West with the Night

“The girl Markham was left to run wild with Kipsigis boys, wearing a cowrie shell on a leather thong around her wrist to ward off evil spirits. She ate with her hands, her first language was Swahili, and she could hurl a spear […] Markham practically grew up in the saddle; she told a friend that she felt better on a horse than on her feet.”

In her Introduction to West With the Night, Sara Wheeler describes the carefree, adventurous childhood of Markham, who lived on her father’s farm and horse ranch in British East Africa (soon to become Kenya) from age four through 17. Wheeler stresses Markham’s unfettered nature and how she had the freedom to pursue the things she enjoyed most in life. This introduces how The Thrill of Adventure will be an important part of the memoir.

“Always the weed returns; the cultured plant retreats before it. Racial purity, true aristocracy, devolve not from edict, nor from rote, but from the preservation of kinship with the elemental forces and purposes of life whose understanding is not further beyond the mind of a Native shepherd than beyond the cultured fumblings of a mortar-board intelligence.”

In her frequent discussions of Colonial Life in Africa, Markham presents herself as someone who is more of an insider compared to other European colonialists. Here, she refers to African cultures as native “weeds,” mocking the tendency of “cultured” civilizations to try to impose their own ideas upon them. The native plants inevitably overwhelm the less hardy transplants. Throughout the memoir, Markham will deride colonialist assumptions while also reflecting some of them in her own writing and perspective.

“So far as I know I was the only professional woman pilot in Africa at that time period I had no freelance competition in Kenya, man or woman.”

Markham proudly declares herself to be “the only professional woman pilot in Africa at that time period,” presenting herself as someone who embraced The Thrill of Adventure in pursuing her own dreams despite her youth and gender.