Kenya and 'rogue' US ambassadors, from Hempstone to Whitman

President William Ruto held talks with US Senator Chris Coons and Ambassador Meg Whitman. [PCS]

Right from its inception as a British colonial entity in the 1890s, what became Kenya attracted many adventurers of the American type. They included former US President Theodore Roosevelt, novelist Earnest Hemingway, and journalist Smith Hempstone. Each had 'wildness' in his veins and sought to prove his manhood in 'wild' Kenya that was seemingly similar to the American 'Wild West'.

The three thrived in being roguish in person, politics, and diplomacy. After helping to snatch an empire from Spain in the Spanish-American War, Roosevelt became president, grabbed Panama from Colombia, built the Panama Canal, decreed his own Roosevelt Corollary to supplement the Monroe Doctrine, visited Kenya to advise settlers to build a 'white man's country', and even unsuccessfully tried helping the settlers by creating an African Booker T. Washington to train 'natives' to be subservient. On his part, Hemmingway observed how the settlers behaved like royalty and advised Hempstone to prove his manhood in Africa. In the late 1950s, Hempstone was a regular reporter in the land of the Mau Mau and campaigned for George Bush to appoint him ambassador to Kenya.