about in the breeze, more rain and any impressions would have been washed away.

  Following the rain, various animals left their tracks in the damp volcanic ash as they went their ways. Spring hares, guinea fowl, elephants, pigs, rhinoceroses, buffaloes, hyaenas, antelopes, a sabre-tooth tiger and dozens of baboon all made their marks. And so did three hominids. A large individual, probably a male, walked slowly towards the north. Following behind, then or a little later, was a smaller individual who for some reason placed his or her feet in the prints of the first individual. A youngster skipped along by their side, turning at one point to look to its left. The sun soon baked the prints into rock-hard impressions. More ash, rain and windblown sand covered and preserved the prints until they were discovered by a lucky chance in 1976.

  “They are the most remarkable find I have made in my entire career,” says my mother, who is directing the excavations. “When we first came across the hominid prints I must admit I was sceptical, but then it became clear that they could be nothing else. They are the earliest prints of man’s ancestors, and they show us that hominids three-and-three-quarter million years ago walked upright with a free-striding gait, just as we do today.’

  The Making of Mankind Richard Leakey.

  When the first men were fashioned in the Good Lord’s forge

  He sent them, it seems, to Olduvai Gorge.

  Punch

  1 Australopithecus boisei was named after Mr Charles Boise, who for many years aided our work financially and also set up the Boise Fund in Oxford to assist in the study of early man.

  PART I

  Exploration

  THE HISTORY OF that part of East Africa now known as Kenya has been, since time immemorial, the history of the East African coast. The people of its seaboard settlements may have been trading with Arabia, Egypt and the Persian Gulf before the Roman Empire arose; the ivory and apes, if not peacocks, brought by his navy to King Solomon could have been shipped from their harbours. Settlers from the Arabian mainland gradually established Arab culture and control, together with the Islamic faith, along the coast and on its offshore islands. From inter-breeding between Arab and Persian settlers and indigenous African women arose the Swahili race. Then came the Portuguese, who for over two hundred stormy years ruled the coastal cities from their headquarters in Goa. They left the hinterland alone, but Arab and Swahili caravans marched far inland to gain slaves and ivory. In the eighteenth century the Arabs exercised political control under the ruler of Oman, who in the 1840s moved his seat of government to Zanzibar. The British arrived on the scene first as Christian missionaries, then as explorers bent on verifying rumours of great lakes, mountains and rivers far inland. In the last half of the nineteenth century, the geography of Eastern Africa was laid bare. Thoughts then turned to trade and exploitation, and in 1888 the Imperial British East Africa Company was formed to this end. The task proved beyond its means, and in 1895 a British Protectorate was proclaimed over the present Kenya, the Germans taking what was to become Tanganyika, the main part of today’s Tanzania.

  The earliest known document describing parts of the East African coast is the Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, attributed to an unknown Greek or Greek-speaking Egyptian writing sometime between AD 95 and AD 130. The Erythraean Sea was the Greek phrase for the Red Sea, Persian Gulf and Indian Ocean. Already there was a lively trade between the Arabian mainland and settlements along the East African coast, then known as Azania, mainly in ivory, tortoiseshell, rhinoceros horn and slaves, exchanged for iron weapons, wine and glassware. The “sewn boats” in which this trade was carried probably differed little, if at all, from the dhows which continued to ply between Arabia, the Persian Gulf and East Africa almost for another two thousand years. The anonymous author of the Periplus described the island of Menouthias, probably Pemba, as

  low and covered with trees, in which are rivers and many kinds of birds, and mountain tortoise. Of wild animals there are none except crocodiles; but they hurt no man. There are in it small boats sewn and made from one piece of wood, which are used for fishing and catching marine tortoises. In this island they catch them [i.e. fish] with a local form of basket trap instead of nets stretched across the mouths of the openings along the foreshore.

