Chapter 12 - Kasama

At length we reached Kasama, headquarters of the Northern Province, a pleasant Govt. 'town' with white bungalows mushrooming up and three shops only one of which had a European window. The usual shops in these small outstations and in the bush, have no windows and are consequently very dark inside with no space for display. We were directed to the Rest House where there were two bedrooms and a dining room and a house boy to attend us. We flopped on chairs with sighs of relief from our journeyings and almost at once appeared a boy in a white kansa bearing a tasteful tray of tea with a note of welcome from a neighbour. I will not forget the pleasure of that sight and the teapot sprinkled with forget-me-knots. I bought one myself later and found that we nearly all had them!

The 'town' had about 100 European inhabitants, working for the key departments like Administration, Forestry, Agriculture, Health, Public Works (roads and bridges), Police, Fisheries etc. The houses were built of home made bricks of the red laterite which was plentiful. Mango trees had been planted, and had planted themselves in profusion and were very popular with the Africans who picked and ate them as they walked and thus spread many more seeds. Plantains, which were a coarse kind of banana, and paw-paw trees were also quite plentiful around the villages, and became a profitable market for Africans among the European houses. Mealies too were grown everywhere, eaten and sold with enthusiasm. Vegetables as we know them were very scarce, as although they grew very quickly, appearing about three weeks after planting, the soil did not enrich them and the lack of water for nearly six months of the year, did not encourage them.

Living in a bush station with so few shops and goods, people find their china and soft furnishings are usually a replica of the others and being supplied with Govt. heavy furniture, identical in design and amount, one house is very like another. I rather like it as it seems to do away with this awful striving to go one better than ones neighbours. Everyone keeps open house, there is little privacy and to one usually retiring it is at first a little embarrassing, but it is a good thing to get into the social round quickly, as any other behaviour is perplexing to these friendly people. True, tea parties morning or afternoon tend to become gossipy and as the station grows cliques form and jealousies arise but the Govt. people move at least every three years, usually to go home on leave, and serious harm is subsequently avoided.

We were moved on our second day into a very pleasant bungalow with rough garden, while my husband and son prepared to go with equipment and several natives, 250 miles further north to build a bush house for us all, where his first African bridge was to be built.