Thread by @HistoryKE

#HistoryKeThread: Mzee's Life In England

This is a note that Mzee Jomo Kenyatta wrote whilst living in England to dedicate his book, My People of Kikuyu, to his landlord, Mr. A.G. Linfield.

Mr. Linfield is seen here (left) with Mzee when he paid his former tenant a visit at State House, Nairobi, in 1965.

Although there isn’t much recorded about Mzee Kenyatta’s life in England, where he lived, studied and worked for much of the period between 1929 and 1946, we will attempt to give a peek at his time in that country.

Mzee had travelled to London as spokesman of the Agïküyü through a political outfit - the Kikuyu Central Association. The main mission was to highlight the Agïküyü community's grievances against the colonial government, and was sponsored by a group of Indian merchants.

While in London, Mzee often found himself facing a brick wall. On numerous occasions, the colonial authorities denied him audience. In 1940, however, Mzee Kenyatta managed to meet with Drummond Shiels, the British colonial undersecretary.

One of the things that Mzee told the undersecretary turned out prophetic.

"If the colonial government refuses to hear or see the emissaries of the discontented", Mzee warned, "it would only drive them into violent methods...."

Mzee briefly returned to Kenya in 1930 as the Indian merchants were no longer able to support his upkeep overseas.

The KCA, realizing that Mzee could do more in England than at home, immediately embarked on raising sufficient funds to send Mzee back, which they finally did in 1931.

Mzee would spend an additional 15 years in England.

He tried to live an austere life, and undertook various odd jobs to finance his mission.

In 1932, Mzee sent quite a number of written petitions to the colonial government, all of which were ignored.

Although he managed in the same year to persuade the Carter Land Commission to offer compensation to Africans who had been forcefully evicted from their lands, his plea that the colonial government stop designating lands "white highlands" was frowned upon.

In 1936, he enrolled for anthropology studies at the University of London under Bronislaw Malinowski (pictured), arguably the most influential anthropologist of 20th century Britain.

Malinowski was struck by Mzee's intelligence and deep understanding of his people's culture. He helped inspire Mzee to author the book 'Facing Mount Kenya', which came out in 1938.

The book was a bestseller. It helped catapult Mzee somewhat into a celebrity African in Europe...

....and many people sought to meet him.

The book wasn't just about Agïküyü culture. It was also a scathing indictment of the colonial system back home in Kenya.

Mzee felt the book had helped in a big way articulate in the west the grievances that Africans had with....

....the colonial government. It was therefore time for him to return home.

However, the outbreak of WWII in 1939 put paid to his planned return. Mzee couldn't sail back. The war seemed to change everything.

Nobody cared anymore about Africans' grievances. Hitler's madness took center stage.

Owing to the war, and persuaded by a friend of his called Dina Stock, Mzee decided to move to the relative safety of the English countryside. They set out to stay with a college friend of Stock’s, near the village of Storrington in West Sussex.

Mzee liked his new home. With its woods and farmlands, this particular English countryside was a lot similar to the central Kenya greenery that he was used to. But he needed to find work to do.

It wasn't long before he found work as a farmworker at AG Linfield's Chesswood nurseries at the village of Thakeham.

Mzee's amiable personality endeared him to the workforce. Many locals also found him to be an interesting and gregarious chap.

They even nicknamed him 'jumbo' (not sure - could also have been 'jambo').

Roy Armstrong was a Southampton university lecturer who was Mzee's landlord. At an interview in the 90s, his daughter vividly recalled how Mzee, who also kept some chicken, diligently...

....tended to his house's vegetable garden, and how she was fascinated by the sweet corn that he grew. Roy's daughter also revealed that she learnt from Mzee how to grow the corn in a block rather than a row in order to facilitate better pollination.

She also spoke of a 'sacred tree' that Mzee had planted. According to her, Mzee had claimed that the tree was the means by which he communicated with the spirits of his people back home.

Incidentally, this tree is said to exist to this day and was mysteriously the only one in that garden that survived the great storm of 1987.

In his spare time, Mzee liked to hang out at a local in Storrington called the Anchor. Here, he would enthral locals with mimicries of how he would stalk and kill a lion.

Could he also have been a ladies man?

Sometime in the 1990s, a Storrington lady recalled an incident that took place when she was out with Mzee Kenyatta for a leisurely walk. This was during the war years.

‘when a snake or adder suddenly appeared in our path. I suppose Jomo recognised it as dangerous and killed it with one swipe of his rather special walking stick, which he always carried’.

It was also during Mzee's stay in Sussex that he became close to a family in which a lady, Edna Clarke, worked as nanny.

When Edna's parents were both killed in an air raid in May 1941, Mzee Kenyatta instinctively offered her much emotional support and sympathy.

Little wonder that the couple got married a year later.

On 11th August 1943, their son, Peter Magana, was born at Worthing Hospital in Sussex. Peter was named after Mzee Kenyatta's grandfather.

To supplement his farmworker’s wage, Jomo Kenyatta was in much demand as a lecturer. Not only did he lecture to British troops under the Forces Educational Scheme, but he also lectured for the Workers Educational Association (WEA), usually about colonial issues.

After the war, in September 1946, Mzee sailed from Southampton, leaving behind Edna and their son, Magana. He returned to Kenya as the indisputable leader of the freedom struggle.

In this October 1963 photo, Mzee Jomo Kenyatta poses for a photo with, among others, James Gichuru (l), Dr. Njoroge Mungai (3rd right) and Charles Njonjo (r). The photo was taken outside the house that was Mzee's residence in England during WWII.

This is yet another pic of Mzee in England in the 1940s.