Though many East African Asians settled and integrated well, there were also challenges. In the decades that followed, more Indians arrived as ‘free-emigrants’, smelling an opportunity to leave behind difficult economic circumstances in India and a chance to make better lives. Most of the surviving workers eventually returned to India, but a few remained in East Africa. Sounds reasonable? Unfortunately, salaries were often low, conditions poor and of the circa 32,000 Indian indentured servants that went to East Africa at that time, over 2,000 died as a result of maltreatment and disease, while some were even the victims of man-eating lions. Their employers usually paid a wage, food and lodgings. The colonialists believed that Indian workers were more reliable than their African counterparts and the Asians, therefore, benefited from marginally better treatment.
These ‘indentured’ servants were contracted, often for a period of five or so years, to build the Kenya-Uganda railway and were overseen by their British employers. From the nineteenth century to the end of World War One, Britain transported over one million Indian indentured servants to countries across the world, Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania among them.
With the abolition of slavery, the British needed to find manpower – and indeed, womanpower – to maintain their economic interests in their colonies. Why were Asians in Africa in the first place? As with much of colonial history, the story begins with the British Empire. 'Now all Asha could see was a few fishing boats, and the crotchety maribou storks with their black feather cloaks.' Maribou storks, Kenya. Decades later, my parents arrived in England clutching their British passports, while other members of my extended family were among the expelled Ugandan Asians. They built a home and a life together in a country they’d never before set foot in. Only a teenager at the time and with a baby of her own, during World War Two she had travelled on a steamer from Gujarat to Kenya to be reunited with my grandfather.
Over the years, my grandmother had told me stories that inspired some of the scenes in my novel. I wanted to bring this history to life in my debut novel, Kololo Hill, as well as my own family background. Many who arrived as refugees in the UK had British passports, yet had never visited these shores before the expulsion. They were forced to leave everything behind, say goodbye to lifelong friends and in some cases, see their families scattered across the world. In 1972, 80,000 Uganda Asians were expelled by brutal President Idi Amin, given only 90 days to leave with £50 each. There’s a period of history that very few British people seem to know about, unless they recall the news reports from the early 1970s.
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