Green City in the Sun (52 page)

     A moment later a car—an official car—pulled up from the opposite direction. When Mona saw a district officer get out, she left her window seat and went downstairs.

     Geoffrey stood up when she came into the living room. "What's going on?" he said.

     "A policeman's just arrived. It must have to do with the initiation."

     But the officer wasn't there for that reason at all. He had brought a telegram, which he now handed to Mona. "It's for Dr. Treverton, but no one down at the mission seemed to know where she was. I was wondering if you would give it to her."

     Mona frowned down at the yellow envelope. When she saw that the telegram had been sent from Uganda, she quickly opened it. It was from Ralph, Geoffrey's brother, and it said: AUNT GRACE. SERIOUS OUTBREAK OF MALARIA. MOTHER IS DEAD. FATHER DYING AND ASKING FOR YOU. COME AT ONCE. BRING GEOFFREY.

     "Oh, my God!" she cried.

     Geoffrey took the telegram, and before he could react, Mona was running down the veranda steps in the direction of the river.

     When she reached the ridge, where she could see the mission compound, the polo field, and Wachera's hut, Mona could not see her aunt anywhere.

T
HE CEREMONIAL SURGERY WAS CALLED
IRUA
, AND IT
consisted of three steps: the removal of the clitoris, the trimming of the labia, and the suturing shut of the vulva.

     Its purpose was to discourage lust in girls, to curb sexual promiscuity, and to make masturbation impossible. With the sensitive part of the genitals cut away and the vaginal opening reduced to the width of a little finger, it was believed that girls would be deterred from experimentation before marriage. Later each girl, upon being purchased by a husband, would undergo an examination to assure him of her virginity, and an incision would then be made to allow for intercourse.

     
Irua
was one of the oldest, most revered rituals of the Kikuyu; it marked a girl's official entry into the tribe and celebrated her passage into womanhood. Those who underwent
irua
were honored and respected among the clan; those who did not were outcast and taboo.

     Wachera had been preparing her instruments and medicines for days.

     It had been many harvests since she had last performed the sacred
irua
—her people's fear of the white man's reprisals had stopped the practice of many important Kikuyu rituals—and so she felt proud and honored to be performing it today. The ancestors were pleased; they had told her so. Just as they had told her of her son's hiding place—in the land where the sun slept.

     However, they hadn't told her when he would come home.

     But Wachera was patient. She had faith that her son would someday return to Kikuyuland and take his place as a leader of his people. On that day, Wachera was certain, David would reclaim his land stolen by the white man and drive him out of Kikuyuland.

     For was not her
thahu
working?

     The terrible curse Wachera had spoken many harvests ago in the bwana's big stone house had finally claimed the life of the bwana's only son. The rest of the
thahu
would work in time, the medicine woman believed, wiping out the seed of the man who had torn down the sacred fig tree. The day would come when the bwana and his family would no longer exist, and it would seem as if they had never been.

     Still, the fruits of revenge were small succor for the pain Wachera carried night and day in her breast, the pain of missing her only son, of yearning for him, of worrying about his safety and happiness. She received some consolation, however, from the knowledge that David was undergoing a special trial of manhood, just as the warriors of old had done. Whatever he had suffered at the hands of Chief Muchina and in the white man's jail, whatever hardships he now endured in the lands to the west, Wachera knew that her son would return a warrior, a true Mathenge.

     She paused in her final preparations to listen for the girls' singing, which would indicate they were coming from the river, ready to be operated upon.

     No one helped the medicine woman in her secret work.
Irua
, because of its sacred nature, required special ritualistically clean and spiritually pure attention. Not just anyone could wield the surgical razor, in the same way that not just anyone could observe the procedure. Only those women who were themselves circumcised and in good standing with the tribe could watch. And men were so taboo as to incur punishment should they try to spy on the ritual.

     Wachera knew that what she was going to do today was denounced by
the white man. It wasn't against his law; no matter how hard the missionaries had tried to stamp out the ancient ritual, they had not succeeded in making it officially illegal. Yet they strove in other ways to turn the Children of Mumbi away from the traditional practices, and in such ways the missionaries were being largely successful, as in the instance of barring any circumcised child from their schools. The missionary schools were the best, and since most parents wanted their children to grow up with the white man's advantages and education, they entered into a sad bargain with the missionaries, giving up the ancestral ways in order to receive the crumbs that fell from their white overlords' table.

     Such had been the feeling in Kikuyuland until the day of David Mathenge's arrest.

     But from that time on, through the persuasive speeches of the girl Wanjiru and others like her, the Children of Mumbi were starting to see what an empty covenant they had entered into with their white oppressors. On the day of the big protest in Nairobi, when David had escaped and the soldiers had fired shots into the defenseless crowd, the Kikuyu had had their eyes opened. One by one they had come to Wachera, asking her what they must do. And she had said, "Return to the ways of the ancestors, who are unhappy."

     Even though many Kikuyu did not agree and refused to take part in today's
irua
, believing the missionaries, who called it monstrous and barbaric, true Children of Mumbi were bringing their sisters and daughters into the forest to be circumcised.

     She listened again for the singing.

