The Mau Mau Rebellion Retold

I thought I knew the story of the Mau Mau.  Reports of it were circulating when I was old enough to be paying attention.  This past week, my assumptions about how much I understood were blown away. 

As very often happens with things I want to talk abut, this discussion started with an episode of RadioLab.  If you want to go right to the inspiration for this blog, there is link at the end.  I will go ahead and give a summary of the information here.

During WWII, thousands of Kenyan tribesmen had fought for justice and freedom on the British side.  When they returned home, they found they were given no quarter when it came to their own personal freedom and prosperity.   Between 1952 and 1960, the Kenyan tribal people’s anger at their treatment at the hands of the colonial government boiled over.  Led mostly by Kikuyu, a sworn brotherhood of rebels rose up with the goal of ejecting the British from their land.

Some horrific incidents ensued.  A few settler families were butchered, including in at least one case, a small child.  Stories began to circulate abroad of savage black on white violence.  The news that spread worldwide reported that the Mau Mau warriors were a splinter group, that their wishes and tactics were espoused by only a small percentage of the population, that the majority of the tribal people wanted the Mau Mau to be controlled.   The violence involved was portrayed as black Africans gone berserk.  Eventually the term Mau Mau came to mean brutal rebels out for nothing but blood.

And that’s the way the story remained.  In 1963, when the British withdrew from the Kenya Colony, lots of their colonial records were destroyed or tossed overboard (as was the practice with all the colonies, large and small.)

End of story.

Until the 1990’s when Caroline Elkins, a Princeton undergrad history major went to Nairobi to research her senior thesis.  In the Government Archives building, she came across a curious file.  It seemed to contradict the prevailing Mau Mau story.  After finding other files in that Nairobi repository, she began to interview people about what had really happened.   The evidence that she rediscovered pointed to the fact that there were thousands of Kenyans involved in the Mau Mau “war,” and that contrary to popular belief most of the victims were, not white settlers, but Kenyan tribal people.   Eventually, the trail of investigation led to the town of Milton Keynes, northwest of London, site Hanslope Park—a top-secret repository of British government archives.  Suspicions were that more and damning information regarding the British behavior vis-à-vis the Mau Mau reposed in that place.  But access was impossible.

That stalemate was not broken until 2012, when a group of elderly Kenyans won permission to sue the British government for their suffering at the hands of their colonial rulers.  In the course of the case, files from the secret stash were subpoenaed, and contrary to anyone’s expectations, the judge ordered the government to open its records.  What emerged was a picture, not of black savagery on whites, but the opposite.  One source that I consulted put the white death count at 32.  Hundreds of thousands of blacks were imprisoned in concentration camps, and many thousands were executed, others castrated, raped, and tortured.

As a result, the British government was found guilty of committing violence against the tribal people of Kenya Colony.  They paid the plaintiffs in the case £14 Million and another £6 Million in court costs.  Most important of all, they took responsibility and apologized.  Here is what Foreign Secretary William Hague said in June 2013, when the case was settled:

"I would like to make clear now, and for the first time, on behalf of Her Majesty's government, that we understand the pain and grievance felt by those who were involved in the events of the emergency in Kenya," he told the Commons.

"The British government recognises that Kenyans were subject to torture and other forms of ill-treatment at the hands of the colonial administration.

"The British government sincerely regrets that these abuses took place and that they marred Kenya's progress towards independence."

One of the reporters of this story thought to ask, why did the British government keep those records?  If they had wound up at the bottom of the Indian Ocean or in an incinerator, there would have been no proof of the allegations.  Here is the good news: those files contain reports and complaints from British officials who were appalled about what was happening in Kenya, and they kept the files because they wanted a record both of the wrong-doing of their government and of their objections to it.

If you want to hear a riveting account of all this on the best radio show in history of the universe—RadioLab, go here.

If you want to see a wonderful film about one of the plaintiffs in the case and how he went to primary school in his 80’s, you should watch the great film The First Grader. After the sad story told by this post, the film will lift your heart! Here is the trailer. 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mD1bYbcxkrM

Annamaria - Monday

An Ode I'm Itching to Tell.

