Kenya 1951. A British colony. The official policy of the white colonial government is to keep the races separate in private places frequented by the public (hotels, cinemas) and in public institutions (public transport, schools). My father is Indian (a Kenya Asian), my mother English; they met reading pharmacy at London University during the war. My brother, sister and I are therefore of mixed race which presents a dilemma when it comes to our education as schools are racially segregated. Eventually, with a few like-minded friends, my parents, in the face of considerable local white hostility, start the first multiracial school in east Africa – Hospital Hill School, named neutrally after the road on which it is situated.
It is a small primary school, only three classes, and the pupils are white, brown and black. These early school days are happy and carefree and we are good friends. There is no bullying and the mingling of races seems the natural way to be. The school grounds are the typical red earth of Kenya with occasional patches of dry, brown grass and clumps of young eucalyptus. These provide the setting for our games and fantasies. The boys cut branches from the trees to fashion swords (or swords, as one boy insists on pronouncing it) and we enact scenes from Ivanhoe and The Prisoner of Zenda, films we have seen.
We are largely protected from the controversy surrounding the school’s multiracial ethos but this is brought home to us rudely when we go to the Saturday morning flicks in Nairobi which we do as a multiracial gaggle. Racial segregation is strictly policed by the cinema staff: separate queues for whites and non-whites; whites in the circle, non-whites in the stalls. Our group refuses to be separated so we all go into the stalls. Once the audience is seated and the lights dim for the advertisements, the fun begins. Downstairs we are subjected to a barrage of missiles from upstairs – ice cream cartons, empty Coke bottles (glass!) – which only subside when the main feature starts. We refuse to be intimidated and throw things back at them.
As our time at primary school draws to an end our minds become focused on our secondary education and we have to grapple with the reality of there being no multiracial secondary schools in Kenya. Most pupils have no choice but to go to a racially segregated school. But my parents decide that my younger brother and I will be better off at a secondary school in Britain, which means boarding. Nothing in our experience can prepare us for what is to come other than the idealised stories of Enid Blyton. There is one early augury, however, of how I might react to being away from home: I can’t cope with sleepovers. Even staying with a close friend, I have to get them to phone my parents to come and pick me up in the middle of the night.
Too soon the fateful day comes. It is May 1957 and I am 11 years old. I arrive at Aberlour House in the north of Scotland, the prep school for Gordonstoun. It is an austere country house – foursquare, dark grey granite, with steps leading up to a portico – in a beautiful setting – on a hillside overlooking the River Spey. Inside it is cold, the corridors smell of floor polish and boiled cabbage. The boot room in the basement is the creepiest place in the house – dark, damp, smelling of sweaty socks and wet leather. I am in a dormitory on the first floor with nine other boys.
I am desperately homesick; each night I cry myself to sleep. Kenya and home seem impossibly far away. I yearn for the warm African sun, the aromatic, dusty smells of the bush, the sweeping horizons, the companionship of Hospital Hill School. What makes my feeling of loss the more poignant is that my parents cannot afford to fly us home every holiday, only once a year in the summer. I feel the separation from my parents, especially my mother, intensely.
In order to survive I eventually learn to suppress this natural but unbearable pain. This burying of my feelings, practiced many times over the following years, is the unwelcome legacy of the institution of boarding school. It is reflected starkly in my letters home, which my mother has carefully kept. Not wanting to worry or disappoint my parents the letters start unvaryingly with, “Dear Mum and Dad, I hope you are well, I am fine,” and go on to give an upbeat account of the week’s events – the ”official version” - with never a hint of my unhappiness.
At the end of my first term at Aberlour House I get an unpleasant shock. One day, alone in the deserted entrance hall of the school, I find myself surrounded by four boys. The leader of this little gang, Laing, says, “We don’t like you, Karmali,” and goes on to enumerate the ways in which I have offended them and an unwritten public school code. In particular, I have ingratiatingly sought to make myself popular with the other boys by my stories of my life in Kenya (told simply to console myself with nostalgic memories). If I don’t change my ways and know my place they will “get” me. I am dumbstruck and frightened and learn another lesson about surviving boarding school – keep my head down and don’t be or show myself.
After almost two years at Aberlour, I progress to Gordonstoun. The house I am in is called the Round Square (a circular building with grass in the centre). I am the only new boy in the house and I don’t know anyone. I feel nervous and lonely. To my amazement, I am rescued. Jim Fowler, a working class boy in his mid-teens from a local fishing family, is in the Round Square on a Gordonstoun scholarship in seamanship for aspiring merchant seamen – he befriends me. Jim is tough and looks it. His hair is combed in an Elvis quiff at the front and in a duck’s arse behind. None of the other boys dare mess with him. He observes my predicament and decides that I need protecting – he is street wise and doesn’t give a damn about public school codes. He is like a big brother and I grow more confident under his watchfulness. After two years, Jim leaves and I am moved to a different house.
Is there racism at Gordonstoun? Probably, but the only overt example I experience is as a senior boy when I reprimand a junior, son of landed gentry, for a minor misdemeanour when he calls me a “black bastard”. My nickname is “Wog”. Racist? Possibly, but it seems more friendly than an insult.
Gordonstoun styles itself as an “outward bound” school which builds character through physically demanding outdoor activities. At five foot and seven stone I struggle with this regime but it is bad form to complain so I keep a stiff upper lip while quaking inside. Every term each class spends a week out of school doing either seamanship or expeditions. Seamanship means venturing out into the Moray Firth in an archaic open sailing boat with a crew of eight. On a calm summer’s day it can be quite pleasant but my abiding memory is of being cold, wet and seasick. Expeditions involve hill walking and climbing in the Cairngorms, Glen Nevis and others. I am a mediocre walker and soon get left behind, whipped on by cries of “Come on Karmali! Keep up!” only for the group to move on as soon as I catch up. One February afternoon with snow on the ground we are made to swim in the icy Moray Firth dressed only in our swimming shorts.
But the activity I hate most is rugby which we play twice a week in the winter. I am not physically strong or robust and I am fearful of the violent physical contact, not without reason: my brother breaks his tibia being tackled in front of me. I spend the 24 hours before each game dreading what is to come.
My only relief is the pipe band. Since an early age I have been enthralled by drums and drumming. To my delight, soon after I arrive at Gordonstoun, the school decides to start a pipe band for which side drummers are needed. Each week we would-be drummers travel to the Seaforth Highlanders barracks in nearby Elgin to be taught the rudiments of side drumming by a bantam cock of a man, retired drum major Archibald. It takes six months until we are proficient enough to join the pipers in a fully-fledged pipe band. Elated, I stride out to the Pibroch o’ Donald Dhu; the exhilarating skirl of the pipes and the intricate, driving rhythm of the drums. In the summer we play frequently, at school parades and local country houses. I rise to become leading side drummer. I am invited to play percussion in the school orchestra.
At last, after an ordeal lasting seven years, I leave Gordonstoun and go up to Oxford University. It is like emerging from the darkness into the light; but that is another story.