In the House of the Interpreter (9 page)

On one special Saturday, students were free to be away from the compound all day, provided they returned to school by six. It was called Nairobi Saturday, probably because many students, particularly those who came from distant places and therefore could not go home, went to the capital city instead. In the first year, I did not take advantage of Nairobi Saturday; my experiences during the term breaks had only increased my reluctance to leave the safety of the school compound. But in the second year, Wanjai persuaded me to accompany him and Leonard Mbũgua to Limuru.

Wanjai assured me that he and his friends had often walked the ten or fifteen miles and back on previous Nairobi Saturdays without any adverse effects. Besides, his father,
Reverend Jeremiah Gitau, had a car and would drive us back. Not that he, or I for that matter, had been in touch with anybody at home: it was always a matter of gamble, hope, and chance.

The first part of the trip went smoothly. We decided to visit my mother’s place first and end up at his father’s for the transport back. It turned out that my mother was in the fields near Limuru town, on a strip of land that had long been hers to cultivate, even before villagization. I had known the big Mugumo tree in its center since childhood. It symbolized a continuity in my life, and I felt like I was bringing the others to my
real
home. She fed us her famous potatoes roasted on an open fire.

Feeling good about ourselves, still sure that we had plenty of time, we decided, at Wanjai’s insistence, to walk to Loreto Girls School just to see them in their flaming red uniforms. Wanjai and his friend wanted to confirm that the girls had hot showers, as the rumors claimed, instead of the cold ones we had at Alliance. After Loreto we would pass by Wanjai’s home and then ride back to school, in style, in his father’s car. So simple.

At Loreto we let the nun on duty at the office know that we had not come to visit anybody in particular, we just wanted to see the school. Uniformed Alliance boys coming just to visit? Not only did we get an escort to show us around, we were treated like stars, with the girls ogling us, some even whistling, strange in my ears, because I thought only boys did that. Unlike over a year ago, when I took my intermediate school exams at that location and all the girls seemed equally beautiful, this time I was able to tell
some differences in their personalities, despite their red uniforms. Wanting to prolong the moment of adulation, we even accepted late afternoon tea with them, dismissing any suggestion that we might be late getting back by saying that we had a ride. When we finally left for Limuru, Wanjai stilled our worries: his father was certain to come to the rescue.

Well, he did not. Though he never raised his voice in anger, he was not amused and asked Wanjai why he brought his guests home so late in the day. In his calm preacher voice, he said that as we had not asked his permission to waste time, we must have had a plan to get back to Alliance, and we had better follow through with it. We were late back. The next Saturday we were confined to the school to cut grass as punishment. It was a lesson on how not to plan on the expectations of what others will do for you.

In time, and with each telling, the tale of our visit to Loreto became more dramatic, the inconveniences, fatigue, and dangers of walking alone in the dark morphing into a thrilling adventure. Wanjai must also have sung praises of my mother’s art of roasting potatoes in the open because later many of his friends hinted that they would not mind going to Limuru with me on the next Nairobi Saturday. And was it really true that Loreto Girls School was not too far from where I lived? But since I could not count on somebody being at the new home, I always deflected the hints. I did not want to walk a guest the ten or fifteen miles and back on hungry stomachs. Besides, I could not conjure up another Loreto visit, which was obviously the main attraction.

In the second term, on another Nairobi Saturday, I broke my self-imposed restraint and invited Johana Mwalwala. Johana, a Mtaita, and I were classmates, he in B and I in A, but both residents in Dorm Two, Livingstone House. He was always polite and considerate, and this drew me to him. I confessed to him that I had no way of alerting home about the visit, that we were chancing it, and he understood. I think he just wanted to get away from the compound on a Nairobi Saturday.

We set out after breakfast, and by the early afternoon we could see Kamĩrĩthũ. I was confident that if my mother was at home, she would find a way of feeding us her roasted potatoes at least. We would eat quickly, drink some porridge or tea, and walk back to school. This time there was no expectations of another person’s car: we were going to rely on our feet. And there was no question of visiting Loreto or indulging in any other distraction. If we stayed within these parameters, everything would work out as hoped, and the nearer we got to Kamĩrĩthũ, the more certain I was of a good outcome. But our plans never came to be.

