Bribery could also be preemptive. In exchange for some flour, or a prized pair of socks, the guards might look the other way when compound meetings were convened or when detainees were too sick or weak to make it out to work. Sometimes detainees shared their rations with the guards, if only to curry favor with them. Some affirmed that such gestures made the guards less susceptible to raising the alarm when camp rules were broken. “In our compound at Mara River, we had the habit of singing our Mau Mau songs quietly in the evening,” recalled one former detainee now living in Nairobi. “So we would give the Luo guard some cigarettes every few days, and he never told on us, except one time when the commandant was nearby and we knew he must’ve heard us as well.”32 Many detainees did their best to convert their African guards, telling them about the history of Kenya and the solidarity they ought to have in the fight against the British. In some instances there were guards who became, according to some detainees, notably sympathetic to their cause.33
How do we begin to untangle the complex relationships between these men? Some former Mau Mau adherents analyzed their interactions with guards the way they would with human relations generally: “Some people are friends, while others are not,” or “Some men are good, others bad, and then there are lot of us who fall somewhere in between.”34 In his memoir, J.M. chose as an explanatory device a Kikuyu allegory about a dog and a jackal.
We say that when a man takes a dog out hunting a jackal, the dog will run far ahead out of sight and start playing with the jackal in a hidden place because they are really the same kind. When the man catches up with them the dog will straightaway begin barking fiercely and chasing the jackal again for a safe distance. This is because it is the man who gives the dog food which it will not get if it disobeys his orders. 35
The fable suggests only a partial explanation. In the Pipeline the guards and detainees were bound together by dependency and fear, antagonism and sympathy, and even by hatred. Both groups lived under extraordinary constraints that can never fully be appreciated. In the end, it was the guards who often determined the fate of the detainees. Both parties knew this, and both parties tried to use and manipulate this power to their own advantage.
Technically, most communication between detainees, including singing, shouting, and passing notes and messages, was forbidden within the Pipeline. Even talking was prohibited, except within the individual huts or barracks where the detainees slept. To circumvent this regulation the detainees usually bribed the guards. They also did something much more ingenious. They turned the stereotype of Mau Mau savagery and madness to their advantage, creating a message system they christened “speaking to the wire.” “If they were going to consider us mad because we were demanding ithaka na wiyathi [land and freedom],” recalled one former detainee, “then we were going to give them our own form of madness.”36 This man then went on to explain how the detainees’ communication system functioned.
We used to speak as if we were speaking to the wire; that is, you did not face the person you were speaking to, but faced the other side. You would pretend that you were talking to yourself like a mad person, while you were actually talking to someone in the compound behind you. The askaris would dismiss one as mad—you know, infected with the oath. Words were spoken in a clever manner, and the person in the other compound would send the message to another detainee in another compound. Within a short time, the whole camp would receive the message or news. Even in a large camp like Manyani, which was many miles long, messages used to be received in this way up to the farthest compound. 37
In some cases a detainee would stand just beside the wire of his compound and start “having fits,” as one man called them, jerking his body and head while shouting what seemed to be nonsensical statements.38 They were, in fact, perfectly rational expressions disguised in a language that was a curious mixture of slang, euphemisms, and parables, combining English, Kiswahili, and Kikuyu. New words or phrases were created that had specific meaning to the detainees in the Pipeline. There was “chakula cha Manyani,” which meant porridge filled with dust and flies; “kiboko cha screening,” which translates literally into “the whip of screening,” but to the detainees it signified the intelligence being used by the screening teams. There was “kazi ya Embakasi,” the phrase for any punishing labor routine, its meaning derived from the reputation of Embakasi airport’s work regime. To the passive listener it sounded as if the detainees were speaking jibberish, their words, phrases, and camp-specific parables having little, if any, apparent meaning.
When detainees were caught communicating, the guards would often simply throw rocks at them to get them to shut up, or accepted a payoff. But on other occasions the consequences were more severe. Like J. M., some detainees were brought to the center of the compound, where they were publicly whipped or beaten, presumably to send a message to the others. In one instance in Saiyusi Camp a detainee was thrown up against the barbed wire and whipped; in another the camp commandant at Mara River ordered the guards to shackle a detainee’s feet together, tie a rope around the middle of the restraint, and collectively drag him around the compound “until bits of him were all over.”39 It was not unusual for retribution to be meted out against everyone in the compound, or even the entire camp, rather than only the individual transgressor. In the case of Karue Kibicho, who had earlier been picked up during Operation Anvil and taken to Manyani Camp, the infamous riot squad was called in. (These squads were used in nearly every major camp in the Pipeline, and their job was to bring order when detainees got out of line.) Karue later described what happened when he was caught speaking to a detainee across the barbed wire of his compound.
