Man Hunt in Kenya Author:Ian Henderson An extraordinary man roamed the vast forests and craggy foothills of Kenya's Aberdare plateau. He was a man of animal instincts and animal cunning. He was a Bible-reading fanatic who served the god Ngai. He was an orator whose vitreolic rhetoric had moved thousands to do as he wished. He had killed, plundered, and tortured his way to the hea... more »d of a movement which had terrorized an entire country. He was Kimathi - the Kikuyu boy who became the most feared and despised leader of the Mau Mau movement.
Senior Police Superintendant Ian Henderson's hunt for Kimathi lasted one full year. It was a year of brutal hardship and personal sacrifice spent in the tangles Aberdare wilderness - an untracked area as hazardous and diffucult as any in Africa. To read of Ian Henderson's search is to share with him the heartbreaking setbacks, the terror-filled months of climbing, cutting, clawing, sifting through a country few white men had penetrate before. "Man Hunt in Kenya" tells, in gripping detail, the last half of the Mau Mau story.
Ian Henderson was brought up on a farm in Kenya at the edge of the Aberdare Forest. His first playmates were Kikuyu boys. In 1945, just before his eighteenthe birthday, he joined the Nairobi police force, bringing with him two valuable assets: a rare talent for detective work and a rare (among Europeans) familiarity with the Kikuyu people and their language. As the Mau Mau movement gained momentum, Henderson became one of the few links between the terrorists and the Kenya government - a negotiator who understood the strange complexities of the terrorist mind. His activities with the Special Branch detachment of the Kenya police have earned him two George Medals, as well as the respect of the Kikuyu tribe, who nicknamed him "Kinyanjui" after one of their elder statesmen. Lieutenant General Sir Gerald Lathbury has said:"Ian Henderson has probably done more than any other individual to bring the emergency to an end."
This book is definitely written from the British point of view.« less