I am at a complete loss for a subject to write about this week, at least any that would make me smile…other than my grandchildren (or Barbara) of course. The world this week is in a state of perpetual “it sucks.” Not a bit of unqualified uplifting news (even for Tom Brady fans).

Life this week is committed to defying the basic parameters of civilized behavior.  Intolerance, indifference, violence, and selfishness seem the watchwords of our times. There is no place to turn for peace of soul.  Even the bucolic woods surrounding my farm have turned on me with their venomous poison ivy.

Scratch, scratch.

In such a mood where can one turn except to writing poetry. No, not my own—that would require far too much talent—but in parodying others. It relaxes me. I hope it has a similar affect upon you…though not so much as to put you to sleep.

So, with apologies to Edgar Allen Poe and any Raven fans out there, here goes:

Once upon a midday early, while I wandered, quick and surly,

Over many a quaint and curious meadow of neglected chore—

While I prodded, briskly clipping, suddenly there came an itching,

As if from some gentle scraping, scraping from elbow to fore.

“‘Tis some hairy vine,” I muttered, “scraping me elbow to fore—

 Only this and nothing more.”

Ah, distinctly I remember it was on the first September;

And each separate shining three-leaf wrought its oil upon me more.

Eagerly I wished the tractor;—I’d foolishly forgot to factor

Would shield my skin from oh such sorrow—sorrow for the itch and more—

From the red and recurring blisters even angels itch and more—

Shameless scratching evermore.

And the silken, sad, uncertain bandage of each purple keratin

Chilled me—filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;

So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating

“‘Tis some shining three-leaf entreating access from my elbow to fore—

Some new shining three-leaf entreating access from my elbow to fore;—

This it is and nothing more.”

Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer,

“Ivy,” said I, “or if Oak, truly your forgiveness I implore;

But the fact is I was clipping, and so gently you came scraping,

And so faintly you came scraping, scraping my elbow to fore,

That I scarce was sure I felt you”—here I opened wide the door;—

For Urushiol and more.

Deep into that toxin peering, long I stood there wondering, fearing,

Doubting, dreaming dreams no scratcher ever dared to dream before;

But the blister was unbroken, though the swelling reached Hoboken,

And the only word heard spoken was the whispered “itch and more.”

This I whispered, and an echo murmured back the words, “and more!”—

Should you scratch there will be more.

Back onto the elbow turning, all my arm upon me burning,

Soon again I heard a scraping somewhat louder than before.

“Surely,” said I, “surely that is something at my window lattice;

Let me see, then, what thereat is, and this mystery explore—

Let my heart be still a moment and this mystery explore;—

’Tis the vine and nothing more!”

Open here I flung the shutter, when, with many a flirt and flutter,

Out there stood a hairy vine of the poisoned sort before;

Not the least obeisance made it; not a minute moved or stayed it;

But, with mien of Trump-like hair, seemed to search beyond my fore—

Searching for a rhyme of Pallas just below my itching fore—

Searched, and that, and nothing more.

Was this hairy vine beguiling my sad fancy into smiling?

So at the grave and stern decorum of the ivy I swore,

“Leaflets three, let it be craven,” for on that I’m a maven,

Ghastly grim and ancient ivy that has me itching every night and more—

Tell me if thy worldly cure is what Methylprednisolone’s for.”

Quoth the three-leaf, “Itch no more.”

I think I’ll stop now at a half parody (please feel free to hyphenate “half” into an appropriate adjective of your choice).

Not because I’m afraid of what all you Poe folks out there might want to do to me, but because it’s time to reach for the Calamine lotion and call it a night.

Next week I’ll be at Bloody Scotland. A land where everything is perfect all the time.  I know that’s true because Caro lives there. Can’t wait.

Scratch, scratch.

Jeff—Saturday

The Long Siesta

                                              

The International Man Of Mystery  Nick Sweet

Or Man Of International Mystery

One of the best things about being a crime writer is discovering new writers.  My experience follows a very familiar pattern.  An email bounces in to my in-tray asking if I would like to review a book and I say yes. Then forget about it.  The book then appears in a brown padded envelope usually sandwiched in between a legal request for an onerous personal injury statement and an electricity bill.  So the secret package is opened up with huge excitement and the contents are sometimes as exciting as the electricity bill. Occasionally the book lives up to my expectations.

