Tracing the Contours of Empire in Mombasa - I

There are names of places inscribed in your mind. Names that you would have come across in a book, a postage stamp or a film. You have not visited them, nor do you think you ever will. Until recently, Mombasa was such a place in my mind. However, life’s undulating nature often surprises, and recently took me to this old port city of Kenya. This is my account.

In view of the coastline, I am seated on the lower deck of the Mombasa Club. Built in 1897, the club is a well-preserved relic from the days of the British Protectorate for East Africa. It is located on the southern edge of the city, facing the Old Town of Mombasa at one end and the waters of the Indian Ocean at the other.

The Club was originally built as a watering hole for British civil servants and officers who were building the Kenya-Uganda railway. A symbol of Britain’s bold effort to connect East Africa, the railway would go on to be nicknamed ‘The Lunatic Express’ due to the number of lives lost in its development. Amongst the chief causes of death? Man-eating lions, immortalised in the book, Man Eaters of Tsavo by Lieutenant Colonel J. H. Peterson, who was in-charge of the railway’s development. Lt. Col. Peterson eventually succeeded in shooting the two lions responsible, but not before they killed scores of his workers, amongst them many Indians brought in to help lay the line. These events took place not far from where I am sitting, in the vast expanse of the Tsavo National Park. The Lunatic Express served the people of Kenya for over a century. However, notorious for delays, it breathed its last a few years ago. It has been replaced by a shiny new standard-gauge Chinese train, which has cut travel time to a third. A new world power is replacing the legacy of the old.

I turn my gaze towards the Club. One could be forgiven for forgetting how much the world outside it has changed since Lt. Col. Peterson ventured out here to build his railway. Its white walls and slanting green roofs are of a distinctly colonial aesthetic. Two large verandas offer mesmerising views of the ocean, ideal for spending an afternoon reading, or in conversation – cooled by ceiling fans if not the ocean breeze. The floors and staircases are wooden, and its spacious corridors are decorated with shields belonging to various regiments of the British Army that have passed through. “King’s African Rifles” reads one. “Gurkha” proclaims another. The male restrooms are marked “Gentlemen” – a reminder of that now rare breed of human being. Everything at the Club seems to move at that somewhat more reasonable pace of the old world. Winston Churchill has stayed here, as has Queen Elizabeth.

Like other British clubs, the Mombasa Club was not open to "natives" for many years. Today however, the Club counts an eclectic mixture of Mombasa's well-heeled gentry amongst its ranks. One is as likely to hear Kiswahili or Gujarati as English in the hallways

In the Club’s library, the tales of many a colonial voyager are recorded in the dusty, time-worn books that line its shelves. I had spent the morning browsing through chronicles of the British Empire, its politics and its military history. The books on the two World Wars had reminded me of my grandfather, who fought on the Burma Front in World War II. He had a great love for reading, and it was from him that I first learnt to speak English. I had found books on illustrious men of the Empire such as Gordon of Khartoum, and Lord Curzon, Viceroy of India, best remembered for ordering and then reversing the first partition of The Bengal. Amongst the titles I had also spotted a biography of Ava Gardner, Hollywood’s legendary seductress from the 1940s, and wife of Frank Sinatra. On the back cover was Gardner, who married thrice, joyfully riding a cycle down a road on a sunny day. Beside it, a caption read “She liked jazz and driving too fast and nights that went on forever. She loved dogs and gin and four-letter words and Frank Sinatra.” The last line had reminded me of a comical episode recorded by the late Minoo P. Bhandara (former member of the National Assembly of Pakistan, author Bapsi Sidhwa’s brother, and known more commonly as M.P. Bhandara). 1954 had brought Ava Gardner to Lahore to shoot the film Bhowani Junction. One evening, her posse had gone out to watch her film, Barefoot Contessa which had been playing at Regal Cinema. Regal’s owner, playing host that evening, had panicked upon realising how quickly Gardner and her friends were going through the gin he had supplied. He had called Minoo’s father, who was in the liquor business, for urgent help. Therefore, Minoo was rushed to Regal Cinema with two bottles of the stuff, and as a reward, given a seat next to Gardner to watch the film. Suddenly, she turned to him and asked a question, which he didn’t understand. She repeated herself, but he still didn’t get it. Exasperated, she shouted, “I want to go to the shithouse! Do you understand, shit?” M.P. Bhandhara was then granted the privilege of escorting her to an outhouse. Some reward!