     While Wachera worked in the privacy of the initiation hut, girls from all over the district, ranging in age from nine to seventeen, were bathing up to their breasts in the icy waters of the river. While female elders of the tribe stood guard on the bank to be sure that no man or non-Kikuyu spied on them, the initiates shivered and froze in water meant to numb them, for there would be no anesthetics used in the surgery. They sang the ceremonial songs and dropped leaves into the river as a symbol of drowning their childhood spirits. They would stay in the freezing water until they had little feeling below the waist; then they would follow a path to a specially built homestead in the forest.

     Wachera had bathed at the river before dawn and shaved her head. Now she painted her body with sacred paint—white chalk from Mount Kenya and black ocher. She chanted as she painted herself, holy words which made the chalk and ocher strong medicine against evil spirits. When this was done, she checked again her healing leaves, the "banishers" that made spirits of infection flee, and the mixture of milk and soothing herbs that would be sprinkled on the fresh wounds. Sweet-smelling leaves were set aside for the last part of the operation, when they would be bound between each girl's legs before she was carried to the healing hut. Lastly, Wachera inspected her iron razor. It was sharp and clean, as her grandmother the elder Wachera had taught her. Few of
her
girls ever felt pain at the time of cutting or died from blood poisoning.

     Singing in the distance brought Wachera to the door of the newly built initiation hut. She saw aunts and mothers merrily constructing the ceremonial arch of banana plants, sugarcanes, and sacred flowers at the entrance of the temporary homestead. This arch was a medium of communication with the ancestral spirits; no one but the initiates might pass under it. Other women were laying out fresh cowhides on the ground; the girls would sit on these during the operation. And still others were preparing the feast of roast sheep and sugarcane beer which would follow the ordeal.

     
Irua
was one of the most solemn yet joyous celebrations among the Kikuyu. Wachera's heart swelled to see her people united again in the old ways. Surely the God of Brightness was pleased! Surely this returning to the ways of the ancestors was a sign that the white man was soon to leave Kikuyuland! It meant that her son David was soon to come home.

     Wachera Mathenge, for the first time in many years, was suddenly very happy.

     GRACE DIDN'T HAVE to ask Mario where the girls were. She could hear them singing down at the river.

     Before she reached them, her way was barred by men—the fathers and brothers of the initiates, Mario explained—who were passing around calabashes
of sugarcane beer. They were polite to Memsaab Daktari, but they would not let her pass. Already there was a district officer, Assistant Superintendent Shannon, who had left his car on the road and trudged through the bush with two African askaris. And arriving at the same time as Grace were two missionaries from the Methodist church in Nyeri and a very disturbed group of priests from the Catholic mission.

     "Hello, Dr. Treverton," Assistant Superintendent Shannon said as he came up to her. He was a tall, stiff military man who ran a tidy district and who knew when to keep out of "native" affairs. "I'm afraid this is as far as they'll let us go," he said, nodding in the direction of the happily drunk fathers and brothers. "The girls are in the river. But they'll come along this path. It'll be your only chance to see them."

     "Where is the ceremony to take place?"

     "Up there, through those trees. They've been weeks at clearing a homestead."

     "I hadn't expected to see you here. Are you going to try to stop it?"

     "I'm not here to interfere, Doctor. I'm here to keep the peace and see that no nasty business comes out of this." He was referring to the missionaries, who were looking stormy and in a mood to obstruct. "Believe me," the officer said quietly, "I don't condone what the natives are doing, any more than you do. But I haven't the authority to break it up, and I wouldn't want to try if I had it. Those Africans outnumber my small force, and they're quite drunk. They've been stirred up by some political agitators. These people are getting harder and harder to control."

     "I hadn't even heard a
word
about this!"

     "None of us had. They kept this one a real secret. It's all wrapped up in the David Mathenge business."

     "Do you have any idea where he is?"

     "Only rumors. Some say he's in Tanganyika; others, in the Sudan. The governor hasn't the manpower to search all East Africa for him, and now that this other boy has confessed to killing your nephew, well, quite frankly, Doctor, I don't think anyone gives a hang where David Mathenge is."

     
"Mi scusi, signor,"
said a white-haired priest, coming up to the police officer with a distressed look. "You must stop this abomination!"

     "They're not breaking any laws, Father. And I advise you not to interfere. If you try to, I'm afraid I shall have to detain you."

     "But this is outrageous!
We
are not the ones performing the ungodly ritual! For the sake of those poor girls, you must stop them!"

     "Father Vittorio," Shannon said in practiced patience, "You know as well as I that these people will not listen to me. And if I try to stop them, there will be bloodshed. Wait until Sunday, Father, and then lecture them from your pulpit."

     The elderly priest glowered at the policeman, then turned to Grace. "Signora dottoressa," he said, "surely
you
want this stopped?"

     Yes. Grace wanted it stopped. She felt so strongly against
irua
that six years ago she had gone to Geneva, where, under the auspices of the Save the Children Fund, a conference on African children had been held. Grace, along with several other European delegates, had spoken out against the barbarous custom, declaring that it was the duty of all governments under which the custom was practiced to make it a criminal offense. Clitoridectomy was practiced not only in Kenya but throughout all Africa and the Middle East; hundreds of tribes from the Bedouin in Syria down to the Zulu of South Africa forced little girls to suffer a painful and traumatizing ritual that posed complications in later life, especially in childbirth. Grace had told the members of the conference about Gachiku and the Caesarean delivery of Njeri.