The Power Of Two: A Riveting True Family Saga Spanning Three Generations

By Anita Eleanor Patel

Shantaben and Ramanbhai begin with nothing, in an arranged marriage when they are 14 and 15-years-old. She must remain with his family to serve them, and he must go to East Africa to earn money to pay off his father's creditors. Arriving in 1926, Ramanbhai enters his adult life with only a blanket over his shoulder and a cloth bag co

• Language: English
• Publisher: Anita Eleanor Patel
• Release date: Sep 30, 2022
• ISBN: 9781736940402

Book preview

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I really like your book! Funny! Frank! Entertaining! Different languages, cultures and religious groups come together and wars aren’t fought… I see family members helping and healing each other through the years. Your writing is detailed, warm and reflective but doesn’t get stuck in the details… it moves at a good pace and leaves me wanting to ask for more!

René Lafaut – Canada

Anita Patel has written a family saga that spans the globe and a century of human history. It is lovingly written and provides valuable insight into historical and social context.

– Gordon Brown: Former UK Prime Minister

The love with which you have written about your large, extended family shines through on every page. The way you have interwoven their story with interesting facts of history and placed it all in context without making it into some complex academic exercise is commendable.

Zarina Patel - Kenya

I was engrossed in your book from the very first page.

Scott Clifford - France

The Power of Two is a finely written tale of how two people from India made their life in Africa, and raised a big family. It made me want to read what came next, to know the outcomes of events, relationships, and their responses to crises. Full of vivid imagery it drew me in and made me laugh and weep – it’s the best book I have read this year!

Antony Macer - England

It’s a real page-turner!

Dr. Millan Patel – Canada

I found it fascinating as it tells of a way of life so utterly different from my own. It speaks directly to the furore in England at the present time of our glorious past. This exposé of the trading companies and the mass land grabbing in India and Africa to create the Empire and our great colonial history, is right on the nail.

Colin Sayer - England

Patel spares no detail in explaining her family’s diversity and interconnectedness in this warm and embracing family saga. In the early parts of the book, the writing would break to provide historical overviews. As the family grows Patel makes a switch to a biography of a whole family, exploring what happened to each of the eight children. 

I felt this book was an excellent exploration of how migrant communities can maintain the concept of origin while simultaneously diversifying their global presence.

As I kept reading I ended up finding Shantaben and Ramanbhai’s stories endearing, the clear love, respect, and acceptance is palpable, and enjoyable to see. Without realising, I was completely committed to supporting these two through their journeys, successes, and pains. 

Reviewer: Farah Qureshi - AwaaZ Magazine Volume 18. Issue 2, 2021

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© 2022 by Anita Patel

All rights reserved. This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the publisher except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Editorial Management: Antony Macer, Colin Sayer, Zarina Patel

The Power of Two/ Anita Patel

Website: thepoweroftwo.ca

Email: [e-mail]

Issued in print, electronic and audio formats.

