Chapters One through Five Summary and Analysis

The author, Elspeth Huxley, says that she and her mother, Tilly, are in Africa in 1913. They are riding in a cart that carries all their possessions and the things they have purchased for their new life as homesteaders in Thika. Elspeth's father Robin has purchased their land from a man in a Nairobi and is already there awaiting the arrival of Elspeth and Tilly. Elspeth says that a hippo had gotten wedged into the water flume of the electrical production plant at Ruiru, causing a power failure in Nairobi. She does not relate the hippo's fate. They stay with an African named Henry Oram who says that Ruiru will soon be a "suburb of Nairobi" and that it is time for him to move on. He says that a wife who has coffee and a...