The Long Siesta  was fabulous.

Then, there is the icing on the cake I promptly request, threaten, blackmail the author to do a guest blog for Murder is Everywhere. Especially if they write about somewhere as yet unblogged.

         
                           
                                                               Seville!

 So it’s with great delight I introduce you to Nick Sweet, who sets his novels in Spain. His book The Long Siesta is published by Grey Cells Press – the crime imprint of Holland House and on the surface it’s an intriguing police procedural set in Spain, yet the author gives us glimpses of the country's unsettled past.  It’s a compliment when I say his detective reminded me of R D Wingfield's  Frost.  The detective is a deeply flawed individual (with good reason) and I shall maintain an enigmatic silence on that one - no plot spoilers here. Nick obviously knows Spain very well and the narrative has a sort of magical flourish. ( I did have one moment of sharp intake of breath when I read a member of the strong supporting cast was a bull fighter so it was interesting to read what Nick had to say  on that subject.)

 I did ask Nick for a few words about the translation style of the novel as it is obviously written in English for an English speaking audience but maintains a direct translation of many Spanish phrases. … read on.

  

The book cover!

I first came to Spain with my parents when I was seven, and it struck me as being a magical place. And as I grew up my fascination with Spain grew, too. It was a country—or a group of countries—with so many different customs and traditions; and at the same time, it also seemed to be a land that embodied a mass of contradictions. I first moved here to live way back in my twenties; to begin with I lived in Bilbao, then I moved on to Barcelona, where I met my wife, Belén, and we married the following year. During our time in Barcelona, we met all kinds of people. One friend we made was an undercover policeman, and I naturally found it interesting to talk to him about his work. It’s certainly true that I learned a thing or two from him about what was going on in the city’s criminal underworld.

                                      

Decades later, after living in England and the Middle East, we moved to Seville; we found a nice flat bang in the heart of the city, and I immediately fell in love with the place. There’s a magic about Seville, so that I found it could be exciting just to walk the streets; and I loved the art and architecture. So I decided to set my next book in Seville, and the main character, Inspector Velázquez, came to life in my imagination as the manuscript of what would become The Long Siesta slowly began to take shape.

                                 

I was impressed by how warm and welcoming the local people were. But this is true of the people all over Spain. I remember one time when Belen and I were in the Retiro, the big park in the centre of Madrid, for instance, and we were considering where we might go and eat. We got talking to a man who happened to be sharing the same bench as us, and asked if he could recommend somewhere that did good food and was easy on the pocket. The man, who was a perfect stranger to us, said he knew just the place; but it was too far to walk, and the route too complicated for him to be able to give directions. No matter, he would just have to take us there. He was waiting for his son, who would be coming to pick him up in his car any minute. They would take us to the place and drop us at the door. We said we didn’t want to put him out. But it would be a pleasure, he protested.  So sure enough, when his son arrived they drove us to the restaurant and even introduced us to the owner.

                                           

I wanted to make bullfighting an integral part of the novel, because it is part of life in Spain. Actually, Spaniards tend to have different attitudes towards it. You can see this in my own family, for instance: when she was eighteen, my wife’s mother once went to a corrida in Valladolid with her father, only to pass out in the middle of the action. Her father had saved up all through the year to be able to afford the best seats, for the two weeks when the bullfights came to his native city and, far from showing any concern for his favourite child’s well-being when she fainted, he merely began to berate her for having ruined his enjoyment of what should have been, in his view at least, a wonderful spectacle. Like her mother, my wife Belén also disapproves of bullfighting.

My late father in law, Manolo, was a keen painter and took an obsessive interest in the work of Goya and Picasso, even though he did not share their passion for the bullfights. Picasso’s Guernica famously manages to feature a number of bulls and elements from the bullfight of course, while also portraying the horrors of war. Manolo also told me stories of his experiences as a small boy during the Civil War, and of how, for years after it had ended, he would be woken up in his bed every Sunday morning by the firing squads. Manolo’s anecdotes inspired me to become interested in the history of the conflict, and this ended up playing a part in The Long Siesta, too.

