West with the Night

West With the Night explores colonial life in Africa from Markham’s perspective as a white English colonialist. In detailing her life in Kenya, Markham presents herself as someone with an insider’s perspective of the continent and its peoples. In doing so, Markham criticizes some colonialist assumptions while sometimes inadvertently mirroring those assumptions herself.

Markham consistently presents Africa as an exotic “other” that is mysterious and beyond the understanding of Europeans. She describes the diversity of the topography, which she claims is still mostly unknown to Europeans at the time of writing: There are places on maps of Africa, she notes, that are simply marked “unsurveyed” (35). Markham emphasizes her own knowledge by describing numerous lesser-known geographical elements, such as the razor-like sansevieria grass, the high plains around Molo, the 1,200 square miles of papyrus swamps near Sudd, and the 3,000 miles of desert. The author implies that the colonial nations that have claimed most of the continent have little idea of its diversity.

Markham frequently characterizes herself as an insider, contrasting her own knowledge with the ostensible ignorance of the other European colonialists. She often stresses her close bonds with Kenyan communities. She describes hunting with African tribesmen, grows up speaking Swahili, and has a close relationship with Kibii, the son of one of the local warriors. She also describes being present for the ingomes, a form of traditional dance. In emphasizing these experiences, Markham presents herself as someone uniquely integrated into African life and culture.

However, Markham also acknowledges the social and racial hierarchies that exist in British colonial society and does not question this hierarchical system. When Kibii, now an adult known as Arab Ruta, reappears in her life, she describes how their relationship is now more formal and distant, with herself as his boss and social superior. Markham presents this change in a matter-of-fact manner, accepting it as a natural progression. Similarly, she criticizes the European practice of trophy hunting as an absurd undertaking but does not hesitate to make big profits by scouting out elephants for the big-game safaris.

In these ways, Markham both attempts to deride colonial ignorance while nevertheless engaging in some of the same attitudes and practices that afford her a higher status in Kenyan colonial society. She writes, “Competitors and conquest have overlooked the vital soul of Africa herself [. . .] The soul is not dead, but silent, the wisdom not lacking, but of such simplicity as to be counted non-existent in the tinker’s mind of modern civilization” (7). In characterizing Africa as having an exotic “soul” beyond European understanding and a “wisdom […] of such simplicity” that modern civilization cannot recognize it, Markham reinforces the colonial stereotype of Africa as mysterious, exotic, and unsophisticated instead of presenting a more accurate and nuanced picture of the continent.