The guard on the watchtower blew his whistle, and the askaris, who we called rioti [riot squad], were set upon us all. They were using their hoe-handle clubs, clubbing us indiscriminately. Some of the detainees died from the beatings before we were all told to come out of our compound naked, holding our clothing and blankets in our hands. This was not done peacefully, because the askaris were inside the compound beating us, and as we hurried out there were others waiting for us, beating us some more. We rushed to squat in fives with our clothing beside us. Those who didn’t move quickly enough were set upon by the askaris and beaten. Then we would be ordered to throw all of our clothing in a heap; again if we weren’t fast enough we were beaten. Then we were ordered to go and retrieve our things. The askaris would set on us as we rushed to get our clothes and blankets, without any regard as to where they hit us…. It was total may hem, and the white man in charge just stood there screaming, ‘Piga, piga sana’ [hit them, hit them more]. 40
These public displays of discipline could not but deter communication, though by no means did they thwart the detainees’ efforts to exchange messages and speak with one another. If speaking was impossible, notes were written and tied to rocks or stuffed inside cigarette butts, which were then tossed across the barbed wire into other compounds or dropped, apparently indiscriminately, during marches out to the camp work sites. In some camps detainees exchanged messages in designated “mailboxes.” The so-called post office at Manyani was located under the main water container. In Athi River the detainees chose a book on Queen Victoria in the camp’s library as their exchange site, leaving them to wonder later why camp officials never discovered the ruse. As one man candidly observed, “Can you imagine any of us caring that much about Queen Victoria?”41
When they “spoke to the wire” or wrote notes, the detainees’ communications extended far beyond social norms or the election of compound leaders. They were hungry for information and news about almost anything. Eager to find out what was happening in the compound across the camp, they also wanted to know what was going on in other camps up and down the Pipeline. They sought news on their family members and friends, often housed in other camps, on the harshness of the up-Pipeline camps that might await them, and the questions and intelligence of the other screening teams. They wanted more than anything to know what was happening outside the
wire. Who was winning the war in the forest? What was the British colonial government doing to the property it confiscated during Anvil? What was happening in the reserves to their wives and children—not to mention their land? Was there any news of Jomo Kenyatta and the rest of their leaders at Lokitaung?
Work provided the best and most legitimate opportunity for speaking with relative freedom. Brief moments were stolen in the quarries, fields, or public works projects. At Manyani, Mageta Island, Saiyusi, and Kajiado camps detainees would often be shackled together in twos for their march to the work sites and would sometimes remain chained together throughout the day. Curiously, they were often allowed to partner up themselves, so that in the morning hours there was often a mad scramble to find a shackle mate who could not only bear the day’s workload but also provide a bit of news, or at the very least some conversation. “It was always such a scene when it was time to be shackled,” recalled a former detainee from Kajiado Camp. “We would try to get the shackle with the longest chain, because it made walking and working easier, but we also wanted a good partner—someone who could work and talk and give us news on what else was happening in the camps.”42
Some specific works projects, like the thirty-seven-mile-long irrigation furrow at South Yatta, facilitated the spread of news. Hundreds of detainees would work standing at various angles along the furrow, using picks and shovels to deepen it. The irrigation ditch was a hazardous work site, so guards kept their distance, enabling the detainees at times to rest a bit as well as talk. “I remember standing in the irrigation furrow at South Yatta,” recalled a man who labored there for two and a half years, “it was [many] meters deep in some places, much more in others. There was always the fear of it collapsing on us, which it did one time, killing a bunch of men. But there were so many of us laboring, and the ditch was so deep, that the askaris couldn’t possibly listen to us all so we would talk and talk about what was going on in the camp, and of the news from elsewhere.”43
Forced labor at South Yatta irrigation furrow, circa December 1955
Compound committees sought to place their literate detainees on the cleaning teams that did the janitorial work in the offices of the camp commandant and his staff. Once there, they would read newspapers and official memoranda, returning in the evenings to divulge their latest news. Sometimes they would pick up information by surreptitiously listening in to the wireless that played aloud in the camp commandant’s office. In other instances, detainees would steal scraps of newspaper, or tama, during the cleaning details. Njari Githui was one of those on cleaning detail at Manyani Camp, where he and a few others were responsible for Mapiga’s office. Together, he recalled,
we would fold a piece of newspaper and hide it neatly inside our clothes such that it was not found during the inspection which we had to undergo before we went into the camps. In the evening, the tama would be read, and interpreted for those who could not understand…. We wanted to know when Kenyatta would be released, and when we would get our independence. We wanted to know if anyone knew about our fight in the camps…. After reading the paper, we would pass it on to the next compound. To do that, someone from one compound would lie flat on the ground near the fence, and another from the other compound would lie flat on his side of the fence. With both our hands outstretched, we could manage to pass over the piece of paper…. Of course, we would do this at night so as not to be detected. 44
