Green City in the Sun (91 page)

     Afraid? Wachera had never been afraid in her life.

     She drew herself up with dignity and approached the humming vehicle. For an instant past met present as her small dark body in its traditional beads and hides stood within the embrace of the open car door. Then she was inside and setting her gaze stoically through the windshield.

     This was such a monumental occasion—Mama Wachera going to Nairobi in a motorcar!—that villagers from across the river and people from the mission had come to give her a sendoff. Today was Independence Day, and the Mathenges were going to attend the ceremonies at Uhuru Stadium. The significance of this—that their beloved and revered old medicine woman should be on hand to witness Kenya's birth—was not lost on those gathered to see her off. When the car started to move, everyone cheered and ran behind, shouting and waving.

     Wachera's impulse, when the car began to roll, was to grab the edge of the seat. But because it would have been undignified for her to show fear in front of others, Mama Wachera sat calmly with her hands resting in her lap. Her expression was serene as trees and huts went by, but her heart raced to see the world move while she herself remained seated!

     "It will be all right, Mama," Wanjiru had tried to reassure her. "Dr. Mwai owns a Mercedes, and he is a very good driver."

     Such words meant nothing to Wachera, who had announced her intention to walk all the way to Nairobi.

     "But it would take weeks!" Wanjiru had cried. "In the car it's only three hours."

     Even so, Wachera wondered at the propriety of it. Walking was honorable; it was what the ancestors had done. Riding on wheels was a
mzungu
custom and therefore could not be African or respectable.

     But she had no choice. If she wanted to go to the stadium and see the Union Jack come down, she would have to ride in Dr. Mwai's car.

     She thought of her grandchildren in the back seat; they were beside themselves with excitement. Although Christopher and Sarah had experienced army transport trucks, for them nothing compared to the thrill of
riding in a "Benzi." Eight-year-old Sarah could hardly keep still in her new dress and shoes. Christopher sat close to the window and waved to everyone, his smile as bright as the white shirt he wore with his long pants. For their sakes Mama Wachera had agreed to ride in Dr. Mwai's Benzi. And it warmed her now to hear them chatter and giggle in the back seat, and it helped allay her fear of riding in a car. The medicine woman lived for her two grandchildren. They were all she had; she would do anything for them.

     They drove past the large fenced field where, countless harvests ago, the sacred fig tree had stood and where elder Wachera had built her new homestead—long before the white man came. The field had been cleared by the bwana for his game played on horses, but it had been neglected now for years. Mama Wachera saw, in satisfaction, the handiwork of vengeful Ngai in the weeds and creepers and dead grass.

     The Benzi moved past the iron gateway of the mission, and in the flicker of an eye the decades fell away. Wachera saw the woods again as they had been in her girlhood, and she saw Memsaab Daktari's first little hut, which was only four posts and a thatch roof. Now there were big stone buildings and paved pathways, and the forest had long since vanished.

     Mama Wachera had not at first wanted to have her grandchildren attend this school—it was owned and operated by a Treverton—but Wanjiru had argued convincingly in favor of enrolling Sarah and Christopher in the white mission school. Had not she herself, Wanjiru asked her motherin-law, gone to this school as a girl? And didn't David also study here and thereby go on to become an educated man? Besides, Wanjiru had added, all the teachers and pupils were African.

     And so Christopher and Sarah attended the Grace Mission School, getting up every morning to eat maize porridge with their grandmother and then going off in their blue uniforms with their books tucked inside canvas bags.

     "In the new Kenya," Wanjiru had assured her mother-in-law, "our children will be educated and free to pursue any career they wish. Christopher will make a fine doctor. He has his father's good mind and logic. And Sarah will have a future such as I could never even have dreamed of. When I went to school, girls were taught domestic service; we were trained to be wives. But my little Sarah can be anything she wants!"

     
The new Kenya,
Mama Wachera thought in disdain. It was the
old
Kenya they must return to! Africans must look to the ways of the ancestors and reclaim the old customs and traditions, for there lay honor and pride, and the Children of Mumbi could be virtuous and righteous once again.

