The Rand Club: The Rhodes Room

The Rand Club (1887-2015)

The Ghosts of Happy Valley: Searching for the Lost World of Africa's Infamous Aristocrats

'Happy Valley was the name given to the Wanjohi Valley in the Kenya Highlands, where a small community of affluent, hedonistic white expatriates settled between the wars. While Kenya's early colonial days have been immortalised by farming pioneers like Lord Delamere and Karen Blixen, and the pioneering aviator Beryl Markham, Happy Valley became infamous under the influence of troubled socialite, Lady Idina Sackville, whose life was told in Frances Osborne's bestselling The Bolter. The era culminated with the notorious murder of the Earl of Erroll in 1941, the investigation of which laid bare the Happy Valley set's decadence and irresponsibility, chronicled in another bestseller, James Fox's White Mischief. But what is left now? In a remarkable and indefatigable archaeological quest Juliet Barnes, who has lived in Kenya all her life and whose grandparents knew some of the Happy Valley characters, has set out to explore Happy Valley to find the former homes and haunts of this extraordinary and transient set of people. With the help of a remarkable African guide and further assisted by the memories of elderly former settlers, she finds the remains of grand residences tucked away beneath the mountains and speaks to local elders who share first-hand memories of these bygone times. Nowadays these old homes, she discovers, have become tumbledown dwellings for many African families, school buildings, or their ruins have almost disappeared without trace - a revelation of the state of modern Africa that makes the gilded era of the Happy Valley set even more fantastic. A book to set alongside such singular evocations of Africa's strange colonial history as The Africa House, The Ghosts of Happy Valley is a mesmerising blend of travel narrative, social history and personal quest.'

The British South Africa Police (BSAP)

Items in my Rhodesiana collection acquired in South Africa and England

Rhodesian Defender

Policeman, Rhodesia 1971 (Note: Land Rover Defender)

The Last Domino (South Africa Border War)

Salisbury - Rhodesia (1971)

Kenya Cowboys

As you know, I spent some time in Kenya in the late 1980s. We went on safari, hiked Mt Kenya, and explored the coast. I partied in Nairobi, Mombasa, and Malindi with English expats, slim, stylish young men and women, some of whom were taking a 'gap year' working in tourism or conservation projects in the region. They worked hard, but also knew how to have fun. Today, one of my best friends is a Kenya Cowboy expat who works as a commodities trader in Los Angeles.

***

"This is the world of the KC, also known as the Kenyan Cowboy. An insular group, descending from white English families that came in the early 1900s, is privy to both adoration and contempt within broader Kenyan society. When the first generation arrived, Kenya was primarily made up of tribes with expansive tracts of unsettled land. The English settlers, most of them wealthy social misfits, were seeking a level of freedom that turn-of-the-century London did not provide. One notorious group, the Happy Valley Set, settled around Lake Naivasha in the 1920s. As the years progressed and the West faced economic decline, the number of settlers swelled to around 20,000. Various scandals, including drug use, affairs, wife swapping, suicide and murder followed the settlers for years. It wasn’t until the early 1950’s during the Mau Mau uprising (which was followed by Kenya’s bid for independence in the 60s) that the Happy Valley lifestyle began to shift.

 The focal point of the KC community began evolving into that of development and conservation. Many members saw themselves as intrinsically linked to the land and worked together to create a number of conservation parks, agencies and some of the very first safari companies. With this they also continued managing a number of farms and cattle ranching. It was here, in the middle of nowhere, that they raised their children and developed intricate networks among themselves. While boarding school was de rigeur, almost all of their children returned to Kenya to work on the family business, or expand their own entrepreneurial companies."

Kenya's Last Cowboys, Persephone Magazine, 2 April 2012

On the Nigerian Affair

Let it be known henceforth that I shall be abstaining from 21-year-old blonde hotties, innumerable bottles of Veuve Clicquot, and weekend excursions to St Barts until those poor little African-American girls are returned to their rightful owners. Let the deprivations commence.

