One Day I Will Write About This Place (8 page)

Riot police unload behind the main gate. When the gate is opened we surge forward, looking for our parents and running away from riot police batons. Crowds attack the kiosks of biscuits and sodas. Mpreeeh mpreeh, shrill whistles everywhere. High school students are stoning buses. Sirens sing as the road clears for the president, his ministers, and a huge convoy of giant black Benzes.

I duck into the car. Mum’s face is set. “Next year you are staying home,” she says. Tears are streaming down my face as we drive away. The song fades, and in my mind rotting voodoo vegetables gather, and screaming night crickets, and radiation-reddened Ugandan women from Wambui’s stories fall and burst, splat, seep into my nostrils. They join the grimacing faces from
The Mind Possessed.

“Your Excellency,” said the sycophant on the podium, “I impress upon you…”

I scramble from the claws and shadows and stand next to Wambui. They are laughing and breathing hard, Wambui and Ciru. Then we are all laughing.

“One day,” says Wambui, licking her red lips, “I am going to be rich.”

Science is smaller than music, than the patterns of the body; the large confident world of sound and body gathers. If my mind and body are quickening, lagging behind is a rising anxiety of words.

I do not have enough words for all this.

Jimmy and Ciru are already learning to play the piano, letting sound be its own truth. I have no such facility. Words must surround experience, like Mum’s new vacuum cleaner, sucking all this up and making it real.

Whooosh.

There she is, back on the roof of my head, clear as anything. Wambui, all of thirteen or so, barefoot in a torn red dress, legs chalky and dusty, a ringworm on her head, with a Huckleberry grin, eyes darting from side to side, in a Dundori public
baraza,
a day before another Madaraka Day, whispering some snarky comment in Bawdy Gikuyu, or Rude Kiswahili, right in the middle of prayer for the president. A sharp trumpet flares again, the village sub­chief doubling back after a public meeting, and wagging his finger, in a pith helmet and khaki uniform. The hearts of the villagers clench for a moment in fear, and he growls: “Who said that?”

The subchief—­I shall call him Carey Francis Michuki—­is fat and stubby, and pleased to see all eyes staring at the ground; the villagers are suitably obedient, in rows and columns. Yesterday three women who sell illegal liquor spent the day whitewashing the stones that mark his little compound, around the flag. He hurrumps and ghurrumps, an Independence Day cockerel, chest swollen,
Jogoo, mimi ni jogoo.
Impos­ing. He grabs hold of his lapels, his colonial buttons shine, he is the most ironed man here. Tonight the Kenya Breweries rep and the British American Tobacco rep and the Imperial Biscuit reps will get him and the district commissioner drunk, with their entertainment allowance, so the convoys of goods can move unimpeded. Anybody who threatens the convoys of biscuits and tobacco will spend the day kneeling outside the tin hut with a Kenyan flag blowing outside. Impudent. Pumbaf. The sub­chief turns and waddles back to his station, two hung­over administration policemen walking unsteadily behind him, whistles in pockets, as Wambui’s mother shoots a warning to her with a wagging finger, as I decide that one day I will write books.

It is 1983, the year of national exams. I am still reading novels everywhere, and I am always in trouble with Mum. Our school is for future doctors, lawyers, engineers, and scientists is what we are told by all our parents; this is what we believe.

The school is run by the town. Some parents are poor, some are rich, the fee is low. Our headmistress has raised much money together with parent volunteers to build a library, classrooms, a weather center; to maintain the pianos; for seedbeds, a home-­science workshop, a dining hall, and a workshop to study carpentry. We bought a tractor, new lawn mowers. We have a swimming pool fund. We bought two mini­buses for school trips to national parks and other places. Our school is always first or second in the district in national exams. There are the army kids, the kids from Egerton Agricultural College. Nakuru is an agricultural town. There are some farmers’ kids, kids whose parents work for the wheat board or are senior civil servants in the municipal council or the district and provincial administration. There are kids from railways, train drivers’ kids, and foremen’s kids. There are doctors’ kids, lawyers’ kids. Nurses’ kids. Engineers’ kids.

Something has shifted. In the world.

