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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