The death of Jomo Kenyatta last week, which raised questions about the future of Kenya, evoked sharp memories for a trio of TIME writers and correspondents who covered the African leader at different stages of his long and spectacular career.

Jim Bell, now a senior correspondent in Boston, went to Kenya in 1959 and was told by British colonial servants that Kenyatta was confined, or "rusticated" as they put it, near the Somali frontier. The militant Mau Mau leader was said to be a "hopeless alcoholic." A year later, Bell met Kenyatta in a village in northern Kenya. He was tall and dignified, and Bell remembers him manipulating a fly whisk with great style and grace. At first he spoke haltingly, "not because he was a gone alcoholic," Bell recalls, "but because he hadn't spoken English in seven years. By the end, he was speaking as the London School of Economics scholar of anthropology he was."

Correspondent Lee Griggs met Kenyatta the day in 1961 that he came home in triumph to his village near Nairobi. Remembers Griggs: "In the crush of thousands I only managed a handshake and a few words, but I was instantly impressed. The handshake was firm and the eyes were almost blazing with determination." Griggs asked if he was bitter about his long detention in the desolate north of his country.

The eyes softened a little. "The British will see the error of their ways someday," he said.

Griggs also recalls Kenyatta giving speeches in three languages: "He would lead off in deep, booming English for the whites, talking of how Kenyans should not resent foreigners but understand that they were in Kenya to help blacks develop.

Next, in Swahili, he would urge tribal unity on the country. Finally, in Kikuyu, he would tell his own tribe's people that he was still virile. That always evoked loud cheers."

By the time Bill Smith arrived in Kenya in late 1962, Kenyatta's country was on the verge of independence. "I'd do it again and again, if I had to--again and again," said the leader, speaking of the revolutionary activities that cost him years in exile and prison. "It was the only way." Like his predecessors, Smith was impressed particularly by Kenyatta's presence. "He really was the father of his nation, and with his seniority and strength he was indomitable."

Now an associate editor, Smith wrote this week's World story on the African leader, drawing on files from David Wood, our current bureau chief in Nairobi. The passing of Kenyatta, perhaps the last of the grand old men of the African nationalist movement, is a milestone in the history of independent Africa.

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