When Hemingway came to Kenya and fell in love

Two lion skulls that belonged to Nobel-prize winning author Ernest Hemingway when he returned to Kenya for his second safari in the 1950s, he fell in love with a Kamba girl named Debba. Although she remained unnamed in popular culture, the fictional memoirs he authored about his second African safari named her as Debba. PHOTO/FILE

What you need to know:

  • There were other differences other than Debba between the two trips. The initial one had been a hunting expedition where Hemingway’s primary interest had been game trophies.
  • In the latter trip, he seemed to be hunting for a philosophical and psychological challenge.
  • Hemingway won the Nobel Peace Prize after his string of bad luck that involved two air crashes in the Congo and a bushfire accident. He committed suicide on July 2, 1961.

When America’s first celebrity writer and later Nobel Prize laureate Ernest Hemingway returned to Kenya for his second safari in the 1950s, he fell in love with a Kamba girl named Debba.

Although she remained unnamed in popular culture, the fictional memoirs he authored about his second African safari named her as Debba.

Hemingway was a notorious philanderer. Between his two trips to Kenya, he had divorced twice, each time cheating on his then current wife with the next one.

Paulina, with whom he had toured Kenya in 1933, was his second wife. Mary, or Miss Mary as he calls her in True at First Light: A Fictional Memoir, was his fourth. She accompanied him to Kenya on his ill-fated safari in the 1950s.

In the book, Debba lives next door.

A young naïve girl, she falls in love with Hemingway and is intrigued by his mystery. She likes to ride in Hemingway’s car and while he drives, she strokes the holster of his pistol or pinches his thigh muscles.

She knows he is married and is afraid that she is merely a conquest to him.

Debba: I don’t want to be a play wife or a wife to leave.

Hemingway: Who would leave you?

Her (almost instantly): You.

She has a point. Hemingway was only on an extended vacation that began with a trip to Tanganyika to visit his son, Patrick.

Mary seems to have no problem with her husband’s adultery.

“I like your fiancée very much because she is a lot like me, and I think she’d be a valuable extra wife if you need one,” Mary says of Debba.

It is clear that Mary views Debba as her inferior, most likely because of her race than her idealness as a future Mrs Hemingway.

As she leaves for Nairobi for treatment, leaving him alone, she adds: “I don’t mind about her being your fiancée as long as you love me more. You do love me more, don’t you?” 

STRIKING SIMILARITIES

To Hemingway, though, it was the striking similarity between Debba and Mary that made her even more intriguing.

When Mary left for her hospital visit, he thought of “…the way she was built and how there was almost no difference between the way she was built and the way Debba was built... and that it was a damned good thing all the way around.”

There were other differences other than Debba between the two trips. The initial one had been a hunting expedition where Hemingway’s primary interest had been game trophies.

In the latter trip, he seemed to be hunting for a philosophical and psychological challenge.

He seems to have developed a deeper appreciation for African culture, a stark contrast of his supremacist views only two decades before.

“Twenty years ago, I called them boys… but the way things were now, you didn’t do it… Everyone had his duties and everyone had a name, not to know a name was impolite and sign of sloppiness…” he writes.

He is referring to his earlier book, Green Hills of Africa, written after the first trip in 1933.

On page 31, he had pompously declared “I am king here…. when I am ready, I extend one foot and the boy places a sock on it… I step from the mosquito bar into my drawers which are held for me… don’t you think that is very marvellous?”

He immerses himself into Kamba culture, expressing a deep appreciation for their social dynamics. The Kamba are portrayed as typical Hemingway heroes, underdogs fighting a brave but losing battle.

He even immerses himself into intra-tribal conflict, viewing that, “The Wakamba hated the Maasai as rich show-offs protected by the government.”

Hemingway won the Nobel Peace Prize after his string of bad luck that involved two air crashes in the Congo and a bushfire accident. He committed suicide on July 2, 1961.