Dance of the Jakaranda by Peter Kimani: book review

Dance of the Jakaranda (2017) is set in Kenya in 1963, the year of the country’s independence from Britain.

The story goes back to 1886 as construction commences on The Uganda Railway, built by the British, to connect Uganda to the sea port of Mombasa in Kenya. In 1893 construction began on the Mombasa to Nairobi rail line that transformed the nation.

It was the construction of the railway that brought Reverend Richard Turnbull and Ian McDonald from Britain to Kenya (known then as the British East Africa Protectorate). It was also the railway that brought Babu Rajan Salim from India to the foreign land.

McDonald, the colonial administrator, built a home in 1902, and in 1963 it was the Jakaranda Hotel. Babu became a technician, and the Reverend began an adoption campaign for abandonned babies. Over the years, Ian, Richard, and Babu’s lives were as separate as the tracks of the railway.

Ian, Richard, and Babu’s lives intersect when they are all implicated in the controversial birth of a child to Seneiya, the daughter of a Masai chief. In 1963, when they are old men, and the child’s child is a young woman, the truth is revealed.

In 1963, the ‘’Whites Only’’ sign was removed from the Jakaranda Hotel, and Africans, Asians, and Arabs all rejoiced – and began ‘’testing the limits, exploring new horizons’’ after Kenya’s independence.

This generational, historical, multi-racial novel blends everyone into a melting pot known as the dance of the Jakaranda, the transformational journey of men and a nation. The characters are interesting, the tensions are real, and the plot is comically entangled in a tale of love, loss, and lust.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).

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