START 10:16:40 A view of a conical hill or kopje overlooking Lake Naivasha in Kenya's Rift Valley and shots showing two Royal Navy officers, assisted by an African guide, scaling the peak and the panorama from this vantage point overlooking the south-west corner of Lake Naivasha, the highest of all the lakes in the Rift Valley. The two RN officers make their way down the hill.

10:18:45 Tracking shots from a moving train as it pulls in to a station somewhere in Kenya (Nairob1?).

10:19:27 Outside Nairobi railway station, smartly-dressed King Freddie Edward Mutesa II, Kabaka or King of Buganda, waits for an official car to arrive; he and a senior British Army officer get into the back of an American Dodge staff car and are driven away.

10:19:53 Delamere Avenue in the busy, bustling centre of Nairobi, Torr's Hotel, a favourite meeting place for Kenya's British settlers, Europeans using a covered walkway in one of the main shopping precincts and the shabbier street outside Nairobi Market. Inside the market, Indian traders are seen selling flowers, pineapples and coconuts to European women shoppers. The exterior and interior of a shop run by an Indian trader called Mohammed Ali al-Harazi.

10:21:07 Scenes on a safari through Kenya showing a Dodge Carryall 4 x 4 heavy utility on the move. Two Africans and Wernham's immediate superior, Lieutenant Horn, clear away a tree that has fallen onto the road and is obstructing their route.

10:22:22 An African boy walks up to the camera. Scenes at a Masai clan gathering where its members are addressed by the local British District Commissioner. Masai tribesmen examine a captured Japanese samurai sword given to their clan as a war trophy.

10:24:00 A typical African village of circular mud-walled huts with thatched roofs. A Canadian military-pattern truck on the move. Low round huts with mud walls and a cattle enclosure fashioned from thorn bushes. Studies of young African women outside their dwellings; one of them is smoking a cigarette and threading cotton through a button.

10:25:00 A herd of African cattle gathers to be watered. A naked herdsman collects water from a well in water containers and pours it into a narrow ditch, from which the animals drink.

10:26:07 Africans line up to enter a sports stadium in Nairobi. Male and female spectators (including many soldiers in the King's African Rifles) sit on terraces to watch a game of football. During play, two goals are scored, one from a penalty.

10:27:38 Scenes at a sports day for men of the King's African Rifles in their camp outside Nairobi. African men try their hand at climbing greasy poles. They take part in the high jump, long jump and in novelty contests involving eating from plates without using their hands and sitting astride a log over a pool of water and whacking one another with pillows or sandbags. They also play blind man's buff. The cameraman experiments with altering camera speeds at several points during the sports scenes in order to emphasise the muscular agility of the participants.

END 10:30:43

Glimpses of life in Kenya during the Second World War

Notes

Summary: John Wernham recorded audio commentary over this film on 14 May 1992, DVD Reel 1 "Reel 2" from 10.55 to 20.36.

Remarks: This material, together with the rest of Wernham's film record of his time in East Africa, constitutes a valuable and possibly unique pictorial record aof this period in the region's colonial history.