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Tatler
UK
1996 0
To build a folly
Potholes are too polite a description for the crevasses on Kenyan roads. Huge craters loom and the four wheel drive ducks in and out like a yacht bucking through big seas. Old Kenya-hands say that a man's well being is reflected in the condition of his car. You ask first about one, then the other. Broken motors are a familiar sight and African's seem and African's seem to welcome them as a social event. They cluster over the bonnet and give impossible advice, mortifying the owner of huge enjoyment. On a wet and gray day Dodo Cunningham-Reid was expertly at the wheel of a four-wheel drive and we leap-fogged these stranded groups with amazing speed. Her land rover has once fallen rather conclusively sideways in a dip. She left it to make her dangerous way through the bush and came face to face with a leopard. “I just looked at it terrified and fortunately it went away.” She said. Some Masai took me to their village, gave me their awful fermented drink and we sang songs. I slept outside the huts with the men because the stench of cow dung, which they used to coat the walls, was so disgusting. My husband heard through the bush telegraph and got me the next day.
“Don't worry. The car is in very good nick”
Dodo and Michael Cunningham-Reid are long established Kenyan residents in love with the country's contrasts – which are extreme. There is great personal, luxury for many Europeans and Africans. There is also overpopulation, disease, poverty and endemic bribery. And then there are hordes of package tourists who suffer from displacement confusion. They treat the place like a hot ramsgate. Cling wrapped in anthropomorphic movies such as The Lion King, they fail to comprehend the savagery of this gorgeous wilderness and that the animals might think that they are lunch. On the day of rain and potholes, Dodo drove us from Nairobi, where she and her husband live, across country to Lake Naivasha, where her folly stands. Beside the road The Great Rift Valley yawned, swathed in rain clouds. Zebras grazed, as common as cows in Devon fields, their extraordinary markings always astonishment. How did such an animal evolve this sophisticated decoration? Who painted their striped haunches? So symmetrically with the little plaited black stripes of beading to complement the effect on their tails?
We bumped through the bush as dusk came down. Dodo was excited; disgracefully long legs worked the accelerator so that we could see her folly before dark.
And there it was . A delicate octagonal tower 115 ft tall and 50ft in diameter, as high as the tallest yellow fever trees that surrounded it (to get an idea of the scale, remember that Nelson stands at that Nelson stands at 170ft high in Trafalgar square.) Beyond Lake Naivasha was still perfectly reflecting the mountains.
Out in the water, a round black rock opened its huge mouth and yawned. There are 500 Hippos in the lake and soon they would be lumbering out on delicate feet to graze and bark around the base of her tower – and, less romantically, to spray everything with waist high shit which is their way of marking out their territory.
Only a fool wanders out of the folly in the dark. Hippos kill more Africans each year than any other wild animal.
Dodo's folly is extraordinary. Once there you want to stay forever. On the ground floor there is a kitchen and a dining room, lined with washed mahogany. The Biedermeier style dining chairs were made in Nairobi, their seats covered with fabric woven locally.
Up ochre painted spiral stairs the living room, which has an adjoining fur strewn library, is furnished with just the old piece from home, including a gothic revival table which comes from “six mile bottom” the estate of Mary Lady Delamere, Michael's late mother. Dodo's land marches alongside Ndibibi estate that belonged to Diana Lady Delamere of White Mischief fame. It was Lord Delamere (Mary was his second wife and Diana his third), who suggested to his stepson, Michael that he should come and live in Kenya after the war.
‘They were both in the Welsh guards,' says Michael, says Michael. Lord Delamere said to the young soldier' Michael says, ‘In Diana's later years I had the power of attorney for her. But I liked Diana and looked after her interests when she was old and vulnerable.'
He looks after his German Wife Dodo with the same generosity of spirit. The family money, which comes from his great grandfather Sir Ernest Cassel, banker to Edward VII, has helped with the practical side of life.
A veranda circles the living room in Dodo's folly so you can step out into a chorus of birdsong. There are more verandas further up further up the tower, making it look like some exotic Burmese pagoda, green balcony roofs enchanting against the building's cypress cladding.
Up the spiral stairs again there are bedrooms, until the tower narrows into a tiny meditation room. And then for those who like to climb, a miniscule lookout perched at the top like a Muslim minaret. ‘the muezzin call to early prayer would not be out of keeping here' says Dodo, keen to emphasize the spiritual feel of the place. The tower smells sweet with the scent of cedar wood floors.
‘I wanted to build something special for Kenya, for me and for others to enjoy,' she explains, unpacking on to a dazzling 19 Century gilt bed, while the Kikuyu maid , Penina, oversees dinner downstairs.
I have been involved in political lobbying for the environment. But there were so many problems that I hit a difficult patch. How can one be properly effective? So I made something lovely'
This is no devoted socialite. Both she and Michael are quite reclusive not great entertainers. If she needs a change she slips off to Europe to visit her friend Teddy Goldsmith. Then there is the Cunnigham-Reid House in Campden Hill Square-a stopover for theatrical pleasures. If feeling adventurous, Dodo drops in on world leaders of her acquaintance. She has interviewed Gaddafi, and Museveni of Uganda has also welcomed her .
Men love the hint of devil in her. And the intelligence. And the beauty doesn't go amiss. In another life Dodo might have been something to change the world. Since she believes that there has and others to come, who knows what could happen next?
Pre-folly she ran the Lake Naivasha hotel, training the kikuyu to cook so successfully that when they sold the place the staff were snapped up. Her friend Jomo Kenyatta was equally enchanted by the food and by her, pitching up with his tribal dancers, whose drumming feet squashed the hotel flowerbeds. Eschewing her flush loos they dug up the lawns for more traditional ‘long drops'.
The folly is different. ‘For some it can be a spiritual retreat. For others, an adventure' she says. ‘it's the best way of seeing old Kenya. I can organize safaris and even go with them. We can take people under canvas with my friend the hunter Ulf Ashan, godson to Bror Blixen,. Karen's husband. There are horses and a boat. Rough shooting on the Delamere Estate. This here Happy Valley country, but little remains of that life. Just a faint whiff of those gin-and-tonic times maybe. It's a way of life you could never see on a commercial tour.
‘I will pass my guests on to private homesteads in the North so that they spend their entire time surrounded by good security on private land. There is no better way to understand Kenya and nothing that I arrange will threaten the environment
