Too Long Are Our Memories + Borders, Installation, Naturama 2012

TOO LONG ARE OUR MEMORIES- Michelle Eistrup and James Muruiki

“Send out some people to settle Because - it is there for the picking”. “Thousands of acres from them ”. (Q.C. Dudley Thompson, 2008

Single channel video- 9 mins Sound: Anders Juhl

 

SYNOPSISAn old grass black doll sits in a mantle, her eyes are nearly gone, a white and brown deer slope in between the fantasy and the imaginary, a girl picks coffee and a seer stands with a mirror reflecting the woody white wintery landscape around him. A voice slips in and out of the passages: ‘The Kenyans could not plant coffee, they could not plant sisal…’… Memories from another time... Dudley Thompson, a lawyer who witnessed and assembled the primary defense team of Kenyata, recollects and describes the tension between the British colonizers and Kenyans. Old pictures on a wall, references to the past, the Kenyan Railway, royalty, Mombasa, versus the workers, the builders, who died to construct that lunatic line. This work is a meditation on the interaction and shifts that exist between these realities and questions our historical perspectives in connection to those times. There is redemption as well, , we see three black workers reclaiming their train, dancing in and out of its remains to the symbolic music of freedom: jazz and ska. The souls of colonial maids and workers are suspended over the train and walk through different time dimensions arriving today as immigrants in the cold North, finding balance on the sharp cliff edges of this past. Too long are Our Memories speeds, splices and interweaves animated form through the juxtaposition of many visual layers and sounds into imaginary spaces, presenting worlds where the path of dislocation, migration and movement leads humans in their search of a future.

BORDERS- Lightbox photographic installation 27 meters, Michelle Eistrup + James Muruiki

Too Long Are Our Memories + Borders, Installation, Naturama 2012

Borderlines can be imagined both in time and space – in reality and in a metaphorical sense. Borderlines designate division, difference and diversity. Geographical borderlines exist in reality, while there are imaginary borderlines between concepts such as multiculture and monoculture, progress and tradition, present and past, etc. • “Through memories, connections, looped borders, hedges, pathways, habitats are intertwined. The artists display in light boxes their 27 meter long photographic project: different notions of land, division and border open or hidden. They build up the relation between spaces from the outer to the inner and the distance in between them.” –explains Michelle Eistrup.

Passport

Installation View, Borders, Karen Blixen Museum 2010
Michelle Eistrup + James Muriuki

Installation View, Borders, Karen Blixen Museum 2010
copyright Michelle Eistrup + James Muriuki

Installation View, Borders, Karen Blixen Museum 2010
copyright Michelle Eistrup + James Muriuki

Too Long are our Memories and Borders Installation

Too Long are our Memories

ETHICS IN PRACTICE: THE CASE OF ODLUS BIN LA SYRA

NARRATED by Ambassador Dudley Thompson

Once during my practice in Tanganika as a lawyer, that's around the 1950's. I was coming home from visiting a farm, an animal farm where they had two white rhinos. When I reached my office, I saw outside the door a group of people around 20 of them, the Masai, the Masai tribe. Chiefly young Masai, some elders, and one white man, a French priest who came as their leader and their interpreter. They had walked about 150 miles to come to see me as their lawyer to help their brother one of their members of their tribe.
Once during the time that I was practicing law in Tanganika there was an incident, which involves the Masai and myself. A tribe, which I will tell you more about later. Now the Masai are a tribe who live on blood milk and meat and who resist Western civilization. They are very peaceful people but when stirred they can be very fierce.
I was coming home from visiting an animal farm where we a most unusual specie, and we saw about 20 of them, young men and some elders and one white man, a French priest who came as their interpreter. They had walked some 150 miles to come to see me as their lawyer to get their young man, one of the members of the tribe who had been arrested out of prison. I stopped their to get my mail as I live some two miles out, and they said they didn't want to come inside the office at all because they do not like to live in houses, they live outside. They are wanderers. They don't have anything over their heads so it took some persuasion to get them into the house, they are nomads. They left their spears outside and they ventured, we persuaded them to come into the house so that we could discuss this matter privately. They looked around very fearfully at first, the books on the wall, and the carpet on the floor. It didn't prevent them from spitting on the carpets, which they do normally outside on the fields outside where they are normally. It is one of their habits, unusual and to us very unnerving and very disgusting. Nevertheless, we had to hear their story and it was this.