I also wanted to give my readers (whether or not they happen to have any Spanish) a sense of the ways in which Spaniards use language when they speak, in the hope of making the work more authentic (and also possibly more interesting and amusing); and so I’ve included a small number of phrases in my novel which are in fact instances of Spanish idioms. This presented the question of whether it would be better to translate these idioms from their original language into English; or whether it would work better if I were to transliterate them. There is of course a big difference, as anyone who is interested in the whole business of translation will know; although this may not be so obvious to ordinary readers who have never had cause to concern themselves with questions which are perhaps usually considered to inhabit the terrain where specialists hang out. Perhaps if I provide a few examples then it might make what I am talking about a little clearer. Let’s begin with ‘milk’. In Spanish, someone who is in a bad mood can be said to have, or to have drunk, (the) bad milk (‘El/ella tiene (la) mala leche’). On the other hand, if you want to express surprise or astonishment in Spanish, then you might say ‘Joder’/’F***’, but you might just as easily say ‘I dirty (or literally ‘shit in’) the milk’/‘Me cago en la leche’. And if you think something is wonderful, or simply ‘the best’, then you might say ‘it’s the milk’/‘es la leche’. To throw your house out of the window/‘tirar la casa por la ventana’, translates to ‘pulling out all of the stops’; and to warn against ‘putting the cart before the horse’ transliterates from the Spanish equivalent (‘empezar la casa por el tejado’) as ‘begin the house with the roof’.

                                                  

You can see how these idioms might prove something of a minefield for the struggling learner of Spanish; but I thought it would be fun to use them in The Long Siesta for comic purposes, and also to provide authenticity, always providing of course that the meaning was obvious. Indeed, I was keen to write a page-turner that would be easy to read, and so naturally the last thing I wanted to do was confuse the reader. I discussed this with my editors at Holland House, and they assured me that the meaning of what I was writing was obvious and that they’d tell me if anything was unclear. I’ve also included a small glossary, at the back of the book, for readers who are interested in looking into these matters further, along with a short list of Spanish vocabulary, where Spanish words (often connected with cuisine or bullfighting) have been used; although readers who are simply interested in enjoying a fast-moving and easy-to-read crime thriller set in Spain won’t need to stop and look words or phrases up. 

Nick Sweet  04 09 2015

The circus

It really doesn't matter what your political views are to see some of what is happening in the US Presidential campaign as a circus.

I have to admit to a certain pleasure at Contender Donald Trump's irreverent, unconventional, oft idiotic approach to presidential politics.  Certainly, given the abysmal records of both House and Senate over the past few years, almost anything that is different is refreshing.

It is hard to select one item to comment on about Trump's campaign, but the selection was made much easier this week by Contender Scott Walker (Governor of Wisconsin).  More of that later.

My choice of one item of Contender Trump's campaign to talk about is THE WALL.

In general, Contender Trump has been pretty light of detail in his broad-ranging proposals, but a couple of weeks ago he released his detailed policy on immigration.  He promises to triple the number of US immigration officers, to end job visas for foreign students, to deport undocumented migrants, and, in contradiction to the Fourteen Amendment, to end automatic citizenship for babies born on US soil.

In addition (fanfare please), Contender Trump has proposed to build a wall all along the 2000 mile (3200 km) border between the USA and Mexico, and to make Mexico pay for it.  To be fair, some of it (less than a third) has already been built, mainly in Arizona.

"“The Mexican government has taken the United States to the cleaners,” says the Trump policy paper. “They are responsible for this problem and they must help pay to clean it up.”

When questioned about the viability of such a fence, especially given the enormous costs and limited success rate of the existing George W. Bush mandated fence, Contender Trump had this to say: "Building a wall is easy, and it can be done inexpensively.  It's not even a difficult project if you know what you are doing."

