Peter Kimani

1963. Kenya is on the verge of independence from British colonial rule. In the Great Rift Valley, Kenyans of all backgrounds come together in the previously white-only establishment of the Jakaranda Hotel. The resident musician is Rajan Salim, who charms visitors with songs inspired by his grandfather's noble stories of the railway construction that spawned the Kenya they now know. One evening, Rajan is kissed by a mysterious woman in a shadowy corridor. Unable to forget the taste of her lavender-flavoured lips, Rajan sets out to find her. On his journey he stumbles upon the murky, shared history of three men – his grandfather, the owner of the Jakaranda and a British preacher – who were implicated in the controversial birth of a child. What Rajan unearths will open his eyes about the birth not just of a child, but of an entire nation.

Dance of the Jakaranda

Stas

The walls that separated the different races were still up, just as they had been through the years of construction. The different racial groups, Master had written in one of his dispatches to London, remained separate like the rail tracks. Yet the rail was the product of their collective efforts-of black and brown and white hands.

The lavender lips were outside his experience. The idea that he 

 have kissed a white woman in the dark brought Rajan to a screeching halt, and his bladder released a drop or two in his pants. 

Those men, once white, now looked pink, like pigs. 

i get the point but what a horrible way to say it

McDonald recorded the events of that day, August 2, 1897, as the first organized labor protest in the British East Africa Protectorate.

Now there were three dungeons, with White at the top, Brown in the middle, and Black at the bottom. He decided to wait and gauge the Arabs' attitudes. If they were hostile to the British presence, he would lump them together with Africans in the Black section. But if they behaved properly, they would be categorized as Brown and grouped with the Indians.

Dance of the Jakaranda quotes

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