They had come to ask me to defend this man, he was charged with the murder of a white planter. A white herdsman, a white settler, a South African veteran.

When I heard this story I told them well the law is that if we found this man wrong, if he killed him wrongfully, he would be hanged.'

They looked rather unusual, and muttered something in their own language, which I did not understand. When I asked,’ What it was?’ they said ‘ this. I don't think you understand what we want, we don't want you to defend him, we want you to get him out to bring him back to our tribe so that we can try him under our law. ‘But it cannot be done in that way, not under the English law, if he is arrested he will be tried in the English courts, and if he is found guilty they will hang him.

They said, ‘I don't think you understand it. If they hang him there will be two wives who will have empty beds, who will comfort the second wife if you kill another one.' It was to show how they do not understand our law at all because according to their law the Masai, there is no such thing as capital punishment. If they tried him and found him guilty, he would become a slave or work as a servant to the widow for the rest of his life or pay her dowry in cattle, and goats and other things or work of the fine, but not capital punishment. I said 'no it doesn't work that way if he is found guilty they will hang him. Nevertheless I would see what we could do. I went to the prison to hear his story so as to get a statement to what happened. And there I found him Odlus Bin Lasyra was his name about eighteen years of age, some six foot four or five, and still growing. Tall, magnificent specimen of a man with one womb over him, a sort of toga made out of the beaten skin of cattle. I asked him what took place and he explained it in this way.
It was one the plains of Sanya June where I was out there carrying my cattle because there they follow the seasons, there are no such thing as a boundaries, the limits, the titles of land that part of the law is unknown to them, they follow the grain where it is, where the grass is lush. And while we were there this man came down from his house with a gun. Now he didn't know what this gun was. He called it * a stick that made noise', he had never heard a gun before, and 'he chased the boys off and he came and asked me to remove my cattle. Now he stood fast, and he grabbed my spear.' Now that is a very, very, very wrong thing to do, if you know their custom you never touch a Masai spear.
He is given that spear when he becomes a man, and when he becomes a man, circumcised that spear he keeps with him as his own possession to prove his masculinity. It is like taking away a guardsman's gun, he keeps it for life.' And as he grabbed my spear, I grabbed his stick' or gun as it turned out to be. And as he pulled my gun, spear, I pulled his gun. He didn't say he did it three or four times because he couldn't explain it in that way, he had to do the actual fact. He pulled my spear, I pulled his gun. He pulled my spear I pulled his gun. He pulled my spear I pulled his gun. He couldn't say four times that is not in their language.
Nevertheless at one stage he said he heard a loud noise, and a big smoke came, and he felt a strange pain a long his arm, he realized that the man was serious so he pulled away his spear, which he could have done cause he was so much bigger, and stronger and taller than this man. He pulled away his spear, and pushed it right through him I asked him, ‘What did he do?' He said,'Yes, it went in here and it came out here', indicating his chest and his back, and 'what did you do after that?' He said' he pulled it out back, and wiped it on the grass. 'And what did you do after that?'
'Nothing I went on minding the cattle.' I went away.
Now when the news went around that this man had been killed.

I went away. Now when the news went around that this man had been killed everybody was worried the Europeans thought that the Masai had brought the Mau Mau come down from Kenya where they were and they were all horribly afraid so they sent out this police search to find this Masai. It was difficult to find him there was no description except this very tall man.  And all of them, which are very tall. Eventually you would go to police stations and you would find dozen and dozens of Masai there because being arrested, searching for this man. And all of them, which are very tall. Eventually you would go to police stations and you would find dozen and dozens of Masai there because being arrested, searching for this man.   

And they were always searching, nevertheless one day he went into a district commissioner like a magistrate for the area. He went into a district commissioner called Mr. Foresythe was his name. Foresythe was matter of fact, I think, was the brother of Princess Margaret's late, late princess Margaret’s suitor whom she was not allowed to marry. And he was in charge as a magistrate for the area. A very able and decent officer. He said 'I 'm coming to give in myself, I hear you are looking for me.' 
I am the man that killed the farmer. He told the story and he told the man while the man wrote it down. So the man said,' I am sorry I will have to take you away. He arrested him, locked him up. 'But here I am in prison, what can you do? Can you take me home? I explained that 'he would have to stay there to be tried by the judge.'   