Almost everyone involved in policing the US-Mexican border, almost everyone involved in building the existing fence, says that it is an impossible task, not worth the money both to build and maintain. Not only impossible to build, but it won't stop the flow anyway, much like George W. Bush's high-tech virtual wall was an inordinate failure.

Needless to say he would want the world to know such a magnificent structure to be known as The Trump Wall.

I mentioned above that it was Wisconsin Governor, Contender Scott Waker, that made me pick The Trump Wall as the one Trump policies to comment on.  The reason for that is in a recent NBC interview Contender Walker, when asked whether it would be necessary to build a wall between the USA and Canada, said it was worth considering.

My friend Steve Alessi (a founder member with Annamaria Alfieri of Sicilians for Kubu) sent me an article about Contender Walker's pronouncement and suggested it was to keep Canadians flooding across the border to take advantage of the US's free health care.

Anyway, as ambitious as The Trump Wall is, the Walker Wall is off the charts.  The border between the two countries is the longest border between any two countries and has severe problems associated with it.  However, to be fair, a start has been made already - it is policy to maintain a clear path along the border for its entire length.

To give some insight into the enormity of Contender Walker's idea, take a look at this fascinating video.

The two candidates arguing as to whose wall is biggest.

We are now only fourteen months away from the election - gasp - and have much more of this to look forward to.  I've lost track as to how many candidates have thrown their hats in the ring, but it must be in the mid-twenties.  So watch this space for updates on how the most powerful country on the planet elects its leader.

Stan - Thursday

PS.  In researching this blog, I discovered to my amazement that there are dozens of walls or fences between countries around the world.  You can find out about them here.

Hell Hotel

by Jorn Lier Horst

In addition to being part of an interesting community, I use this blog to keep my English skills in working order. I hope I manage to make myself understood. It is not so easy with a foreign language. My grandfather got to experience that. He signed on board the freighter Polar Fart. In Norwegian fart means to travel, or be traveling. After the first quay in Glasgow the crew re-baptized the ship with a single stroke of paint to Polar Traveller.

A couple of years ago I had a visit by an Englishman. He howled his laughter over signs that alerted for Fartshump, and had to get out of the car and take a picture of each eternal one. The signs are there to get alert drivers of bumps in the road and to reduce speed. I didn`t know that hump is slang for intercourse. I do know what fart is. Humping and farting is an en embarrassing combination, that knows everyone who has tried it.

Another friend of mine worked for a period as a telemarketer, but had to take off the rest of the day off when a potential customer was Englishman and she had to ask for Steve Pick. In Norwegian the pronouncement of Steve means hard and Pick means dick. Lessons learned was also she who started an IT company and called it FagWeb it. In Norwegian Fag means skills or science. After very many hits via American homoerotic sites, she changed the name to e-profile.

One should tread carefully when it comes to international launch of national products. Kavli is one of the biggest food companies in Norway, but in Greece they had trouble launching their goods. No wonder, since the Kavli (Καβλί) in Greek means erect penis (am I right, Jeff?). For the same reason Ford never sold any models of Ford Pinto in Portugal, where Pinto means small penis. It also went wrong for Chevrolet when they in the 80s launched the car model Nova in Latin America. Nova means star in Spanish but in Latin America means Nova "does not go". In France it went wrong with Toyota's launch of the sports car MR2. The French pronunciation of the letter and number combination is namely merde, witch means shit/damn -  isn`t that so, Cara?

There are several car companies who have committed advertising blunders as a result of imprudence or ignorance about the choice of name. Prior to launch in the Nordic market, Honda had to change model name on Honda Fitta to Honda Jazz, as fitta is a Norwegian name for the female genitalia. The wife of a friend of mine in Japan had one of those cars. In the advertising brochure he could read that  "Fitta is small on the outside but big inside" and "Fitta is a daily pleasure". It goes with the story that Honda previously dropped the model name Pervo. 

The people in the hotel industry also have their challenges. In my hometown Larvik we have Farris Bad Hotel  (Bad; norw. bath/spa) and a little further north is the village of Hell (hell; norw. slope/hill). There will you also find the city hotel, wishing you Welcome to Hell. 

Jorn Lier Horst