Alone in the shop, Abdulla would keep alive memories of hope and bitterness. He wondered what mood he could now trust, seeing that one so quickly and frequently, without any warning, changed into the other. But he was glad that Joseph had started school: how, he asked himself over and over again in his repentant moods, how could he have kept Joseph from school? He eagerly waited their fatigued return in the evening from school and from the fields, for only then, lost in their talk and their drinking, could he be sure that the calmness in him would not suddenly be rent asunder by his remembrance of things past. He looked at Wanja’s utter transformation, a kindred spirit, and he felt that maybe with the rains and the crop and the harvest to be, something new was happening.
The herdsmen also returned. They talked of the cattle they had lost to the sun. They talked about the journeys they had made across the plains. Now they hoped that the drought would never return. Not after so much sacrifice. Things would soon follow their normal rhythm.
But the previous flow and pattern of the seasons was obviously broken by the late rains. This irregular season, for instance, ran from December to March which under the old rhythm should have been the beginning of the major Njahi season. Their first harvest since the journey to the city was not big but it would keep bones and skins together.
They adjusted to the new pattern and once again after the harvest they cultivated the fields, readying the earth for new rains and new planting whenever this would come to be.
And so once again the peasants of Ilmorog waited for rains, their hearts alternating between fear and hope. Nothing seemed to have changed in Ilmorog. The journey to the city seemed a thing of the past.
Then suddenly two lorries came almost at the same time and brought men who started erecting a church building and a police post. What was all this about, they wondered? Was this the promised-for development? The post would be occupied by a chief, they were told.
The builders who lived in tents would occasionally come to Abdulla’s place. Their very voices and their presence marked them as different, as outsiders, and this made the people of Ilmorog feel a solidarity and an intimacy among themselves that was a way of rejecting the strangers. It was as if the men had been sent by the forces that had earlier humiliated them in the city. Even Wanja, Abdulla, Munira and Karega took the side of Ilmorog against the new intruders.
But suddenly, soon, the church and the post were forgotten under a new flurry of activity.
June had brought rains.
It fell day and night for two weeks so that nobody could really leave their huts.
The builders packed their tents and tools and drove away.
Children sat at the doors and went on with singing:
Mbura Ura Rain, rain
Nguthinjire I slaughter for you
Gategwa A young bull
Na Kangi And another
Kari Mbugi With bells, around the neck
Kara, Kara Ding-Ding-Ding-Dong.
After two weeks it changed the rhythm: it would pour only at night to be followed by a day or two of sunshine. Rain, sunshine. That was always the classical pattern heralding a big crop and a big harvest. And this balance remained so until the whole land was one luscious green growth with crowds of flowers of many colours.
So that even when toward the end of the season the builders returned and resumed their twin structures of the post and the church, the fears of Ilmorog were drowned by two big expectations.
The second harvest since their return from the city was going to be one of the biggest in the history of Ilmorog. It was a total reversal of previous years when Njahi season that started in March produced the most. This now was more or less the Mwere season at the end of the year and it had all the signs of a major event. Munira and Karega offered the school’s help in the harvesting.
There was also going to be a circumcision ceremony after the harvest. Some of the herd-boys were going to be initiated into men. As a boy Munira used to hide from home to listen to the singing which accompanied the ceremony. And even as a young teacher, after Siriana, he once or twice stole to the ceremonies. That was before the dances were banned during the Emergency. It was during one of the ceremonies that he had met Julia. She was then Wanjiru. Her voice, her dancing, her total involvement had attracted him and he had decided that here at last was what would bring fulfilment to his life. But she had become Julia and the temporary dream of an escape into sensuality had vanished on the marriage bed.
Maybe it was the memory of the dream: but Munira was thinking of possessing Wanja again during the harvest or after it and he felt a thrill course through his blood at the prospect.
3 ~ There was something about harvesting, whether it was maize or beans or peas, which always released a youthful spirit in everyone. Children ran about the fields to the voices of women raised to various pitches of despairing admonition about the trails of waste. Sometimes the children surprised a hare or an antelope in a lair among the ripened crops: they would quickly abandon whatever they were carrying and run after the animal the whole length of Ilmorog, shouting: Kaau . . . Kaaau . . . catch . . . catch it . . . catch meat. Even old men looked like little children, in their eyes turned to the fields: only they tried to hide their trembling excitement as they carried token sheaves of beans to the threshing-ground. But as they sat and sipped beer or merely talked about this and that they were still thrilled by the sight of children competing in threshing the mass of pea- and beanstalks with thin poles: a purring rustling sound issued forth as the bare grains of beans or peas jumped from the beaten dry sheaves and coursed through the dry stalks to the ground. Women winnowing beans in the wind was itself a sight to see: sometimes the breeze would stop and women would curse and wait holding their wicker trays ready to catch the breeze when it returned. It was as if the wind was teasing the women and was only being playful with their hopes and desires and expectation of clearing off the chaff before darkness fell and put an end to the working day. Later it was the turn of the cows: they were left loose to roam through the harvested fields of maize: they would run about, tails held up to the sky, kicking up dust with their hind legs, their tongues reaching out for the standing feed of maize. Sometimes the male would run after a young female, giving it no rest or time to eat, expecting another kind of harvest.