The Swedes made the first announcement that things are no longer the same. One day they come and set up right next to the flag, where no pupil is allowed to play. It is here that we gather every day for parade. The whole school stands on the grass watching. Mrs. Gichiri stands too, watching. There are two giant drums of cow shit standing next to our proud national flag; there are pipes and meters and things connecting to other things. The Swedes fiddle with the cow-shit machine earnestly. We hear some burping sounds, and behold, there is light. This is biogas, the Swedes tell us. A fecal martyr. It looks like shit—­it
is
shit—­but it has given up its gas for you. With this new fuel you can light your bulbs and cook your food. You will become balancedieted; if you are industrious perhaps you can run a small biogas-­powered food mill and engage in income-­generating activities.

This way, they said kindly, eyes as blue as Jesus’s, looking at us through steel glasses, you can avoid malnutrition. This is called development, they said, and we are here to raise your awareness. Biogas rose up the pipes and gurgled happily. We went back to class very excited and making farting noises. Heretofore our teachers had threatened us with straightforward visions of failure. Boys would end up shining shoes; girls would end up pregnant.

Now there was a worse thing to be: a user of biogas.

…

Even though Mum is complaining, Ciru and I are doing well. Sometimes she is first in school. Sometimes I am first in school. She is the youngest in the class, but her confidence gives me confidence. I do well enough in math, even though I pay no attention to it.

To me every new thing is always splintering into many possibilities. These can still spin and spin around and leave me defeated. I stand and abandon my homework, retreat to the toilet and read a novel. Sometimes when I start to spin, I simply let myself be Ciru, and look on the page, and start to write and answers arrive, and after a while I realize I have followed a straight line, and I am done. I lied to one teacher that we are twins. I dream that we will always be together, like twins. I love to read books about twins, identical twins who can read each other’s minds. If she does something that is her own, if she won’t let me join in, I am okay only if at the end of it she pulls me in, so we can laugh at it together. If she looks away, shuts me out, I lash out, or hide away. She locks the door to her room a lot these days.

Chiqy, now five and everybody’s darling, likes to knock on my door, and I often don’t open it. I watch her disappear to the Bishops Lodge, across the road, and return with a group of kids. She is the boss, and they follow.

Whenever grown-­ups talk politics, we whisper. Baba plays golf every weekend this year. Come Sunday morning, we tear up roads up to make his tee-­off time. As usual, our plan is to launch ourselves into a frenzy of splashing and swinging and sliding with fellow golf children and lick tomato sauce and molten Cadbury chocolate off hot fingers and generally squirm and bliss around. Eldoret has a great golf club. Uplands pork sausages.

Mum has been going to church more. Sometimes Mum sleeps the whole afternoon. She is diabetic. All our uncles and aunts on Mum’s side are now diabetics. Today, she insists we find a church service. We drive around for a while and end up in some corrugated iron church, with no windows. We don’t want to go in, but Mum’s face is set, so we don’t argue. The heat and light are blinding, and people are jumping up and down and singing what sounds to me like voices from an accordion. It smells of sweat and goats.

We sit. All hot and in Sunday sweaters and collars and Vaseline under the hot iron roof, and people spit and start and this is because we are frying, not because God is here. In the front, there is a line of young women dressed in long gowns: bright red and green, with a stiff cone rising outward up their chins. They are jumping up and down. Up and down. And some of them have rattles, and some have tambourines and they are singing loud and sweating in that gritty dusty Kenyan way—­not smooth and happy like American gospel on television.

And the man in the front stands on the pulpit, sweating and shouting. The Catholic Church I know is all about having to kneel and stand when everybody else kneels and stands, and crossing and singing with eyebrows up to show earnestness before God, and open-mouth dignity to receive the bread. Some women will not open their tongues for the priest—­this is too suggestive. They will cup their hands and receive bread, and put the bread demurely into their hands and move back and bend one knee briefly before fading back to their seats and adjusting headscarves before sitting, kneeling, standing. Kneel. Stand. Massage rosary. Service ends in fifty-­seven minutes. Then announcements, when the priest says whoever wants to donate money for the parish fund should do so, and nobody ever does.

