Update: Reading Kenya's History

I asked Lydia if she knew of any places that commemorate Britain's camps where Mau Mau sympathizers were imprisoned.  Do any of the camps still exist as museums?  Or transformed into something else?  She said that the only place that remains (that she knows of) is Kapenguria, which is the location where Jomo Kenyatta and five other Mau Mau leaders were imprisoned at the outset of The Emergency.  They were known as the Kapenguria Six.  (It's far away, but I am curious enough to want to see it.)

If the name Kenyatta rings a bell, well it should.  Jomo Kenyatta became the first president of Kenya and his son Uhuru Kenyatta is the current president.  Neither one is known for a stellar human rights record.

Interestingly, in the epilogue to Elkins' book, she reports on a meeting between Jomo Kenyatta (after he had ascended to the presidency of Kenya) and Evelyn Baring who had been the chief British official in Kenya during the Emergency and was directly responsible for the imprisonment of Kenyatta.  I have to quote directly from Elkins because it is so.... so... terribly classic.

There was no avoiding the subject, so after some initial pleasantries the former jailer turned to his onetime captive, gestured, and said, "By the way, I was sitting at that actual desk when I signed your detention order twenty years ago."  "I know," Kenyatta told him.  "If I had been in your shoes at the time I would have done exactly the same."  The nervousness evaporated, and the room erupted in relieved laughter.  With everyone still chuckling, the new president chimed in, "And I myself signed a number of detention orders sitting right there too" (354-355).

Nothing is black and white.  I have a whole series of critiques of the Elkins book (including her lack of nuance), which I will save for another post, but neither the Mau Mau leadership, nor the British colonial authorities come out as heroes.  Revolutions are ugly but sometimes necessary.