June 2000: OLD CARS I HAVE KNOWN by Margery Barnes.

Margery Barnes came to Kenya as a young girl of 3. She first wrote about her early memories of driving in Kenya for 'Competition', the magazine of the Kenya Motor Sports Club. It was published again recently in 'Women In Kenya', the Journal of the East Africa Womens' League, and we are grateful to Margery Barnes and to the editorial staff of the EAWL for permission to print it again here.

The first car I can remember was a Chev box-body. It was a khaki-green colour, with tool boxes sticking out at the sides, and canvas windows which rolled up and down, and fixed onto little clips which always seemed to be broken so that one side of the canvas either let in billows of dust or else flapped soggily if it was raining. The doors closed with an ordinary bolt. But it had a very high clearance and was splendid in mud. The car was only used for the once or twice-monthly visit to our local town which was Nakuru, and for occasional social visits to our friends. My father and mother sat in the front and us three children, as we were then, at the back on sacks of posho, or else sandwiched between a dozen bulging sacks of dried pyrethrum going down to the KFA. Sometimes we had to hang onto a bucking calf going to the vet, or wriggling baby pigs. Whatever it was, it was always a likeable adventure. The twenty-five miles down to Nakuru took a good hour, and even longer coming home as we lived 3,000 feet higher, a long hot, or sometimes muddy, grind back with a stop for a picnic lunch or tea half-way, while the engine cooled. At one time my father acquired a reading light for my mother to use in the evenings, the paraffin lights being rather inadequate. It worked off a car battery and.... there was only one battery. Inevitably there came the day when we were all waiting in the car, dressed in our best clothes for one of our rare outings, my mother driving, and the battery down in the house securely fastened to the light, my father somewhere out on the farm.... When my grandparents came out to visit us from England it was only fitting that they should be taken round in comfort, so my father hired a smart green saloon. This actually had glass windows and I remember winding them up and down until my arm ached, just to impress our neighbours' children. Some years later we had a super little Chev, also a box body, but of a more streamlined build. It was registered number C 2298. C was then for Nakuru. A represented Mombasa, B Nairobi, and H Kisumu. This little car served as the family and farm car for many years, through every imaginable vagary of road and weather. And in those days there was no tarmac except in the towns. To get to Nairobi, we had a hundred miles of a variety of roads including a perilous (for our car) climb up the Kedong escarpment, below the present escarpment road which was built very expertly by Italian prisoners of war. C2298 faithfully conveyed us and our school trunks to boarding school every term. Often there was a glutinous mud on the last stretch home. Once school friends, their respective cars and us, all in our school uniforms, were thoroughly stuck on the famous Bahati forest section coming home after the school concert. I can see my father now, with his best trousers rolled up to his knees, shoes and socks discarded, shouting instructions and heaving the car with the rest of us. The last mile was often the worst. Once, when only my mother and I were in the car and thoroughly stuck, I was despatched to call farm labourers to come and push, and had to walk the wet mile home in the dark, with my brand new white shoes stuck into my mackintosh pockets - at least they were not going to get spoilt! Some years later we used to go camping near Nanyuki. Every holiday the family expedition would set out in C2298 for a week or longer. Into the car were piled all of us, our camping gear and food, the baby and her pram, our bicycles strapped to the sides, and the cook perched on the 'verandah', the open back door. We must have looked like a travelling hardware store! On the way home after one of those expeditions, an ominous rattling started up in the region of the engine. We went on until something finally snapped and the car ground to a halt outside old Dr. Henderson's farm house near Ol'Joro-orok. Some hours later we set off once more -towed by the doctors team of eight oxen, while we children walked alongside or rode in turn. It was a great adventure especially as we arrived well into the night. Ever after that the car had a permanent mutter, and was known as the 'Chatterer.' My father informed us that the unobtainable part which caused this was the 'propeller-shaft-housing-bushing-tailor-pin.' This sounded so good we learned it off by heart. After the 'Chatterer' I remember a series of cars, usually old and always of great character. For a short time we had a two-seater tourer with a 'dickey' sticking out at the back. My brother was relegated to the dickey, while three could just squeeze into the front. On long drives he used to be virtually forgotten as he could not communicate with the rest of us and we'd arrive at our destination hours later, and he would climb stiffly out, scarlet from wind and sun and covered in dust, but unperturbed and cheery as ever. I learned to drive in a Fordson van, a good strong little farm car, but by the time my driving lessons came along it had a second gear which used to leap out and into neutral, so had to be held firmly in the left hand while one concentrated grimly on steering with the right - probably a good way to learn! My brother and I used to pop down to the local duka, five miles away, as practice for our driving. Coming home there was a particularly steep hill which the old van just couldn't get up when loaded with farm and household purchases. So we'd have to negotiate a rather murky deviation which used to be the old road, and which went through the bamboo forest but was navigable only when dry. Modern cars with 4WD would now think nothing of the roads which, for us, could hold such terrors, and the cars such joys. But for us they were for real, not for fun, and often meant the difference between getting home or spending the night in the car. My parents in fact made lasting friends through rescuing strangers from the famous miles of mud past our farm. On shocking wet nights the tell-tale grinding could be heard and then stop, and soon dripping figures would appear at our door and be ushered into the warm and homely room with the great fireplace glowing. And my father would button up his mackintosh and be off into the night to help push out the car.

Does anyone have any similar reminiscences, or know some body else who does?

 

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