A Grain of Wheat (9 page)

Mugo once attended a meeting of the Movement held at Rung’ei Market because it was rumoured that Kenyatta, who had recently come from the land of the whiteman, would speak. Although the meeting was scheduled to start in the afternoon, by ten o’clock there was hardly any sitting-room at the market place. People stood on the roofs of the shops. They appeared like clusters of locusts perched on trees. Mugo sat in a place where he could command a good view of the speakers. Gikonyo, then a well-known carpenter in Thabai, sat a few feet away. Next to the carpenter was Mumbi. She was said to be one of the most beautiful women on all the eight ridges. Some people called her Wangu Makeri because of her looks.

The meeting started an hour later. People learnt that Kenyatta would not attend the meeting. There were, however, plenty of speakers from Muranga and Nairobi. There was also a Luo speaker from Nyanza showing that the Movement had broken barriers between tribes. Kihika from Thabai was one of the speakers who received a big ovation from the crowd. He talked no longer in terms of sending letters to the whiteman as used to be done in the days of Harry.

‘This is not 1920. What we now want is action, a blow which will tell,’ he said as women from Thabai pulled at their clothes and hair, and screamed with delight. Kihika, a son of the land, was marked out as one of the heroes of deliverance. Mugo, who had seen Kihika on the ridge a number of times, had never suspected that the man had such power and knowledge. Kihika unrolled the history of Kenya, the coming of the whiteman and the birth of the Party. Mugo glanced at Gikonyo and Mumbi. Their eyes were fixed on Kihika; their lives seemed dependent on his falling words.

‘We went to their church. Mubia, in white robes, opened the Bible. He said: Let us kneel down to pray. We knelt down. Mubia said: Let us shut our eyes. We did. You know, his remained open so that he could read the word. When we opened our eyes, our land was gone and the sword of flames stood on guard. As for Mubia, he went
on reading the word, beseeching us to lay our treasures in heaven where no moth would corrupt them. But he laid his on earth, our earth.’

People laughed. Kihika did not join them. He was a small man with a strong voice. Speaking slowly with emphasis on the important words, he once or twice pointed at earth and heaven as if calling them to witness that what he spoke was the truth. He talked of the great sacrifice.

‘A day comes when brother shall give up brother, a mother her son, when you and I have heard the call of a nation in turmoil.’

Mugo felt a constriction in his throat. He could not clap for words that did not touch him. What right had such a boy, probably younger than Mugo, to talk like that? What arrogance? Kihika had spoken of blood as easily as if he was talking of drawing water in a river, Mugo reflected, a revulsion starting in his stomach at the sight and smell of blood. I hate him, he heard himself say and frightened, he looked at Mumbi, wondering what she was thinking. Her eyes were still fixed on her brother. Everybody’s eyes were on the platform. Mugo experienced a twang of jealousy as he too turned and looked at the speaker. At that moment their eyes met, or so Mugo imagined, with guilt. For a split second the crowd and the world at large seemed drenched in silence. Only Kihika and Mugo were left on the stage. Something surged for release in Mugo’s heart, something, in fact, which was an intense vibration of terror and hatred.

‘Watch ye and pray,’ Kihika said, calling on his audience to remember the great Swahili proverb:
Kikulacho Kimo nguoni mwako
.

Kihika lived the words of sacrifice he had spoken to the multitude. Soon after Jomo and other leaders were arrested in October 1952, Kihika disappeared into the forest, later to be followed there by a handful of young men from Thabai and Rung’ei.

The greatest triumph for Kihika was the famous capture of Mahee. Mahee was a big police garrison in the Rift Valley, the heart of what, for many years, were called the White Highlands. In Mahee too was a transit prison for men and women about to be taken to concentration camps. Situated in a central position, Mahee fed guns and ammunition
to the other smaller police and military posts scattered in the Rift Valley to protect and raise the morale of white settlers. If you stood at Mahee at any time of day, you would see the walls of the escarpment, an enchanting guard to one of the most beautiful valleys in the land. The walls climbed in steps to the highlands; a row of smaller hills, some hewn round at the top while others bore scoops and volcano mouths, receded into shrouds of mist and mystery.

