A Fool's Knot (17 page)

Had this been an ordinary day, Migwani would have dozed through the day. There had been no market today, no point to focus the life of the town. Buses would have come and gone in their clouds of dust bringing with them their momentary panic before vanishing again, leaving only an odd traveller and the smell of their smoky black Diesel in the still hot air. Barely fifty people would have walked the track between the shops today. A handful of women, released for the day from the necessity of working in the fields and having come to sit, ignored, in the shade of an acacia, would have returned home with their unsold handfuls of softening fruit. The cobbler would have sat patiently all day in the shade of the market shelter's tin roof, quietly fashioning his fabled pairs of ‘squirrel catchers' from the stretched rubber and tread of old car tyres. As the sun lowered, he would have transferred the day's products to the shelves of a nearby and as yet unoccupied concrete box of a shop he had recently rented as a base for his trade. Tomorrow he would return to repeat the day, which would prove as fruitless as the rest, but, like everyone in the sleepy place, he did as he knew, repeated his chores, relived his role, with thought for neither success nor failure. Today, as ever, cows and goats were the town's most frequent visitors. Ambling down the hill past the shops to the point where the path dipped along the floor of a deep rain-cut gulley away from the road and towards the dam, they could find their way by instinct and practice. The small boys, whose task it was to drive their fathers' stock to water, strolled along with the straggling column, stick in hand, sometimes far behind the herd, often diverted for minutes by the sight of a man mending a bicycle or the sound of a blacksmith forging a hoe. For the animals, nothing had been strange today. Mulindu's cows had been driven to water and had returned to their grazing in front of the mission. The businessman Mbuvu's massive herd of goats, newly bought at the previous week's market for sale in Nairobi, had been driven to water and had returned to their grazing behind the chief's camp. But for Migwani, this had been no ordinary day.

At seven the wind had begun as no more than a breath of breeze. By nine it had grown to its usual howling gale, blowing dust like a blizzard. To sit beneath a tin roof in Migwani at night was to listen to a chorus of cracks and pings amplified by the volume of the room. When cooled by a gust of wind, the metal contracts, squeaking and creaking on the nails that hold it to the rafters. Dust on the wind plays a rain-like line as it bounces across the corrugations. These sounds are part of the night, part of every night here. They are as natural as the clicking of crickets or the electronic buzz of the cicada; that elusive noise one never hears until it stops.

All this went quite unnoticed by John Mwangangi, as he sat alone in a room behind the Safari Bar, leafing through the wad of papers he had accumulated during the day's court sitting in Migwani. His magistrate's court was held in all locations of Kitui North in rotation and today, when the case against the boys from Nzawa School was to be heard yet again, it had been Migwani's turn. Thus, that day every shop had been closed. Every person living in or near the town – all thirty – had come to the chief's camp and crammed into the mud-walled, classroom-sized meeting room to hear the proceedings. Others had walked the dusty miles via hill and valley from Nzawa, Thitani, Kyome and Kamandiu. Friends, relatives and mere acquaintances of the accused had made the journey and many others, merely curious, had joined them.

The gallery was by now both used to and tired of its role. This was the fourth time the case had come to court since the boys' bail was granted. Each time the teachers' attorney had requested and had been granted a postponement. Surely today, with the hearing to be held in Migwani, itself, surely today there would be judgment.

Looking, as usual, incongruous in his surroundings, the young attorney stood to defend his clients, the two primary school teachers. He spoke in a voice calculated to express a model of efficiency, reason and professionalism. Listening to this young man, dressed perfectly in a three-piece suit with a gold watch chain for decoration, John showed no emotion, every word of his comment couched in a consciously impartial voice without expression. Beneath this, John despised the man. He was an impostor with no right to claim the status he demanded, nor the knowledge to inform the role to which he aspired. His clients had grown afraid of the action they had brought and he knew it. All reports John had received told the same story. The whole of Nzawa seemed to know exactly what happened and, indeed, why it had happened. The whole of Nzawa knew, except for Mr Muchira and Mr Kivara, the two Kikuyu teachers involved, who stolidly maintained their own independent version. When the statements were read out in court, everyone listened intently, many laughing openly, many scoffing criticism at what they heard.

