glared, before walking away. It was a useful reminder that under the apartheid laws in South Africa, miscegenation was outlawed, so Indians, blacks, whites, and coloreds were prohibited from mating outside their own races. While the statement conveyed McDonald’s allegiance to the law, it was also his way of saying: You can do what you want to do, but surely not with blacks.
The incident was not discussed any further; they were giving each other what Nakuru folks liked to call “nil by mouth.” Neither uttered a word to the other, McDonald humiliated into silence because there was no way he could broach the topic without raising doubts about his abilities as a man. After all, his wife had not been caught stealing food or clothing; she had steered her servant, her black servant, away from the flower beds to her own bed, to perform a role that McDonald had either failed to do or had not performed to her satisfaction. Sally, on her part, remained silent because she had lost hearing in one ear and was too upset to talk anyway.
So McDonald had seen his posting in the new colony of British East Africa as an escape from personal turmoil and humiliation. Perhaps he and Sally would even have another shot at their troubled marriage.
I shall be the lieutenant of the entire province, he had written to her. With a dozen servants at my disposal so even when I cough, one is likely to check if I had called for him . . .
Sally’s response had been terse: Even if you were the governor, I’m not going anywhere with you, now or in the future.
Sally, whose rich background and royal roots had been a permanent source of ridicule from McDonald’s peers, said she would remain in England for the rest of her life. He then prevailed upon her not to file for divorce—to give them a bit of time to review things.
McDonald then resolved to do what he knew best: work hard and earn a decoration for his service to Great Britain. Sally would be proud of him, he mused to himself, perhaps she’d even harken his word. If he was knighted, he would be a man of title, just like her father. That’s what motivated him to go to East Africa—to head the project that even his bosses in London admitted was a little insane. Its London architects called it the Lunatic Express, wondering where the rail would start and where it would end, for nothing of value was to be found in the African wilds. But it had to be done, and McDonald had fully committed himself to the idea that the construction of a railroad across the African hinterland was his route to self-affirmation and validation. But soon after he arrived in the marshes that grew into Nakuru town, few locals believed he was anything but completely nuts.
* * *
Ian Edward McDonald’s Years of Solitude—as his four-year seclusion came to be known in Nakuru lore—far surpassed the few hours that Reverend Turnbull was reportedly in the belly of the iron beast, and, if one were to allow his mythical parallel, the three days Jonah spent in the belly of the whale. And even the forty days and nights that Jesus spent in the wilderness. But where myth and history often intersect, and the past often collides with the present, it is imperative to clarify the circumstances surrounding McDonald’s house and Sally, the woman for whom it was built. For one cannot talk about the Indian singer Rajan, the love slave, without talking about the original ngombo ya wendo, since the two narratives both start and end at the place: the house that McDonald built—set between a hot spring and a cool lake—which ultimately became a site of unseemly arguments and simmering loves. To absorb the full story, one must turn back the hands of time and think about the dry savanna where only stunted acacia stands, their spiky hands thrown up in surrender against the harsh sun. That was McDonald’s inheritance of loss, the bittersweet consolation for the coveted peerage from the Queen of England that had fallen through the bureaucratic cracks between London and its colonial outpost of Mombasa.
So, as was typical of McDonald, he ignored any signs to the contrary and continued dreaming that another future was possible for him and Sally. He saw the virgin territory and trembled with lust. He would conquer nature and assert his control, make something out of it for himself and, in the process, leave his mark on the world. He had been to different territories in the colony where locals had adopted names of missionaries who had ventured there, and remembering them, he felt a clog in his throat, for long after those men of God were gone, memories of their life would linger. There was Kabarnet, named for Reverend Barnett who had pitched a tent in Nandiland. Or one could point at Kirigiti in Kikuyuland, where the Brits’ love for cricket had earned them immortality in the name of the place.
Above all else, McDonald wanted to please Sally, estranged from him since the incident in South Africa, and for the entire duration of the railway construction. He would prove he had been worthy of her love.
So, soon after his discharge was confirmed, and London reaffirmed that the coveted title for his service to the empire had been erroneously replaced with a deed to a piece of earth he neither desired nor needed, McDonald wrote to Sally. His first letter went unanswered. And the second, and the third, and the fourth. She answered his seventh letter, clarifying that she had been prompted to respond not by his persistence, which she remarked was a sign of foolishness—a wise man has many ways of sending a message, she said—but because the last letter had arrived on her birthday. Any meanness of spirit wasn’t permissible on her special day.
Sally said she would think about the visit, which to him meant his request had been considered favorably. He knew Sally was not the thinking type; she acted on impulse, so any claim that she was thinking things through was, in fact, an affirmation that she had already made her decision. Her final letter with confirmation of dates and itinerary arrived six months later. She would be visiting in another six months. She then added:
I’m curious to how you use your fork and knife these days. I recall you had trouble drawing butter from the jar and putting it on the side plate. You liked buttering your bread direct from the jar, which ticked me off without fail. I suspect you must be eating butter directly from the jar since, in your military wisdom, bread and butter eventually meet in the stomach.
Sally wanted to find out if he had gone native, McDonald thought happily; he would prove to her he had only grown more sophisticated. He would demonstrate to her that he was as good as any Englishman; in fact, he was as good as her father, whose country home in Derbyshire he replicated in the design of the Nakuru house. He worked his men like donkeys, most of them artisans he had diverted from the team detailed to maintain the new railway, and so worked at no cost to him. None of them knew their old boss had been retired.
The concrete blocks were sourced from other faraway colonies like the Congo and Nyasaland and hauled uphill by African handymen. The blocks were used as cornerstones that were a slightly different shade from the rest of the wall, and were placed at calculated intervals to evoke the pattern of a staircase. Once again, McDonald maintained the division of labor he applied on the railway construction. African laborers teamed up with an Indian artisan. A white architect named Johnson—whom the African workers called Ma-Johnny—provided general oversight.
Workers sang songs to urge others; they cracked jokes to deflect attention from their backbreaking toil. “Hey, man, a bird is going to perch on your head thinking it’s a tree!” one worker would tease another who was considered lazy.
“Maybe he will help build its nest,” another would join in.
During the rail construction, McDonald had discouraged joking among the workers because he believed those busy using their tongues were misdirecting their energies. But he had become more tolerant during the construction of the house—not that the workers necessarily knew this. To be on the safe side, the workers continued to fall silent at his approach.
When workers fell short of their projected goals, McDonald organized overnight shifts. That’s when the glowworms in the marshes were replaced by lightbulbs and locals who had never experienced electricity were drawn to the lights, just
