‘It may be those things that the Americans and Russians are throwing into the sky.’
‘It could be. I hear that they might be sending travellers to the moon. Is it possible?’
‘There was a time we didn’t believe it was possible for a man to walk on a metal horse of two wheels,’ Njogu said as he saw Munira riding the metal horse toward them. ‘Until Munoru rode on one.’
‘You know when the white man first came. He removed his shoes and we thought he had taken off his leg. People ran away saying: what is this new magic?’
They laughed at this and asked for more to drink. Munira leaned his bicycle against the wall, and sat down, asking for beer at the same time.
‘Beer will soon be our only water . . .’ he said.
‘Mwalimu . . . when do you open school?’ Njuguna asked him. ‘You have now been with us two years. That has been good for our children.’
‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘We are now in the middle of January. Unless I get more teachers, it will not be possible to carry on. The first year I had two classes. The second year, I had three classes. Now it’ll be four classes.’
‘Where will you get the teachers? Which VIP will want to come and bake in the sun?’
‘I will be going to Ruwa-ini. I’ll go and tell Mzigo this: unless you give me at least one extra teacher, you better close the school.’
They were silent at his words. For a moment they all withdrew into private thoughts. So Mwalimu was preparing to leave them? Two years had maybe been too long for him.
Munira had hoped that with Wanja’s going he would recapture his previous rhythm and aloof dominance. But this was an elusive dream, he had soon realized, and for a month after she had gone Munira could be seen galloping all over Ilmorog, a dustcloud following him. ‘It is the sun,’ some of them said. After four or five months of hoping in vain that she would return, he went to Ruwa-ini on a market day, pretending that he was only looking for something to buy but didn’t get anything. He again found a reason to stay the night at Ruwa-ini and drank in almost all the bars. He ended up in Furaha Bar. There he saw a girl at the juke-box. Her back was turned to him. But his heart gave exaggerated wild beats and he could not keep up the pretence: he was looking for Wanja. He sat on a high stool at the counter and waited for her to recognize him. First the guitar: then the choral voices rose and dominated the atmosphere: it was a religious hymn and the girl now turned – oh! it was not Wanja – and started singing with the voices, her eyes slightly shut, as if she was part of the choral voices issuing from the box. When it was over, she came to the counter and asked for a drink. What interested Munira was her knowledge of nearly all the languages of Kenya. When she spoke Gikuyu one thought she really was a Mugikuyu: when she spoke Luo one thought she couldn’t be anything else. The same with Swahili, Kamba and Luhya. He soon lost interest in her: but he had liked the hymn and he went over, put a shilling into the slot and pressed it. It was sung by Ofafa Jericho Choir and the hymn was moving. The girl ran back to the box and Munira was so fascinated with her total almost seductive absorption in the hymn that, for a time, he forgot his disappointment at not finding Wanja. He even thought of buying her drinks and asking her to bed for the night. But the religious hymn brought back the memory of his boyhood escapade and later attempt at purification by fire, and he lost all interest in the girl’s body.
He had returned to Ilmorog after that fruitless search for a dream and for the rest of that year he threw himself into his teaching and tried to suppress memories of Wanja and their lovemaking in a hut. But things were not quite the same. At least Abdulla’s place was different: Abdulla himself hardly ever spoke more than two sentences to him. He was always glad when he found the elders in Abdulla’s place.
‘Is it true that these people are trying to walk to the moon, Mwalimu?’ Muturi asked to move their minds away from thoughts of Mwalimu’s possible desertion.
‘Yes.’
‘These people are strange. They have no fear even of God. They have no respect for holiness. They ruin things on earth. And now they go to disturb God in his realm. It is no wonder He gets angry and withholds rain.’
‘Indeed this is true. Look at us. We have always feared God and we have not tried to probe closely into his ways. This is why God was able to spare us from utter ruin. That’s why after the Battle of Ilmorog he turned the colonialists’ eyes the other way. And you will agree with me that we of Ilmorog did not lose too many sons in war for Uhuru despite Nyakinyua’s husband’s mad action.’
