START 10:07:51 An African hand holds the official programme for '"An East African Dreams": A Military Pageant' held on 25th and 26th February 1944 (the patrons for this event are Kenya's governor, Sir Henry Monck-Mason Moore, and General Sir William Platt, Commander-in-Chief East Africa Command). A large number of Africans arrive at Nairobi Racecourse and pay to buy the entry tickets. A group of Kenyan Africans - a man in khaki shirt and shorts holding a bicycle and three nurses (?) in white headscarfs - lark about in front of the camera. For the pageant, actors dressed as Arab traders praying towards Mecca and travelling on a donkey and a mule and on foot, preceded by men beating drums. Young European women wearing robes and leapard skins travel on a decorated float towed by a tractor; the cards they are holding in their hands advertise Kenya's principal wartime agricultural products - coffee, pyrethrum and maize.

10:10:53 A military band of musicians from the King's African Rifles marches at the head of European soldiers (Kenya Regiment?) wearing slouch hats, khaki drill and shouldering SMLE rifles with fixed bayonets. A troupe of African (Kikuyu?) warriors perform a dance whilst others, seated on the ground, drink from animal horns and appear to be drunk.

10:11:39 Soldiers of the King's African Rifles, shouldering their SMLE rifles, perform a march past behind their military band. Sixteen African soldiers in white sports clothing perform exercises with wooden logs. A firing demonstration by several KAR two-man Bren light machine-gun teams and a two-inch mortar team, followed by a demonstration of an infantry section attack on a defended position under the cover of smoke and support fire from the Bren gunners.

10:12:55 A KAR rifleman stands guard outide an enclosure where Allied and captured enemy weaponry is on display to the general public. A dummy dressed in Japanese infantry uniform, webbing, steel helmet and Arisaka Type 38 rifle. Army officers and European civilians look at rows of rifles and 1/72 scale model aircraft laid out on tables. A selection of British Army gas masks (respirators) and two dummies wearing British gas masks and gas-proof overalls. An army officer shows a civilian how to operate a Blacker Bombard spigot mortar.

10:13:54 Off-duty British soldiers and sailors, European settlers and Indians stroll around a fun fair at the race course. An army officer throws darts at a whirling circular dart board. A football is kicked at a wooden board painted with the face of an African tribesman; the man kicking the ball is hoping to get it through one of the face's hollow eyes. Family groups consisting of European settlers and Sikhs try their hand at hurling wooden balls into a line of buckets. A white bull terrier on a lead. Players roll coins onto a board consisting of numbered squares that, if the coins happen to land on a lucky number, results in a prize. A European soldier (Kenya Regiment ?) who has taken part in the marchpast swigs beer from a bottle.

10:15:09 A field filled with pyrethrum daisies, a species related to the chrysanthemum and used for centuries to produce natural insecticide. African women and children gather up the daisies and stuff them into shoulder bags.

10:17:16 African farm labourers plough an arable field after a crop harvest. They are in charge of a team of ten draught oxen that is pulling a plough designed to cope with difficult soil conditions.

10:19:08 The ingredients for a pasta meal on a kitchen table - bags of dripping, flour, eggs and some tomatoes - plus a sieve and a rolling pin. An Italian prisoner-of-war at Naivasha (?) sieves flour, breaks half a dozen eggs and mixes them into the flour. He kneads the mixture into a big lump of pastry, cuts off a section and proceeds to turn it into a very thin pastry by rolling it flat with a rolling pin. The cook then folds up the pasta into a roll and slices it up very thinly. From the thin pasta strips, he makes something that looks like tagliatelli. END 10:22:44

Kenya's contribution to the British Empire's war effort is celebrated in Nairobi. Harvesting and ploughing. An Italian prisoner-of-war prepares a meal.

Notes

Summary: John Wernham recorded audio commentary over this film on 14 May 1992, DVD Reel 5 "Reel 18" from 5.10 to 14.20.

The pageant seen here was organised by Lorna Swinburne Ward, a local artist.

During the Second World War, pyrethrum was grown in huge quantities in Kenya's prime farming land to produce an organic and quick-acting insecticide for the Allied armies. Crucially, although pyrethrum is lethal to insects, it is relatively non-toxic to humans and warm-blooded animals.

The plough seen being used in this film is a development of the stump-jump plough, an Australian invention of the 1870s, designed to cope with ploughing up land full of obstacles like tree roots and rocks. This type of plough also helps limit soil erosion, an important feature in a country like Kenya with a serious soil erosion problem aggravated by bad farming techniques.

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.