Ebook Interior: 978 – 1 – 7369404 – 0 – 2

Table of Contents

1. A Small Village in India

2. Voyage to Africa

3. A Struggle for Shantaben’s Soul

4. Ramanbhai in Dar es Salaam

5. A New Challenge

6. Shantaben’s Release

7. Together at Last

8. Jeevanjee Gardens and Jalebis

9. Emotional Isolation

10. Recovery from Devastation

11. A Move to Nairobi

12. A Business Opportunity for Ratilal

13. Marina Bakery and Bar

14. Sunday Drives and Family Picnics

15. Ramanbhai’s Big Break

16. Gandhi on the BBC News

17. Summer Holidays in Nanyuki

18. A Reluctant Bride

19. Sirish’s Stories of Childhood

20. Ratilal and the Ice Cream Factory

21. The Miracle of Vallabh Vidyanagar

22. Sharad Departs for England

23. Boarding School Life in India

24. A Funeral in Meru

25. Completion of Nandanvan

26. Return of ‘Qualified’ Sons

27. Shantaben’s Worst Fears Realised

28. European Honeymoon

29. Sarojini Meets Chandrakant

30. Expo’67 and Motiben Becomes a Widow

31. Motiben Joins the Family Business

32. On Safari

33. Building an Optical Lab

34. Creating a Life in New York

35. Sirish and Suru in England

36. Important Contacts

37. Subhash’s Family in Canada

38. Sharad Must Start Over

39. Motiben Emigrates to Britain

40. Life and Progress in New York

41. The Magic Bus to Kathmandu

42. The Brothers Settle in Canada

43. Holidays, Homes and Investments

44. Overtaken by Calamity

45. Family Reunion in Switzerland

46. In Memory of Mr. and Mrs. Marleyn

47. Sirish and Tallika In Victoria BC

48. Sumant Carves Out a Career

49. Vacating Nandanvan

50. Shantaben Passes Away

Epilogue

Mini Bios of the Descendents

Additional Family Trees

Chapter Content Summaries

To my husband Sharad who has in every way, made it possible

for me to write this book

My mother-in-law Shantaben (Ba), for whom this book

is a memorial, to her life, her worth and her love

This is a story of love. Love that grows from an arranged marriage in their early teens leading to the love of their children, to sibling love, and eventually to an English woman’s love for her mother-in-law. The book traces the perilous journey of two teenagers, from the small villages of Gujarat in India where they grew up, to a life together in a stone cabin among the wild animals of Africa. It chronicles their upward climb towards sufficiency, the education of their many children, their faith and full cultural expression, and ultimately the dispersal and success of those children around the globe. It is the story of the power of the love of two individuals transcending geography and culture.

Foreword

I came to know Anita after she married my brother Sharad and came to stay in our home in Nairobi. I had an immediate connection with her. She taught me to drive, to dress, and inspired me in so many ways, I could go on and on. I considered her a sincere friend, a sister and a sister-in-law. Right from day one she took an interest in our family, our culture and our traditions.

Anita’s book more than meets my expectations in its scope, sensitivity and understanding of our family. It is scarcely believable that a long discussion during a family wedding a few years ago to explore and document our family’s history has now fully emerged animated in body and spirit. For this effort of love and devotion, I am sure all of us Patel siblings extend our gratitude to her and her thoughtful reminiscence of our collective experiences. 

Anita was just the right person to undertake such an effort: both detached and objective, but at the same time totally invested. She seemed to be guided in her dedication to the lives of my parents, in the relentless pursuit of the details of our lives through meetings, email and Skype calls, and in her research of the historical details.

In reading it, I cannot but believe that Anita has found her true vocation, a writer, researcher and chronicler. Her researches and reflections go far beyond a catalogue of dates and anecdotes. In her thoughtful hands the story goes back all the way to a century ago, beginning in Sojitra and Karamsad, two small villages in Gujarat, India, as she introduces her protagonists, my mother and father.

Filled with the almost universal compulsion that ignites people to improve their welfare and conditions, and a belief in a better future and the promise to leave a better world for their children, my parents engaged in those steps that have led our family to this present time. 

We are now straddled over so many decades, countries, continents, cultures and societies, and the world has become our oyster. 

As we grew up our parents inculcated in us the desire to study, learn, listen and respect; a common thread that explains our many shared values and experiences. It is this legacy that helps each of us to tolerate each other’s idiosyncrasies and foibles. It is this organic unity that gets us together for our family reunions in exotic settings or at weddings, to renew these connections, build new ones as the family expands, and share it with the younger generations. At this time, undaunted by pandemics, we have to thank Zoom technology as we plan our next reunion, now in the eager hands of this younger generation.

Anita has inspired all of us to add our own recollections and reflections to this tapestry: young or old, we could do no more than continue to add to this history which I am sure will get even stronger over time.

Sarojini Patel

Geneva, August 2020

Preface

It all started with a slip of paper yellowing on a window ledge in the bedroom of my sister-in-law, Motiben. Motiben was now the matriarch of the family and was just turning eighty. On this slip of paper she had jotted down the names of her brothers and sister and their birth dates, and those of her deceased parents.

I held this paper in my hand and felt a strange excitement, and quickly made a copy. I had a plan. I would find out the birthdates of all the family members up until now and make a long list. This was in June of 2013 and there were 48 direct descendants of my mother and father-in-law at that time. My sister-in-law, Sarojini, put my list together in a nice long table and circulated it. The rest of the family was very encouraging and thrilled to get copies of this list.

At our Family Reunion in Whistler, BC in 2007, a Calendar had been made with photos of each one attending linked to their birthdays. My new list was now carrying it one stage farther, including the year they were born, and for everyone in the whole family, not just those able to attend the gathering.