  CHAPTER 16

  From here after two courses off the mainland lies the last mart of Azania, called Rhapta, which has its name from the aforementioned sewn boats, where there is a great deal of ivory and tortoiseshell. The natives of this country have very large bodies and piratical habits; and each place likewise has its own chief. The Mopharitic chief rules it according to an ancient agreement by which it falls under the kingdom which has become first in Arabia. Under the king the people of Mouza hold it by payment of tribute, and send ships with captains and agents who are mostly Arabs, and are familiar through residence and intermarriage with the nature of the places and their language.

  CHAPTER 17

  There are brought to these marts things made specially in Mouza:

  Spears .

  Axes .

  Small swords .

  Awls .

  Several kinds of glassware .

  And to some places wine, and corn, not much, nor for trade, but for expenses in making friends with the Barbaroi. There are exported from these places a great deal of ivory, though it is inferior to that of Adouli, and rhinoceros horn, and tortoiseshell, next in demand to that from India, and a little coconut.

  CHAPTER 18

  And these are almost the last marts of Azania on the right hand (coming) from the land of Bernikē. For after these places the unexplored ocean curves round to the west, and extending southwards in the opposite direction from Aithiopia and Libya and Africa, mingles with the western sea.

  The harmless crocodiles were probably giant water-lizards, known to the Swahili as kenge. The site of Rhapta has not been identified; the town has disappeared. Mouza was probably situated about twenty-five miles north of present-day Mocha in South Yemen, and Bernikē was a port on the western shore of the Red Sea.

  Azanian fishermen were adept at catching tortoises; their method was described by Pliny (AD 23–79) in his massive natural history of the Roman world published in 37 books. (The only time he stopped working, his nephew wrote, was when he was in his bath.)

  PLINY, Book IX

  The Indian Ocean produces tortoises (testudines) of such a size that a single shell is enough to form a hut to live in, and the inhabitants of the islands in the Red Sea use them as boats. They are caught in many ways, but chiefly when carried out to sea in the warm hours before midday. They float on the surface with their backs out of water, and the pleasure of breathing freely so lulls them into forgetfulness that their shells are dried by the sun’s heat and thus they cannot sink, but float aimlessly, an easy prey to the hunter. They feed at night; when they have eaten enough they return in the morning and sleep on the surface of the water. The noise of their snoring betrays them to the fishermen who swim up quietly and capture them, three men taking one tortoise between them: two men turn the creature on to its back, and the third puts a noose round it, and thus it is pulled to the shore.

  Tortoises have no teeth, but instead jaws with sharp edges, the upper shutting on the lower like the lid of a box. They feed on shell-fish, for their jaws are so strong that they can break stones with them. They come out on land and lay eggs like birds’ eggs, up to a hundred in number; they bury them in the ground out of the reach of water, cover them with sand, and smooth it with their breasts; they sit on them at night. The eggs are hatched after a year. The female flees from the male till he puts some sort of herb on his unwilling partner. In the Troglodyte country there are tortoises with
horns like lyres, but moveable, which they use as oars when swimming. This kind is called chelyon; it has a valuable shell, but is rare, because the Tortoise-eaters are afraid of the sharp rocks among which they live; and the Troglodytes whose coast they visit account them sacred.

  The Periplus of the Erythraean Sea, ed. G. W. B. Huntingford.

  Arabs were great travellers, and several accounts survive of visits to what they called the coast of Zinj, or Zanj, meaning black. The following report was written by Abdul Hassan ibn al Mas’udi, who was born in Baghdad at the end of the ninth century and died in Old Cairo in AD 956 or 957. With a flair for arresting titles that might be envied by a modern publisher, he called his East African volume Meadows of Gold and Mines of Gems. His voyage took place in AD 916.