     But there was no use arguing such matters with the headstrong Wanjiru. Seven years in prison, the medicine woman knew, had hardened her daughter-in-law, had planted an obsession in her heart, and had even made her forget how to show respect and deference to an elder!

     Wachera knew what Wanjiru had gone through since her arrest nine years ago. She knew that Sarah had been conceived in rape and that she was therefore not a true Mathenge; Wachera knew also that Wanjiru had suffered other, unspoken abuses while in the detention camps and that these experiences had made her into an obstinate, intractable woman. And then, afterward, upon her release at last and suddenly out in an uncaring world, penniless and husbandless with two children, Wanjiru had endured the humiliation of begging for food, of doing menial labor for Europeans in order to feed her children. Wanjiru was a KRN—a Kenya registered nurse—a skilled and educated woman, but she could find no respectable jobs because the hospitals were run by whites who were afraid to hire ex-Mau Mau. For two years Wanjiru had lived in the Nairobi tenements with the thousands of other abandoned women, preserving her virtue and protecting her babies, until at last the Native Hospital had acquired an African administrator who not only was not afraid of an ex-Mau Mau but, in fact, admired Wanjiru for her activities as a freedom fighter. She was given a decent job at last.

     That was when she had finally brought Christopher and Sarah to live with their grandmother. Wanjiru sent money every week, and food and clothing, and now, because of her recent promotion to senior matron, Wanjiru was making the intimate acquaintance of powerful, emerging men such as Dr. Mwai.

     While Mama Wachera was overjoyed to have the children live with her and to know that her loneliness was at an end, and while she was grateful for the extra food Wanjiru sent—although she had no use for the shillings— Wachera was unhappy with the lack of harmony in their lives. They were
never in agreement, the medicine woman and her son's wife, and Wanjiru insisted always on arguing to the bitter end. It would not have been so in the old days, when a grandmother's word was law!

     The Benzi climbed the road that went up to the top of the ridge, and there Wachera saw the big house that had been built eighty-eight harvests ago. It was dark and boarded up now, and in a deplorable state.

     Mama Wachera knew that the memsaab named Mona had sold the ruined coffee farm to an Asian and had left Kenya for good. That had been wonderful news for the medicine woman, who saw in it part of her
thahu
being fulfilled; The whites were leaving Kikuyuland. It would only be a matter of time, she was certain, before the Asian gave up on the failed plantation and relinquished the land to the Children of Mumbi at last. But, to Wachera's chagrin, she learned that the memsaab had left her daughter, the grandchild of the cursed Bwana Lordy, in the care of Memsaab Daktari.

     As the big house receded behind trees, Mama Wachera recalled when, for the first and last time in her life, she had visited Memsaab Daktari's house at the mission. It had been the morning after she had been told of her son's death. Wachera had gathered up the letters Memsaab Mona had been bringing to her and had delivered them at the feet of Memsaab Daktari. Wachera did not know what was in the letters, for she could not read, and she had no desire to know. With David's death, her bitterness toward and hatred of the whites had intensified. While the
wazungu
had gathered to mourn the killing of one of their own—the one called Bwana James—Wachera had retreated to her lonely hut to grieve by herself for the murder of her one and only child.

     Then, when Christopher had come home one day with David's passbook and Wachera had seen the photograph, it had been like seeing David alive again and seeing also her beloved Kabiru Mathenge, who had died many years ago.

     It was then that she had told her stunned daughter-in-law of David's part in Mau Mau, revealing that he was not, as Wanjiru had thought, a coward, but was, in fact, a hero of
uhuru.

     And it was to honor him, Mama Wachera decided now as the Benzi turned onto the main road and headed toward Nairobi, it was to pay homage
to the spirits and memories of David Kabiru Mathenge and his father, Chief Kabiru Mathenge, that all Kenya was gathering today at Uhuru Stadium.

