A Grain of Wheat (14 page)

‘My heart was filled with joy,’ he wrote later. ‘In a flash I was convinced that the growth of the British Empire was the development of a great moral idea: it means, it must surely lead to the creation of
one British nation, embracing peoples of all colours and creeds, based on the just proposition that all men were created equal.

‘For me, a great light had shone in the darkness.’

Transform the British Empire into one nation: didn’t this explain so many things, why, for instance, so many Africans had offered themselves up to die in the war against Hitler?

From the first, as soon as he set his hands on a pen to write down his thoughts, the title of the manuscript floated before him. He would call it:
PROSPERO IN AFRICA
. In it he argued that to be English was basically an attitude of mind: it was a way of looking at life, at human relationship, at the just ordering of human society. Was it not possible to reorientate people into this way of life by altering their social and cultural environment?
Prospero in Africa
was a result of an assiduous dive into English history, and the General History of Colonization from the Roman times to the present day. He was influenced by the French policy of Assimilation, but was critical of the French as he was of what he called ‘Lugard’s retrograde concept of Indirect Rule’.

‘We must avoid the French mistake of assimilating only the educated few. The peasant in Asia and Africa must be included in this moral scheme for rehabilitation. In Great Britain we have had our peasant, and now our worker, and they are no less an integral part of our society.’

It was to Margery that he often revealed his ambitions. She was first attracted to him by the sadness and distance in his face. She admired his brilliance. His moral passion gave life a meaning. Once they went for a walk in London. They stood, for a time, at St James’s Park, their eyes raised towards Westminster Abbey, the British House of Commons and beyond. Margery inclined her head on his shoulder as if she wished he would carry her with him to those lands he talked about. He did. A few years later, Mr and Mrs Thompson sailed for East Africa, to be at the centre of the drama in the Colonial administration.

‘I am delighted,’ he had written on arriving at Mombasa, ‘to touch the red earth of Kenya. I was here during the war and I liked the climate. Then I never knew I would come back on a different mission.’

He always remembered those words. And even today, on the eve
of his departure from East Africa, the touch of Margery’s fingers had brought back a flicker of the faith that then imbued him. His faith in British Imperialism had once made him declare: To administer a people is to administer a soul. He was then talking with a group of officers at the New Stanley Hotel. After dinner, he had written the words in his diary – no, not a diary but a mass of notes he scribbled at various times and places in his career, hoping to incorporate them into a coherent philosophy in
Prospero in Africa
. These were the notes that were now in front of Thompson; he went through them, lingering over the entries that struck his mind.

Thompson woke to the present. He stared at the manuscript without seeing anything. Before Rira, his way to the top had been so clear, so open. Now at Githima he felt the irony of the words he had written, the irony accentuated by the fact that the Queen’s husband would be the guest of honour at the Uhuru ceremony. His vision, vividly resurrected by his wife’s touch, mocked him: what even if he had gone to the top, a DC, PC, or a Governor? All these would now go, like this house, the office, Githima, the country. Let silly fools like Dr Lynd stay. But eventually they would all be thrown out without ceremony. That is why Thompson had resigned, to get away before Uhuru. For why should people wait and go through the indignity of being ejected from their seats by their houseboys? And he remembered Dr Lynd and the story. His lie to Karanja. He wanted to talk to Margery. Tonight, anyway, because she had renewed her faith in him. Her softened eyes and voice would exorcize the hallucinations that plagued him. How we have grown old. He braced himself for the effort. His heart livened with hope and fear as he went into the bathroom to prepare himself for the great confession.

He opened the door to the bedroom cautiously and stepped in. He did not put on the lights, feeling that darkness would create the right atmosphere. A man was born to die continually and start afresh. His hands were shaking, slightly, and he felt darkness creep towards him, as he reached for the bed. But Margery was already asleep. Thompson saw this and felt enormous relief and gratitude. He got into bed but for a long time he could not sleep.

God helps those who help themselves, it is said, with fingers pointing at a self-made man who has attained wealth and position, forgetting that thousands of others labour and starve, day in, day out, without ever improving their material lot. This moral so readily administered, seemed true for Gikonyo. People in Thabai said: Detention camps have taught him to rule himself.

Gikonyo was among the first group of detainees to pass through the pipe-line back to the village. (The pipe-line was the official euphemism for the chain of concentration camps all the detainees had to pass through.) When he returned his only companions were an old saw and a hammer. Fortunately he had come back during August and September harvests, when carpenters are in great demand to construct barns and stores for the maize and beans and potatoes. People in Thabai had known him before the Emergency. Now he worked harder and finished each barn on time. He got more orders. But if he promptly fulfilled his part of the contract, he expected no less from the other side. Thus he insisted on getting the money at the agreed day and time. He would not countenance a delay. He treated the poor and the rich alike. The only difference was that he could give a man who so requested a longer time in which to find the money. But on the date agreed, whether after one, two or three months, the money had to be ready. ‘Detention has changed him,’ they moaned. But they trusted and came to respect his scrupulous honesty. At least he did fulfil, on time, his own part of the bargain.

