Kayerts

Kayerts is one of the main characters of the short story “An Outpost of Progress” by Joseph Conrad. He is a white man, who works along Carlier at an African trading station. Physically, Kayerts is “short and fat”. Before being assigned to oversee the trading station, Kayerts “had been in the Administration of the Telegraphs”, where he has worked for 17 years. He is a widow and he has a daughter named Melie, for whom he hopes to earn a dowry. 

Kayerts is naïve and “moved almost to tears” by the director’s speech, unaware that the director thinks he is stupid and useless. He is given no specific instructions about his duties at the trading station, and, when the steamship leaves, both he and Carlier feel lonely and abandoned: 

And now, dull as they were to the subtle influence of surroundings, they felt themselves very much...