START 10:15:15 An African man demonstrates how to start a fire, using a straight wooden stick and a flat section of wood similar in size and shape to a six inch ruler in which three semi-circular indentations have been made. Heat created by the friction caused by rotating the stick in one of the indentations ignites dry grass and a fire is started.

10:10:52 A wild fire takes hold on a hillside in bush country. African soldiers attempt to extinguish the flames by beating them with brushes. Night scenes showing flames consuming the undergrowth and wooden huts despite the efforts of fire-fighters.

10:17:45 An African village market where the majority of the customers and the vendors seated on the ground in front of their wares is female. A woman scoops up root vegetables into her straw shopping basket. Items for sale include vegetables that look like radishes and carrots and big bunches of bananas. A customer staggers off homeward with a large bunch of bananas on her back.

10:19:34 A line of African women traders seated on the ground, including one looking after her baby. A young man tries on different hats, watched by the man in charge of selling them. A woman looks at a cotton dress for one of her childen and appears to seek her husband's permission before she makes the decision to buy it. Male traders appear to be selling everything but foodstuffs, which here is a female monopoly. Maize and beans are sold in bags or spread out on blankets for customers to inspect. A large number of clay jugs for sale.

10:22:34 Working in the shade, butchers use machetes to cut up large pieces of meat on the ground.

10:23:06 Miscellaneous market scenes - a young boy stares playfully at the camera. Whicker baskets full of rmaize or nuts. Women with whicker baskets balanced on top of their heads. Faces of women and children whose features are obscured by shadow caused by the sun directly overhead. Sergeant Wernham takes a photograph of the busy scene with his stills camera.

END 10:24:15

Bush fires and African village markets in Kenya

Notes

Summary: John Wernham recorded audio commentary over this film on 14 May 1992, DVD Reel 2 from 16.38 to 22.45.

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 at this time in the region's colonial history.