‘He assembled the school. We thought it would be another session during which he would lecture us on scouting, England, Cambridge and the history of the world from the Celtic times to the birth of the new nations in Africa and Asia. But what he said made us want to laugh: my ribs pained me as I tried to hold in my laughter. He talked of the place of pets in human life: that in all civilized countries learning to care for pets and animals enriched one’s appreciation of human life and God’s love. Then suddenly the whole school was one thunderous laughter. Fraudsham swore and fumed and said that Africans had no feelings. But we went on laughing through his fury because how could we understand it, how could we believe our ears? I mean who ever heard of a dog being given human burial?
‘He asked the school captain to select four boys from each class who would get jembes to dig a pit and make a coffin for Lizzy. He also wanted pall-bearers. The captain asked for volunteers. There was another outburst, with our heads bent down in fear of being selected. No volunteers and the captain named a few. They refused to go. We all refused to go. Fraudsham woke up to the present rebellion.
‘He expelled the boys selected.
‘We all went on strike.
‘The whole school shivered with unbelief. There had been one strike in the history of the school and Fraudsham had won. Now he stormed and shouted and threatened. He claimed that we had refused to obey orders. In any civilized society there were those who were to formulate orders and others to obey: there had to be leaders and the led: if you refused to obey, to be led, then how could you hope to lead and demand obedience? Look at heaven: there was God on a throne and the angels in their varying subordinate roles: yet all was harmony. But he had opened our eyes.
‘Yesterday he had been white and big and strong; but it was no longer the same. Yesterday he had been white and strong and invincible, a rock that could not be moved, but now, it was no longer the same. And all the things, all the cracks, all the contradictions that we had often whispered about but which had never been part of our conscious minds came to the fore. He tried to compromise: only one would be expelled. We still refused to go back to our classes. OK, only a simple punishment: four canes each and cutting grass for a day. We saw his unease. We made new demands.
‘We wanted to be taught African literature, African history, for we wanted to know ourselves better. Why should ourselves be reflected in white snows, spring flowers fluttering by on icy lakes? Then somebody shouted: We wanted an African headmaster and African teachers. We denounced the prefect system, the knightly order of masters and menials. That did it. And imagine. The newspapers took up this aspect of the crisis and denounced us. Since when did students, a mob, tell their teachers what they ought to teach? If the students were so clever and already knew what they ought to be taught and who was fit to teach them, why had they bothered to enrol in the school? And a school with such a record! A headmaster whom even the very best school in England, like Eton, would have been proud to have in their midst? They counted the money spent on a student and compared it with the income of the poor peasants.
‘But we were adamant, despite the divisive hate campaign. Chui, Chui, somebody cried. Chui, the name had been alive, a legend. We wanted him to come and lead the school. Down with Fraudsham: down with the prefect system: down with whites: Uuuuuuup with Chui, shake them . . . Black Power!
‘Well . . . the people in the ministry came. One was an old boy of the school. They appealed to us to go back to our classes. Our demands and our grievances would be looked into: the four boys would accept a simple punishment of cutting grass for a day and having their heads shaven clean.
‘We went back to our classes. But something had happened: the rules of the game had been questioned and everything had been altered. We knew this, Fraudsham knew this, and almost a month later he resigned and soon afterward followed Lizzy. We were proud and thrilled and saw ourselves anew. We vowed that should we get an African headmaster we would give him the utmost obedience; we would work even harder, so as not to shame him and ourselves. No more prefects. We would elect our own leaders. We called ourselves African Populists and we wanted a populist headmaster.
‘It was Chui – it was Chui. We waited for him with bated breath. None of us had ever seen him or knew anything about him outside the school’s legend and folklore. But we sang with hope: a new school, a new beginning, a new people. But among the white teachers, there was only gloom and uncertainty: one or two did in fact resign. Apprehension and jubilation; despair and hope; sullen lips and radiant smiles: these battled in the air as we waited for Chui’s arrival.
‘Well, he did come, finally: we lined up the route from the gate to the office. He waved at us once and we replied with a heart-rending cry: Chuuuuuui!
‘The first assembly . . . we went to the hall almost one hour before the time. We sang and clapped and made a few speeches. The white teachers stood outside and talked nervously.
‘Chui arrived. Deathly, sepulchral silence. He climbed the steps . . . up . . . up . . . to the foyer. Our eyes were glued to the scene before us. He had khaki shorts and shirt and a sun helmet: a black replica of Fraudsham. We waited for words that would somehow still the doubt and the fear. He spoke and announced a set of rules. He thanked the teachers for the high standards and world-wide reputation of the school. It was his desire, nay his fervent prayer, that all the teachers should stay, knowing that he had not come to wreck but to build on what was already there: there would be no hasty programme of Africanization, reckless speed invariably being the undoing of so many a fine school. There had been a recent breakdown in discipline and he vowed that with the help of all he would resolve it. Far from destroying the prefect system, he would inject it with new blood. Obedience was the royal road to order and stability, the only basis of sound education. A school was like a body: there had to be the head, arms, feet, all performing their ordained functions without complaints for the benefit of the whole body. He read a passage from William Shakespeare.