  The sea of the Zanj reaches down to the country of Sofala and of the Wak-Wak which produces gold in abundance and other marvels; its climate is warm and its soil fertile. It is there that the Zanj built their capital; then they elected a king whom they called Waklimi. This name … has always been that of their sovereigns. The Waklimi has under him all the other Zanj kings, and commands three hundred thousand men. The Zanj use the ox as a beast of burden, for their country has no horses or mules or camels and they do not even know these animals. Snow and hail are unknown to them as to all the Abyssinians. Some of their tribes have sharpened teeth and are cannibals. The territory of the Zanj begins at the canal which flows from the Upper Nile and goes down as far as the country of Sofala and the Wak-Wak. Their settlements extend over an area of about seven hundred parasangs in length and in breadth; this country is divided by valleys, mountains and stony deserts; it abounds in wild elephants but there is not so much as a single tame elephant….

  Although constantly employed in hunting elephants and gathering ivory, the Zanj make no use of ivory for their own domestic purposes. They wear iron instead of gold and silver….

  To come back to the Zanj and their kings, the name of the kings of the country is Waklimi which means supreme lord; they give this title to their sovereign because he has been chosen to govern them with equity. But once he becomes tyrannical and departs from the rules of justice, they cause him to die and exclude his posterity from succession to the throne, for they claim that in thus conducting himself he ceases to be the son of the Master, that is to say of the king of heaven and earth. They call God by the name of Maklandjalu, which means supreme Master….

  The Zanj speak elegantly, and they have orators in their own language. Often a devout man of the country, pausing in the midst of a numerous crowd, addresses to his listeners an exhortation in which he invites them to serve God and submit to His orders. He points out the punishments which disobedience must entail, and recalls the example of their ancestors and their ancient kings. These peoples have no code of religion; their kings follow custom, and conform in their government to a few political rules. The Zanj eat bananas, which are as abundant with them as in India, but the basis of their food is dorrah, a plant called kalari which they take from the ground like a truffle, and the elecampane root…. They also have honey and meat. Each worships what he pleases, a plant, an animal, a mineral. They possess a great number of islands where the coconut grows, a fruit that is eaten by all the peoples of the Zanj. One of these islands, placed one or two days’ journey from the coast, has a Muslim population who provide the royal family; it is the island of Kanbalu….

  Abdul Hassan ibn al Mas’udi, Les Prairies d’Or, Vol. III, Paris 1884.

  From The African Past Basil Davidson.

  Slaves were the principal export from the coast of Zinj in the Middle Ages. The trade was in the hands of the Arabs, one of whom told this story.

  Ismailawaih told me, and several sailors who were with him, that in the year AH 310 [=AD 922] he left Oman in his ship to go to Kanbalu. A storm drove him towards Sofala on the Zanj coast. “Seeing the coast where we were, the captain said, and realizing that we were falling among cannibal negroes and were certain to perish, we made the ritual ablutions and turned our hearts towards God, saying for each other the prayers for the dead. The canoes of the negroes surrounded us and brought us into the harbour; we cast anchor and disembarked on the land. They led us to their king. He was a young negro, handsome and well made. He asked us who we were, and where we were going. We answered that the object of our voyage was his own land.

  “You lie, he said. It was not in our land that you intended to disembark. It is only that the winds have driven you thither in spite of yourselves.

  “When we had admitted that he spoke the truth, he said: Disembark your goods. Sell and buy, you have nothing to fear.

  “We brought all our packages to the land and began to trade, a trade which was excellent for us, without any obstacles or customs dues. We made the king a number of presents to which he replied with gifts of equal worth or ones even more valuable. When the time to depart came, we asked his permission to go, and he agreed immediately. The goods we had bought were loaded and business was wound up. When everything was in order, and the king knew of our intention to set sail, he accompanied us to the shore with several of his people, got into one of the boats and came out to the ship with us. He even came on board with seven of his companions.

  “When I saw them there, I said to myself: In the Oman market this young king would certainly fetch thirty dinars, and his seven companions sixty dinars. Their clothes alone are not worth less than twenty dinars. One way and another this would give us a profit of at least 3,000 dirhams, and without any trouble. Reflecting thus, I gave the crew their orders. They raised the sails and weighed anchor.

