In 1914, at the age of 27, Isak Dinesen (née Karen Blixen) left Denmark and sailed for East Africa where she established a coffee plantation. She wrote a book of her experiences (which was later made into a movie) called “Out of Africa.”
Among the Africans she trained to work in her home was a young Kikuyu by the name of Kitau. He was a meditative boy, an observant, attentive servant and she liked him. After three months he asked her to give him a letter of recommendation to her old friend Sheik Ali bin Salim, the Arab governor, at Mombasa. Kitau had seen him in her house and now, he said, he wished to go and work for him. She did not want Kitau to leave just when he had learned the routine of the house, and she told him she would rather give him a raise.
No, he said he was not leaving to get any higher pay, but he could not stay. He told her that he had made up his mind before he had come to her that he would become either a Christian or a Muslim, only he did not yet know which. For this reason he had come and worked for Dinesen, since she was a Christian, and he had stayed for three months in her house to see the ways and habits of the Christians. From her he would go for three months to Sheik Ali in Mombasa and study the ways and habits of the Muslims; then he would decide.
She exclaimed, “Good God, Kitau, you might have told me that when you came here!”