‘Nyakinyua’s husband, Njamba Nene. He was a brave man,’ Njuguna commented.
‘That he was – so old and yet pointing a gun at a white man!’
‘He redeemed Ilmorog with his blood,’ said Njogu.
‘And so did your grandson – don’t forget that Ole Masai had Ilmorog blood in him.’
And suddenly they were all startled by Abdulla’s stream of curses at Joseph. This was strange because for a whole year after Wanja’s visit they had not heard him curse. Again they kept quiet as if they were holding a silence in memory of Nyakinyua’s husband and of Ole Masai whom they only knew in name.
‘I don’t agree with you there,’ said Muturi, once again trying to change the subject. ‘We have been losing our sons to the cities.’
‘Oh yes,’ agreed Ruoro and he coughed to clear his throat. ‘I don’t understand young men these days. In our time we were compelled to work for these oppressing Foreigners. And even then, after earning enough to pay tax or fines, we would run back to our shambas. Now take my sons . . . I don’t even know where they are. One went to work in Nairobi, another in Kisumu, another in Mombasa, and they hardly ever come back. Only one, who occasionally comes back to see his wife Wambui, and even he hardly stays for a day.’
‘Mine too,’ observed Njuguna. ‘One went to work as a cook in the settled area. He was then detained and even after detention went back to work as a cook for the new African settlers. Imagine that: a big man able to use his hand cooking for others. The other three are in Nairobi.’
‘Actually we should not blame them,’ rejoined Muturi. ‘After that first big war there was no more land in which to move. And also there will always be those who will never resist the call of strange places. My father used to tell me that even before the white Foreigners came, a few people would travel to the waters carrying ivory, and sometimes they would not come back.’
‘Like Munoru who sighed after new things,’ said Ruoro. They were again silent, for a few seconds, as if all their minds were on this movement of their sons and the calamity which had come over the land. Then Njuguna coughed and looked into space:
‘You are right about the shortage of land. I remember the words of my youngest son before he left for the City. It was soon after a harvest like the ones we have had these last two years. He said: “I have worked on this land for a year. My nails are broken. But look at the yield. It mocks the strength in these arms. Tell me father, when the tax gatherer comes round, what shall I give him? When I go to Ruwa-ini and I see nice clothes, where shall I get the coins to give the shopkeeper? I must go to the big city and try my future there: like my other brothers.” What words could I tell him?’
‘This land used to yield. Rains used not to fail. What happened?’ inquired Ruoro.
It was Muturi who answered.
‘You forget that in those days the land was not for buying. It was for use. It was also plenty, you need not have beaten one yard over and over again. The land was also covered with forests. The trees called rain. They also cast a shadow on the land. But the forest was eaten by the railway. You remember they used to come for wood as far as here – to feed the iron thing. Aah, they only knew how to eat, how to take away everything. But then, those were Foreigners – white people.
‘Now that we have an African Governor and African big chiefs, they will return some of the fat back to these parts . . .’
‘You mean bring back our sons?’ retorted Njuguna. Then he coughed, a cou
gh with a meaning, and turned to Abdulla: ‘Now about this, your donkey: don’t you think it is eating too much grass in a season of drought?’
Munira stood up. He left them arguing about the donkey. For him Ilmorog without Wanja had been a land of drought. But he was strangely affected by their words. He remembered his strange conversation with Karega almost two years before and his own sudden thoughts about an unevenly cultivated garden.
Every day they all waited for the rains, or a change in the sun. They all waited for something to happen. But every morning they woke to wind and dust and a dazzling sun.
As the days dragged on and there was no visible change, Abdulla’s donkey became increasingly the centre of talk. Elders met and discussed what they could do about it.
Early another day Njuguna, Ruoro, Njogu and Muturi once again called on Abdulla and they refused to sit down. They also refused to drink anything. They would not even look Abdulla in the eye. Abdulla saw the shifty eyes in solemn faces.
‘You appear burdened in the heart,’ said Abdulla. ‘Is it anything I can help?’
