Early Memories – Kenya V

Terence McNally's postcard of Windsor Castle in Cape Town

It is amazing to think that when I was four and the family came to leave Kenya it was still normal for the company my father worked for to use ocean liners rather than air liners to move its staff around the world. Within just a few years this would change and the era of the ocean Liner would draw to a close.

By this time I had sailed across the Atlantic from Trinidad to the UK and then sailed through the Suez to Kenya and now I was about to travel the rest of the way around Africa and onwards back to the UK. We were using the Castle Line, and the two ships I remember were the Union Castle and the Windsor Castle. The ships Livery was pink hence my nickname for them being the ‘Pinky Ship’.

The event my poem describes is the Crossing the Line Ceremony. It takes place when a ship crosses the equator. Sailors who have already crossed the Equator are nicknamed Shellbacks, those who have not are nicknamed Pollywogs. (A Pollywog is another name for a Tadpole.)

The ceremony uses the guise of King Neptune’s court to convert Pollywogs to Shellbacks by submitting them to a number of embarrassing ordeals.

Dependant on which line of longitude you cross when you become a shellback you can be given different grades of shellback such as the Royal Diamond Shellback for crossing the equator on the Prime Meridian or Golden Shellback for crossing the Equator at the 180th meridian.

I just remember people dressing in drag, (as well as other fancy dress) and then being covered in shaving foam and being dunked into the swimming pool. I hope you enjoy the poem;

Early Memories – Kenya V

Traveling ‘home’ upon the ‘pinky’ ship,
around the cape, then North.
As we crossed the equator
King Neptune’s court called forth
the pollywogs in fancy dress
were tried around the pool
then covered in shaving foam
they were made to look the fool.

John Carré Buchanan
21 January 2012

Early Memories – Kenya IV

As a little boy I used to collect insects (or Dudu as they are called in Swahili) and keep them in jam jars. When the family came to leave Kenya to return to the UK all our possessions were packed into large wooden crates full of straw. I was told that my insects would not be able to travel with me, so I put them in the crates which had been packed, but had not had the tops nailed down.

My father found the insects and asked a friend to pretend to look after them until we had left. It wasn’t until a long time later that I realised what had happened.

I have always wondered what might have happened if the bugs had not been detected or escaped in the crates and made the long sea voyage back to the UK. Here is the memory expressed as a poem, I hope you like it.

Early Memories – Kenya IV

Millipede and spiders,
mantis, sticks and moths
lovingly kept in jam jars
with holes punched in the tops.
Treasured by their captor,
who was due to move away
so he hid them in a packing case
to be sent to the UK.

But his father found something
that wasn’t in the crate
and when he lifted up the lid
he found his young son’s mates
The little boy was mortified
when his ‘Dudu’ were detected
so they gave them to the neighbour
who promised they’d be protected.

And so it was, the family moved
with young son quite contented.
He knew his insects were all safe
with the neighbour who’d consented
to look after the collection
and feed them every day.
He didn’t know that the insects
had already been thrown away.

John Carré Buchanan
20 January 2012

Early Memories - Tanzania I

This childhood memory has stayed with me since I was about 3 years old. My family had travelled from Kenya to Tanzania to visit the Ngorongoro Crater. This crater, which is 18 Kilometres across, is the largest perfect unbroken caldera in the world. Surrounded by very step walls which rise 610 meters from the crater floor, this natural amphitheatre is home to a spectacular array of wildlife.

The crater was and still is a conservation area and vehicle movement was restricted, as a result we had to travel in the Rangers’ Land Rover rather than my parent’s car. On this particular day we were standing in the back of the Land Rover looking out for wildlife when a Black Rhino broke cover and charged the moving vehicle.

It was clear that this was not a dummy charge and an instant before the Rhino hit the vehicle the driver slammed on the brakes. Apparently this is considered the best thing to do when being charged by a Rhino as it confuses the Rhino which expects most things to run away. In its confusion the Rhino missed the Land Rover by a couple of feet. I remember watching the Rhino charge and all the adults falling over as we came to a halt. When the vehicle stopped I thought it had been rammed.

My Father tells me that he remembers watching the Rhino try to regain the initiative having narrowly missed us. He describes how; determined to face the vehicle the Rhino planted a forefoot and literally span with three feet off the ground before landing facing the vehicle. Dad recalls how the momentum of the speeding Rhino actually resulted in the beast sliding backwards to a halt.

Early Memories - Tanzania I

The Rhino came from nowhere
at thirty five miles an hour.
As he tried hard to ram us
in the vehicle we did cower.
Then just before impact
the ranger stopped the Rover.
The rhino missed by inches
and the adults all fell over.

John Carré Buchanan
19 January 2012

Image: Rhino Charge by Peter Delaney. Tuesday, 23rd August 2011 - earthshots.org

Early Memories - Kenya III

This is the third of a series of poems depicting my earliest memories. The memory involves the Great Rift Valley which extends some 6,400 kilometres from the Middle East to central Mozambique in East Africa.

