The Colonial Farm

By Wanjirũ Warama

Reviewed by Pennell Paugh

January 1, 2025 (La Mesa) -- Wanjiru Warama a resident of La Mesa, provides true stories of how her family and community lived in abject poverty on British colonial farms in Kenya in her novel, The Colonial Farm. Her historic memoir sheds light on the struggles of Kenyan farmworkers and rural populations under the British colonial rule. She then covers how Kenya’s rulership developed after the British retreated from governing.

Below is an excerpt from the novel:

“Before colonization, Kenya had no plantations for children to work in and earn money. People lived in clusters of extended families and worked only on their own lands unless friends did merry-go-rounds at each other’s projects. Without full-time jobs elsewhere, parents did most of the hard work and eased their children into work without burdening them unduly.

“But during my time, in the fifties and sixties, our parents needed us children to help them not only garden and harvest but also earn extra money. “Hard work killed nobody,” they said. Discipline (a euphemism for beating or assaulting a child) and work, the village culture claimed, molded a child into a responsible human being. Or the Christians evoked “Spare the rod, spoil the child” nonsense.

“Later in my adulthood, I heard an occasional misguided adult say, “My parents beat me, and look at me now? I turned out okay.” I bet people make such statements to make light of the assaults and damage they suffered.

“Regarding child labor, one would expect that because Kenya was a British colony, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), also known as child labor laws enacted in England in 1938, would apply. But the law applied to British children, not African children in the colonies like us. Our parents didn’t know of such laws; individual parents set the standards. Major Miller, like the rest, employed children as young as ten.

“My siblings and I complained about the hard work, but the hardest hit were the unlucky children whose fathers couldn’t afford school fees (at twenty-two shillings per pupil per year from 1956) or didn’t see the need for educating potential farmhands. The children worked full-time. They dug, weeded, and picked coffee cherries alongside their parents or other adults eight to nine hours a day, six days a week. Some landowners, like the famous author of Out of Africa, Karen Blixen (pen name Isak Dinesen, 1885-1962), besides plantation jobs, employed small boys as domestic trainees.”

Warama shows the lives of overworked native groups while describing the lives of her family members, including herself. Despite the odds of an African living in 1950s Kenya, where education for a girl was an afterthought, Warama managed to use education to escape a life of drudgery.

The book is astonishingly positive given the abject poverty under which Warama and her siblings suffered. She tells a compelling story. I look forward to reading the author’s personal story—how she continued her education and eventually immigrated to the United States.

Author Wanjiru Warama has written five books and one personal essay. The Colonial Farm is the latest in her The Colonized series. A philanthropist, Warama is a member of The Rotary Club, a lifetime member of the Friends of the San Diego Public Library, and a benefactor of Gitura Secondary and Gitura Primary schools in Kenya.

By Wanjirũ Warama

Reviewed by Pennell Paugh

January 1, 2025 (La Mesa) -- Wanjiru Warama a resident of La Mesa, provides true stories of how her family and community lived in abject poverty on British colonial farms in Kenya in her novel, The Colonial Farm. Her historic memoir sheds light on the struggles of Kenyan farmworkers and rural populations under the British colonial rule. She then covers how Kenya’s rulership developed after the British retreated from governing.

Below is an excerpt from the novel:

“Before colonization, Kenya had no plantations for children to work in and earn money. People lived in clusters of extended families and worked only on their own lands unless friends did merry-go-rounds at each other’s projects. Without full-time jobs elsewhere, parents did most of the hard work and eased their children into work without burdening them unduly.

“But during my time, in the fifties and sixties, our parents needed us children to help them not only garden and harvest but also earn extra money. “Hard work killed nobody,” they said. Discipline (a euphemism for beating or assaulting a child) and work, the village culture claimed, molded a child into a responsible human being. Or the Christians evoked “Spare the rod, spoil the child” nonsense.

“Later in my adulthood, I heard an occasional misguided adult say, “My parents beat me, and look at me now? I turned out okay.” I bet people make such statements to make light of the assaults and damage they suffered.

“Regarding child labor, one would expect that because Kenya was a British colony, the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA), also known as child labor laws enacted in England in 1938, would apply. But the law applied to British children, not African children in the colonies like us. Our parents didn’t know of such laws; individual parents set the standards. Major Miller, like the rest, employed children as young as ten.

“My siblings and I complained about the hard work, but the hardest hit were the unlucky children whose fathers couldn’t afford school fees (at twenty-two shillings per pupil per year from 1956) or didn’t see the need for educating potential farmhands. The children worked full-time. They dug, weeded, and picked coffee cherries alongside their parents or other adults eight to nine hours a day, six days a week. Some landowners, like the famous author of Out of Africa, Karen Blixen (pen name Isak Dinesen, 1885-1962), besides plantation jobs, employed small boys as domestic trainees.”

Warama shows the lives of overworked native groups while describing the lives of her family members, including herself. Despite the odds of an African living in 1950s Kenya, where education for a girl was an afterthought, Warama managed to use education to escape a life of drudgery.

The book is astonishingly positive given the abject poverty under which Warama and her siblings suffered. She tells a compelling story. I look forward to reading the author’s personal story—how she continued her education and eventually immigrated to the United States.

Author Wanjiru Warama has written five books and one personal essay. The Colonial Farm is the latest in her The Colonized series. A philanthropist, Warama is a member of The Rotary Club, a lifetime member of the Friends of the San Diego Public Library, and a benefactor of Gitura Secondary and Gitura Primary schools in Kenya.