This service goes on and on. Mum is shushing us a lot. Why does she come here? What is she looking for? Jimmy is quiet and looks pained. Mum, dressed in a simple, elegant dress, her hair professionally done, with her angular Kinyarwanda face looks out of place here. She does not seem involved; her face is set.

People are dressed in wild robes: orange Peter Pan collars, neon blues and golds and yellows. People reach into bras and pockets and purses and take out notes and envelopes and throw them in the moving dancing collection baskets. A crescendo is reached, after we have given money, and people are writhing and shouting in the heat. Words are flowing from their lips, like porridge, in no language I know, but in a clear coherent pitch. Each person has her or his own tongue.

In the Catholic Church, we all recite the same prayer and make a chorus out of it. Here, a chorus is made out of each person’s received tongue. The drums in the front set the tempo, and the pastor leads with his own language­less tongues, on a microphone.

The church I am used to uses stories, parables, little priestly essays, and short written lyrical prayers. Some people just hiccup for twenty minutes. The pastor is saying, “RECEIVE, RECEIVE your own TONGUE.” And eyes are closed, and each person lets go of something, like me pissing in the sofa. The whole crowd has a group sound, and the instruments make this all one sound, and this sound carries us all, but each individual lives inside his or her own sound. One woman, all sharp angles and awkward shapes, is just hiccupping, as if her secret language is all starts and stops, and her elbows keep hitting the man next to her, who doesn’t even notice. In the front, eyes are closed, tears are flowing, and hand­made bottle-­top tambourines rattle at full slapslapslap, the tin roof church is so hot. Our hot wet breath is now dripping back down on us from the roof. Some faint. I want to drink.

Why is Mum here?

Ciru and I are both certain we will get into the best schools in the country. I apply to Alliance High School, Ciru to Alliance Girls. In the district mock exams, I am third in the district, and first in our school; Ciru is second.

Mrs. Gichiri calls me in to her office one day. She is my English teacher. Mrs. Gichiri. She is worried that my compositions are too wild. She says I should concentrate, keep them simple. She is sure I will do well. Like your sister, she says, beaming for the first time I can remember.

A few years ago, President Moi announced that he was going to restructure the education system. The kids who are a year behind me will abandon the British-­style 7-­4-­6 system and do a new one, called 8-­4-­4, that is supposed to introduce more practical education.

CPE is our national high school entrance exam. All papers except English composition are graded by a computer. You only use your computer-­issued number. You do not write your name on the exam sheet. Your school is only a number. This way, it is unbiased.

It is scientific.

When the results come out, Ciru is the top student in our school. I am fifth. I am not happy. I expected better. But—­we are both among the top twenty students in our province, Kenya’s biggest province. Relatives call from all over the world to congratulate us.

One day a friend of my father who works in the ministry of education calls him and tells him that he has not seen our names on the list for any schools. After the test results are out, head teachers from high schools across the country meet and select students, strictly based on merit. National schools, usually the best schools, pick the best students from each province. This way the whole country is represented in the student body. Then there are provincial schools, and district schools, day schools, and, at the bottom, there are what we call
harambee
schools, schools built through community contributions.

The terrible curse of the past is that it always starts right now. Hind­sight will pull facts to its present demand; it is the dental brace that will reshape your jaw, your resolve. When hindsight desires enough, it obliterates uncertainty. All the selected past becomes an argument for action.

And the tribe was made flesh, and dwelt among us.

Neither Ciru nor I is called to any school. No school at all. Rumors are spreading everywhere. We hear that lists of selections, long reams from a science computer, were taken away; that names are matched to numbers, and scrutinized, word by word, line by scientific line, for Gikuyu names in a secret office by Special Branch people.

Kenneth B. Wainaina. June Wanjiru Wainaina—Ciru’s full name. Unfortunately, I do not use Binyavanga—maybe that would have caused some epistemological confusion.

Gentlemen, we can rebuild tribe. We have the technology.

These names were crossed off lists.

In Rift Valley Province, Kalenjins get places in the best state schools. Baba and Mum argue. She is trying to get us into private schools. Baba says no. For the first time in my life, I call somebody because he is a Gikuyu, as I am properly discovering I am. Peter. An old friend and classmate. We call each other, whispering about other friends, walking through each person’s grade, his tribe, the school she is going to.