President Mzee Jomo Kenyatta, whom we visited at the Nakuro State House is a crotchety cranky old man at 84. He walks with a cane and a limp although he has a young 42 year old wife. He talks hesitantly.
Nairobi is a city of wide open spaces and wide streets but this may have been due to the British. And so are the trees and the British-like houses and lawns.
Pres. Kenyatta apparently refused to attend the opening of UNCTAD [United Nations Conference on Trade and Development] because he did not want any other president invited although he went out of his way during our visit at Nakuro to explain that he had other previous commitments.
This petty pompousness again I find reflected in his petulant dismissal of the photographers and newspapermen. And his declaration, “I command my minister to bring you to the tea plantations.” And Minister [Mathews] Ogutu repeating it later in the plane to Keekorok to me.
This minister incidentally, has gone out of his way to prove his importance. He is Minister of Tourism and Wildlife. He solemnly announced to John Saego and David Anthony Parkinson who have contracted to export wild animals to the Philippines that no animals can be exported without his approval and henceforth no animals will be exported except to heads of state like me.
Which cuts out the livelihood of the white hunters and trappers who must export animals to live. The two were taken aback inasmuch as they had paid their licenses and registered properly with the minister’s office, I presume with the subordinates who probably know more about this matter than the minister.
The same thing is true of the stuffed and mounted animals we ordered from Zimmerman the taxidermists. The prices are being changed after the intervention of the minister.
If this is the way they run their government I am afraid this is another shaky state.
So I catered to the ego of Pres. Kenyatta by calling him “the great Kenyatta,” “the father of his people” and other ego-boosting.
It is enough that we have met the great Kenyatta and we do not need to do anything more,” I concluded when he asked me if I wanted to do anything else in Kenya.
There are two handwritten entries for May 7, 1976 this one written on Malacañang letterhead, the second on the letterhead of Safari Lodge Properties, Nairobi.
When I referred to his book, Facing Mt. Kenya, he asked me if I had read it which of course I answered in the affirmative.
And when I admired the architecture of the buildings in Nairobi, he said he was also an architect.
The corruption is open.