Who desecrated the tomb of Finch-Hatton?
"Someone came to remove the grave. It was a group of foreign, They began to photograph everything and then the next morning I saw that something had unearthed the day turned to rebury. They were rare, I do not know what they were doing. A year later one of the men turned around and saw him hanging around this area ", He explains the young.
She is a humble Kenyan keeps the secret of one of those inaccessible places full of mythical, the tomb of Denys Finch or Hattton, if preferred, the tomb of the mythical character that Robert Redford made eternal in eternal Out of Africa. Lies in a remote and forgotten.
The road to the Ngong Hills, to the grave, it's complicated. The road climbs a mountain man has been populating a certain disorder. Vegetation buries houses and misery, in green, It becomes more bearable. Tras preguntar in varias personas, spend several detours and move along a path that seemed to get anywhere, finally we found a small handwritten plaque announcing the grave.
But peace and serenity in this place a disturbing remoteness breathed
We climbed a steep slope of sand and stone and got another poster, near the top, from which we saw the Nairobi National Park. But peace and serenity in this place a disturbing remoteness breathed. then we started looking for Hatton's grave without being able to find. Knocked on the door of a house that looked uninhabited and which certainly he lived someone. Was not, one was not, there was nothing.
Then, one of my two traveling companions, two fabulous company types Kobo Safaris, He called me shouted. "I found the grave". It is among thick vegetation, exactly behind a rusted metal door with a phone number handwritten. It is Candada. "Could not be a better place grave", I.
We called the number listed and ten minutes later a young woman who is presented as a guide and owner of the tomb. "My grandmother owns this land. Must pay an entry ", He tells us while we extend a receipt. We paid and opens the door to a nice garden, not very neglected, with an obelisk in the center on which rests the hunter.
My grandmother owns this land. Must pay an entry
Everything is fascinating. She begins to lose the shame and starts talking in a mixture of English and local language I translated one of my classmates. "I'm sick of this place. When I die my grandmother will have to do something with this site. My brothers want to stay with this, but I'm working. They want to make money ". His talk shows that the lock, Tomb, the care in the garden are part of a business for which the family will end sticking. It, as a woman, has little to say. The tomb grandfather bought, with a huge field, a ridiculous amount for a few decades ago. "So it was worthless", she says.
She also serves as a guide and apologized for the lack of the original plaque placed there Hatton's brother, which it was the construction that is propelled by the refusal of Karen Blixen, the hunter lover in Out of Africa Meryl Streep plays, there carrying the body of her lover (the true story of two is not as idyllic as the film says). Instead they have another reproducing the same fragment of poem by Samuel Taylor, It contained in the original, and that says «whoever loves everyone well prays well, man and bird and animal ".
Reza well who loves good to all, man and bird and beast
After, the girl tells the strange event of the tomb and foreigners Enigmatic. I make a thousand questions, I try to know more, even you try to look at your bills paid on that everyone should write the names. "I think I threw last year that notebook", remember while we dissected the current. She has everything naively, offhandedly, and I try to know why some foreigners leave until the end of the world to dig and bury something and come back a year later. No answers, There is no time for more.
Then I experienced a similar situation that happened to me in Livingstone's grave, en Zambia, and I sat down and I was silent for a while contemplating the views you'll enjoy Hatton to eternity. From there the African savannah now full of houses and humans who have been moving the animals could be seen. "There are still around here buffalos and hyenas", she says. I try to imagine the lions resting on this obelisk, perhaps because of the heat from the sun stone, drying of an ill-timed rain. She taught us a letter in which it makes sure that it is true that there were going to lie lions, just as the famous film.
Nairobi National Park is seen from afar. Above my head the famous chalk outlines Ngong hills, those under which Blixen put his farm in Africa. How wonderful to get here, that silence, that nothing on which rests one of those people who suffered "evil Africa", that ailment that keeps you from. Rest in peace Mr. Hatton.
(Excuse not to put the names of the people I speak, They are targeted in a notebook all I have left forgotten in Maputo. All the characters in this post deserved to be appointed, especially my two fabulous fellow travelers)
Comments (1)
Cecilia Briones
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It's hard to remain indifferent to this article, Dennys life and Karen reflect many situations that somehow feel nearby. The love of nature, life in contact with animals, the consequent being in his living, respect for other cultures…let me clear that it is not only a time. Once I'd like to be loved that way or have a love who remember for a lifetime.
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