I’m sitting at Dorman’s coffee shop at the Karen Nakumatt (supermarket), waiting for a friend. Karen (named after Karen Blixen’s niece) is home to the Kenya Cowboy (the ‘KC’), the white, trans-generational Kenyans who rear horses, drive Land Rovers, and who live on farms. We’re talking seriously expensive (expansive?) properties here …
I’m nervous. There’s hardly a black face to be seen.
Sorry, the waitron is black ….
I liken the experience to sitting somewhere between a coffee shop in Hoedspruit, on the border of the Kruger game park, and one at Century City, near Belleville, Cape Town. Everywhere around me are white faces. Some of the guys are wearing, like, serious safari gear (along with Australian bush-leather hats). Some of them are dressed a bit more regular (beach-casual actually), as in, flip-flops, T-shirts and baggy khaki trousers. Others are dressed ‘smart-casual’. But, hey, that’s OK, it’s the accents that are making the scene what it is … South African Mall-inesque.
Behind me is a white South African talking insurance to another white lady seated beside him. He sounds like he used to live in Pretoria, or perhaps he once worked for SAA but got tired of the gay scene in Rome. In front of me is a Brit, and another South African whose face I seem to remember from somewhere (like Leadership magazine).
Seated just next to me is YET ANOTHER South African who works for a wireless Internet service provider. We met before, but I don’t think he would remember …
Sheesh, I feel like I could just step outside and onto the beach at Blauuwberg …
Feeling outnumbered and outsmarted by the Big White Bucks that surround me, I wait expectantly for Shibero to arrive. Only a few minutes late, I see her (very 60’s) lanky black form appear. I’m relieved. We depart Dorman’s, jump into her stenciled car (CATS: Childrens’ Art and Theatre School) and head for a rustic place up the road to have some breakfast.
Breakfast is very pleasant. The service meanders at just the right pace as the staff set up for a wedding on the lawn.
But behind me are seated two white guys. The one has an accent I again seem to recognize. He notices me and my accent too. He doesn’t say anything. Such is the population of expatriate South Africans here that I’m just another guy …
The bottom line: Clearly, South Africans are making some kind of contribution to the Kenyan economy. But it just seems a pity to me that all the SA white folk seem to prefer living in white enclaves like Karen. (Not my idea of living in Kenya at all)
I mean, coming to Karen, in Kenya, must be like moving from Kenilworth to Knoppieslaagte.
Kom mense, wat gaan aan met jille? (basically, “wassup wichu?”)
I’ll write some more once my biltong has dried a bit …
B-)
