Chapter Nineteen

Goodbye to my Home

As a child, the farm was the centre of my world; I thought that Tanzania was the most beautiful country in Africa and I would never ever leave. However, even then the future had been uncertain for the colonists because it had been getting more and more difficult for Britain to maintain her sovereignty. The African people were beginning to become politicized and to demand independence from the Europeans.

The British Empire had started to shrink after the Second World War with the independence of India and its partitioning with Pakistan in 1947. British policy in the colonies was seen by the European settlers in East Africa as a betrayal, and they felt insecure and threatened. This was very hard on my poor grandfather, who had sacrificed forty years of his life working hard on his estate for all of us and didn’t want to believe that it had all been for nothing. My family was afraid that we would lose everything, as had happened to Europeans in other colonies that became independent. There was a heavy atmosphere and I overheard countless discussions about what we should do if independence were to be granted to Tanzania.

Gradually, as time went by, I could sense that my life on the farm was coming to an end and I had to face a new reality. What worried me most were the fates of my grandmother and grandfather: Where would they go?

I was now ten years old and my birthday gift was an even bigger, brand new, shiny bike. During the last year or so I had missed my cycling escapades. It was too long an absence. I felt I had to catch up and venture out into the vast estate and beyond to experience the memories and the magic once again. I wanted to be alone cycling in the wilderness to see my animal friends whom I missed and the watoto at the shamba. I was no longer the innocent child I had been then, I was more aware of what I saw now. I realised how emotionally attached I was to all this. But there were no lions at the clearing and the leopard was not lying sleeping on the acacia tree by the river. The shamba too was almost abandoned. Most of the workers and their families had left. No watoto, they had gone too! I rushed to the termite nest: no mchwa, they too had abandoned their graceful castle of earth. My heart sank.

Some months later we were back at the airport in Nairobi. Mama, my brother and I were leaving for Mauritius, where Dad was waiting for us. The day before at the estate we had said our goodbyes to grandfather, who had wept. It was the first time I had seen him cry. He held me tightly in his arms as if he did not want to let me go.

My grandmother and my uncles came with us to the airport; we were all restrained and tense, no one spoke. I now knew I would no longer be under the care and watchful eye of my Grandma and Grandpa. The farm would be only a memory. I felt a panic: I was not psychologically prepared to go to Mauritius.

The farewell was filled with emotion and tears. My grandmother spoke to me as calmly as she could: ‘My dear boy, do write to me, and I will write to you. You must know that I’ll always be near you at all times and do not worry, we will see each other soon. Kiss your father for me and take care of your little brother and your mother.’ Then she held me for a long time in a tearful embrace. We heard the announcement for boarding; the three of us waved. I saw my grandmother’s face; she was trying hard to smile. She pulled out a white handkerchief and waved it. I didn’t see her again for many years, not until she came to stay with us in England for two months after my grandfather died.