How we cite our quotes: (Part.Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #7
Farah's attitude to the Natives of the country was a picturesque thing. No more than the attire and countenance of the Masai warriors, had it been made yesterday, or the day before; it was the product of many centuries. The forces which had built it up had constructed great buildings in stone as well, but they had crumbled into dust a long time ago. (2.5.18)
Farah is a Somali, and also the head servant on the farm, so he looks down on the Kikuyu a little bit. And when we say a little bit, we actually mean a ton. According to Dinesen, his superior attitude is the result of eons of history that have shaped the relationships between foreigner and "Other".
Quote #8
The Kikuyu, when going to a Ngoma, rub themselves all over with a particular kind of pale red chalk, which is much in demand and is bought and sold; it gives them a strangely blond look. The colour is neither of the animal nor the vegetable world, in it the young people themselves look fossilized, like statues cut in rock. (3.1.6)
Whoa, this is rich. The Baroness just can't wrap her head around the Kikuyu and their ways, and she lets that slip multiple times in her description. For one thing, saying they look "strangely blond" is, well, strange, because the last thing you would expect from a description of black Africans is the word "blond". The dissonance comes up again in the simile comparing them to fossils and statues, as though they were stuck in the past.
Quote #9
By the time that we had become well acquainted, the girls asked me if it could be true what they had heard, that some nations in Europe gave away their maidens to their husbands for nothing. (3.2.7)
Once again the Europeans are reminded of their own "Other-ness" when the Somali girls start dissing their mating rituals. Whereas the idea of selling off your daughters in the Somali tradition might seem super-foreign to the Baroness, her willingness to just marry a guy for free is just as foreign to the Somalis.