‘Do you see how the sun shimmers? It almost blinds the eye to look,’ Njuguna commented, vaguely pointing to the sun-baked land.
‘It will rain,’ said Abdulla without conviction.
‘It is not that we are saying it will not rain!’ said Ruoro. ‘It is too early to tell about the vagaries of the weather.’
‘Can’t you see the dust and the wind?’ added Ruoro.
‘What do you want?’
‘We are only messengers from the village,’ said Njuguna.
‘We come in peace and good heart.’
‘But what do you want from me?’ Just at that point, his donkey hee-hooed across Ilmorog. The elders looked at one another. Njuguna delivered what he called only a friendly message, a request.
Abdulla watched them walk away, the sun shimmering on their bare heads. Emissaries of evil, he hissed, and buried his face in his hands on the table: what could he do without his other leg?
‘So it is a question of my one donkey or their cows and goats? No, I’ll not have it killed or sent away. I would rather leave the village. Oh yes: they want to drive me from Ilmorog.’
Joseph looked at him. He feared that this would mean that he would not return to school for his second year. He wanted to weep. Perhaps if Wanja had not gone, he thought in his boyish, sad but grateful remembrance of her action.
2 ~ When at long last school reopened, Munira found that he could not possibly deal with four classes all by himself. Now, looking back over the two years that had gone, it seemed a miracle that he had managed to carry on the school that long. If he could get even one extra teacher, he could perhaps manage it. Standards I and III could meet in the mornings and Standards II and IV in the afternoons.
He decided to cycle to Ruwa-ini to confront Mr Mzigo with the problem. It would also be good to get away from these constant talks about sun and dust. If Mzigo did not give him a teacher, Munira would have to abandon the school.
But just before he could leave for Ruwa-ini to see Mzigo about the school’s problems, two things which Munira was later to remember happened in Ilmorog. At the time, however, they only seemed out of character with the sunny somnolence of the old Ilmorog as he had known it. First came the tax officer in a government Land Rover accompanied by two gun-carrying Askaris. Before the officer could get out of the Land Rover, word of his arrival had gone round: all the men somehow managed to vanish into the plains. The officer knocked at the door of every house: in each place he found only women and children. ‘All our men have gone to your cities,’ complained the women, ‘look at the sun and the dust and tell us if you would stay here.’ In the end, the officer went to Abdulla’s place and over a drink of beer he talked incessantly about Ilmorog country. ‘It seems to be getting more and more depopulated. Every year that I have come here, I have been met by fewer and fewer males. But this trip breaks all records.’ Abdulla agreed with the officer without adding any details. ‘Anyway you have all the women to yourself,’ the officer continued, writing a tax receipt for Abdulla. He drove away. In the evening the men miraculously reappeared and they talked as if nothing had happened.
But soon after this episode came two men from ‘out there’. They claimed that they were sent by Nderi wa Riera. People of Ilmorog gathered around them at the school compound and patiently waited to hear the news: perhaps Nderi wa Riera had remembered his old promise to bring piped water to the area. One was fat with a shiny bald head which he kept on touching and they called him Fat Stomach: the other was tall and thin and kept his hands in his pockets and never once said a word. They baptized him Insect. Insect told them of a new Kīama-Kamwene Cultural Organization – which would bring unity between the rich and the poor and bring cultural harmony to all the regions. Fat Stomach declared that the people of Ilmorog were to ready themselves to go to Gatundu to sing and have tea. He explained that all the people from Central Province were going to sing and drink tea. Just like 1952, he hinted and talked vaguely but with suggestive variation of voice, of a new cultural movement: let he who had ears hear. He explained how their hard-won property and accumulation of sweat was threatened by another tribe.
Ruoro stood up to answer back: where was Gatundu? Why would anybody want Ilmorog people to go and drink tea? How come that they from out there were threatened by other tribes? Had they piled enough property as to excite envy from other tribes? Here, people were threatened by lack of water; lack of roads; lack of hospitals. But what really was expected of them?