For that reunion I had made a very large chocolate cake and inscribed it with Thank you Ba and Bapuji (mother and father.) As I brought forward the cake I was quite overcome with emotion, thinking of those two oh-so-vulnerable people beginning their life together in Africa in 1930, with no support from anyone. And now, here we were, over forty people gathered around the chocolate cake, because of these two persons and their life together.

I asked the brothers and sisters to tell stories of their memories of Ba and Bapuji, but instead they told stories about their childhood, all the fights they had with each other, or the pranks they got up to! Like most adults they had not had time to think about their parents as people, outside of the role of parenthood. I told a couple of stories about Ba, with Motiben (eldest sister) endorsing their veracity. Everyone was listening with interest; the brothers had not known these stories.

Once I had put together that birth dates list I began to dream of writing a book where I could tell all my mother-in-law’s stories that she had shared with me over the years. I knew little about my father-in-law; he was not one to talk about himself.

In 2014 my husband and I went over to England to stay at my sister-in-law Motiben’s house in London, the hub for those settled in England and Switzerland. I took my laptop with me and was determined to get recordings of as many family members as I could. There was a wedding happening, which brought family to London from as far away as Shropshire, in the Midlands of England, and there I got a wonderful collection of memories spanning decades of events in the lives of each descendant of Ba and Bapuji. Coming back to Canada I did the same with family members in Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia.

I now had enough information to begin a timeline. Over many Skype calls and meetings with individual members over the three years that followed, this timeline expanded to form the skeleton of this book on which to hang all the flesh and muscles of real-life people. I wanted future generations to hear the voices of their Uncles and Aunties, to absorb the wisdom that my mother and father-in-law lived by, and to feel the solid backbone of their ancestry.

I set the unfolding of this large family saga against the backdrop of the development of Kenya as a British colony; defining their lives within the reality of the place and times they lived. Maps and photos are included to help the reader become familiar with Kenya, and with the family.

Every living member of the family has been involved in one way or another in the writing of this book and I have had the extreme privilege of getting to know each one of them even better over these past seven years.

Anita Patel

White Rock, BC November 2021

List of Illustrations

‘SS State of Bombay’