  “In the meantime the king was most agreeable to us, making us promise to come back again and promising us a good welcome when we did. When he saw the sails fill with the wind and the ship begin to move, his face changed. You are off, he said. Well, I must say good-bye. And he wished to embark in the canoes which were tied up to the side. But we cut the ropes, and said to him: You will remain with us, we shall take you to our own land. There we shall reward you for all the kindnesses you have shown us.

  “Strangers, he said, when you fell upon our beaches, my people wished to eat you and pillage your goods, as they have already done to others like you. But I protected you, and asked nothing from you. As a token of my goodwill I even came down to bid you farewell in your own ship. Treat me then as justice demands, and let me return to my own land.

  “But no one paid any heed to his words; no notice was taken of them. As the wind got up, the coast was not slow to disappear from sight. Then night enfolded us in its shrouds and we reached the open sea.

  “When the day came, the king and his companions were put with the other slaves whose number reached about 200 head. He was not treated differently from his companions in captivity. The king said not a word and did not even open his mouth. He behaved as if we were unknown to him and as if we did not know him. When we got to Oman, the slaves were sold, and the king with them.

  “Now, several years after, sailing from Oman towards Kanbalu, the wind again drove us towards the coasts of Sofala on the Zanj coast, and we arrived at precisely the same place. The negroes saw us, and their canoes surrounded us, and we recognized each other. Fully certain we should perish this time, terror struck us dumb. We made the ritual ablutions in silence, repeated the prayer of death, and said farewell to each other. The negroes seized us, and took us to the king’s dwelling and made us go in. Imagine our surprise; it was the same king that we had known, seated on his throne, just as if we had left him there. We prostrated ourselves before him, overcome, and had not the strength to raise ourselves up.

  “Ah! said he, here are my old friends! Not one of us was capable of replying. He went on: Come, raise your heads, I give you safe conduct for yourselves and for your goods. Some raised their heads, others had not the strength, and were overcome with shame. But he showed himself gentle and gracious until we had all raised our heads, but without daring to look him in the face, so much were we moved to remorse and fear.
But when we had been reassured by his safe conduct, we finally came to our senses, and he said: Ah! Traitors! How you have treated me after all I did for you! And each one of us called out: Mercy, oh King! Be merciful to us!

  “I will be merciful to you, he said. Go on, as you did last time, with your business of selling and buying. You may trade in full liberty. We could not believe our ears; we feared it was nothing but a trick to make us bring our goods on shore. None the less we disembarked them, and came and brought him a present of enormous value. But he refused it and said: You are not worthy for me to accept a present from you. I will not sully my property with anything that comes from you.

  “After that we did our business in peace. When the time to go came, we asked permission to embark. He gave it. At the moment of departure, I went to tell him so. Go, he said, and may God protect you! Oh King, I replied, you have showered your bounty upon us, and we have been ungrateful and traitorous to you. But how did you escape and return to your country?

  “He answered: After you had sold me in Oman, my purchaser took me to a town called Basrah, – and he described it. There I learnt to pray and to fast, and certain parts of the Koran. My master sold me to another man who took me to the country of the king of the Arabs, called Baghdad – and he described Baghdad. In this town I learnt to speak correctly. I completed my knowledge of the Koran and prayed with the men in the mosques. I saw the Caliph, who is called al-Muqtadir [908–32]. I was in Baghdad for a year and more, when there came a party of men from Khorasan mounted on camels. Seeing a large crowd, I asked where all these people were going. I was told: To Mecca. What is Mecca? I asked. There, I was answered, is the House of God to which Muslims make the Pilgrimage. And I was told the history of the temple. I said to myself that I should do well to follow the caravan. My master, to whom I told all this, did not wish to go with them or to let me go. But I found a way to escape his watchfulness and to mix in the crowd of pilgrims. On the road I became a servant to them. They gave me food to eat and got for me the two cloths needed for the ihram [the ritual garments used for the pilgrimage]. Finally, they instructing me, I performed all the ceremonies of the pilgrimage.