Tana River
A trip down the Tana River in Kenya 1960.
Like all boys of European descent, once I turned eighteen I was 'called up' for National Service in the Kenya Regiment, which was part of the British Army. Something that was expected of me and quite normal. It involved six months in The Kenya Regiment Training Centre (KRTC) near Nakuru in the Great Rift Valley and then three years of weekends and an annual three-week camp if one remained in the country. I knew many of the intake of one hundred, having attended the same schools.
At the time Kenya Colony was still in a “State of Emergency' trying to deal with the Kikuyu-led Mau-Mau insurrection. Jomo Kenyatta, who later became Prime Minister of an independent Kenya, was still incarcerated.
Once I had completed my six months stint I was thrilled to be included in a trip down the Tana River in Northern Kenya organised and paid for by the army. As far as I was concerned it was just another wonderful opportunity to explore the country.
A dozen graduates from our intake plus an officer and a sergeant from the training centre piled into one of the training centre trucks, something we were quite used to, having been on several expeditions as part of our six months training. Taking two days, we drove north from Nakuru to Thomson's Falls (now Nyaharuru) Nyeri, Nanyuki and passing Mount Kenya just to the south continued on to the lower lying and therefore hotter small towns of Isiolo and Garba Tula, and then on to the tiny village of Bahadale, the starting point of our journey, located on the bank of the Tana River.
The Tana rises on Mount Kenya, flows north and then turns south, eventually emptying itself into the Indian Ocean, about three hundred miles later, half way between Lamu and Malindi.
1, with a 12 bore shotgun and another member of the intake, Robin Hillyar, with a .256 rifle had been authorised to take our own weapons, to help provide for the pot, which we did.
Bahadale is part of the tribal area of the Rendille tribe, one of several small tribes in Northern Kenya, some of whom are related to the Oromo of Ethiopia. I found it interesting to come in contact with a tribe, one of some seventy in the country, with whom I had had no previous dealings. The lingua franca in Kenya and the whole of East Africa and beyond is ‘up country' Swahili, a derivative of the pure or safi Swahili spoken by the small Swahili tribe resident on the Kenya coast.
Our dug-out canoes, with two strapped together for stability, had elaborate grass roofs, I suppose because our hosts were used to catering for fancy ‘Safari Parties'. We asked the villagers to remove the grass roofs. There were also four local paddlers attached to each pair of canoes; since we intended to help paddle our own canoes, we arranged for two of the paddlers to travel in our truck to Garissa which is about one hundred miles down-river from Bahadale, and our half way point, where we would pick up another set of canoes to take us on the second part
of the journey. An African game ranger, dressed in his smart Kenya Wildlife uniform and carrying a well-maintained .303 service rifle, joined us.
The journey south, down this huge river, about two hundred yards wide, was completely wild and magical to me, despite the fact that I was brought up on a farm in a very rural part of Kenya and was familiar with local wildlife.
We always stopped paddling as we came round each bend, so as to be completely silent and trying not to disturb any wild animals who happened to be coming down to drink. We saw a multitude of animals. The river of course was home to a seemingly endless number of crocodiles and hippo; we also saw herds of antelope, wildebeest, zebra and giraffe. We expected to see herds of elephant round every corner and were rarely disappointed. On a couple of occasions a group of lions appeared. Mostly the animals stayed put, or just eased their way quietly back behind the canopy of trees, when we drifted into sight. There was often a large crocodile sunning itself on a sandbank, who silently slipped into the river when it became aware of our presence. Hippos are very territorial and often followed us while we transited what they saw as their patch. Once or twice we had to fire a shot into the water next to a more aggressive or just curious hippo.
The wild animals seemed to be relatively undisturbed by the local tribesmen and their herds of cattle, goats and camels, also coming down to drink.
We camped for two nights on the bank of the Tana. Our “tents' consisted of two groundsheets buttoned together and shared by two people; exactly what we had done on the various field expeditions during our six months training. A small fire was kept going during the night, which was enough to keep the wild animals away.
Robin Hillyar and I always went out hunting while the rest of the group set up camp, and most days came back with a guinea fowl or two. They were a bit tough but edible if cooked for long enough. Guinea fowl really need to be ‘hung' for a few days to make them tender. On one occasion, when walking down a game trail we almost bumped into the rear end of an elephant and had to beat a hasty retreat.