The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre
Observe degree, priority, and place,
Insisture, course, proportion, season, form,
Office, and custom, in all line of order:
And therefore is the glorious planet Sol
In noble eminence enthron’d and spher’d
Amidst the other; whose med’cinable eye
Corrects the ill aspects of planets evil,
And posts like the commandment of a king,
Sans check to good and bad: but when the planets
In evil mixture to disorder wander,
What plagues and what portents, what mutiny,
What raging of the sea, shaking of earth,
Commotion in the winds! Frights, changes, horrors,
Divert and crack, rend and deracinate
The unity and married calm of states
Quite from their fixture! O, when degree is shak’d,
Which is the ladder to all high designs,
The enterprise is sick! How could communities,
Degrees in schools and brotherhoods in cities,
Peaceful commérce from dividable shores,
The primogenity and due of birth,
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels,
But by degree, stand in authentic place?
Take but degree away, untune that string,
And, hark, what discord follows!
‘Those are words of a great writer – greater even than Maillu and Hadley Chase. The school’s traditions, which had stood the test of time, had to be maintained. He did not therefore want to hear any more nonsense about African teachers, African history, African literature, African this and that: whoever heard of African, Chinese, or Greek mathematics and science? What mattered were good teachers and sound content: history was history: literature was literature, and had nothing to do with the colour of one’s skin. The school had to strive for what a famous educator had described as the best that had been thought and written
in the world. Racism had been the ruin of many a school, many a state, many a nation: Siriana believed in peace and the brotherhood of man. He would never have a school run by rebels and gangsters and the European Foreigners should have nothing to fear.
‘We listened in silence, unbelief struggling with belief: was this the Chui who had once led a strike in this same same school?
‘We debated his words for almost a term. The new prefects were even more pampered than those of yesterday. The new headmaster gave orders through a very tight and rigid chain of command from the school captain, the senior prefects, the junior prefects, down to the rest of us. Privileges were also graded according to the seniority of the classes, Form VI for instance being allowed to wear trousers and jackets and ties while the Form I was not allowed to wear shoes except on the day of worship. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Napoleon, Livingstone, Western conquerors, Western inventors and discoverers were drummed into our heads with even greater fury. Where, we asked, was the African dream?
‘He complained about the falling standards of spoken and written English. At one Assembly he turned to the European teachers and said:
‘“I don’t of course want to look a gift horse in the mouth. I don’t want to tell you how you should approach your jobs. I don’t want to be like the enthusiastic American salesman who went to sell refrigerators to the Eskimo. But I am the headmaster, and it is the piper who calls the tune.
‘“Teach them good idiomatic English.”
‘We went on strike and again refused the divide-and-rule control tactics. Down with Chui: up with African populism: down with expatriates and foreign advisers: up with black power.
‘Well, the rest is common knowledge. Chui called in the riot squad which came to our school, and would you believe it, led by a European officer. We were all dispersed, with a few broken bones and skulls. The school was closed and when it reopened I was among the ten or so not allowed to sign for re-admission.’
There was a slightly pathetic note in Karega’s narration, something between despair and dumb incomprehension. A certain gloom encircled the room and they each tried to struggle against it. Munira was the first to speak, echoing the words of the lawyer.
‘I do not understand – so different from our time – I mean the demands. Was it because of independence? I mean what did you really want?’
‘I don’t really know . . . when the lawyer spoke, I seemed to get it . . . an inkling . . . but it eludes the mind . . . an idea . . . I mean, we were men . . . a communal struggle . . . after all, we were the school, weren’t we? We imagined new horizons . . . new beginnings . . . a school run on the basis of our sweat . . . our collective brains, our ambitions, our fears, our hopes . . . the right to define ourselves . . . a new image of self . . . all this and more . . . but it was not clear . . . only that the phrase African populism seemed to sum it all!’
5 ~ There was a time when Nderi wa Riera was truly a man of the people. He used to play darts and draughts in small and big places, punctuating his playing with witty lighthearted comments and threats to unnerve his opponents: you will know me today . . . You think I was in Manyani for nothing! It used to be said that he had chosen his offices in the Market Street to be near Camay which was then a renowned centre for darts and draughts and roasted goat meat and beer. Camay had in fact thrown up first-rate African darts players like Waiguru and Parsalli who, on reaching the thrilling finals staged at the Brilliant Night Club in what used to be an exclusively Asian and European pastime, had become household names in dart-playing circles all over Nairobi. He was in those days also one of the most vocal and outspoken advocates of reform in and outside Parliament. He would champion such populist causes as putting a ceiling on land ownership; nationalization of the major industries and commercial enterprises; abolition of illiteracy and unemployment and the East African Federation as a step to Pan-African Unity.
