In the House of the Interpreter (12 page)

It could not be lost on me that the first-ever direct election of African members to the Legislative Council, the Kenya Colony law-making body, known by the acronym Legco, took place on March 10, four days after Ghana’s independence. The election, despite the exclusion of Central Province and the fact that Africans were overwhelmingly outnumbered by the European and Asian elected members, was historic. Three days later the eight members formed the African Elected Members Organization, AEMO, and rejected as null and void the Lyttelton Plan under which they had been elected. The phrase
null and void
entered our student vocabulary immediately.

It emerged slowly, but Kĩmathi’s capture in 1956 and hanging in February 1957 marked the beginning of a crucial shift of political theater from the mountains to the Nairobi streets and the imperial chambers in London. In pre–Mau Mau days, the street was a popular base from which to openly challenge imperial chambers, but the state of emergency declared in 1952 had literally outlawed the street as a theater of social and political action. After the 1957 elections, however, the street resumed the role it had played earlier, once again becoming a living stage on which unfolded the drama of unexpected scenes and actors.

In my mind, political actors had always appeared as fictional characters. In the Ngandi period of my youth, the
Pre–Mau Mau nationalist lineup had loomed larger than life. Their struggles against the giant white ogre from across the sea were epic battles fought with fiery swords that lit up the dark. Sometimes I saw the heroes battling it out in the shadows with the charging feet of wild rhinos and the roar of lions. Now, confined as they were to exile, prisons, and concentration camps, the characters had faded in outline, but didn’t epic heroes always end up chained between rocks of ages or locked up in dungeons-within-dungeons?

The new post-Ngandi, post–Mau Mau nationalist characters seemed life size, actors on a stage I could comprehend. Perhaps this was because we were witnesses to their entrances and sometimes their exits, or because of their distinct disadvantage of having been forbidden to form political parties based on an area larger than a district. The Africans used ingenuity to overcome this circumscription and local confinement by grouping themselves under the umbrella of African Elected Members Organization, AEMO. Still, it remained a case of too many bulls in one kraal. I did not yearn to catch a glimpse of them with the intensity I had shown for the older actors. But their clashes with their settler adversaries and their shifting alliances with their Indian counterparts fueled the excitement of the present drama. Sometimes they would move their act from the streets of Nairobi to those of London to confront the imperial throne, but they would always come back to Kenya to report to the masses that thronged the streets, becoming instant poets, their speeches poetry. The peaceful, fun-loving, and singing throng from the slums made the dwellers of the exclusive
suburbs tremble with terror of the unknown and shut themselves inside their palaces within reach of guns and telephones.

Tom Mboya’s confrontation with Michael Blundell, the settler leader, in their Legislative Council debates, created sparks that always seemed on the verge of lighting the prairie on fire, but the sparks were contained in the polite chambers of the legislature, following the tradition of the British Parliament. These gentlemen, always in suits except for the occasional nod to African dress, demanded power, unlike the long-haired, armed guerrillas in their hodgepodge of dirty rags, animal skins, and torn boots, who threatened to seize power, smashing open the walls that chained the epic heroes of yesteryear.

We at Alliance could not take our gaze away from the drama in the streets. Each day brought out something new that impacted our view of the country, the continent, and the world. Our activities on the school compound now played out against the background of the all-year political theater in the streets. At times the compound and the street would come face to face. I felt this interaction profoundly at a scouting event.

The scout camp, like the chapel, the playing field, and the classroom, sought to instill in students the ideal of service. Scouting was voluntary, but it had all the exciting elements
of physical and mental discipline, loyalty, fellowship, and obedience to authority, a kind of secular religion without the rites of a particular spiritual order. As my mother would point out with horror, the word
scout
in Gĩkũyũ sounded like
thika hiti
,
^*
a professional burier of dead hyenas, a possibility that always made me wary of the movement. But in 1955 I watched with admiration as the troops came back from camping with stories of adventures in the wild that exhibited their knowledge of outdoor life. Their badges, covering their shirtsleeves, shirt pockets, and shoulders, and their colorful scarves, were irresistibly attractive. The scouts managed the canteen, a very well-run business where one could buy buttered slices of bread. Many of the masters were involved in scouting activities. Even Carey Francis, though not active in the school’s troops, had been a scoutmaster in Cambridge.