Nosher in Africa

"By 2000, however, a new business opportunity arose. Several other freelance intelligence men were interested in west Africa, including a jovial and sandy-haired individual called Nigel Morgan. A Briton of Irish descent, Morgan is a former member of the Irish Guards (he calls them the Micks)  where he worked in military intelligence. His character is one that the novelist Graham Greene might relish. He trained briefly as a Jesuit priest, shortly after working for a thinktank that advised Margaret Thatcher in the 1980s. Known by friends and neighbours as Nosher or Captain Pig, he has a startlingly red face, the sort that glows in a dark room, having spent years under the African sun while swallowing pints of pink gin and tumblers of whisky. His love of hearty English food, rich cheese and cigars is matched only by the pleasure he takes in spinning yarns and arguing about politics."

- Adam Roberts, The Wonga Coup: Guns, Thugs, and a Ruthless Determination to Create Mayhem in an Oil-Rich Corner of Africa (2006)

Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck

'Lieutenant Colonel Paul Emil von Lettow-Vorbeck was every inch the Prussian officer that day he stepped off the German mail steamer in Dar es Salaam harbor and prepared to call on his superior officer, Governor Dr. Heinrich Schnee. He was in civilian clothing, but a military man would have recognized him immediately from his bearing. His hair was cropped short in the Prussian manner and his brown skin lay close against the bones of his face. His blue eyes sparkled as he smiled, but an observer would also get the impression that his baritone voice could be raised in military German that would give goosepimples to an erring soldier. He was the archetype of the Junker officer. There was no wonder about that phenomenon; his father had been a German general and he expected to be a general himself, quite soon if the world situation continued to be as shaky as it had been in the last two years.'

Guerilla: Colonel von Lettow-Vorbeck and Germany's East African Empire, Edwin P. Hoyt (1981)

Agent Kruger

Or, as he's also known in the film, Agent 32--a direct reference to South Africa's famed special forces unit, 32 Battalion, known by their enemies as Os Terriveis, or, The Terrible Ones. I knew several of these chaps during my time in Southern Africa. Big, burly, bearded guys from South Africa, Rhodesia, Australia, and Portugal who didn't take shit from anyone. The attitude, beard, shorts, braai, weapons skills, and accent in the movie are accurate depictions of these men. After the fall of the country in 1994 some of them joined private security firms operating in other parts of Africa, namely Angola. They're still around waiting for new work. Activate Kruger !

Quatermain

"Well, it's eighteen months or so ago since I first met Sir Henry Curtis and Captain Good, and it was in this way. I had been up elephant hunting beyond Bamangwato, and had had bad luck. Everything went wrong that trip, and to top up with I got the fever badly. So soon as I was well enough I trekked down to the Diamond Fields, sold such ivory as I had, and also my wagon and oxen, discharged my hunters, and took the post-cart to the Cape. After spending a week in Cape Town, finding that they overcharged me at the hotel, and having seen everything there was to see, including the botanical gardens, which seem to me likely to confer a great benefit on the country, and the new Houses of Parliament, which I expect will do nothing of the sort, I determined to go on back to Natal by the Dunkdd then lying in the docks waiting for the Edinburgh Castle due in from England. I took my berth and went aboard, and that afternoon the Natal passengers from the Edinburgh Castle transhipped, and we weighed anchor and put out to sea.

Among the passengers who came on board there were two who excited my curiosity. One, a man of about thirty, was one of the biggest-chested and longest-armed men I ever saw. He had yellow hair, a big yellow beard, clear-cut features, and large gray eyes set deep into his head. I never saw a finer-looking man, and somehow he reminded me of an ancient Dane. Not that I know much of ancient Danes, though I remember a modern Dane who did me out of ten pounds ; but I remember once seeing a picture of some of those gentry, who, I take it, were a kind of white Zulus. They were drinking out of big horns, and their long hair hung down their backs, and as I looked at my friend standing there by the companion-ladder, I thought that if one only let his hair grow a bit, put one of those chain shirts on to those great shoulders of his, and gave him a big battle-axe and a horn mug, he might have sat as a model for that picture. And, by the way, it is a curioas thing, and just shows how the blood will show out. I found out afterwards that Sir Henry Curtis, for that was the big man's name, was of Danish blood. He also reminded me strongly of somebody else, but at the time I could not remember who it was.

The other man, who stood talking to Sir Henry, was short, stout, and dark, and of quite a different cut. I suspected at once that he was a naval officer. I don't know why, but it is difficult to mistake a navy man. I have gone shooting trips with several of them in the course of my life, and they have always been just the best and bravest and nicest fellows I ever met, though given to the use of profane language.