Mackinnon-Slater Road

Territories of East Africa

Central Railway Line

The Baobab Tree

Pink Flamingoes

Nairobi Railway Station

Ramanbhai’s work circuits

Prince of Wales’ Safari

Manulal and Lilavati

Ram Krishna age 36

Portrait of Shantaben

Woolworths’building

The livingroom extension

The living room furnishings

Gandhi’s Salt March

Parklands House

Children’s portrait

Prized possessions

Motiben

The two fathers meet

The wedding

The Austin A40 car

Portrait of Ratilal

Portrait of Ramanbhai

Suryakant and Motiben

Restoration

Ba holding baby Sunil

Nandanvan

City of Nairobi in the 1960s

Suresh on a long hot drive

The Kite-flying Festival

Bathing in the hot pools

Family picnics in Nanyuki

The four wives

Fontaine de la Concorde

Sharad at Montmartre

Sirish leaving for England

Sharad age 23

Invitation to Buckingham Palace

The family dog Rover

Thika Falls

The Great Rift Valley

Westcobs Garage

Mwangi washing the car

Guilsborough Road house

Sharad & Anita are married

Parklands Cricket Team

Cooking on a sakhdi stove

Norwich Corner House

Eugene, Rita, Ragin, Subhash

Anita attends her sister’s wedding

Lavington House

Suryakant at French Customs

Family group

Locations graphic 1

17-year-old Sumant with Ba

Suresh’s children

Nairobi Dam

The plains of Amboseli

Wildebeest at Amboseli

Elephants at Maasai Mara

Leopard with its kill

Giraffe among Balanites trees

Impala antelope

Two lionesses and three cubs

Map of National Parks 1970

Wildebeeste in the Crater

Hippopotamus in the swanp

A Dark-maned lion

Rhino marking its territory

Lake Manyara

Giraffes by the lake

Lake Manyara buffaloes

Millan with baby zebra

Relief Map

Treetops Hotel

Watering hole

A Baboon inspects us

Some local children

Kikuyu warriors’ dance

Millan offers his soother

Mongoose accepts gift

Thorns for dinner

Watamu Bay Resort

Deep-sea fishing

A Dorado fish

A baby shark for baby Jini

The puppies of Pixie

Hamsters for Jini and Millan

A small reception

Sirish and Suru 1969

Wedding of Suru and Maureen

The Family with Eva Moss

Herb Moss, Millan and Jini

The swimming pool

Couples graphic 1

Motiben, Sulbha, Minesh

Chesapeake Bay Bridge

Fall in Vermont

Millan with new cousin

Jini holding Nadine

Locations graphic 2

Motiben’s town house

A Christmas tree

Sarojini with Niharika

Sarojini’s pottery pieces

Bapuji at home in India

Sirish at Nandanvan

Tallika aged 21

Sirish & Tallika wedding

Something amusing

The cousins reunite

Sumant & Reena’s wedding

When it was all over

Couples Graphic 2

No. 8, Woodbend Crescent

A boat trip

No. 8, renovated

Jini riding Dobbin

Ratilal and his four sons

99, Blenheim Road

Gathering together

Sunil and Nila

After the wedding

Garden Pharmacy

Saas Fee Resort

Enjoying the reunion

Fun on the swings

Niyati’s ‘ET’ cake

Locations Graphic 3

The doctor’s bag

Between two sons

Motiben’s Mandir

Motiben embracing Zara

Family Tree Part I

Family Tree Part II

Family Tree Part III

Family.jpg

What we have once enjoyed, we can never lose.

All that we love deeply becomes part of us.

Helen Keller

1

A Small Village in India

1912 – 1926

Mother was usually to be found resting in bed, and although she was too weak to do much, she was always there as a loving presence in the family. Her eldest son and a daughter had married and moved away some years before but her daughter Maniben and her little daughter Shantaben were still with her.

When Shantaben was seven years old her mother passed away, and the comfort of that presence was withdrawn utterly and forever. Her father, Shivabhai, was a kind, affectionate man and he did his best to make up for their loss. But hanging over the family was the awful spectre of what might happen to his two daughters if Shivabhai also passed away. After all he was an elderly man. 

He thought and worried about this for a year before setting out to find a suitable boy for his 13 year-old daughter Maniben to marry. He had left it as late as possible but by fourteen years a girl must be married, and begin life in her husband’s home. Here she would be trained to serve her new family and be kept ‘pure’ until the consummation of her marriage vows a few years later. Within the year, a marriage was accomplished with a boy just a few months older than she was, and Maniben left the family home to live at her husband’s house in another town. At least Shivabhai could rest easy about this daughter.

But misfortune followed Maniben and seven months later her husband became seriously ill and died. Maniben returned to her father’s house where her kind and loving nature was a blessing to Shantaben and her father. She took over the cooking and looked after them, although she could often be found crying for the loss of her husband and her future, for remarriage of women or girls, no matter how young, was completely taboo within their particular culture.

Life settled into a peaceful rhythm in their home. Maniben faithfully performed her duties but despair was always close to the surface. ‘What will become of me? I have no future. Where is my place in this life? No one will want me.’ She cried more and more often as the years passed. One day some family member advised her to dedicate her life to God and she became very religious. She found her place in life, she had her future; she would love and serve God for all the days He chose to give her.

Shivabhai was very thankful that God had allowed him to live thus far, but as Shantaben reached her thirteenth birthday he felt he must do something to secure a future for her. With Maniben a widow it was essential for Shantaben to have a place in society, where she might even be able to give some support to her sister.

One day her father called Shantaben to come and sit by him.

"Come beti (little daughter), I want to show you your dowry."

He put an old black briefcase on the floor in front of him and from its mysterious interior extracted three jewelry cases in red, black, and dark blue coverings. He took up the first one and with ritual fervor slowly opened the lid. Her mouth formed a soundless ‘O’ as she gazed on the gold necklace inside, and a matching ring. The next box revealed another set, and the third; thin, solid gold bangles in beautiful designs.

Finally she spoke, "How can you buy such rich things Bapuji? (Father) We are not rich people."

"Some are from your mother’s dowry, and the rest I saved for many years to buy them, but we shall find you a good husband from a Chha Gaam – from one of the top six villages in Gujarat. This is your security that your husband’s family will treat you well, and you will have something if you are widowed."

