Cruelty and Empathy, Animals and Race, in Colonial Kenya

Abstract

Colonial Kenya was, by anyone's standards, suffused with violence and cruelty. Africans suffered conquest, the cane, and counterinsurgency. Indians endured their share of bloodied noses at the hands of whites. While the European immigrant community gave better than they received—without admitting cruelty no matter the barbarity of their actions—they too believed themselves living amidst unconscionable cruelty. Mother nature, in her heartless way, oversaw a cruel realm. Leopards seemed to have a particular taste for domestic dogs, often snatching them from front porches or even leaping through open windows for their innocent prey. Settler attempts to raise fowl often failed due to pitiless hawks or other predators. Whites were most repulsed by siafu or army ants. Siafu appeared, seemingly from nowhere, marching in a line a foot wide and yards long, consuming any living thing in their path. Europeans recounted gruesome scenes of animals and even human infants killed and bodies picked clean by marauding siafu.

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