In reality, the only solid evidence to incriminate any of the accused boys was Muchira's assertion that he had recognised the voice of one of them shouting from the road by the school soon after the attack on his house. Obviously at best no more than circumstantial, this evidence John now rejected out of hand, much to the consternation of the young attorney who laboured the point for some minutes, before the magistrate, in his matter-of-fact way, simply told him to shut up or leave the court. The young man sat down deflated and humiliated and, in sympathy, Bwanas Muchira and Kivara hung their heads, and thereby effectively admitting publicly that their claim was groundless.

Witness after witness endorsed a thoroughly consistent story. It stated that the teachers had been attacked not by these boys, but by thirty parents of children from the Standard Four class. Pupils had been mercilessly beaten each day for a week by these two teachers in an attempt to discover the culprit responsible for writing an abusive slogan in pencil on the classroom wall. It had read simply, “Muchira fucks only his mother” and the abused had been incensed. As the week progressed and each day their children came home in tears, still bearing the scratches left by the crude thorn switches the teachers had used to beat them, the parents had talked, shared grievances and vowed revenge. A group had coalesced around an agreement to act, to teach these Kikuyus a lesson of their own. Under cover of darkness, they had gone to the school, stoned the teachers' houses and then beat the two pleading men with sticks. These teachers, claimed the witnesses, knew the identities of all of the masked assailants who had delivered their justice and, equally, knew full well that none of the accused students were among them. In truth, they were now afraid to stay in Nzawa and, indeed, had immediately left the area to be re-posted elsewhere. So, afraid to return or to tell the truth, lest their educator's professionalism be questioned, they had fabricated charges against those they thought might be weak enough to bully, thinking that a judgment in their favour would cover their backs. And now even their calculated ploy had backfired.

Protesting, the teachers, now oblivious of the presence of their attorney, got to their feet and shouted that the court should not be dealing with these stories. The fact remained, they implored, that they had been attacked and that their own story was accurate. The court should be trying the defendants, they pleaded, not themselves.

John silenced them with a word of warning and then, without further hesitation, brought matters to a close by dismissing the charges, announcing that there was no case to answer. The court was immediately filled with an uproar of cheering that John did not try to silence. Even the public prosecutor clapped his hands high over his head in joy. He had been released from his task in this particular case by the presence of the teacher's private attorney and had voluntarily taken on the task of organising the boys' defence, stating openly that his interest was only to see justice done. Humiliated, the trio of Kikuyu men left the room in a largely unnoticed and hasty flurry. Publicly belittled, the two teachers immediately began to argue and, feeling that it would be unwise, perhaps unsafe, to wait in town for a bus, they set off on foot along the northward road towards Mwingi. In renewed silence and order, the public prosecutor stood and formally asked John to inform the defendants of their right to take action against the teachers in view of their false accusations. John did as asked, but the youths, all exhausted in their relief at the outcome, declared themselves satisfied with acquittal and rejected the proposition. The case had already taken almost six months to resolve. It had hung over them like a weight and they were now merely glad to be rid of it.

With the court dismissed, members of the gallery went their separate ways, their smiles and staccato comments testifying to their satisfaction with the outcome. Janet, obviously relieved, came forward to thank John and congratulate her student, Munyolo, who was overjoyed at the decision and deeply grateful to her for the support she had offered. In return, he promised that she would share the next harvest from his family's farm. Faithfully, four months hence, he would bring her a bag of beans worth more than two hundred shillings and an ebony walking stick he had carved himself. He had needed to save just to buy the wood. Janet would donate the beans to the church's famine relief service, but the stick she would treasure and, though clumsy and crude, she would prize it as one of the greatest mementos of her stay in Kenya, even when, years later, it would form the centrepiece of her display in St Mary's School library.