Shantaben looked up at her father’s face as the full impact of all this wealth pierced her consciousness. This was for her. Her father had saved and planned that she might have a good future, with a home and children of her own from a high Chha Gaam (six villages) family, with the chance of a position in life and in society. As she perceived her worth in his eyes she felt the swell of love expand within her, liquid and flowing, and it formed a new resolve, to be worthy of this love. Arrangements for Shantaben’s marriage continued in their time. Shivabhai found a family of good reputation in the city of Karamsad, a family with four sons. The eldest son, Ramanbhai, was just fourteen years old, nine months older than his daughter Shantaben.

Karamsad in Gujarat was one of the Chha Gaam in the top tier hierarchy of Gaam the same as Shivabhai’s own town of Sojitra, but even a little higher up the social scale due to the famous people who had come from Karamsad; people renowned for their strength and endurance and leadership in politics, education, religion and cooperative activities. They were known as the Patidars of Karamsad.

The Patel community in Gujurat is still socially divided up into a hierarchy of villages, instituted several hundred years ago to prevent intermarriage of related persons. All the people living in a particular village would consider everyone else living in that village as a brother or a sister, and therefore not marriage material. As population and the number of villages grew they became divided into tiers with class distinction, structure and rules developing between the villages. These rules gained the strength of tradition and law among the village mores. The Chha Gaam was the top tier with six villages. The next tier was 14 villages, the next 24 villages, and the last 48 villages. This system held tremendous power and control over the communities.

Shantaben went to school now with mixed feelings. She was proud of the match her father had made for her future, and the attention she got from her classmates, but the thought of losing school and everything she was familiar with just plain frightened her. Yet she still had a naturally curious nature, and a mind that delighted in exploring new things, and so the waves of fright and hope continued to crash upon the beach of her emotions.

Nearly a year passed while they made all the arrangements and Shantaben turned fourteen years old. Finally the wedding events would surround her.

The boy’s father Govindbhai, with his family and friends, would arrive that day to take up residence for the three-day duration of the ceremonies. Her husband-to-be would be among them. Everyone who saw him told her that Ramanbhai was fair and a good-looking boy, now nearly fifteen years old. Shantaben was of fair complexion herself with regular features and a generally serious expression that suggested intelligence, and her eyes spoke of clear discernment and the promise of wisdom.

The wedding was a blur of rustling silks and gold jewelry, of sitting long hours under her veil through which she took shy looks at the slender boy in all his wedding finery who sat in the chair opposite hers. As the voice of the priest intoned the ceremonies and rituals that predicated their union, her eyes would follow the beautiful intricate patterns of her hennaed hands, and play with the red silk of her embroidered sari, seemingly hypnotized by the events that would change her life forever

Leaving her safe, familiar, happy home with no ruling matriarch, she travelled to Karamsad, Gujarat, to take her place as the only ‘bhabi’ (daughter-in-law) in the home of Ramanbhai - although she was not as yet allowed to see him, or to speak to him. Most of the time he was at boarding school in Pune, in the state of Maharashtra. Her role was to become a useful member of the family, to know all its ways and preferences, and to serve them all the waking hours of the day. Now she had a ruling matriarch – Dhahiben, and one who had hardly known kindness in her own life! Married to Govindbhai at a young age after his first wife died, she found him quick to anger and an unhappy man. Dhahiben had no mother-in-law to guide her and she became pregnant almost immediately with her first child, Ramanbhai. She lived a hard life with a difficult man who believed that harshness and humiliation was the only way to maintain respect and control.

With few more rights than a slave, Shantaben had to rise at 4:30 in the morning to begin work at 5:00 am. After taking her bath, her first job would be to pound the millet into flour for the day, in a small storeroom pantry with no windows and a bright electric light bulb hanging in the centre of the ceiling. The rhythmic pounding, up and down of the long and heavy pestle on the grain in the mortar was hypnotic, and after a while her head and eyes would droop a little further with each downward stroke; drifting off she would come back with a jolt and continue on and on.

The dals (lentils) for that day had to be sorted next, separating any tiny stones and bits of dirt, always with the dread that if anyone in the family found one in the dal, or worst of all, broke a tooth on one, well; that would be just too fearful to imagine. Now the spices for the day must be ground in a small pestle and mortar: turmeric, cumin and coriander, cinnamon and cardamom, ginger and garlic. She worked on until all was prepared for the day, feeling as alone as a vagrant albatross in a marshland that remembered soaring with its colony in the high cliffs, so beautiful but now so confined to this harsh world on the ground.