Just before we reached the turn to my new home, we were caught up in a military dragnet. Armed black and white soldiers in camouflage, red berets, and green military vehicles and Land Rovers surrounded a huge crowd squatting in the sun in the plain below the village. I had hoped the Alliance uniform would make us invisible, but it didn’t, and we
were forced to join the captives. Mwalwala, being a Mtaita, was allowed to leave, but I had a long wait, weighed down by the anxiety I always carried: that my connection with a guerrilla fighter might keep me from returning to Alliance, ever. Every time I seemed to conquer that fear, other events would crop up to mock me with, Not so fast.

Eventually my turn came. I had learned my lessons from the past and answered all the questions about my brother and whether I knew his contacts, calmly pleading sincere ignorance to most of them, shielding myself behind being away at Alliance, a boarding school. Despite all my bravado about not letting fear rule me, I could not believe that this was happening to me on the only Saturday I had brought a visitor home by myself. Finally, they released me.

Wisely, Mwalwala had already headed back to school. I hurried home to tell my family what had happened, but they already knew. My mother said that it was really not necessary to come home before the end of the term. I grabbed whatever food there was and left. Shaken and disappointed, I walked back to school in the dark, alone. I was late, very late. I had committed the same offense twice. On Monday I was called to the principal’s office.

I was sure that I was going to be caned, even expelled from the school. Since my admission, I had always wondered how long it would be before the fact of my brother being
in the mountains caught up with me. Somehow, after that Churchill speech, I could not get rid of the image of Carey Francis as a defender of the British Empire. After all, he was an OBE. The image of the empire loyalist and the legend of the disciplinarian were in my mind as I entered the office.

He was in his eternal khaki wear. I stood before him, and his eyes pierced me the whole time. Why had I broken the school rule so badly that I had returned to school at midnight? This was the second time. Did I know how serious this breach of school rules was? Nairobi Saturday did not mean breaking rules. He appeared calm, but it seemed to me that he might, at any time, start stepping, rolling his tongue in his cheek, and fuming. I eyed the door and the windows.

I faced a dilemma. The whole of last Saturday lay before me. I could tell him about the raid, but did I have to talk about the questions and my responses? If I told him that my brother was out in the mountains fighting against Churchill’s empire, I could be expelled from the sanctuary and have to return to the village and the community prison I had helped to build during my very first break as an Alliance student, the place that always reminded me of loss. Still, I decided to tell him everything.

There! At long last, my secret was out. I was relieved. It was my turn to dare him, silently, looking straight into his eyes, resigned to my fate. You are an officer of the British Empire. My brother is sworn to end the empire. Send me back to my mother, if you so wish, but I will never deny him. Not for you. Not for Alliance. My brother is a good
man. All he ever asked for was the right to be free. Had your Churchill not fought Hitler so that his people would not be ruled by the Germans? You see, sir, my brother wants the same thing for his people. All he ever wanted was—Carey Francis cut off my flow of thoughts.

Had I been in my Alliance uniform last Saturday? he asked. It was the last thing I expected from his mouth. Alliance uniform? Of course, yes, with the badge and the logo, AHS, I said. He did not ask any more questions. You can go, but in future, be more careful. Some of those officers are scoundrels! he added, gritting his teeth.

I was completely taken aback, confused even, by his reaction. I was relieved and grateful that he did not dole out any punishment, but to call the British officers scoundrels? In the world of Carey Francis, politicians were either statesmen or scoundrels. Bureaucrats were either statesmen or scoundrels. Those who had detained me, even though white officers, were scoundrels for discounting the evidence of the Alliance uniform.

Only later did it hit me: he had not reacted to the fact that my brother was in the mountains. Or that my sister-in-law was in a maximum security prison. He did not even ask if I had taken the oath, which I had not. It was as if he knew my story all along. Or perhaps my story was not so unique, just one among many he had heard.