Then he was flooded with offers of directorships in foreign-owned companies. ‘Mr Riera, you need not do anything: we do not want to take too much of your busy and valuable time. It is only that we believe in white and black partnership for real progress.’ The money he had collected from his constituents for a water project was not enough for piped water. But it was adequate as a security for further loans until he bought shares in companies and invested in land, in housing and in small business. He suddenly dropped out of circulation in small places. Now he could only be found in special clubs for members only, or in newspapers – photographed while attending this or that cocktail party. As if to reinforce his new social standing, he took a huge farm in the Rift Valley. But his most lucrative connection was with the tourist industry. He owned a number of plots and premises in Mombasa, Malindi and Watamu and had been given shares in several tourist resorts all along the coast. Soon he began talking of ‘the need for people to grow up and face reality. Africa needed capital and investment for real growth – not socialist slogans.’ But he remained a strong advocate of African culture, African personality, Black authenticity: ‘If you must wear wigs, why not natural African or Black wigs?’ He insisted on most of the companies of which he was chairman or director dropping their European names and taking names like Uhuru, Wananchi, Taifa, Harambee, Afro, Pan-African, which would give the enterprises a touch of the soil.
Nderi wa Riera was the envy of most of his parliamentary peers. His area was so remote from the city that he was hardly ever troubled by endless complaints from his constituents. A happy contented lot your people are, they would tell him, and he would receive the compliment with a beaming smile. An MP’s political freedom! And it was true that the chairs and the carpets in his office would have gathered dust had their cleanliness depended on visits from Ilmorog. The arrival of the delegation from his area became instant news among his parliamentary friends. They eagerly waited for him in his night haunts to find out the outcome of this unexpected confrontation.
As it was they all had to wait for Tuesday: Riera had gone to Mombasa for a business inspection and on-the-spot investigation of two tourist resorts which had been mentioned in a foreign newspaper as ‘special places where even an ageing European could buy an authentic African virgin girl of fourteen to fifteen for the price of a ticket to a cheap cinema show’. This had raised one or two awkward questions in the newspapers.
He came back on Monday night and after a quick visit to his home and family in Lavington Green went to places to find out the latest gossip. He went to Tumbo’s in Adam’s Arcade, saw nobody he knew, and after swallowing a cold Tusker drove further down Ngong Road to the Gaylord Inn.
It was there, at the Farewell Bar, that he was quickly surrounded by friends who all wanted to know about the delegation. For a second he thought they were asking him about the affair of the authentic virgins. He laughed it off: there was nothing to it . . . Europeans cannot tell the ages of Africans, and to them any woman with breasts that have not fallen – even if they are cotton-wool – is a virgin. It was only when they had mentioned Ilmorog that he looked at them rather sharply as if somebody was playing him an unpleasant practical joke. It was his friend Kimeria who confirmed the truth of it and mentioned something about a drought. Riera shrugged off the importance of the delegation and continued drinking. But inwardly he was slightly apprehensive: could they really have come all that way because of a drought about which there had not been even a column-inch in the newspapers? How anyway could they have managed to organize themselves? It was more likely, he thought, that somebody wanted to unseat him.
He was in the office by eight o’clock. His secretary showed him the appointments for the day. He was visibly impatient for two o’clock to come: he was ready and expectant for a fight: he was old and experienced at political manoeuvring: he would show those who were plotting against him that he was the same Nderi son of Riera and he never ate nyeni cia terere sukuma wiki at anybody’s mother’s house!
The delegation was a little late because they had all overslept and it took them time to cook and eat porridge. How lucky they
all had been to find the lawyer! It was a sign of good luck, Karega thought, as they approached the Jeevanjee Gardens. The talk with the lawyer had gone on to the small hours of the night. It had opened so many avenues of thought for Karega that he wished Ilmorog was next to Nairobi so that they could continue the discussion daily. The lawyer had been careful not to discourage them in their quest for an audience with their MP. ‘We must stretch the resources and processes of democracy to their utmost limits,’ he had said. ‘But should anything adverse happen, you are always welcome to the floor space. I would anyway like to know the outcome of your call.’
As they did yesterday, the main delegation sat in the Gardens. But this time, Wanja, Abdulla and Njuguna accompanied Karega and Munira to Iqbal Iqlood Buildings. Their creased, greasy, dirty clothes made them the strangest group of scarecrows ever to face an MP in offices that previously had only known men and women in impeccable business suits.
But Nderi wa Riera, in a three-piece grey suit, did not show any surprise as he stood to welcome them and even personally pushed chairs toward them. This was a good beginning, Karega thought, easing into the chair with a sigh of inward relief. And Riera was thinking – people can be malicious – only five, and his friends had talked of a multitude – but at the same time he was disappointed, for a politician lives by crowds.
‘Is it well with you?’ he asked them politely, and shook hands with each of them.
‘It is well,’ they chorused.
The MP sat back on his chair, his eyes all the time trying to assess and place them.
‘Have you come a long way?’ he asked, not letting it out that he knew about them.
‘Ilmorog,’ said Munira. ‘We were here yesterday. Didn’t your secretary tell you?’
‘Of course she did,’ and he laughed. ‘It is part of our language, remember. You find somebody digging or felling a tree, and you ask them: what are you doing?’