Munira and Abdulla were one evening resting from the last stages of the busy harvest, talking about the coming ceremony of circumcision. Karega was teaching Joseph some algebraic sums. Munira was telling Abdulla how he had always felt a little incomplete because he had been circumcised in hospital under a pain killer, so that he never really felt that he truly belonged to his age-group: Gicina Bangi. Wanja suddenly sprang among them, micege and grass and maramata sticking to her skirt. Abdulla gave her a beer. Munira playfully admonished her: where has our proprietor been? Karega continued with his teaching. Wanja sat quietly on a low stool, her legs parted a little, her hands pressing down her skirt between her thighs. She looked at them all as if she was in deep meditation. Maiden from the fields, Munira thought, and now he remembered the bruises on their skins, sustained when gathering beanstalks into sheaves. They were all caught up in that atmosphere of indolence and relaxation from a fatiguing session of breaking maize in the sun which only needed a beer and a fire to send them to sleep. ‘Like she had come from another world,’ Munira continued with his line of thought. Was there anything she would do which could possibly make her less attractive? There was a fever-excitement in her eyes which would not go even when she laughed off the male concern in Munira’s eyes. Then she started talking almost to herself: ‘I’ve got it now, now I’ve got it. And you won’t believe it when I tell you of it. But I shall tell you, for you see – must we not redeem this village, bribe the troubling ghosts of those that went before us? Sometimes it pains, the memory. Must we not lure new blood to a forgotten village? Theng’eta is the plant that only the old will talk about. Why? It is simple. It is only they who will have heard of it or know about it. It grows wild, in
the plains, the herdsmen know it and where it grows, but they will not tell you. Nyakinyua says that they used to brew it before Europeans came. And they would drink it only when work was finished, and especially after the ceremony of circumcision or marriage or itwika, and after a harvest. It was when they were drinking Theng’eta that poets and singers composed their words for a season of Gichandi, and the seer voiced his prophecy. It was outlawed by the colonialists. He said: These people are lazy. They drink Theng’eta the whole day. That is why they will not work on the railway line. That’s why they will not work on our tea and coffee and sisal farms. That’s why they will not be slaves. That, says Nyakinyua, was after the battle of Ilmorog, and they said that these warriors must have been drunk: for how dared they put out their tongues and flex their muscles at the colonialists when they already knew what had happened to others who had resisted? So only the less potent stuff, Muratina, was now allowed. Even this was only licensed to the headmen and chiefs who had shown that they could secure more people to work on European farms – for according to her, people kept on running away. For how could a whole people leave their land to go and work for strangers? So that’s why the art of making Theng’eta was lost, except to a few. But it is a Gichandi player’s spirit: it is also used in fertility rites.’
Karega, who had stopped the teaching to listen to her monologue, asked:
‘This battle of Ilmorog. What did she say about it?’
‘Aah! she is always evasive. She will tell you a story without your asking and when you become curious she suddenly cuts it off. You had better ask her yourself.’
‘And Theng’eta,’ asked Abdulla. ‘Did she tell you how to make it?’
‘She said she would show us how to make it. Theng’eta . . . just a little spirit to bless the work of our hands.’
‘When?’ Munira asked.
‘Soon. It must be ready on the day of circumcision. When the elders are having their Njohi we too can join them with our Theng’eta.’
‘Why not? To celebrate! To say farewell to a season of drought,’ said Karega with boyish enthusiasm. ‘To celebrate a big harvest.’
‘Farewell to the drought in our lives,’ added Abdulla.
‘And for more sperms of God to fertilize the earth,’ Munira said.
‘A Village Festival,’ Abdulla agreed.
‘Time too, before the police post and the church are occupied,’ added Karega.
They started work on the idea with a playful religious fervour. Nyakinyua’s hut was the centre of action. The old woman took out some millet seeds, soaked them in water, and put them in a sisal bag. Every day at about five they all would pass by the woman’s hut to see if the seeds had started to germinate. On the third day they found Nyakinyua standing at the door, beckoning them to hurry up. She had sighted little shoots, she told them, with the eagerness of a child. It was true: as if peeping through numerous holes in the bag were yellowish greenish naked things. Lord watch over us. Wanja poured out the seedlings onto a tray and they all joined hands in spreading them out to dry. Munira’s fingers were trembling at the nearness of Wanja. Lord, breathe strength into our hands. Another three days of anxious waiting. The old woman supervised the grinding but it was Wanja on her knees, a cloth tied just above her breasts so that her shoulders were bare, who did it. This in itself was a kind of festival and children and even men came and sat around and watched the grinding with stone and mortar. She would put some seeds on a large, hard, flattened granite stone, inoro, and she used a smaller one, thio, to crunch-crunch the millet. The spectators stood or sat and moved their eyes with the forward–backward motion of her beautiful body, until the seedlings were one stringy velvet mass. She was sweating by the time she finished but her eyes were shining with suppressed elation.
