Free A Guide to the Beasts of East Africa by Nicholas Drayson

Rose (who as a
     sixteen-year-old pupil of Edinburgh Presbyterian Ladies’ College had made a point
     of reading
The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
though it was banned at school, who in
     her bedroom had rocked to Little Richard androlled to Chubby Checker,
     and who had made it a point of teenage honour to hitch her skirt up at least four inches
     above her knees as soon as she was out of the house on a Saturday night) had always
     thought of herself as more of a Ruth Brown girl. But once she’d got over the shock
     of discovering that someone younger than forty could actually like the sight and singing
     of Doris Day, she mellowed. And now whenever she found herself in a nostalgic mood she
     would put one of the old LPs on the turntable and find herself back in those happy,
     hectic days of her marriage to Joshua Mbikwa.
    Mr Malik pulled back the garage doors of
     Number 12 Garden Lane.
    ‘There you are, Ally. Mind out,
     though, they’re heavier than they look.’
    Ally Dass ordered his truck to back up and
     his men to load the two wooden crates, each about seven-foot square by two-foot deep,
     that were lying on the floor. From the dents and scratches that covered them, they were
     clearly not new. The men heaved them into the truck, finding just enough room for them
     behind the blackened gas range and assorted crates of food and kitchen equipment.
    ‘Benjamin’s coming up with you.
     He’ll show you what to do with them when you get there. As I mentioned to you at
     the club, Ally, it’s going to be my little surprise for this year’s safari.
     Now, Benjamin, have you got everything you need?’
    ‘I have remembered all that you showed
     me, Mr Malik. First the erection cranks, then the draw-bar extender screws, then the
     spirit adjustment.’
    ‘Good. And remember that there’s an
     instruction book in the left-hand case if you need it. Oh, I nearly forgot –
     here’s something for you all on the journey.’
    Mr Malik handed Benjamin a large round tin
     on whose side were colourful sketches of lions, giraffes and elephants. On the top was
     printed in large lettering: J OLLY M AN A SSORTED B ONBONS .
    I once spent a Christmas in Australia,
     where I was surprised not so much at the novelty of sitting down in a hundred degrees in
     the shade to an alfresco
lunch of hot roast turkey with all the trimmings and plum
     pudding to follow, as being asked by my bikini-clad hostess to pull her bonbon. It was
     only when I noticed the beribboned paper tube in her hand that I finally caught on and
     was rewarded with a bang, a paper hat and a joke – about a chicken, I seem to remember
     (though now I come to think of it, it may have been the one about the cockatoo). At home
     we had always called them ‘crackers’, you see. I suppose that to Americans
     crackers would be what we called ‘fireworks’ – or perhaps even
     ‘biscuits’. And they would think a biscuit was a ‘scone’ and –
     oh, the complexities of the tongue that binds us. When it comes to edible confectionery,
     things get even more confusing. What are ‘sweets’ in England are
     ‘candy’ in America and ‘lollies’ in Australia and New Zealand.
     In Kenya they have always been ‘bonbons’ – but wherever you are and whatever
     you call them, these small lumps of flavoured sugar have long proved a hit with young
     and old. Equipment to manufacture these delights is not complicated to make or operate,
     and the items produced are easy to pack, store and distribute.Among
     the confectionery manufacturers of Kenya, few take their business more seriously than
     the Jolly Man Manufacturing Company.
    Like many a commercial enterprise in Kenya,
     the Jolly Man Manufacturing Company has been through many ups and downs. Begun by Mr
     Malik’s father in the 1930s as a maker of cigarettes, it was badly affected in the
     1940s by wartime tobacco restrictions, then by competition from cheap imports from the
     US. When Mr Malik Senior had made