And so the tasks would continue hour upon hour, with little pause, under a steady stream of complaints and disapproval.

Didn’t your mother teach you anything? Dhahiben would say in irritation or exasperation, and Shantaben would cringe inside, never permitted to defend herself, and exposed to the painful comparison of her mother-in-law with her own sweet gentle mother. Reminded of the gaping wound of her passing when she was only seven years old, she would redouble her efforts to satisfy Dhahiben to avoid this pain.

At the end of a long day she was finally permitted to fall onto her cotton filled bed mat for a blessed escape into sleep.

Shantaben’s tender soul began to shrivel. Her heart would turn for solace back to her own family, where she remembered love and kindness, and going to school. It was a bitter comparison, made no better as the day wore on and she was driven from one task to the next by the stick of humiliation and criticism, bitter and cruel. She longed for her father and older sister and their gentle encouraging home.

She had the occasional glimpse of her husband the odd time when he came home from boarding school in Pune. When she was hanging the washing out to dry she would sometimes spy him through the trellis fence, and she liked what she saw. A little twinge of excitement would accompany the forbidden viewing, and she would grasp the hope that there could be something more to come; there could be a future beyond this acid marshland.

Then one day she was working in the kitchen and one of the sons, Ratilal told her, Ramanbhai is going to Africa!

Ten year-old Ratilal was the second eldest of the four boys in her new family. After Ratilal there was Ram Krishna at eight years of age, then five year-old Rajnibhai and finally their little three year-old sister Liliben.

"He is on a ship called the State of Bombay. He is going to work in Dar es Salaam," Ratilal continued.

As she worked away, she imagined him on the ship heading for Africa. To her mind it was a fearful unknown, yet she was curious. What would it be like? Would it be hotter than India? She knew there would be wild animals in Africa, would her husband be safe?

She pondered all these things, oscillating between the peace she found in her daydreams of home, her fear of present day hardships, and her hopes in the future awaiting her. Then the voice of her mother-in-law would jerk her back to reality:

You useless lazy girl, how could I be so unlucky that God brings you into our home. Can’t you ever do anything properly? Any other mother-in-law would kick you out!

Shantabens‘s soul, bruised and bleeding, wondered if it would be so bad to be thrown out. She was so tired, never allowed to sleep for too long, it was no wonder her head got muddled at times. She had been so clever in school; her teachers never had cause to upbraid her. She had yearned to go on studying. And now here she was, dragging herself through to the end of each day, in the absence of any kind of reward to comfort her.

"Come beti, I brought you penda (a sweet milk cake)." The kind words of her father would break through to her consciousness in bittersweet remembrance.

2

Voyage to Africa

1926

The steamship ploughed through the dark ink-like depths of the harbour waters as it left Bombay, its great black funnel belching smoke as the engines drummed steadily. Ramanbhai had so many images in his head from seeing Bombay for the first time with its many huge buildings and different people. The Arab traders with their white pillbox caps, many white men and women and also Indians in Western dress, many Indian merchants in traditional dhotis, coolie labourers carrying unbelievable loads on their heads. There was the occasional motorcar creating a path through the people, and bullock carts carrying every kind of merchandise. There were a few people riding mules or horses with the odd horse-drawn carriage, and rickshaws drawn by men running or riding bicycles. And everywhere – people hurrying. He had never seen so many people walking so fast. He wondered about their lives and then began thinking of his own life …

He thought back to the scene at home where he was summoned to his father’s room. His father stood with his back to the window heavy with dark brooding anger.

You get your things ready. You are not wasting any more time in that school. You will go to Africa and earn the money. I have fixed you up with NAAFI (Navy, Army & Air Force Institute) in Dar es Salaam. You will be a clerk in the Finance department. You leave at the end of next week. Now go, get out of here.

Ramanbhai left the room quickly before he got a boot or a belt.

It was later, when he was alone, that he dared to examine the calamity that had just overtaken his life. He had been reading medical books ahead of his studies, so fixated had he been on becoming a doctor. His teachers without exception had encouraged him, had faith in him and had no doubts he could attain his goal. He stuffed this new grief and loss deep down inside him where it joined the other griefs stored in the hard core around his heart.