At night the valley was hidden in darkness, except for the light outside Mahee. It was quiet. The guards, following the example of their white officers, who were used to a life of indolence, for the name of Mahee itself was proof against any attack, had already drunk and gone to sleep, leaving a few guards to observe the convention. Suddenly the night was broken by the simultaneous sound of bugles, trumpets, horns and tins. From inside the prison came a responding cry of Uhuru. The officer in charge, aroused from the spell of whisky he had taken earlier by this commotion, instinctively reached for the telephone, trying the magic feat of pulling up his trousers and ringing at the same time. Suddenly, the hand that lifted the receiver let it fall, the trousers also rolled to the floor. The telephone wires had been cut, Mahee could not get help from the outlying posts. Caught unawares, the police made a weak resistance as Kihika and his men stormed in. Some policemen climbed the walls and jumped to safety. Kihika’s men broke into the prison and led the prisoners out into the night. The garrison was set on fire and Kihika’s men ran back to the forest with fresh supplies of men, guns and ammunition to continue the war on a scale undreamt of in the days of Waiyaki and Young Harry.

People came to know Kihika as the terror of the whiteman. They said that he could move mountains and compel thunder from heaven.

A price was put on his head.

Anybody who brought Kihika, dead or alive, would receive a huge sum of money.

A year later, Kihika was captured alone at the edge of the Kinenie Forest.

Believe the news? The man who compelled trees and mountains to move, the man who could go for ten miles crawling on his stomach
through sand and thorny bush, was surely beyond the arm of the whiteman.

Kihika was tortured. Some say that the neck of a bottle was wedged into his body through the anus as the white people in the Special Branch tried to wrest the secrets of the forest from him. Others say that he was offered a lot of money and a free trip to England to shake the hand of the new woman on the throne. But he would not speak.

Kihika was hanged in public, one Sunday, at Rung’ei Market, not far from where he had once stood calling for blood to rain on and water the tree of freedom. A combined force of Homeguards and Police whipped and drove people from Thabai and other ridges to see the body of the rebel dangling on the tree, and learn.

The Movement, however, remained alive and grew, as people put it, on the wounds of those Kihika left behind.

‘We are not staying long,’ Gikonyo said, after a silence. ‘We have really come to see you about the Uhuru celebrations on Thursday.’

Looking at Gikonyo, you could not believe that he was the same man whose marriage to Mumbi almost thirteen years before had angered other young suitors: what did Mumbi see in him? How could a woman so beautiful walk into poverty with eyes wide open? Now four years after returning home from detention, Gikonyo was one of the richest men in Thabai. He had recently bought a five-acre farm plot; he owned a shop –
Gikonyo General Stores
– at Rung’ei; and only the other day he had acquired a second-hand lorry for trading. On top of this, he was elected the chairman of the local branch of the Movement, a tribute, so people said, to his man’s spirit which no detention camp could break. Gikonyo was respected and admired as a symbol of what everyone aspired to be: fiercely independent, bending all effort to success in any enterprise.

‘What – what do you want?’ Mugo asked, raising his eyes to Warui.

Warui’s life was, in a way, the story of the Movement; he had taken part in the meetings of Young Harry, had helped in building people’s own schools and listened to Jomo’s speeches in the ‘twenties. Warui was one of the few who saw in that recent employee of the Nairobi Municipal Council, a man destined for power.

‘He will do great things,’ he used to say of Jomo. ‘You can see it in his eyes.’

Warui looked at the hearthplace. An oil-lamp with soot around the neck and sides of the glass, stood on the stone.

‘We of Thabai Village must also dance our part,’ he started, his
voice, though low, embracing the whole room. ‘Yes, we must dance the song the way we know how. For, let it never be said Thabai dragged to shame the names of the sons she lost in war. No. We must raise them – even from the dead – to share it with us. Our people, is there a song sweeter than that of freedom? Of a truth, we have waited for it many a sleepless night. Those who have gone before us, those of us spared to see the sun today, and even those to be born tomorrow, must join in the feast. The day we hold Wiyathi in our hands we want to drink from the same calabash – yes – drink from the same calabash.’