I asked, a page or two back, what is a gentleman? I'll answer it now : a royal naval officer is, in a general sort of a way, though, of course, there may be a black sheep among them here and there. I fancy it is just the wide sea and the breath of God's winds that washes their hearts and blows the bitterness out of their minds and makes them what men ought to be. Well, to return, I was right again ; I found out that he was a naval officer, a lieutenant of thirty-one, who, after seventeen years' service, had been turned out of her majesty's employ with the barren honor of a commander's rank, because it was impossible that he should be promoted. This is what people who serve the queen have to expect : to be shot out into the cold world to find a living just when they are beginning to really understand their work, and to get to the prime of life. Well, I suppose they don't mind it, but for my part I had rather earn ray bread as a hunter. One's half -pence are as scarce, perhaps, but you don't get so many kicks. His name I found out— by referring to the passengers' list—was Good—Captain John Good. He was broad, of medium height dark, stout, and rather a curious man to look at. He was so very neat and so very clean shaved, and he always wore an eye-glass in his right eye. It seemed to grow there, for it had no string, and he never took it out except to wipe it. At first I thought he used to sleep in it, but I afterwards found that this was a mistake. He put it in his trousers pocket when he went to bed, together with his false teeth, of which he had two beautiful sets that have often, my own being none of the best, caused me to break the tenth Commandment. But I am anticipating."

H. Rider Haggard, King Solomon's Mines (1885)

Anse Intendance, Mahé, Seychelles

A few years ago my beautiful young bride (now ex-wife--first of several, I imagine) and I spent a week of our three-week honeymoon in a villa overlooking this, the famous Intendance beach on the southwest coast of Mahé, the main island of the Seychelles. By day we drank champagne after a large breakfast, lounged about the sun-drenched swimming pool with various European bankers and their supermodel wives, and then repaired back to our quarters for a mid-afternoon romp. Afterwards we cooled off in our private pool overlooking the pounding surf. For supper we visited one of the nearby restaurants, and then met on the verandah for wine, cocktails, hors d'oeuvres, and conversation with fellow guests. My petite blonde bride, fluent in French and Arabic, charmed the gathering and quickly made friends. We settled down as the evening drew on, the women chattering away, the chaps drinking whisky and smoking cigars and discussing the rugby scores, business opportunities in Dubai and Qatar, and the global economy. The evening wind and rain tore through the landing, giving us a light soaking. Down below the surf intensified.

2e Régiment étranger de parachutistes à Djibouti (Légion étrangère)

Afrikaner Blood

SA Special Forces Brigade: Second To None

Windhoek

On my first visit to Windhoek, Namibia, about fifteen years ago, I saw dozens of blonde-haired German children and their parents milling around this church one afternoon. African traders were lined up across the street selling tourist trinkets. I stayed in a small German hotel in the centre of the city, within walking distance of the research institute. At night I drank in the bar, next to large bearded men who downed glass after glass of white wine. I visited the luxury hotels to meet up with pretty local girls or cute-but-naive American Peace Corps women, the latter type a distressingly common occurrence throughout my travels around Southern Africa. I met representatives of the local German community, who told me increasing numbers of young Germans were coming to the country and running hunting farms for the tourist trade. Namibia sports a bleak, desolate landscape, beautiful in its spareness, reminiscent for me of Arizona and Southern California, and it occupies a special place in my memories.

Lamu Archipelago

Shooting Practice

I'm in love--with my new handgun. I went shooting this morning, partly in commemoration of the savages for whom this day has been set aside by the American authorities and the traitors who advocate for them. I used a Wilson Combat .45 ACP. I was--according to my companions--extraordinarily accurate, a 'natural' as they put it. Almost all of my shots hit home. I haven't used a handgun since my South African days 13 years ago. As I've mentioned before, in my late 20s I lived in Pretoria, South Africa, after travelling around Southern Africa, and trained with a local cadre of Boere Nationalists. (Hoe gaan dit my vriende?). When I was a boy I had a BB-gun and sometimes used a .22 with a friend's dad in the woods of New York and Connecticut. When I say 'shooting' here I'm referring to firing handguns and rifles at a local shooting range--not targeting pheasants, deer, neighbourhood moggies, and university students, which in the US is called 'hunting'. It's all very confusing. But I'm sure you knew that. Using a firearm gives one a measure of real power, which, given the general trajectory of things, might be of benefit to you and yours.

Recces !