Instead of buying clothes for himself or his family, Gikonyo did what Indian traders used to do. He bought maize and beans cheaply during the harvests, put them in bags, and hoarded them in his
mother’s smoky hut. That’s where he and Mumbi also lived. He argued: they (his wife and mother) have been naked and starved for the last six years. A few months of waiting won’t make much difference. When the jobs-boom created by the harvest ended, Gikonyo did odd things here and there, waiting for an opportunity. At Thabai and villages around Rung’ei, most families finished their harvested food by January. Then there always followed one or two months of drought before the long rains started in March. Even then people had to wait for the crops to grow. That was the time Gikonyo gave up hack-work as a carpenter and entered the market. He went to the market very early in the morning, bought one or two bags of maize at a wholesale price from licenced, and at times black-market, maize suppliers from the Rift Valley. Later in the day his wife and mother would join him. Along with other market women, Mumbi and Wangari would sell the maize at a retail price using tiny calabashes for a measure. With the money obtained, Gikonyo would again haggle for another bag and the two women did the retail selling. The profit gained would be re-invested in the business on the next market-day. Sometimes Gikonyo would buy a bag of maize and then sell it there and then to another person at a higher price. He was never rude to customers. He talked with humble conviction and put himself at their service; always ready to apologize, he insisted on giving his customers prompt attention. This way, he coaxed in money. Women, especially, liked doing business with him. ‘Such a tongue, and so honest too,’ they said. So his fame spread through the market. All the time Gikonyo waited until the maize-grain was very scarce. The supply from the European farms in the Rift Valley was severely controlled. At the right time, he poured what he had hoarded on to the market at a high price.

It had been a life of struggle. At first other men derided him for doing a woman’s job. Brushing sides with women’s skirts. But when his fortunes changed, they started respecting him. Some even tried to follow his example with varying degrees of success.

The story of Gikonyo’s rise to wealth, although on a small scale, carried a moral every mother in Thabai pointed out to her children.

‘His wife and his aged mother need no longer go rub skirts with
other women in the market. This is only so because their son was not afraid to make his hands dirty. He never slept to midday like a European.’

It’s true that Gikonyo always rose early. He did not let the troubles of the heart or anything deflect him from the immediate purpose. On the morning following the visit to Mugo, for instance, he rose before the birds and went to Kiriita, beyond Uplands, where he bought vegetables which he would later transport to Nairobi. Supplying vegetables to Nairobi (Gikonyo had many orders there) was a lucrative job, especially if you oiled smooth with money your relationship with the traffic and market police who could always create trouble for African businessmen. Internal self-government had not changed preferential treatment for Europeans and Asians. Because Gikonyo could not drive, he had employed two men, a driver and a turn-boy, who looked after this side of his business. But Gikonyo kept a vigilant eye on everything. In any case, he liked to set the pace for his workers. At lunchtime, he held a meeting with the committee responsible for decorating the field where sports and dances would be held on Uhuru day.

In the afternoon he had an appointment with the MP for the area. About a month back, Gikonyo and five other men had decided to contribute and jointly buy a small farm belonging to Richard Burton. Burton was one of the earliest settlers, who, encouraged by the British Government to settle in Kenya after the railway line to Uganda was finished, came and got the land for a song. His children were born in Kenya, went to school there – the boys to the Prince of Wales School and the girls to Kenya High School (or as they called it, the
Heifer Boma
), and then went home to England for their university education. Most of them had stayed in England, but one son and a daughter had returned to Kenya. The son worked for one of the big oil companies in Nairobi. An old man, Burton really knew no other home than Kenya, and had never intended leaving the country (he never even went to Britain for leave or for health reasons) until he saw, beyond any doubt, that power was going to black hands. For, like many settlers and in spite of hints from their leader, Sir Michael Blundell, Burton had never believed that the British Government would abdicate.
Now Burton wanted to sell the land he loved and in which he had put so much of his life and go home to Britain. Gikonyo had already contacted Burton and made preliminary arrangements. Because the five men could only raise half the amount (Burton wanted cash), Gikonyo had gone to see the MP to find out if he could recommend them, or use his influence behind the scenes, to get them a government-backed loan from a bank. The MP had gravely listened to their needs, noting down all the particulars about the farm, on paper. Then he had asked Gikonyo to return today. ‘This is the real Harambee spirit. This is real self-help,’ he told Gikonyo, shaking his hand firmly.

And Gikonyo was very hopeful as he hurried from the meeting to catch a bus for Nairobi. The bus, called
A DILIGENT CHILD
, belonged to one of those people in Rung’ei whose fortunes were made during the War of Independence. Those were men who through active co-operation with the colonial government had acquired trade licences and even loans to develop their business. Although Gikonyo was hopeful he was slightly bitter about having to go all the way to Nairobi. Few MPs had offices in their constituencies. As soon as they were elected, they ran to Nairobi and were rarely seen in their areas, except when they came back with other national leaders to address big political rallies. Before they reached Nairobi, the bus was stopped by two African policemen. One came in and counted the number of passengers, while the other one asked for the driver’s licence. The bus had two passengers extra. The driver argued with the policemen. Then the cashier took the two policemen outside, and waved the driver to go on. The driver understood the sign. He drove a few yards and stopped. Soon the cashier came running, and got into the bus. ‘They just wanted a few shillings for tea,’ he said, and people in the bus laughed.
A DILIGENT CHILD
continued on its journey to the city. The Uhuru Highway (formerly Princess Elizabeth), was lined on either side with columns of the new black, green and red Kenya flags, and flags from other African countries. For a time Gikonyo forgot his mission to the city as his heart fluttered with the flags. He got out of the bus and walked down Kenyatta Avenue feeling for the moment as if the city really belonged to him. The statue of Lord Delamere that
proudly dominated the Avenue (the Avenue previously bore his name) had been replaced by a fountain around which African men and women crowded, spilling into the grounds of the New Stanley Hotel, all pointing at, and talking about, the rotating jets of water. ‘They are many penises spurting out water in competition,’ Gikonyo heard a woman say. The others around her laughed. To Gikonyo, Nairobi seemed ready for Independence. He resolved that when he returned to Thabai he would try to inject new enthusiasm into decorating Rung’ei.