The old woman now set to work. She mixed the crunched millet seedlings with fried maize flour and put the mixture in a clay pot, slowly adding water and stirring. She covered its mouth with the mouth of yet another pot through which she had bored a hole. A bamboo pipe was fixed into the hole and its other end put in a sealed jar over which she placed a small basin of cold water. Then she sealed every possible opening with cowdung and when she had finished she stood back to survey her work of art and science. Karega exclaimed: ‘But this is chemistry. A distillation process.’ She now placed the pot near the fireplace.
After this it was simply a matter of waiting for the brew to get ready. It would take a number of days, she told them. But their attention was now taken by the preparations for the ceremony. People were already beginning to sing and dance in groups in rehearsal for the eve of the ceremony. It would also be the eve of Theng’eta drinking and celebration.
Karega could hardly wait for Saturday. He had always liked the dances connected with the ritual of circumcision and the singing, especially when two or more good singers happened to be present and faced one another in a kind of poetry contest. Then his heart would be lifted to lands far and beautiful where people were held together by a common spirit.
The main venue was at Njogu’s house because Njenga, one of his sons, was going to be circumcised. Muriuki too, and a few others were going to face the knife, as they would say.
The dances on the eve of circumcision attracted people from ridges near and far. Even the builders came to participate so that both the hut and the compound of Njogu’s place were full. Karega took part in some of the more general dances like Mumburo. But he, like Munira, did not know how to do the mock fight. At times it really looked as if somebody would really throw another into the fire, and Karega’s stomach tingled with fear of expectation. But all the same, he was soon drawn into the dance, and after a while, he was sweating.
Wanja was amused to see Karega laughing and jumping about, completely absorbed in the atmosphere. He was normally so serious that at times Wanja wanted to tickle him under the armpit just to see him laugh or relax that earnest face.
Munira liked the dances: but it always made him sad that he could not take part, that he did not really know the words, and his body was so stiff. So he only watched, feeling slightly left out, an outsider at the gate of somebody else’s house.
And the house tonight belonged to Karega and Abdulla and Nyakinyua. Nyakinyua especially. She was good at singing and she threw erotic abuse, compliments, or straight celebratory words with ease. She would make up words referring to anybody, any event, without breaking the tune or the rhythm. Most of the dance songs had a refrain and everybody could join in the chorus. But it was Njuguna and Nyakinyua who provided the dramatic tension in the opera of eros. They all, young and old, women and men, had formed a circle, and they moved round, feet raising a little dust, in rhythm with the songs:
Njuguna is now a visitor, standing at the gate of the homestead. He pays compliments to the house but demands to know who the owner is so that with his permission Njuguna can throw himself to the ground and bathe in the dust like the young bull of a rhinoceros. Nyakinyua answers him and says he is welcome so should feel himself at home:
Njuguna: And show me the bride!
And show me the bride!
Chorus: I’ll pass through Ilmorog—
Njuguna: For whom our goats
Came crying in daylight
Chorus: I’ll pass through Ilmorog—
Greeting Muturi and the young braves.
Wanja is pulled to the centre of the circle. All fingers point at her as Nyakinyua replies that this is the bride, ‘truly ours and not the other one, belonging to a different neighbourhood, for whom I was being abused’.
Njuguna’s tone suddenly changes. He puts contempt on his face:
Njuguna: Is this the bride?
Is this the bride?
Chorus: I’ll pass through Ilmorog—
Njuguna: So dark, so beautiful
But with a broken cunt?
Chorus: I’ll pass through Ilmorog—
Greeting Muturi and the young braves.
Nyakinyua’s voice comes in strong accepting the challenge
and swearing to abuse him and even extend the abuse to his clan:
Nyakinyua: But can you do it?
But can you do it?
Chorus: I’ll pass through Ilmorog—
Nyakinyua: You are the one that roars threats
But keeps a bride wakeful for nothing!
Njuguna is not at a loss for words but comes back to the attack with the prideful authority of a choosy lover:
Njuguna: I saw cunt holding tobacco wrapped in banana leaves,
I saw cunt holding tobacco wrapped in banana leaves
Chorus: I’ll pass through Ilmorog—
Njuguna: I didn’t know that cunt
You took so much snuff.
Chorus: I pass through Ilmorog
Greeting Muturi and the young braves.
It is now a full battle in an erotic war of words and gestures and tones suggestive of many meanings and situations. The crowd of dancers is getting more and more excited, waiting to see who will be the first to give way, to crack under the weight of the other’s abuses and allusions. Nyakinyua is now on top and she presses home her advantage:
Nyakinyua: I was not even giving it to you
I was not even giving it to you
Chorus: I’ll pass through Ilmorog—
Nyakinyua: It’s only that I found you
Fucking a crack
Chorus: I’ll pass through Ilmorog—
Greeting Muturi and young braves.
Njuguna gives way. Why, he asks, should children from the same womb fight one another, with the enemy at the gate? He is now pleading to his mother. He is really her warrior returning weary but victorious from wars:
Mother ululate for me!
Mother ululate for me!
Or do you leave it to strangers and foreigners
To ululate for your son’s homecoming?
All the women now ululate the five Ngemi for a boy newly born or one returning from wars against the enemy of the people.