been pushing south for generations in search of a âGreater Somaliaâ. Lawless and independent, they make great friends and implacable enemies; they will laugh as they kill you and cry as they listen to a poem. Many didnât really understand what the government meant when it imposed law and order upon them, and those who did were having none of it. One of the people obliged to urge this new regime upon the Kenyan Somalis was one himself, Mahmoud Mohammed,the head of the army in Garissa. He was a great ally of ours in the early years at Kora and would never interfere when our friends in the police helped us out with the poaching and banditry in later years.
Garissa was a town of extraordinary characters. If you werenât one when you got there, the heat and the flies would drive you into characterhood before too long. One of my best friends there was Brother Mario Petrino, a former nightclub owner from Chicago. A portly man with a Hemingway beard, he would sit in the police mess sipping warm Tusker beer with me and telling tales of when he had driven a powder-blue Cadillac and drunk champagne all day. A truly good man, he built a school for orphans in Garissa where he taught them carpentry, mechanics, welding and agriculture. He transformed the town in his short time there, setting up a pipeline and water-purification system, building a school, a fuel station and the orphanage. A few years later, when he was moved on by his order, the Consolata Fathers, there were howls of outrage from his resolutely Muslim flock.
Like many Kenyan towns in Muslim areas, Garissaâs police mess and the Kikuyu-run dives were the only places, until quite recently, where you could get a drink. The latter were a hotbed of debauchery where all the heathens would meet. Dark, tinroofed shacks that never seemed to close, the bars were normally a raw wood counter protected above by the same wire mesh that we used for discouraging the lions from sleeping on our beds. I donât think those shebeens were ever cleaned and they always smelt of warm beer and Rooster filterless cigarettes but they were home and I loved them.
I once burst into the Catholic mission to tell Mario a pretty risqué political story. Halfway through I realized he was looking at me rather oddly. At the next table sat a Gammarelli-socked cardinal sent from Rome to ensure that Brother Mario wasmaking the right sort of friends. He must have been hard of hearing because apparently he approved of me.
It was in the police mess that I first met Philip Kilonzo, who became a true friend over the years and a great and worthy success in Kenyaâs ever more corrupt police force. The fact that Garissa bred so many notables is a testament to how hard it was to work there. New York it was not, but if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere. Philip helped us enormously when we were under threat from the gangs of poachers and the Somali bandits who were soon to infiltrate the area, but back then Garissa was relatively peaceful. I would buy a crate of beer and work my way through it as I drove back along the sandy dirt road to camp. The main danger then was driving into a ditch or shunting an elephant rather than being ambushed.
Keeping the Land Rover on the road was a constant challenge both literally and metaphorically. Old and knackered, it was always breaking down but the fact that there were so many of them about helped a lot. Now everyone drives Toyotas in the bush but in those days it was all Land Rovers. I became as fast as a Formula One team at removing bits from laid-up government vehicles and swapping them with broken parts from ours. Always when I was in Garissa I was on the hunt for carburettor needles, seals, springs, mountings or other parts as there was inevitably something wrong with our engine or a steering rod about to break. We needed the car for resupplies from Garissa but its most crucial function was ferrying water from the river. We
Garissa was a town of extraordinary characters. If you werenât one when you got there, the heat and the flies would drive you into characterhood before too long. One of my best friends there was Brother Mario Petrino, a former nightclub owner from Chicago. A portly man with a Hemingway beard, he would sit in the police mess sipping warm Tusker beer with me and telling tales of when he had driven a powder-blue Cadillac and drunk champagne all day. A truly good man, he built a school for orphans in Garissa where he taught them carpentry, mechanics, welding and agriculture. He transformed the town in his short time there, setting up a pipeline and water-purification system, building a school, a fuel station and the orphanage. A few years later, when he was moved on by his order, the Consolata Fathers, there were howls of outrage from his resolutely Muslim flock.
Like many Kenyan towns in Muslim areas, Garissaâs police mess and the Kikuyu-run dives were the only places, until quite recently, where you could get a drink. The latter were a hotbed of debauchery where all the heathens would meet. Dark, tinroofed shacks that never seemed to close, the bars were normally a raw wood counter protected above by the same wire mesh that we used for discouraging the lions from sleeping on our beds. I donât think those shebeens were ever cleaned and they always smelt of warm beer and Rooster filterless cigarettes but they were home and I loved them.
I once burst into the Catholic mission to tell Mario a pretty risqué political story. Halfway through I realized he was looking at me rather oddly. At the next table sat a Gammarelli-socked cardinal sent from Rome to ensure that Brother Mario wasmaking the right sort of friends. He must have been hard of hearing because apparently he approved of me.
It was in the police mess that I first met Philip Kilonzo, who became a true friend over the years and a great and worthy success in Kenyaâs ever more corrupt police force. The fact that Garissa bred so many notables is a testament to how hard it was to work there. New York it was not, but if you could make it there, you could make it anywhere. Philip helped us enormously when we were under threat from the gangs of poachers and the Somali bandits who were soon to infiltrate the area, but back then Garissa was relatively peaceful. I would buy a crate of beer and work my way through it as I drove back along the sandy dirt road to camp. The main danger then was driving into a ditch or shunting an elephant rather than being ambushed.
Keeping the Land Rover on the road was a constant challenge both literally and metaphorically. Old and knackered, it was always breaking down but the fact that there were so many of them about helped a lot. Now everyone drives Toyotas in the bush but in those days it was all Land Rovers. I became as fast as a Formula One team at removing bits from laid-up government vehicles and swapping them with broken parts from ours. Always when I was in Garissa I was on the hunt for carburettor needles, seals, springs, mountings or other parts as there was inevitably something wrong with our engine or a steering rod about to break. We needed the car for resupplies from Garissa but its most crucial function was ferrying water from the river. We
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