The Rift was formed about 20 million years ago when the earth's crust weakened and tore itself apart creating a jagged gash across the African continent. The land on either side erupted creating volcanic mountains, while the valley floor gradually sank into a low flat plain.

There are about thirty lakes lies along the rift's length; these include Lake Tanganyika, the deepest lake in the world, and Lake Victoria, the second-largest freshwater lake in the world. At its widest the Rift is about 100 kilometres wide and this narrows to about 45 kilometres just North of Nairobi.

When we used to go on Safari, my parents would set off very early in the morning with my brother and I in wrapped in blankets. Our first stop would be somewhere along the rift valley sometime around dawn. I can remember the sheer scale of the cliff which descended from the road to the bottom of the rift, these walls vary between 600-900 meters high.

Nowadays there is a new road, but in those days the descent was extremely dramatic and as a toddler I was petrified of it. This poem sums up my memory of the Great Rift Valley, I hope you like it;

Early Memories - Kenya III

We’d stopped atop the Rift valley
early in the morning
looking into the abyss
just as the sun was dawning.
The valley floor was far below
to one as small as me
I didn’t like it very much
it made me want to pee.

John Carré Buchanan
17 January 2012

Early Memories - Kenya II

This is the second of a series of memories which I am recording as poems. The memories are some of the earliest I have and come from a time I spent as a young child in Kenya.

This particular one stays in my mind because a huge reddish-brown elephant was looming large in the car's rear window and my parents were shouting at each other.

As I recall; Dad was trying to get Mum to lean out of the window to film the charging elephant. Needless to say Mum was not exactly chuffed with the prospect, her main concern being that Dad should drive a little faster!

Early Memories - Kenya II

The huge bull elephant was watching us
as we deigned to pass nearby
He flared his ears and stomped the ground
and let out his battle cry.
Then he charged right at the car
and followed us down the track.
Dad yelled at mum to film the chase
I didn’t catch what she yelled back!

John Carré Buchanan
17 January 2012

Early Memories - Kenya I

As a child I travelled the world with my parents. Between the ages of one and four I lived with them in Kenya. They took every opportunity to get out and about, as such I did things that most other children of my age didn’t do.

I thought that I would record some of my earliest memories as short poems. This is the first I hope you like it;

Early Memories - Kenya I

The car was stuck in a pothole
by a leopard in a tree.
We waited for a ranger
to come and pull us free.
That day I ate more gingerbread
Then I’d ever had before'
as mum and dad kept me quiet
by bribing me with more.

John Carré Buchanan
16 January 2012

Home

I have been very fortunate to have travelled the world extensively as both child and adult. I was born in Trinidad and sailed back to the Channel Islands via the UK at the age of about 6 weeks. Shortly after that we sailed out to Kenya via the Suez Canal. I remained in East Africa for Three years before returning to Britain via the Cape of Good Hope. By the time I was four I had crossed the Atlantic and circumnavigated Africa on board 3 liners.

My parents knew that if I continued to live with them I would be constantly changing school and in order that I had a stable education they sent me to boarding school whilst they continued to Globe Trot. By this time Airliners had become the normal means of travel and so my school Holidays were full of trips to exotic countries such as; Ascension Island, Mauritius, Hong Kong, Grand Cayman and Gibraltar, to name a few.

This nomadic lifestyle continued when I joined the Army on leaving school. I moved regularly sometimes for a few weeks and other times for months or years. By the time I left the Army the longest I had lived in one place was three years.

I have now lived in Guernsey for eight years and I am still enjoying the stability that has come with remaining in one place. I was thinking about this about a year ago and thought that it might be fun to pen some verse on the different forms of accommodation I have lived in over the years. I hope you enjoy the results of this endeavour;

Home

I boarded at school
along with my brother,
spending our holls.
with Father and Mother.

I’ve lived in the tropics,
the Far East and near,
a while in the US,
I even lived here.

I spent years in barracks
surrounded by wire,
with guards on the gate
ready to fire.

I’ve lived in a trench,
in all kinds of weather,
wrapped in a poncho
surrounded by heather.

I lived in a port
in a bombed out warehouse.
In Hong Kong I lived in
a parquet floored penthouse.

I spent six months
In a far off region,
sharing a camp
with the Foreign Legion.

Now refugee camps
are not “state of the art”;
they have to be uncomfortable
so people depart.

While a shipping container’s
a ready made shelter
it’s freezing in winter,
and in summer you swelter.

The heat of a jungle
the cold of the snow
these are the things
I’ve come to know

I’ve lived in buildings
as tall as the sky
and down in the cuds
but these I decry;

For all of these places
have become part of me,
but none were a home
without my family.

John Carré Buchanan
25 September 2010

Image: NASA/Via the Daily Mail