During the early days of the war, the main fear was that the Italians might break through into Kenya. Because they presented enticing targets for bombers, all the schools were emptied of boarders who were sent to Naivasha to stay in a big hotel there. But by the time I entered high school in 1941 the fear had receded somewhat and the boarders were back in the schools in Nairobi including mine. I was now at the Prince of Wales School which was a state funded school but run on English public school lines. The expectation was that we would be young English gentlemen when they had finished with us.
Of course you couldn’t buy lollies or chocolates once the war broke out. But I had since discovered a few shops in the Indian Bazaar that had a few boiled lollipops in store. I bought a few for about 5 cents or a ha’penny each and paraded my largesse the next day at school.
I was instantly set upon by other children with a crazed, sugar-lust in their eyes. The boarders were particularly insistent as they demanded to know where I had found such precious, sugary treasure and could I procure them some. I agreed and in the lunch hour rode down the long hill into the centre of town to the bazaar. I bought as many as I could find. Originally I was selling them for the 5 cents I had paid for them but then word went round and soon the orders were plentiful. I decided it was time to get businesslike and suitably rewarded for the effort I was putting into obtaining the schools’ sweet stocks.
I started demanding 10 cents for each lollipop but the customers baulked at such a price hike over such a short amount of time. So I decided to try and cut my overheads instead. I went looking for, and found, the wholesaler of the lollipops- a horrible, dirty, little bazaar shop with tanks of lolly water made up in a small back-room. Into this was thrown any odds and ends of sugar that happened to be lying around and any odd bits of wood were then used as the lolly sticks.
The Indian owner looked somewhat askance at me when I entered but he was not one to dismiss the chance of secure income, no matter the youth of the business minded customer. We soon struck a deal that he would sell wholesale batches of 100 sweets at a time to me with each one costing 2.5c. Confident of my consumers’ lust for the product and ability to shift such quantities I dropped my price back to 5c. I was soon reaping the rewards of a 100% mark-up.
Thus my business skills education was complete.
Through this I ended up being able to buy quite a few tools for my toy making and also to buy cigarettes which my mates and I would smoke together or sell back to the Italian POWs. But when I reached the age of 10 or 11 I discovered a new passion that ate up all my sweet-selling profits.
Boat building.
I had a mate who was two years older than me and possessed a book that showed you how to design and build a boat. He had begun doing so and I was deeply impressed. I monitored his progress closely and after a few weeks decided it didn’t look too hard and it was time to build my own boat.
I didn’t have the same tools as him but slowly, though my entrepreneurial efforts, I started accumulating a saw and a drill and other bits that I needed. When I had what I thought were the essential tools I began to draw extensive plans and put great mathematical efforts into working out where the centre of effort and centre of force needed to be so it would sail properly. I worked out every piece of wood I would need and the exact length it had to be.
The cost of the wood I knew to be beyond my slender boyhood means and I pondered this problem for some time. I decided there was no option but to appeal to my parents. My father, when approached, gave no clue as to what he thought of my aspirations but he agreed that he would pay for half the wood if I paid for the other half. I felt this was more than fair and so I trotted down to the timber yard with a detailed list of all that I would need clutched in my probably very grubby fist.
The mill staff were in equal parts amused and impressed at my serious face and unequivocal demands. Grinningly they would present me with samples of wood asking “is this bit good enough?”, “do you want a different pack of wood?”. But they made up all the bits for me and I was in a triumphant mood on the day I accompanied my father in the truck to pick up my hessian covered stack of planks.
Other than helping me buy the timber, I don’t think either of my parents took the slightest interest in my boat, despite the fact I built it on the verandah of the house and it took about eight months to do. However, my mother never once mentioned the amount of mess I was creating. This was either a testament to how busy she was or relief that I was appeared to be occupied every hour there was on something she could see and appeared to be mildly constructive.
I even cast aluminium in wooden moulds to make the rudder…although I discovered afterwards there were much easier ways of doing it. I made every single rivet and even sewed every hole needed to loop the rope through from the mast on the sail . I was very proud of that first boat- it was 6ft long and a bit like a sabbo and it sailed well. We had lots of fun in it.
The finished product- my boat
“We” was me and my friend David Walker. He was the only other one in my gang who was interested in boats and this interest rapidly elevated him to become my second-in-command.
He lived a few houses down the street from me and together we also made a canoe together. This was a less successful enterprise as afterwards we realised it was only designed for one man and we had gone somewhat awry with the stability meaning one of us usually got a dunking every few minutes we were in it.
David’s other valuable quality was that he was very good at schoolwork. I had now embarked on building my next boat- a 14-ft racing boat- a much bigger and more ambitious project by far so obviously I needed much more time on it. I couldn’t waste precious hours completing school work so David proved his worth as a friend by completing all of my assignments.
My interest in learning how to build things was always strong. Once my gang and I managed to build a very impressive treehouse right near the house. It was one of those traditional flat-topped African trees and we dragged poles and bits of plank we had purloined from yards….only if it wasn’t being used for something else- I was very firm about that- my principles allowed, nay even promoted the reduction of wastage but I could not condone stealing.
The treehouse
We dragged the timber up this tree, at least 25 feet up from the ground which took a degree of co-ordinate effort in itself. I designed the house which had a triangular shape, about 10ft wide and even had a roof on it. Originally we tried a thatched roof but that wasn’t very satisfactory, mostly because we couldn’t get up to lay the thatch….possibly, although it costs me to admit it, the sub-structure wasn’t that good.
Anyway we ended up roofing it with some black building board- like a fibro sheet but made out of milk protein instead of asbestos. We made the walls of the same stuff and then had a hole in the middle of the floor where we could drop nasty things on anyone walking below who we didn’t want coming up.
Funnily enough, despite my continued belief that I was a very tolerant supervisor, as soon as I started putting my gang to work on the next large project, my boat, it was amazing how their visits soon dropped off.
himalayan epiphany 