Nowhere in Africa (2002)

Directed by Caroline Link and based on the autobiographical book by Stefanie Zweig. Subtitled from German and Kiswahili.

by Pam Lutz

Sadly I missed this film in theatres, as I was off ‘somewhere in Africa’ at the time of its release and subsequent Oscar triumph for Best Foreign Film of 2002. It makes me wonder if any of the hundreds of local extras involved in the production of this German-made film, shot almost entirely on location in Kenya, were ever able to see themselves on the big screen!

A good friend recommended Nowhere in Africa to me fairly recently, and fortunately a few copies of the film were available in the teeny-tiny foreign film section of my local video store. Even on a modestly sized television set, I found the work to be visually striking, an accomplishment of the filmmakers’ intent to convey a “rougher, dustier and more authentic Africa” than previous historical epics such as the famed Out of Africa (1985) or “high-gloss safari park” National Geographic-style shows have illustrated. (Interestingly, in the remote community of Mukutani where at least one-third of the film was shot, the Nowhere in Africa production team actually built a 40 km. stretch of road as payment for being able to film there, at the community leaders’ insistence that this would be of greater benefit than offering cash wages to individuals.)

The emotional storyline is just as compelling and genuine, to a large extent based on the traumatic true lives of the German-Jewish Zweig family during the rise and fall of the Nazis. In the film version Walter Redlich, a budding young lawyer, sees the drastic consequences of Hitler’s anti-Semitic policies coming and in 1937, slightly ahead of the mass Jewish exodus from Germany, takes up unlikely refuge in Kenya. After securing employment on an ornery British colonist’s farm and pulling through a near-death scare with malaria, Walter sends for his high-society wife Jettel and their wide-eyed five-year-old daughter Regina to join him there. It haunts Walter that he is unable to convince he and his wife’s parents and siblings also to flee at that time, as the news from home on a crackly transistor radio steadily wanes and the worst is feared and ultimately confirmed.

Regina adapts quickly and happily to her new surroundings, with fear and darkness her only real memories of Germany. On the contrary her parents (her mother in particular), demonstrate considerably more reservation and less resilience dealing with their radical change in scenery and socio-economic status. Defying Walter’s requests to bring a refrigerator and mosquito nets from Germany, Jettel instead shows up with elegant party dresses in her suitcases and a trunk full of expensive china. These central protagonists predictably encounter a barrage of ‘transformative challenges’ from culture shock to grief, poverty to marital problems, racism to natural disasters. Being essentially ‘reduced’ to a farm hand has dealt Walter’s esteem a major blow and a resentful Jettel laments, “yes we’re alive but what for?… I feel like I’m dead here, sometimes I wish I were!” Their trusted house-help Ouwar (skillfully played by rising Kenyan film star Sidedo Onyulo, also featured in The Constant Gardener) and his close relationships with young Regina, Walter and eventually with Jettel as well, seem to be the only thing that holds the family together at many points throughout the film.

Without exposing much more of the plot, one very interesting historical tidbit depicted in the film shows how the German refugees in Kenya were suddenly reclassified as ‘enemy aliens,’ rounded up by colonial forces when Britain officially declared war on Germany in 1939. Acknowledging that their Jewish captives were anything but sympathetic to the Nazi forces yet feeling the need to ‘do something’ with German nationals in their midst, British forces opted to send the men to a makeshift internment camp in Nairobi and put the women and children up in the exclusive comforts of the Norfolk Hotel – still known to be one of Kenya’s most aristocratic accommodations. “What a nice prison, Mama!” exclaims Regina upon their arrival. Before too long, the absurdity of this British policy is truly realized, and the Redlich family returns to work on a different farm, Regina enrolls in a British boarding school and paradoxically Walter even ends up serving as a Sergeant for the Royal British Army.

A segment of history lacking in this re-telling of wartime in the British colonies and indeed, overlooked by most accounts, is the participation of thousands of Kenyan soldiers in this same Royal British Army. The British needed African manpower on all fronts, and as citizens of the Commonwealth, Kenyan men were called upon to enlist, with many ultimately serving as combatants in Europe. In fact, my husband Eric and I only recently discovered that both our grandfathers saw action in Italy at approximately the same time! The coincidence ends there of course, as while my grandfather came home a celebrated veteran honored every November 11th to this day for his sacrifices, Eric’s grandfather and the other half million African soldiers who fought for the British and French in World War II were never formally recognized and quite deliberately forgotten about by their colonial masters… but that’s a whole other story!

Back to the film, that does a decent, if calculated, job of juxtaposing the German and Kenyan cultures and emphasizes the distinction that unlike the exploitative British colonists who ruled the day, the Redlich (and real-life Zweig) family were in Kenya against their will, only because they had been chased out of their homeland. One of the Kikuyu farm workers interjects a particularly poignant and prophetic quote to this effect:

If someone steals your cow it will be killed and eaten and you can forget it. But if someone steals your land, it is always there. You can visit it, it will always be there. You can never forget it.

Of course, as time wears on each member of the exiled family collects their own attachments to Kenya, and it becomes more and more difficult to think about leaving once the war is over. On impending departure, Ouwar wisely notes that “the first to leave on safari has dry eyes,” and all I can really say about that is that my eyes were certainly not dry by the end of the movie!! My favorite scenes were those featuring the endearing young Regina and her many adorable Kenyan chums climbing trees, translating storybooks into imaginative theatre pieces, and even hinting at a romantic tangling with a handsome Kikuyu lad. Apparently the ‘real’ Regina Redlich – the now 75-year-old Stefanie Zweig – described this love interest her first book, a children’s story entitled Mouthful of Earth. After watching Nowhere in Africa based on Zweig’s book of the same name, I find myself rather intrigued to read her memoir Somewhere in Germany that goes on to recount her teenage years in an unfamiliar homeland.

A lot of critiques I read on this 144 minute film claimed it was entirely too long and dull at parts, but I have to say I was quite riveted throughout and would definitely recommend Nowhere in Africa to those who haven’t had the opportunity to see it yet. If you are predisposed to weak tear ducts as I sometimes am, make sure you have some Kleenex on hand… but don’t worry, it’s not the kind of film that leaves you desperately depressed either. It’s just the kind that makes you want to go to Kenya ;)

Originally published in The Habari Times, Volume 1, Number 2

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