The long and the short of it in Africa

As late as the 1920s, it was believed that Africa’s tropical sun would boil a European’s brains. ‘The direct ray of the sun – almost vertical at all seasons of the year – strikes down on man and beast alike,’ Churchill had written on his visit to East Africa. ‘Woe to the white man whom he finds uncovered!’ When my father first arrived in Tanganyika he was advised to go about in a spine pad and solar topee, which he swiftly discarded. He wore a khaki drill bush shirt and shorts as long and baggy as spinnakers. In old age his face, neck, arms and legs were very dark brown, but his torso remained a much paler colour.

As a boy I also went about in khaki shorts, made by the Indian tailors in old Malindi town. All the white boys like me wore shorts, which made sense in the heat. It was also a kind of uniform we all had while we drank Tusker beers at Ocean Sports, a beach bar on the Kenya coast we affectionately called ‘Open Shorts’. Home for the holidays from school in England, my mother would observe how white I was, give me a jug of cooking oil to pour over my skin and tell me to get out into the sun.

After university in England I became a correspondent in Tanzania, where the citizens expressed discomfort at my habit of wearing shorts. A friend explained that such attire was regarded as colonial, a symbol of white oppression. I was appalled and since I did not wish to offend anybody, I opted for long trousers. In all my years of journalism, I wore longs, however hot it became in the scorching sun’s rays of Somalia, Ethiopia or Sudan. When I began farming 20 years ago I returned to wearing shorts occasionally, but even now my friends tend to laugh at my white knees.