The rest happened with mechanical autonomy. Now here he was travelling in the belly of this humming smoke-belching ship that would carry him nearly three thousand miles over this vast Indian Ocean. Booked in deck class, the cheapest of all, he found himself imprisoned in a huge metal cage. The stairs were metal, the floor and the walls were metal, even the bunk beds were metal with a burlap mattress stuffed with hay or seaweed. A life preserver doubled as a pillow. Bunks were stacked in two tiers, with about two and a half feet between them. There were fifty passengers in one compartment. Food was served on tin thalis (metal plates) and if you didn’t make it to the distribution point at the right time, you missed it!

Deck class consisted of several compartments below the waterline of the ship. They were on the same level as the engine room with its mighty steam turbine propellers, and the drone of the machinery reverberated through the metal walls.

No one in deck class was allowed to leave the compartment. And as there was nothing else to do, Ramanbhai was so glad he had brought a book with him. He’d managed to find a book about the British in East Africa, and he passed many hours studying it.

He was that way with books. He felt he could learn everything there was to know about this world if he could just find enough books. He devoured and metabolized them whenever he had the chance.

Reading his book by the dull electric light bulb near his bunk, he learned about the land he was heading towards. Up until 1890 people could only travel on foot into the interior of the country, with African portage to carry their gear, using the old Arab caravan and slave-trader routes. The Imperial British East Africa Company (IBEAC) administered territories in Uganda and the hinterland of British East Africa.

IBEAC also had access to the coastal strip that was owned by the Sultan of Zanzibar with Britain paying annual fees for its use. This strip was 150 miles long and just 10 miles wide, extending from the River Juba in Somalia, down through British East Africa including the port of Mombasa, and continuing on into German East Africa.

Ramanbhai wondered how the British had gained so much control, and then learned that just as the British East India Company had led to the British Raj in India, so the British East Africa Company led to the British Foreign Office taking over the Company’s areas of trading in Uganda and the vast hinterland of British East Africa.

Lake Victoria, the largest lake in Africa, was rich in freshwater fish, Nile Perch and Tilapia especially, and the Africans in Uganda were prosperous and had good governance under their king, whose palace was on one of the seven hills of Kampala. A lot of trading went on with the people living in the areas surrounding the lake. It was barter trade of many goods e.g. iron steel and electrical goods from Britain and textiles tea and spices from India, in exchange for ivory, animal skins and also of the captured wild animals of Africa.

William Mackinnon, who owned the East Africa Company, had a small fleet of sailboats that carried merchandise around the lake. These goods came from Mombasa and had to be carried all the way to Uganda by African portage, making their way along ancient Arab trading paths. William Mackinnon thought – if only goods could be transported in bullock carts the IBEAC would be able to increase trade with Uganda considerably. And so he undertook to build a road right across southern British East Africa to provide the link between Mombasa and Lake Victoria.

Ramanbhai stopped to ponder: that was over 30 years ago. Although slavery had been abolished right back at the beginning of the 1800s, it was hard to implement. The portage system meant that many traders would round up Africans at gun-point and compel them to carry their goods for any distance, then abandon them among hostile tribes where they could easily be killed or starve to death.

In order to build his road, William Mackinnon hired an Australian engineer, George Wilson, to create a way through the wilderness.

George Wilson cleared and widened the Arab caravan tracks to accommodate two firm tracks broad enough for a bullock cart to pull its load along.

It was called the Mackinnon-Sclater Road, for these were the men who helped to finance this roughest of tracks that extended 600 miles from Mombasa to Kisumu, on Lake Victoria. Started in 1890, it took six years to complete over the most challenging variety of terrains.

Beginning at the same time, in 1890, another amazing plan by William Mackinnon had been set in motion: to build a ‘knock-down’ steamship; one built and bolted together in a shipyard in Scotland, with all its parts numbered. This could then be dismantled and shipped to Mombasa in hundreds, even thousands of sacks, each weighing no more than 60 lbs; the best weight for portage. This was long before the Mackinnon – Sclater Road was completed.

