Forks And Hope: An African Notebook By Elspeth Huxley

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Hardcover

Publisher: Chatto & Windus Ltd 1964, 1st edition

Used - Very Good: The DJ is in a poor condition and has some wear and tear and paper loss (see picture) but is now covered with a fresh Cellophane sleeve. The book is clean and the pages clear and without markings. The book pages are clean, intact and the spine remains undamaged. Dj is faded.

This book was first published in 1964, has 272 pages, 21 chapters, 20 B/W line drawings by Jonathan Kingdon, and 2 maps. This book is based on Elspeth Huxley's visit to parts of Tanganyika, Kenya and Uganda, between Feb and May 1963. ELSPETH JOSCELIN HUXLEY (CBE 1962) was born on 23.7.1907. Her parents arrived in Thika, British East Africa (BEA -Kenya) in 1912 to start a coffee farm. She was educated in a White school in Nairobi. She left Kenya in 1925 but returned periodically. She married GERVAS HUXLEY in 1931. She wrote 30 books. She died in a Nursing Home in Tetbury, Gloucestershire, England, at the age of 89 on 10.1.1997.
Serengeti is like a land-ocean. Huxley appreciated the birds and animals driving to Lake Lagarja -south east and soon saw hyena and the wildebeest, lions and cheetah in the grass. Humans were much more of a threat than the hyena. She flies over short grass plains of eastern Serengeti and Ngorongoro Conservation Area (NCA), where the wildebeest had their calves. She listened to stories of poaching and
Africanisation. she watched the floor of the 8th natural wonder of the World - Ngorongoro crater from the only Wildlife lodge at the time ( Now in 2014, there are many lodges and camps in Serengeti and NCA, with better solid road coming out of the Crater and new observation platform and toilet facilities at the rim of the Crater.). Huxley found Arusha a small Asian town. (Now 2014, a very large town from where all safari's start. Many Asians still live here and some are very rich - on one of the Indian wedding they took over the 2 largest hotels in Arusha.). She also talks to President Julius Nyerere who believed in one party state like many other African leaders.
Back in Kenya, Huxley goes to Aberdares and Kipikieri Peak at over 9,000ft. The Africanisation has given the kikuyu to chop all the trees down. The population growth has been by millions and the new African settlers get some small plots of land to farm. Similar arrangements were at Kinangop. A typical African man will have 3 wives and 25 children to feed. Many European houses and farms were left to ruin. The scent of Lamuria bushed the Mt Kenya air. Here too in Kenya, the land had been divided and the Kikuyu plant maize and potatoes. The colonial houses are left to ruin. The Nandi and the Kamba need settlement officers to help to form Co-Ops. Most of the Kenyan Afrikaners left for South Africa. The Nairobi traffic was choking in 1963. (Now in 2014, the traffic is so bad that workers leave home at 2 am to fine a parking place and then sleep in their cars before work. Morning and evening traffic comes to stand still for hours). Huxley had met Mzee Jomo Kenyatta (Kamau -wa-Ngengi -- Johnstone Kamau) first in London in 1936. Visiting Tsavo NP, Huxley meets David and Daphne Sheldrick, dealing with orphans, poachers, too many elephants, fires and drought. She also visits Northern Frontier District (NFD), Masabit Mountain and Isiolo where Joy and George Adamson lived. Later, she visits Njoro where her mother 'Tilly' lived with her aged African servants.
The last chapters of this book are on Uganda and her problems and future. Over 15 years, we have visited Kenya and Tanzania on safaris and visited nearly most corners, and our drivers have always said that their politicians were only interested in their own pockets and stomachs and not in the people. This book gives the reader insight into the life of these 3 East African countries in 1963 and before.
Some other books by Elspeth Huxley are:-
(1) White Man's Country, 2 Volumes, 1935 (1988)
(2) Murder on Safari, 1938 (2002)
(3) Red Strangers, 1939 (2009)
(4) East Africa, 1941
(5) The Sorcerer's Apprentice, 1956
(6) Flame Trees of Thika, 1959 (2000)
(7) The Mottled Lizard, 1962 (1999)
(8) Livingstone, 1974
(9) Out in the Mid day Sun, My Kenya, 1985
(10)Race and Politics in Kenya, 1944 (1956)