John, himself, had gained a lot of satisfaction from the case. Though he had tried to remain impartial, the more he learned about the events of that night in Nzawa and, indeed, those of the preceding week, the more he became angered by the attitudes and deeds of the teachers. Much as he condemned the action of the parents, he could not help but sympathise with them. It seemed that Muchira and Kivara, and others like them throughout Kenya, considered themselves, by virtue of their education and the salaries they drew, to be above reproach, above criticism, above even the law. These people despised the uneducated, illiterate poor of Nzawa, dismissing them as peasants, who knew of nothing other than the cultivation of their fields or the driving of their skinny goats and head-hanging cows. They seemed to assume that no one, save perhaps for the school's headmaster, had any right to criticise their actions. Since, in this case, their headmaster was Mr Mwanza, whose prime consideration was not the education of the children but their adoption into the Africa Inland Church, the teachers did not even respect his right to question them. John took great satisfaction in bringing these two arrogant men down to earth and his decision had clearly been popular with the locals, but he was equally aware that he was taking something of a risk. Without doubt the two aggrieved teachers would soon be knocking on the office door of a contact, a relative or a friend in some ministry or other, to complain that this Mwingi magistrate had not shown due respect for their status and had succumbed to pressure from the mob. Entries would be made in his file and if, one day, the gossiped claims of such enemies, though empty, developed weight out of sheer numbers, then surely someone would take notice and he would thereby have a new enemy, and one to be feared. But for John, here in Migwani, it was only justice and the truth that deserved any respect.

Now, save for a moth trapped in the room, he was alone. Today the District Officer and his entourage had not immediately returned to Mwingi, as they would normally have done. Tomorrow there would be a fund-raising
Harambee Day
for a Migwani primary school, a day of celebration, speeches and auctions that John was required to attend in an official capacity. As usual, there were to be four speakers. The chairman of the school governors would start the proceedings and Migwani's Chief would follow. John would be third on the rostrum, just ahead of the star attraction, James Mulonzya, the area's member of parliament. It was expected at such gatherings for the invited speakers to extol the still unquestioned virtues of education, to praise the Government's wise and effective policies in the sector and to list and elaborate the numerous successful projects throughout the region. Over three thousand people were expected to attend. It would be another day of celebration, a near repetition of the others he had attended during his time as Northern Region District Officer. But this was likely to be his last such occasion. Unknown to anyone in Migwani, John Mwangangi was about to leave his post. In a month or two he would move to Nairobi to reclaim his own legal career with a prestigious law firm.

Events that had appeared random at first sight had mysteriously combined to provide the lure of an opportunity he found attractive, alongside a push he could not ignore. It had been soon after the turn of the year that one George Nzou, a Migwani man, younger than himself, had sent him a letter of invitation. John knew Nzou from his time in university. They had shared a year in Nairobi before John left for Europe. When Nzou graduated, he joined a Nairobi firm and had stayed with them ever since. He was now a partner. Nzou's letter had suggested that he might consider joining the partnership himself, alongside, of course, a substantial input of capital. At the time, John had acknowledged the request, but declined the offer. Certainly at the time, his priority remained public service in Mwingi.

But then two months later, Nzou wrote again, this time with better conditions and, crucially, recognition of John's superior qualification, experience and expertise. The conditions were easier, the capital input reduced and the potential earnings greater.

That same week, perhaps coincidentally, John found himself hauled before the District Commissioner in Kitui. He was a much older man, a more ‘traditional' administrator, who at all costs sought to preserve order and respect among the elite of the District, though with younger elements, such as John, he could be pugilistically direct. There was a complaint, the Commissioner announced, from a respected man in Thitani. “Bwana Mwangangi,” he continued, the verbatim transcript of the session having lodged solid in John's memory, “we public servants must not play politics. Teaching women to read and write is a commendable activity, but using that context as a vehicle to attack a political opponent is not an activity becoming of a District Officer.” The words, clearly, were well chosen, well rehearsed, and delivered according to the script, whose authorship remained anonymous, but suspected. And so John was formally requested to withdraw his official and personal support for non-governmental activities. All of his joint ventures with the Church would have to cease. He would supervise them in his official capacity, of course, since that would remain his job, but he should no longer be a participant.