Writes Barrack Muluka
Isaak Denisen, also known as Karen Blixen, begins her world famous story, Out of Africa, with a description of the mammoth farm she once owned in Kenya.
She says: “I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ngong Hills.”
Karen Blixen In Kenya - Click PIC For Larger Image
She reports that she experimented with coffee growing, besides sundry rural activities on the farm.
She goes on: “I had six thousand acres of land, and had thus got much spare land besides the coffee plantation. Part of the farm was native forest, and about one thousand acres were squatters’ land, what they called their shambas.
“The squatters are the Natives, who with their families hold a few acres on a white man’s farm, and in return have to work for him a certain number of days in the year. My squatters, I think, saw the relationship in a different light, for many of them were born on the farm, and their fathers before them, and they very likely regarded me as a sort of superior squatter on the estates.”
There are diverse views on Karen Blixen’s story of her adventures in Africa and of the Oscar award winning movie that they crafted out of the story.
Ngugi wa Thiong’o in an essay ‘Her cook and her dog’ describes Blixen as a woman gifted with words in a dangerous way. He particularly takes umbrage with the passage where she writes of her cook in the following terms: “He stuck to the maize cobs of his fathers. Here, even his intelligence sometimes failed him. He came and offered me a Kikuyu delicacy — a roasted sweet potato or a lump of sheep’s fat – as even a civilised dog that has lived with people, will place a bone on the floor before you, as a present.”
Out of Africa is a capsule of the origins of what Kenyans will be addressing in the coming weeks, as they come to terms with what are being called ‘historical injustices’. When they arrived in Africa, European explorers, settlers and allied adventurers did not recognise the humanity of the people they found here. They did not therefore recognise their right to the things and instruments that support life. They pretended to ‘discover’ rivers, mountains, lakes and other relief features that had been there from creation day. This was a deliberate ploy to rob the African of his natural heritage. For if you were discovering land, a lake or a river, you could very well own it and do with it as you pleased.
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