But given its colorful presence at Alliance, it was easy to forget that the movement was born during the defense of the British Empire in Africa. Scouting started in Kenya in 1910, three years after Lord Baden-Powell founded the movement at Brownsea, near Dorset, in England. Initially it was confined to Europeans and Indians, but the first African troop was officially recognized by the HQ in Nairobi in 1929.

I joined the scout movement in 1956 and vowed to do my best to fulfill my duty to God and queen, help other people at all times, and obey the scout law. I learned that
a scout was loyal; useful and helpful to others; brother to every other scout; courteous; a friend to all, including animals; and was thrifty and clean in thought, word, and deed. He smiled and whistled under all difficulties and obeyed orders of authority without question. A scout’s honor was to be trusted. Although the bit about the queen was difficult to swallow, the promises were not at odds with Alliance, my religious fellowship, or my upbringing. Values of frugality, doing the maximum with the minimum, and not despairing in difficult situations but trying to figure a way out appealed
to me. Among the many skills of survival we learned, knots occupied an important place. I knew some of them by their Gĩkũyũ names, but in English, names like
bowline, square knot
, and
sheet bend
made the knots sound extraordinarily difficult to master. Ironically, this helped me to not take my knowledge for granted or think that I knew all the knots there were to know.

Scouts: James Mathenge (on left) and Ngũgĩ (on right)

Aside from being instructive, scouting was fun. I enjoyed camping at Rowallan in Nairobi, making trips to Ngong Hills for a magnificent view of the Great Rift Valley, and journeying to Hell’s Gate for the incredible sight of hot steam springing from the bowels of the earth. In October 1956 Princess Margaret visited Kenya, which led to a particularly memorable scouting experience. I was among a party of fifty boys and twenty scouts who went to Nairobi to line the streets, waving small Union Jacks as the slow-moving motorcade wound its way around the stadium. As scouts, we were better positioned to get a glimpse of the passing princess. But it was the milling crowd of children waving the flag that left the biggest impression.

My most memorable scouting experience, however, was the 1957 jamboree at the graveyard of Lord Baden-Powell for the centennial celebration of his birth. Accompanied by three teachers, Omondi, Ogutu, and Smith, as well as Mrs. Smith, twenty-four scouts left at seven a.m. on Friday,
February 22, in the school truck. Past Nairobi, every new name of place—Ruiru, Juja, Mang’u, Thika—sounded magical. At the Blue Post Hotel we crossed the bridge over the Chania. It was the biggest river I had ever seen in my life. Even more breathtaking was the roaring waterfall to our right, but this was only the beginning of the wonders. As we drove through Murang’a, then Fort Hall, I was held captive by the landscape of ridges and deep valleys that lay together in parallel. On the slopes, one could spot people walking two or three cows along dusty paths to find grass, while others worked in the fields of corn.

Ngũgĩ (on right) with Johana Mwalwala (on left) hiking in Ngong Hills, 1956. Below is the Great Rift Valley.

Ngũgĩ at Hell’s Gate, Naivasha, 1956. Behind are the natural hot springs.

We zigzagged up and down the slopes, ridge to ridge, till we reached a small plain along which meandered the Thagana River, said to originate from Mount Kenya to join other streams to become the Tana River, which flows all the way to the coast and the Indian Ocean. Thereafter it was another climb toward Karatina, famous for its wartime agriculture that aided the British war economy but where, after the war, the advanced processing plants were razed to the ground to prevent Africans from competing with white settlers. One or two miles later we were in Nyeri town, then the capital of Central Province. I had always been drawn to thick forests, rugged rocks, and other natural sculptures, but the landscape between Murang’a and Nyeri left a lasting impression, years later to appear as the fictional landscape in my first novel,
The River Between
. The images that would later launch my novel-writing efforts were thus formed on my way to honor Baden-Powell.

In the afternoon, we took part in what was dubbed an
Asante rally, a thank-you affair to the memory of Baden-Powell, an incredible assembly of boys of all races from all parts of the country and the world. The sheer magnitude of the crowd of secular worshippers of this iconic figure was itself a sight to cherish, remember, and reflect upon, a vision of peace and cooperation across races dreamed up amid the carnage of another colonial war.

For me, Nyeri was not about Baden-Powell alone; in my heart, it was also about the native-born Dedan Kĩmathi and
Stanley Mathenge and the other larger-than-life guerrillas from Nyeri who were coping with survival in a real forest, unlike those of us who were choosing to learn survival skills only to affirm our loyalty to God, queen, and colonial authority.