Indeed, I was to learn later that my case was not unique, that among my classmates were others who carried similar woes. In the early days of the state of emergency, the school, even during vacations, had become a sanctuary for victims
of both sides of the conflict: those who feared retaliation by Mau Mau because their fathers were loyalist home guards, and those who feared retaliation by the colonial forces because their relatives were guerrillas in the mountains or captives in the concentration camps. The Franciscan reaction to my revelation put more cracks in my perception of a white monolith pitted against a black monolith, already challenged by the reality of many Africans, including some relatives, who fought on the colonial side. In a more personal way, his reaction went quite a long way to undercut the fear that had haunted my stay in the sanctuary, the fear that a discovery of my blood connection with the freedom fighters would somehow curtail my education.

One good attracts another, and I also got the welcome news soon afterward that Kĩambu Native African Location Council had awarded me a full scholarship. My arrears would be covered, and I would not have to pay tuition for the rest of my years at Alliance. My next holidays in August were the first that I would enjoy without the fear that money and politics would block my educational path. And then the unexpected happened.

I was about to return to school for the last term of my second year, when we learned that British forces had captured my brother. Since there was no official announcement, the news reached us through the grapevine from Banana Hills,
where his in-laws lived. There were all sorts of rumors: he had been shot in the leg; no, in the head; no, the bullets had gone through the heart. One thing was constant: they had captured him alive. If true, that was a relief. Still, I feared that they would hang him at Gĩthũngũri the way they had many others before him. My fears were deepened by the fact that I did not know the circumstances of his capture.

Years later I would learn that Good Wallace and his men had fallen into an ambush soon after they themselves had ambushed a small convoy of British soldiers near Longonot. They managed to fight their way through the cordon and then ran in different directions. With more reinforcements, the enemy forces pursued them relentlessly, over hills and valleys, across rivers, day and night, through Gil-gil, southern Nyandarwa. Some of his comrades fell to the enemy fire, but Good Wallace just managed to escape. He would tell a harrowing story of how at one time, completely exhausted, he fell down and crawled under a thick tea bush in the Brooke Bond Estate on the White Highlands side of Limuru, his gun beside him. The enemy soldiers were scattered all over the tea bushes, each following a different row, turning over the thickets with their rifles. At one point, a soldier was literally standing above my brother’s hiding place. Good Wallace thought he had met his fate and opened his mouth to beg for his life,
hapana ua
, don’t kill, but as in a nightmare, no voice came out. It was just as well. Soon the enemy went away, still searching among the bushes.

Good Wallace spent the next couple of days trying to reconnect with his remaining comrades, in vain. Alone,
with the gun as his only companion, he assessed his situation: he had once escaped into the forests under a hail of police bullets; now he had escaped death by the luckiest whim. Should he tempt fate again? The choice was between accepting a heroic death or giving up for the hope of fighting another day.

He chose the latter. Burying his gun under a Mugumo tree, he crossed rivers and walked through forest slopes and coffee plantations all the way to Chief Karũga’s family homestead, near Banana Hills, quite a distance. Good Wallace knew the family in the days when my sister Gathoni was their neighbor in Kĩambaa.

It was very early in the morning when he appeared at the door and identified himself to Grace Nduta, Karũga’s wife, who welcomed him and made a meal for him, the first homemade food he had eaten in years. She was the one who quietly broke the news to her husband. Chief Charles Karũga Koinange ensured that my brother did not fall into vengeful hands. We did not know what tale the chief told, but it was a relief when we learned that Good Wallace had been taken to Manyani concentration camp. He would live, at least.

The nationalist guerrillas were being hit hard. On October 21, 1956, the British forces captured Dedan Kĩmathi, the Mau Mau guerrilla leader, the one they feared most, the stuff of legends. The image of the wounded warrior chained to his hospital bed would haunt me for a long time, clashing as it did with that of the legendary Kĩmathi whom Ngandi told me of in his stories. I wondered what Ngandi, wherever
he now resided, would say about the loss of Kĩmathi. No doubt he would claim that they had merely captured his shadow, that the real Kĩmathi still roamed the Nyandarwa Hills and slopes of Mount Kenya, vowing to fight to the end, proclaiming that it was better to die fighting for freedom than to live on bended knees.