The accompanying image, courtesy of the 1967 photobiography “Kenyatta,” by Anthony Howarth, is of Jomo Kenyatta, leader of Kenya from 12th December 1963 to 22nd August 1978, addressing a gathering at Trafalgar Square, London, England, in 1938. Jomo Kenyatta spent two stints in Europe i.e. from 1929 to 1930, and again from 1931 to 1946, both times sent by what used to be known as the Kikuyu Central Association (KCA), to present grievances of Kenya’s Kikuyu community to the British Cabinet Minister in charge of the British Colonies i.e. the British Secretary of State for the Colonies.
Jomo Kenyatta never liked discussing his two stints in Europe for the rest of his life, despite graduating with a Diploma in Anthropology from the London School of Economics in 1938, something that was confirmed in 2001 by one of his former lecturers at the London School of Economics, Prof. (Sir) Raymond William Firth.
Both stints spent by Jomo Kenyatta in Europe in his lifetime were characterised by hardship and desperation, which is why he never liked discussing his time in Europe.
For one, Jomo Kenyatta, during his second much longer stay in Europe, was based in England’s capital city of London, where he was forever behind in paying his rent, where he frequently accumulated big rent arrears at the different places he stayed, and where he frequently got evicted from the different places he stayed, forcing him to eventually relocate to rural England, where he worked as a farm labourer for a living, where he met and married Edna Grace Clarke, with whom he had a son who is still alive i.e. Peter Magana Kenyatta.
Indeed, it is even suggested in a feature published by Kenya’s “Sunday Nation” newspaper of 3rd December 2017 titled “Secrets of Jomo Kenyatta in London from British intelligence,” that at one point, Jomo Kenyatta even became a gigolo at the disposal of well to do White women, to survive.
The legend also goes that Jomo Kenyatta, during his second stay in Europe of 1931 to 1946, relocated to Moscow in the Soviet Union, where he half-heartedly embraced Communism, drawing suspicion from his Communist benefactors in Moscow, who almost therefore killed him, believing he was a British spy masquerading as a Communist convert. What saved Jomo Kenyatta, the legend goes, is that he was tipped off about his “looming elimination” and thereafore escaped from Moscow in the dead of the night;