The Decline and Fall of the British Empire by Piers Brendon was another title which had attracted my attention. On the inside cover was a map showing the Empire at its apogee, and the many nations it ruled over. Browsing through it, I had stopped at a photograph that I recognised well. It showed Muhammad Ali Jinnah and Jawaharlal Nehru, taking a garden stroll together. I knew the photograph well – it was from a summit in Simla during the critical final years before the 1947 Partition. Jinnah is seen in a light coloured suit, and Nehru in an achkan and tang pyjama. The caption read “Tragically, the brilliant, opulent and inspiring leaders of rival political movements, could find no means of uniting an independent India.” A more accurate description would have explained that while Jinnah had accepted a united India on condition of constitutional guarantees for fair treatment of religious minorities, Nehru had spurned the idea. In the crucial final episode prior to Partition, the Nehru-led Congress Party had rejected the Cabinet Mission Plan (after the Muslim League had accepted it) which would have secured a united Indian federation. A second photograph, captioned “On top of the world, 1938,” showed a group of British merrymakers enjoying refreshments against the backdrop of the Giza pyramids. Amongst them was a fair-skinned lady, glass in hand, looking on at a dark-skinned Arab man, who was bent over in order to serve her. It had made me wonder what must have been going through his mind.

Like other British clubs, the Mombasa Club was not open to “natives” for many years. Today however, the Club counts an eclectic mixture of Mombasa’s well-heeled gentry amongst its ranks. One is as likely to hear Kiswahili or Gujarati as English in the hallways. My sojourn here, a welcome respite, is thanks to the generous hospitality of one of the Club’s member families.

The ocean gently laps the Mombasa coast, not fifty yards away. Along the club's boundary runs a long hedge of bougainvillea, which is in bloom. Every now and then, there is a whiff of jasmine from somewhere. On the horizon, like tea lights, flicker the lamps of ships that have taken leave of the port. Above all this is a starry sky

It is my last night in Mombasa, and I have come down to the restaurant for dinner. To satisfy one’s taste buds in exile, I have ordered the spicy chicken curry and now await the twenty-five minutes that the menu says it will take. The restaurant on the lower deck is open-air, and tonight’s diners include a young Indian couple and a group of Kenyan professionals engaged in lively conversation.

It is what can only be termed a glorious night. A strong breeze blows through the coconut palm trees around the deck, carrying with it the warmth of the Indian Ocean. As if chasing it in futility, for it is forever heavier, the ocean gently laps the Mombasa coast, not fifty yards away. Along the club’s boundary runs a long hedge of bougainvillea, which is in bloom. Every now and then, there is a whiff of jasmine from somewhere. On the horizon, like tea lights, flicker the lamps of ships that have taken leave of the port. Above all this is a starry sky. The grand vista reminds me of a passage from Karen Blixen’s Out of Africa which, serendipitously, I have read just the day before. Her description did justice to the night sky. “The stellar heaven of the equator is richer than that of the north, and you see it more because you are out more at night….Here in the great room everybody comes and goes, this is the place where things are going on. To Arabia and Africa, where the sun of the midday kills you, night is the time for travelling and enterprise. The stars have been named here, they have been guides to human being for many centuries, drawing them in long lines across the desert sands and the sea...”

Blixen, a Danish Baroness, came to settle in British East Africa at the turn of the 20th century. She bought a large farm outside Nairobi and launched a coffee plantation. From shooting “big game” to mediating disputes amongst Kikuyu tribal elders, to driving ox-carts to supply British front lines during World War 1, she saw it all. The coffee plantation never succeeded – Nairobi’s high altitude and pest attacks getting the best of it – and eventually she had to return, disappointed, to Europe. However, Kenya never left her, and she went on to write about her exploits in an intimate memoir which has become a classic and a film of worldwide acclaim. She visited Mombasa several times, and would likely have visited the Club, perhaps even looked out onto the same view.

I look towards the ocean’s dark, endless waters and am struck by a sense of history.

The author is an economic development specialist working to enable emerging economies to tackle poverty through private sector development. Raised in Rawalpindi and educated at IBA Karachi and Brown University, he has worked in North America, Europe, the Middle East, East and West Africa, and South Asia. He is fond of exploring the cosmopolitan fabric of African and Asian societies. He tweets at @arsalanalif