Fat Stomach laughed rather uneasily, but when he talked he oozed a sense of infinite patience. They would get free transport: but each man and each woman was expected to take with him twelve shillings and fifty cents.
At this, the women, led by Nyakinyua, started making a noise: did he mean that they had to pay all that in order to go and sing and drink tea?
‘Let him who has ears listen,’ Fat Stomach repeated, a mixture of warning and menace in his voice. And now Nyakinyua seemed possessed: ‘You too, if you have ears, listen: you are worse than a tax gatherer. Twelve shillings and fifty cents! From what hole are we to dig up the money? Why should we pay to sing? Go back and tell them this: here we need water, not songs. We need food. We need our sons back to help this land grow.’
Fat Stomach was sweating a little and now his voice carried anxiety. At the same time he did not want to show fear in front of these people. He tried to say the tribe’s wealth was being threatened by the lake people and others deceived by the Indian communist who was recently removed from this earth.
‘You mean some of you have already made enough wealth while we scratch the earth?’
‘Is that the wealth they want to steal from you?’
‘Good for them if they are as poor as we are.’
‘Yes, yes. What can they steal from us?’
‘One year’s harvest.’
‘Our drought and dust.’
‘If somebody can steal away this dust and this drought – that would be a blessing.’
‘Here we live with our neighbours, the herdsmen. What quarrels have you amongst yourselves out there?’
The women had taken over the whole show, and they seemed to be enjoying it. Some started making threatening loud cries. There was a slight commotion.
‘Let us pull out their penises and see if they are really men,’ one woman shouted.
Fat Stomach and his companion, Insect, backed a little, trying to keep dignity, but at the woman’s words, they started running across the school compound toward their Land Rover, the menacing voices of women behind them.
Munira briefly thought about these two incidents as later the same month he cycled to Ruwa-ini to fight for more teachers. What madness had seized the women? What was that sudden rumble of violence behind the sunny rural passivity? Maybe it was the sun and the dust he thought, dismissing the whole matter from his mind. Fat Stomach and Insect were charlatans, probably thieves who wanted to make money on the
side.
He started reviewing in advance his coming confrontation with Mzigo. He was tired of his monthly cycling to Ruwa-ini. He was tired of Ruwa-ini Town with its red tiled colonial houses; its golf course; its bougainvillaeas and its jacaranda trees lining the pavements.
Ruwa-ini, the capital of Chiri District was famous only because it was originally the centre of hides and skins trade and also of trade in wattle barks.
Baumann and Coy, Forrestals, and also Primchand Raichand and Coy, in their nineteen-twenties fearsome rivalry for the control of wattle bark trade and of tanning extract, had set rival offices and factories here. It was these foreign and local giants of capital, together with the Mombasa-Kisumu-Kampala charcoal and wood-eating railway engines which had depleted forests near and far. Ruwa-ini had had an air of prosperity and growth before the wattle extract was replaced by synthetic tanning materials and the charcoal-eating engines by those powered by diesel oil.
The tanning extract used to be railed to Limuru, in Kiambu District where a Czech-Canadian International shoe-making factory had been established just before the Second World War. Ruwa-ini was now no more than an administrative centre although its daily market and its golf course were widely known.
Mzigo’s office was still the same specklessly tidy affair. He sat in the same place, in the same position, as he had always done.
‘Aa, Mr Munira, good to see you again and again. How is the school? But do sit down. I’m sorry I have not been to your school yet but I’ll be coming shortly. Any good roads yet? I don’t need to tell you about these damned cars. Anything to wet my throat? By the way, congratulations. You were before only an Acting Headmaster. It’s now confirmed. You are the new Headmaster of Ilmorog Full Primary School. Congratulations again.’
‘I am touched by the honour,’ Munira said, actually thrilled inside.
‘It’s nothing,’ said Mzigo. ‘Your own dedication!’
‘But I could do with a few more teachers. At least one . . .’
‘Teachers? But Mr Munira, I told you almost two years ago that you could recruit any help you needed.’