From Mombasa, all the parts were to be carried by Africans through the interior of the British East Africa Protectorate and up to Kisumu. It took seven years to accomplish. There were many mishaps – parts abandoned in the bush when porters died or absconded - others rusting in warehouses in Mombasa – those so severely damaged that replacements had to be imported. Finally, all the disparate parts were assembled together at Kisumu and in 1897 the great task of reassembly began.

As he read about this vessel Ramanbhai found himself to be strangely stirred. As he familiarized himself with the names of these places, he formed an overall picture of these lands in his mind, he began to feel a definite destination taking shape, and it kindled a flame of hope for his future. The ‘knock-down’ and reassembly he could personally identify with! His dream of becoming a doctor in India had been broken up and now he must reconstruct himself within this new country and his new life. Encouraged, he continued reading.

As early as 1890 the British Foreign Office had suggested in Parliament the idea of building a railroad to connect Mombasa with the lucrative trade in Uganda. But getting bogged down in estimates, logistics, and labour questions, the idea of a railroad did not gain approval until 1895, when the Foreign Office took over from the British East Africa Company. Implementation, however, took another two years.

The cost of portage throughout East Africa was £300 per ton. By rail it would be £3 per ton. The Foreign Office requested the British Government to finance this project: to build a railway line from the port city of Mombasa all the way to Kisumu.

The British Government debated the merits of this incredible venture; the risks of hostile natives (especially the Maasai people), the wild animals, malaria, heat stroke, black water fever, smallpox, the tsetse fly that brought sleeping sickness, not to mention the difficulty of the terrain, with its deserts, mountains, rivers and huge chasms. Added to that were the logistics of importing all the materials necessary for the construction of the railroad, together with the engines and wagons. The cost would be enormous to the British Government.

After two years of intense debate in the British Parliament, they decided the cost of not building the railroad was simply too high with German East Africa posing a threat to trade with Uganda and the source of the River Nile. The Nile was the gateway to the huge potential trading markets to the north and the new British/Egyptian-controlled Sudan, and made protection of the Nile vital to British interests.

Ramanbhai read with interest how Sir George Whitehouse, a veteran developer of ports and railroads in India, had constructed a modern port at Kilindini on the west side of Mombasa Island where the water was deepest. Finished in 1897, there followed a massive inflow of 37,747 indentured labourers from Gujarat and the Punjab; artisans including masons, carpenters and smiths, as well as draftsmen and surveyors, men with experience in the business of building railroads. The legendary A.M. Jeevanjee, a Shi’a Bohra trader, and a man of great wealth and many contacts in India had recruited many of these men. He had made his name in Karachi and later in Mombasa stevedoring (organizing the loading and unloading of ships) dubashing (interpreting for visiting crews) and chandlering: preparing the ship for its next voyage, with water, ice and provisions, and freshly laundered linens). Since everything necessary for the building of the railroad had to be imported, his efficiency in these trades was highly valued.

Ramanbhai loved to read the parts where Indians had been important in the development of this land. He wanted to learn everything he could about how it had all come about. He continued with his reading …

Telegraph lines followed the railroad all the way to Kisumu, which in many places followed closely to the Mackinnon-Sclater Road.

Again, A.M. Jeevanjee’s organizational skills were fully utilized, and when supply chains to the work force faltered, he was called in to supply rations and other necessities to the Indian workers on the railroad.¹ 1901 saw the completion of the 660-mile railroad that linked the port of Mombasa to Kisumu on Lake Victoria.

Lake Victoria was a huge body of water as big as Scotland, with its 26,600 square miles uniting the East African Protectorate, Uganda and German East Africa.

The same year as the railroad was completed, the reassembly of the 110 ton ‘knockdown’ steamship in Kisumu was also completed, and named the SS William Mackinnon. She was launched in 1901, linking Kisumu, (via Entebbe) with Kampala, the beautiful capital of Uganda built on seven hills. A single voyage of two days would replace two months of strenuous marching on the trading routes by land. It was the final link in the chain from the coast to Uganda.

The railroad ended up costing the Brtish Government £5.5 million (that would be approximately £8.2 billion in 2020), and in order to pay for it, the Colonial Office annexed the best and most fertile lands in the Kenya highlands, displacing Maasai, Kikuyu, Kalenjin and other ethnic communities. This was practically one quarter of all arable farmland in Kenya.

By 1903, both rich and poor farmers in Britain were encouraged to immigrate to Kenya, paying two