     T
HE RECENTLY NAMED
Kenyatta Avenue, formerly Lord Delamere Avenue, was lined with flags of all nations. For days prime ministers and heads of state from around the world had been arriving in Nairobi to attend the celebrations. The air was charged; roads were clogged with Kenyans of all tribes, who had walked for days from ancestral homelands to witness the birth of their new state. Two hundred and fifty thousand poured into Uhuru Stadium, trailing along wives and children and goats, their many dialects and tribal tongues creating a deafening babel. President Obote of Uganda got stuck in the mud and had to walk from his Rolls-Royce to the royal box. The Duke of Edinburgh arrived fifty minutes late and had to push his way through a wildly excited mob that had swept aside police barriers. A gentle rain fell steadily on ladies in evening gowns and Masai in red
shukas.
Beer and oranges were consumed as the masses in the stands cheered the tribal dancers down in the arena, who put on show after show with drums and spears and skins. All the peoples of Kenya were represented, and the mob howled with chauvinistic frenzy. When a handful of freedom fighters appeared—the last of the Mau Mau who had been holding out in the forests— Jomo Kenyatta embraced them and tried to introduce them to the Duke of Edinburgh, who politely shook his head no.

     Finally the much anticipated moment arrived. Just before midnight, on December 11, 1963, the Union Jack was solemnly brought down while the military band played "God Save the Queen," and the new red, black, and green Kenya flag went up. It fluttered in the spotlight, proudly displaying the Kenya coat of arms—a shield with two crossed spears—and the crowd burst into wild cheering. A royal salute to the Duke of Edinburgh came next, followed by the official handing over of the colors from the King's African Rifles to the Kenya Rifles. The old maroon fez was replaced by a black peaked cap; Kenya now had its own modern army.

     Then Jomo Kenyatta rose on the dais, and the stadium fell silent. The old
man was impressive in his somber European suit and traditional beaded Kikuyu cap. His sharp, penetrating eyes swept over the thousands of Africans in the stands, and his voice rang out in the night. "Fellow countrymen, we must all work hard, with our hands, to save ourselves from poverty, ignorance, and disease. In the past we used to blame the Europeans for everything that went wrong. Now the government is ours.... You and I must work together to develop our country, to get education for our children, to have doctors, to build roads, to improve day-to-day essentials. This should be our work, in the spirit that I am going to ask you to echo, to shout aloud, to shatter the foundations of the past with the strength of our new purpose...."

     He paused, surveyed the crowd, then held out his arms and cried,
"Harambee! Harambee!"

     
"Harambee!"
shouted the audience.
"Harambee!"
people chanted in one voice. "Pull together!"

     Smiling, Kenyatta turned to the duke and said, "When you get back to England, take our greetings to the Queen and tell her that we are still friends. It will be a friendship from the heart, more than what was there before."

     The crowd went insane. Hats and gourds flew up in the air; people embraced one another. It was a roar, they all thought, that was the roar of a lion, a roar, they were certain, that must have been heard around the world.

     And then, at last, with great solemnity and dignity, the Kenya military band struck the first chords of the new national anthem, and two hundred and fifty thousand people rose as one body.

     As the sad, sweet strains rose into the rainy night, filling everyone with a kind of melancholy pride and a sense, for the first time in anyone's memory, of real African unity, this final stronghold of British imperialism, the last colonial corner to break away from the no longer powerful British Empire, moved into the modern age.

     From where she stood, in a privileged box with Geoffrey Donald and other prominent white Nairobi businessmen, Grace Treverton looked around the packed stadium and realized she had never before seen so many Africans gathered together in one place. It overwhelmed her. It also chilled her far more than the rain did. For the first time Grace received a true understanding
of what the African fight had been all about. She looked at the black, pride-filled faces and thought about the cloudy, uncertain future. She knew that there was still much anger and resentment in these African hearts. Would they, she wondered, ever truly be able to forget their ignominious past and the humiliation suffered at the hands of the colonists? These hearts were barely fifty years away from the savage hearts of their warrior fathers. Would they revert to barbarism and bloodlust once the law of Britain was gone from Kenya? Grace knew that these people were drunk with their new power and that they lusted for luxuries they naively imagined self-rule would bring. Remembering Mau Mau, she wondered how the remaining Kenya whites would fare should a second emergency break out. The next time there would be no British troops to protect them.