Silence followed these words. Each person seemed engrossed in himself as if turning over the words in his mind. The woman cleared her throat, an indication that she was about to take up the thread from Warui. Mugo looked at her.

Wambui was not very old, although she had lost most of her teeth. During the Emergency, she carried secrets from the villages to the forest and back to the villages and towns. She knew the underground movements in Nakuru, Njoro, Elburgon and other places in and outside the Rift Valley. The story is told how she once carried a pistol tied to her thighs near the groin. She was dressed in long, wide and heavy clothes, the picture of decrepitude and senile decay. She was taking the gun to Naivasha. As luck would have it, she was suddenly caught in one of those sporadic military and police operations which plagued the country. People were collected into the square behind the shops. Soon came her turn to be searched. Her tooth started aching; she twisted her lips, moaned; saliva tossed out of the corners of her mouth and flowed down her chin. The Gikuyu policeman searching her was saying in Swahili: Pole mama: made other sympathetic noises and went on searching. He started from her chest, rummaged under her armpits, gradually working his way down towards the vital spot. And suddenly Wambui screamed, the man stopped, astonished.

‘The children of these days,’ she began. ‘Have you lost all shame? Just because the whiteman tells you so, you would actually touch your own mother’s … the woman who gave you birth? All right, I’ll lift the clothes and you can have a look at your mother, it is
so aged, and see what gain it’ll bring you for the rest of your life.’

She actually made as if to lift her clothes and expose her nakedness. The man involuntarily turned his eyes away.

‘Go away from here,’ he growled at her. ‘Next …’ Wambui never told this story; but she never denied it; if people asked her about it, she only smiled enigmatically.

‘It is like our elders who always poured a little beer on the ground before they themselves drank,’ Wambui now said. ‘Why did they do that? It’s because they always remembered the spirits of those below. We too cannot forget our sons. And Kihika was such a man, a great man.’

Mugo sat rigidly on his stool. Warui watched the lamp that badly lit the hut into an eerie haziness. Wambui rested her elbows on her knees and wedged her chin into the cupped palms of her hands. Gikonyo looked abstractedly into space.

‘What do you want?’ Mugo asked with something like panic in his voice.

Suddenly there was a loud knocking. All eyes were turned to the door. Curiosity heightened the tension. Mugo went to the door.

‘General!’ Warui exclaimed as soon as the new guests entered. Mugo walked back behind the two men. One was tall, clean-shaven, with close-cropped hair. The shorter man had his hair plaited. They were some of the Freedom Fighters who had recently left the forest under the Uhuru amnesty.

‘Sit down – on the bed,’ Mugo invited them, and was startled by the sound of his own voice. So old – so rusty … today … tonight … everything is strange … people’s looks and gestures frighten me … I’m not really afraid because … because … a man’s life, like mine, is not important … and … and … God … I’ve ceased to care … I don’t … don’t … The arrival of the two men had broken the mounting tension. Everybody was talking. The hut was animated with a low excited murmur. Wambui was explaining something about the Uhuru preparations to the man with plaited hair. In the forest he was called Lieutenant Koina. The tall one was the General, General R.

‘A sacrifice! A sacrifice!’ Koina exclaimed, laughing. ‘And let me eat
the meat. A whole ram. In the forest we only ate bamboo shoots and wild animals—’

‘What do you know of sacrifice?’ Wambui interrupted, joining in the laughter.

‘Oh, we did sacrifice – and ate the meat afterwards. We prayed twice a day and an extra one before any expedition to wrest arms from European farms. We stood up facing Mount Kenya:

‘We also sang:

Everybody had stopped talking and listened to Koina’s singing. And the plaintive note below his words was at odds with his apparent mirth. There was a sudden, almost an uneasy silence. None of this is real … I’ll soon wake up from the dream … My hut will be empty and I’ll find myself alone as I have always been … Gikonyo coughed, dryly. Warui burst in.

‘Cold? I always say this. The young of these days have lost their strength. They cannot resist a tiny illness. Do you know in our days we would lie in the forest nights long waiting for Masai? The wind rubbed our necks. As for our clothes, they were drenched with dew. Yet you would not hear a cough in the morning. No, not even a small one.’