Hashtag Jacaranda Propaganda
The colonial history of one tree in Kenya being reclaimed as our own
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When the British left Kenya at the end of their colonial rule of the country, one of the things they left us was the gift of the jacaranda tree. Growing up in Kisumu, a city in the Western part of Kenya, we would see them, these jacarandas, blooming in hues of seismic purple every January, heralding the new year. By Jomo Kenyatta Highway, Oginga Odinga Street, on the streets and avenues of Kisumu, the jacarandas would stand, towering over the vehicular and foot traffic on the roads. Sometimes, these jacarandas were rarely noticeable, but once you ventured to several bastions of the city, you would see them, dominating everything else. One of these bastions was Milimani Estate, where the British settlers in the city had built themselves houses, and planted jacarandas en masse to remind themselves of home, of Britain. Another was the one in town by the Barclays branch under which men would gather to discuss politics. Another was on the Kisumu-Busia highway, where for a glorious stretch of five hundred or so metres just before the turnoff to the airport, a grove of jacaranda trees shaded the road, and bid one goodbye from the city.
The primary school I attended was an old one, and the buildings it then occupied, and still occupies, had been opened by the then Governor of the Colony of Kenya, Sir Evelyn Baring. This particular school was awash in jacarandas, and when we broke from classes, we would huddle under the shades of the jacarandas and eat our packed food. The Kenyan primary school system takes eight years, and commonly, for each of the eight classes, pupils are divided into multiple streams. This particular school had two streams per class, and the naming was Lotus 1 and Lily 1 for class one, Salvia 2 and Sunflower 2 for class two, Jacaranda 3 and Jasmine 3 for class three, and so on and so forth, all the way to Goldenshower 8 and Gardenia 8 for class eight. When I was in class three, I was in Jacaranda 3, and the fact that there was a jacaranda tree right outside our window gave us a sense of superiority; that we could look out of Jacaranda and see a jacaranda was a source of pride.
The ubiquity of the jacaranda tree in Kisumu, and in Kenya is unusual in the sense that the tree itself has little, if any…
