Kenya
A poignant place in the world for me to be in right now.
When I started to write this piece on Tuesday, I had woken up in the morning feeling quite tearful. I had these thoughts of ‘what am I even doing here?’ Far from my normal life, from my home, my family, my friends. I had literally uprooted myself from everything that was comfortable in my life.
Yet, this situation is of my own choosing. I alone had decided to separate myself from everything ‘back home’. Nobody made me undertake this journey but what has made it so easy is that I am comfortable in the knowledge that I can go back to my home at any time and nothing would have changed. Yet, this was not the case for my father, ‘tata’ who in 1940 at the age of 12, together with his entire family was forced in the middle of the night to get out of bed, grab what he could carry and leave his home, never to return.
It was Saturday 10th February at 2am 85 years ago that the NKVD, the secret Police of the Soviet Union began the deportation of hundreds and thousands of Poles from Eastern Poland to camps in Siberia. Every family has their own unique story of their parents or grandparents, yet the horror that they went through is unimaginable but similar in their experiences.
These families were put onto cattle trucks and spent days travelling in the most horrendous, freezing conditions and with very little food or water. My father and his family were among them. In fact there were over a million Polish nationals in total that were deported to the USSR, Urals and Siberia and forced into hard labour. After two years, the women and children that had survived disease, starvation or exhaustion were evacuated and started their long journey out of Siberia as refugees. Eventually my father’s family found asylum in Arusha, Tanganyika, which is now Tanzania. My father on the other hand had a different journey, he ended up enlisting, along with several thousand other ‘youth,’ into General Anders Army Military School as a ‘Junak’ cadet, at the age of 14 and travelled and spent time in the Middle East, Iran, Iraq, Palestine, Egypt and North Africa.
After the war my father ended up in the UK where he was de-mobbed and spent some time in the Midlands. He had lost all contact with his family and had no idea where they all were. Eventually they had found him through the Red Cross Missing Persons and he joined them in Nairobi in 1955 where they were now settled, living, working and rebuilding their lives.
One of the first jobs that my father found was working as an electrician on film sets and I had only recently found out that he would regularly go drinking with William Holden the Hollywood actor who at the time was passionate about conservation and created the first game ranch in Kenya.
I know very little of what my father did in his years in Kenya before he had to leave in 1963 but I do know that he too was passionate about the wildlife and the preservation of it. Growing up, I remember he would watch every single wildlife programme that was shown on television and was the most animated and happiest when he was running a commentary about the animals, he was our very own David Attenborough.
I also remember that he tried to introduce his five children to such exotic fruits such as avocados and mangos which he would have eaten plenty of in Kenya. Yet we were only used to the simpler fruits like apples and bananas, introducing such exotic fruits to his uncultured children was hard work for my father. Believe me I am making up for it now though!!
He also kept a suitcase under his bed and as well as a photo album of his time in Kenya, it also contained stamp albums and cowboy books, all his prized worldly possessions. I often wondered whether my father was constantly on stand by ready to leave his family and go back to Kenya where I truly believe is where he left his soul. Maybe that’s why he was never truly happy in London, he had no friends, didn’t socialise, drank at home, alone. Maybe all along he wished he was back on some safari or jungle adventure or fishing with his friends. Or maybe he sat there reliving the time he spent in Siberia, the horrors he had witnessed, the family and the home he had lost.
He was not alone, there were thousands of Polish refugees, just like him, each with their own unique memory of their journey that they were also reliving. Scattered in all four corners of the world unable to go back to Poland and back to their homes each one just trying to live as normal life as possible and trying to block out the nightmares, memories and thoughts of their horrific ordeal. I only hope that my father was able to place his memories of Kenya at the forefront of his mind.
What I wished that I had really done was ask him more questions about his life when he was still alive, about his childhood, about his time in Siberia, his time in Kenya. I wish I had got to know him a lot better than I actually did. I have to admit that I never really knew who my father was and what really happened in those thirty six years before he settled for good in London. Imagine, if I could turn back the clock, the questions that I would ask….
On Wednesday 19th February would be the 15th Anniversary of my father’s death and it just so happens, by coincidence, that on this day I am due to start climbing Mount Kenya. My father and his journey and his time in Kenya will be on my mind over those four days. He may no longer be here, physically, but he will always be in my heart and in my thoughts and I just know, that if he did leave his soul here in Kenya, then his soul will definitely be climbing up that mountain with me.
Thank you so much for reading this. Please carry on subscribing, following or sharing. You have given me a reason to write!!! xx
If you would like to find out and listen to more about the history of those that were deported from Poland to Siberia, Jola Piesakowska has created a series of podcasts called Monte Cassino 80 in conjunction with Ognisko (where I used to work) and in the below episode she interviews Professor Norman Davies about his book titled a ‘Trail of Hope’.
When my mum died, I struggled to think of her best times in her life. No doubt, she was happy after the war, bringing up her family, but many endured many tough times including losing a son when he was only 8, but also the effects of ptsd from the experiences she endured in Siberia. I stayed up all night trying to write a eulogy before her funeral. I thought about her best times, having left the cold harsh environment of the brick factory in Arkhangelsk and visions of death and the happy time when she arrived in Africa, Lusaka to be precise. As you know, she lived less than half a mile from your family, and shared a similar horrible history as your fathers family. I’ve not shared this before. Perhaps you’ll connect with it in some way. X
UNDER THE AFRICAN SUN.
You came from the east,
from frozen lands,
to the African sun and earth scorched sands.
Nature was abound,
The flowers smelled sweet.
The Army ants scattering beneath your feet.
You slept in a straw hut,
Healthy food was assured,
You were miles away
From the pain you’d endured.
With your Red Cross shoes,
and your new adopted cat,
You were frightened of the snakes,
but more scared of going back.
Then close friendships were made,
the future looked bright,
and the stars shone like diamonds,
in the African night.
And then you left this beautiful land, never to return;
A new life awaited.
Eight children, one lost
You were not always elated.
But I like to think,
As your time drew near,
That your heart shone bright
And you had no fear,
And you remember with a smile on your face,
Your children all around
With the help of that Sun,
You now sleep sweetly and sound.
Most of the children of Polish refugees wish they had asked their parents much more about their experiences, I certainly did - you are not alone! It must be very emotional to be where your Tata found himself. Many of these Poles did not talk much about their experiences through and after the war as they found it too painful to recall and didn't want to subject their families to the pain of what they went through.