We stopped and camped in Garissa, which is the main administrative centre for the region.
We said farewell to the Rendille boatmen, who now had the arduous job of paddling their canoes back upstream. The fresh boatmen were Somali, since we were now in Somali territory.
Our second leg of the journey would take us from Garissa to Bura, about sixty miles further downstream; the training centre officer had been replaced by the centre's commanding officer, whom we had nick-named 'Buffalo Bill’(BB) as he was intent on shooting a buffalo; he was a bit 'gun happy. I was detailed to accompany him due to my Swahili language skills.
On one of the mornings, before dawn, a small group made up of BB, the game ranger, one of the boatmen and yours truly went out into the neighbouring scrub to shoot quail that regularly flew down to the river for an early morning drink. The whole area is semi-desert, usually with big trees on the river bank for a few yards, but because of the low rainfall, this degenerated into scrub quite quickly. On that day I remember disturbing a little dik-dik, one of the smallest antelopes in Africa, who glanced at us before dashing off into the bush, disturbed by the human presence
BB, with his fancy double barrelled 12 bore shot gun was a very good shot and within half an hour we had a bag of some twenty quail, including a few from me.
While we were out hunting the rest of the expedition had packed up and not long after dawn continued on the journey. Our little side trip had delayed us a couple of hours, so we were hurrying to catch up with the other two boats.
Sometime after noon we came round a bend in the river and encountered two elephants frolicking in the water. We thought to avoid them by moving towards the right hand bank but one of the boatmen said, , in Swahili, “No, the main stream of the river is on the left and the bank on the left is too steep for the elephants to climb out of the river. We should stay left, but maybe the bwana (referring to BB) could fire a shot into the air, then the elephants will run out on the right side, which is quite shallow.”
BB was persuaded to fire the shot and both elephants rushed out to the right. After a collective sigh of relief when we seemed to have averted danger, one of the elephants turned and charged us through the shallow water.
Standing up in the boat BB yelled: “Should I shoot it? Should I shoot it?" He waved his fancy double barrelled “elephant gun' about. Somehow I remained quite calm. “No sir,” was my response, “no sir. Over its head, shoot over its head.” The two boatmen, not trusting the situation, had leapt off the canoes and notwithstanding the presence of crocodiles and hippo in the river had swum to the left bank.
For those people who have never been under fire, if one is being shot at, firstly there is a bang when the bullet, breaking the sound barrier, goes over one's head and secondly one hears the report of the gun. So with me repeatedly firing my 12 bore, the game ranger firing his.303 service rifle, again and again and BB firing a barrage of shots, the elephant, who had got within ten yards, was suddenly confronted with this cacophony of noise coming from what he must have seen as an intruder into his territory. So he backed off and followed his companion out into the nearby bush.
Once calm had been restored after the few minutes of pandemonium the game ranger smiled at me. “Pasipo licence,” he said. “Without license.” Meaning that BB did not have a license to shoot an elephant.
“I should have shot it, I should have shot it,” muttered BB
We paddled the canoes over to the left bank, picked up the two boatmen and an hour or so later joined the rest of the group, who had already pitched camp, further downstream.
“What was all the shooting about?” our companions asked.
We explained about the elephants.
“Oh yes, we went past them on the right hand side. They took no notice.”
“I should have shot it,” BB kept muttering.
“Sir, there would have been a lot of trouble, best you didn't. You didn't have a licence." I said.
As before Robin Hillyar and I went off and bagged a few guinea fowl for the pot, to be included with BB's quail for our evening meal, adding to the usual baked potatoes, boiled carrots and ‘ugali’ – maize meal cake,
A day or so later, our little adventure, much treasured by me, ended in Bura, a small dusty village on the bank of the Tana. We all piled into the truck, having said a grateful farewell to the boatmen. We arrived back at the training centre two days later.
A month afterwards I caught the boat train' from Nairobi to the port of Mombasa and had a three week voyage on the Durban Castle mail boat from Mombasa via Mogadishu, Aden, Suez, Port Said, Genoa, Marseille and Gibraltar to the London Port of Tilbury, to continue my education. It was the very first time I had left Kenya. I have not lived in Kenya since- something that I certainly had not anticipated when I left- although I have visited several times in the intervening years. My Swahili is a bit rusty although I can still make myself understood throughout East Africa. When I do return I feel quite comfortable; Kenya will always be a part of me.