Chapter Seven White hunters: my Enemies

Since my early childhood I have loved animals. I spent hours watching them from close up with scant regard for my personal safety. My uncles had grown up with hunting and it was a way of life for them. In the beginning they killed animals that destroyed or caused damage to the plantations on the estate, but later on, when trophy hunting became all the rage, helping tourist hunters to kill animals brought in a significant cash income.

The best customers were usually Americans. I can remember all the preparations that we needed to make when some wealthy trophy hunter booked a hunting safari. Then things changed in the ‘60s and ‘70s: uncontrolled hunting was officially banned to protect species that were threatened with extinction. As a result, some of the former hunters began working in large national parks as safari wildlife guides for visiting tourists.

My grandmother had four children, and my favourite uncle was the Benjamin of the family, Homer and my grandmother’s darling. He was fond of me and would always find time to play with me. I remember him as tall and blond, with a deep tan. His green eyes always sparkled and he had a broad smile and bright white teeth. I loved and respected him. I felt safe in his strong arms, and with my head resting on his chest I would breathe in the characteristic scent of his skin mixed with the clothes that he wore. I identified this scent with confidence and masculinity. My favourite uncle was a role model for me.

I was five years old and he was just twenty two when he was killed in a shooting accident while hunting. I will never forget the grief that permeated the house. My grandmother was inconsolable for a time, but eventually her love and care for me somehow helped her to overcome her pain.

Chapter Eight

My Grandmother: Cook and Homemaker Extraordinaire

After my youngest uncle died, my grandmother took over my upbringing, especially during the times that my father was away from home because of his work. My mother often went with him when he left for long periods of time, and they were sometimes absent for months on end. My brother was born, and from then on my grandmother lavished care on me almost exclusively. I was her adored grandchild! She insisted I spoke to her only in Greek. When I spoke to her in English or Swahili, she pretended not to hear. She was very strict about this. To make it easier for me to learn Greek, she ordered the language book used in primary schools in Greece at the time for me. So I learned to read and write Greek long before I went to school.

When my grandmother and her sisters lived in Smyrna they had all learnt to play a musical instrument, and my grandmother loved music. She played the mandolin. She also had an old gramophone with 78rpm records and very often we listened to Greek music, songs from Smyrna, rebetika, classical music and opera. My parents and uncles preferred to listen to jazz and rock and roll on the Grundig stereophonic record player which had been ordered from Germany. I remember examining the 78rpm records and wondering how the music and human voices got there, so that you could play it with a needle. One day I removed the round label at the centre of the record and replaced it with one of my own. I thought that if I wrote a song on the label, glued it in place of the original label and then played it on the gramophone; I would hear the song I had written. I was very disappointed to discover that it was not so and I complained to my grandmother about it. She tenderly explained that the sound is recorded on the record itself and not on the label.

If I was mischievous, a glare from my grandmother was punishment enough. At worst, she would threaten me by raising her slipper menacingly over her head, but she never actually hit me with it. I remember one time I had been very naughty and my grandmother was very cross, so she chased me to punish me. There was a large grandfather clock in the hallway of the house; I was able to open the little door where the pendulum was and hide in there, something I often liked to do. This caused the pendulum to stop its rather loud tick-tock, so, of course, my grandmother knew exactly where I was. But she kept on walking up and down the hallway, calling out ‘Where are you, my boy? I’ll find you wherever you are!’ The moment I did not hear her footsteps in the hallway, the characteristic flip-flop her slippers made as she moved along, I knew that she had stopped in front of the clock and was preparing to open the little door. The agony of those seconds made me laugh nervously, and then I heard ‘Aha! There you are’, as she opened the little door. Then it was all kisses and hugs; punishment had been forgotten!

Grandma was a sensitive and affectionate person who wouldn`t kill a fly. She loved animals and had a female corgi, called Bella, who was a loyal guard dog. Bella would lie on the verandah at my grandmother’s feet and devotedly watch her every move. When a stranger approached Bella she would growl menacingly and sometimes, when really angry, would even bite. Fortunately she was a very obedient dog, and my grandmother had only to raise her voice for this wannabe lion to become a lamb.

My grandmother was very fond of our gardener because he looked after her beautiful garden with its many tropical plants. She especially loved roses, and the gardener took great care of them. One day he hurt his leg very badly with his hoe. He immediately shouted ‘Memsahib! Memsahib!’ (Ma’am! Ma’am!), and my grandmother realized that something serious had happened. I remember her running out into the garden and saying, in Greek, ‘My dear fellow, dear me, what happened to you?’ She helped him up onto the verandah and ran to fetch the first aid kit. She carefully washed and cleaned his wound and spilled copious amounts of iodine on it. As she placed some gauze and bandaged his leg, she spoke to the gardener as if he were her own child, using a calm, gentle tone to reassure him. Then she patted him on the head and ordered the driver to take him to the shamba to rest.

Often the whole house was filled with delectable aromas from the kitchen when Grandma cooked with her assistant Sabani. I would hear the two of them chatting away in a somewhat one-sided conversation, with grandmother giving directions and Sabani mostly saying ‘Ndio Memsahib’ (Yes, ma’am). Sabani became the most trusted servant and cook. I enjoyed my grandmother’s culinary creations. Usually she cooked delicious recipes from Asia Minor and Egypt, and even European haute cuisine dishes, adapting her recipes to use local ingredients and tropical fruit. The sweets and puddings she made were out of this world, and when she baked her cinnamon cookies and syrupy desserts, the whole house smelled delicious.

My grandmother taught Sabani all the secrets of her kitchen and so he became a superb cook. She even taught him Greek. I was very fond of Sabani, and he had a soft spot for me, too. So much so, that he often treated me to some goodies from the secret pantry that housed grandma’s delicacies. Sabani would slip me a couple of cookies or a piece of baklava while stressing that this was our secret Grandma must never know.

It was a rule that sweets were not allowed until after lunch or at afternoon tea. Often I would run into the kitchen to find Sabani, but he would be hiding somewhere. Then he would jump out at me, grab me and hold me tightly in his arms. I could smell cinnamon cookies on his apron. He would lift me up, and I would screech with joy while he laughed. Poor Sabani had no family of his own because his wife had died of an illness before they could have any children, so he devoted his life to his work.