But he was to tell his story just as he told me, and I spoke to him. it is no use to brief any Masai in anyway to change his story because it is well know that Masai do no tell lies. They speak straightforward in nature and to the vaguery and changes of our law courts. They speak straight from the soul. ' Yes I killed the man and that is the spear that I put through him.' 

That was the story and he was going to tell it. However the crown council wanted to make a clause celebrity out of this, they wanted to, as put' to teach the natives a lesson.' This man was going to get it to the hills, and as usual they overplayed the game. They brought in two celebrated medical men, one of whom was the ex-medical doctor to the ex-Viceroy of India. 
and another highly distinguished doctor. Together they were to give medical evidence to prove according to them that this man was killed while he was lying on the ground, and they were going to prove that in various ways by showing the order by which these organs were pierced by the spear. A Masai spear had a particular shape to it.   

Unending wide on the other and flexible when it reaches the bone. They wanted to show by expert evidence the order by which these injuries, to prove that he got it while he was on the ground. Under my cross examination I asked them 'whether they had examined Odlus Bin LaSyra?' they said, ‘No.No. There was no use examining him, there was no point in examining him, he was not the victim. I said, but did you Hmm, Will you examine him now?' They looked at him and I said ' Will you examine his right forearm?' They said, 'I saw a mark there, what is that mark? Does that mark signify anything to you?'   

He said' it looks like an old barbed wire mark, he probably got that climbing through a fence when he was going to steal cattle, which show his frame of mind.' I said' Look at it very carefully isn't it a burn, a mark, a burn mark?' They said' No, that is not a burn mark any fool could see that that was not a burn mark, look very carefully now that you are examining him for the first time,

'Doesn't it look like a mark from a burn?'   

'No, he said, 'Absolutely no, that could not be a mark from a burn.' At which case, I referred to a statement written by the District Commissioner Foresythe. Now it is part of the law in Kenya that whenever the person come in, you make a note on them so as to prevent any accusation of them being beat up while they are in prison. 
  
And Mr. Foresythe had carefully written down an obvious burn mark about 15 inches on the right forearm. Those were the actual words, an obvious burn mark, 15 inches on the right forearm. I said... And the judge read it out I said, 'Would you kindly read it out so the witness can hear.' the judge read it out. ' Do you change your mind now, that that is an obvious burn mark?' There was no answer.   

I said' Well, the person who wrote that must have been a fool according to you. Even a fool could see that. It must have been a fool who wrote that. Wouldn't you agree with me! Mr. Foresythe who was a magistrate who was sitting at the bench at that time, not as judge but a long with him. Because in those courts, there is only one judge, the European judge. There are three advisors they’re sitting down on tribal customs etc., and there is no jury. Just one judge. Sitting beside the judge was Mr. Foresythe who had written those words down in all honesty. On the embarrassment plus other matters of confusion between the two doctors who misplaces the order in which the organs were braced because according to them he could have only gotten those marks in his body in the organs if he was lying on the ground if they were placed in a certain order. One gave one order the other gave it in the exactly the opposite order, which proved that the evidence for the crown was highly confusing, probably fabricated. He was acquitted. 
  
During this case of course, Oltus Ben Lasyra sat on a bench in the prison with his toga like garment, otherwise completely naked, one could see the furtive members of the court glancing at this man's magnificent body who didn't understand a thing that was happening, he didn't understand a word. When he was acquitted, and he was told, 'you can go home, he wanted back his spear. I told him, 'No, I was talking that spear as part of payment Oltus Ben Lasyra sat on a bench in the prison with his toga like garment, otherwise completely naked, one could see the furtive members of the court glancing at this man's magnificent body who didn't understand a thing that was happening, he didn't understand a word. When he was acquitted, and he was told, 'you can go home, he wanted back his spear. I told him, 'No that happened in Tanzania, the tribe was in Arusha at the foothills of Kilamanjaro in 1950..Early 1950's.   

There are many other incidents, which show the differences between the clashes of civilization, many varied; different ways of life but it would take the whole night to start to tell you the different ones.  
But that was the story, the last case that I actually did in Tanganika before I returned to Jamaica. Incidentally, I am a lawyer by profession, my name is Dudley Thompson, and I went straight into Africa to practice law after I left the University, and after that went back later on capacity to serve as ambassador to Nigeria, some many years later.