Throughout the Pipeline, the detainees called this secret circulation of news the Manyani Times. There was, however, another grapevine, one literally invented by the detainees. It was generally called By Way of the Wire, though also the Waya Times, the Kimongo Times, or Nyandarua. Its content was utter propaganda or deliberately false rumor fabricated by detainees to encourage other detainees and compel them to go on or, more to the point, to help them resist any temptation to confess and cooperate with camp authorities. “News” circulated that those who confessed their oaths in the camps were not released but instead taken to court, convicted of Mau Mau crimes based on their own self-incrimination, and then sent to jail in South Africa. In other instances, it was rumored that the colonial government had deported those who had confessed to an island off the coast of India, where they were to live forever in unbearable heat and humidity.45
Most often, though, the detainee rumor mill was about what J. M. and others called “wishful thinking.” Nearly every detainee recalled hearing at some point that independence was on the horizon, that the colonial government was about to capitulate and leave Kenya, and that such exciting news was “all over the papers.”46 Rumors of rebellions, escapes, and labor strikes also spread like bushfire in the Pipeline. By Way of the Wire circulated reports that the United Nations was going to intervene on their behalf, or that the Labour Party was coming to help them. Along with Jomo Kenyatta, Fenner Brockway and Barbara Castle were veritable legends in the Pipeline, and the detainees enjoyed reporting that Castle and Brockway were negotiating for their release or were going to convict the camp authorities for torturing them and forcing them to labor against their will.47
Generating false hope was not without its psychological benefit. Many men remember the rumors for what they were intended to be, “words of comfort.” “They gave us something to hold on to,” one former detainee explained. “When you looked into the eyes of another man and saw nothing, you knew that such words would help him.”48 Rumor could also take a more humorous line, though its ultimate goal was the same. Detainees roared with laughter when they heard that certain screeners had sent home for, say, a shirt, and their wives instead sent them a baby carrier, or they had asked for a pair of pants and were sent a pair of knickers.49 For the Kikuyu, this was interpreted as an affront to the screeners’ manhood, that their wives did not approve of them collaborating, that taking the side of the British colonial government had made them lesser men. It was the screeners who now had their masculinity challenged, and the detainees would revel in it.
The spread of knowledge and ideas also took another form, something the detainees called rehabilitation. Not to be confused with the rehabilitation program drafted by Askwith and touted by the governor and colonial secretary, this program was developed by the Mau Mau adherents themselves. It was intended to curtail the damaging effects of the Pipeline by turning the camps into impromptu schools. Dozens of literacy classes sprang up. Many detainees had been well educated in the missionary and independent African schools, some had advanced degrees from foreign universities, and together they taught the illiterate and semiliterate how to read, write, and do arithmetic. Despite obviously trying circumstances, the classes were well organized, with curricula and lessons modeled on the British system that had been introduced by the missionaries throughout Kenya. Some camps had virtual schools, with forms or grades starting at Standard I and going all the way up to Standard IX. There were also lectures and discussions on politics, history, law, geography, and religion—all were wildly popular with the detainees.50
Lessons extended into the practical as well, with many classes designed to impart survival skills to detainees, particularly the newcomers. Such wisdom had been accrued over time, often through trial and error. When transfers came into the compounds, they were apprised of which guards to avoid and which ones could be more easily bribed; they were also told about rationing their water supplies and how eating slowly would allow them to feel more satiated. They were instructed never to gorge after a long food-denial to avoid rupturing internal organs, something which nevertheless happened all too frequently. There were hygiene classes that instructed detainees to put ash over their waste in the toilet buckets, and to wash their hands using cooking fuel and ballast. There were lessons on how to treat scorpion bites using tobacco snuff, how to most effectively bathe using sand, and how to eat amid swarms of flies.
Teaching and learning were often conducted through the age-old method of “writing in the sand.”51 Using a stick in his hand and the dirt on the floor, Nderi Kagombe instructed his fellow detain
ees in Manyani’s Compound 9 in the basics of Kiswahili grammar. He had been transferred there after his initiation by Wagithundia in Compound 6, and, once the welcoming committee painstakingly apprised him of all the compound rules, the rehabilitation committee stepped in and recruited him to teach a variety of courses ranging from reading and grammar to history and politics. “Everyone would be gathered around not wanting to miss a word of the lesson,” he later reminisced. “It was quite inspiring to see how these weary men wanted to feed their minds.”52 This homegrown education system helped deflect attention from the abysmal conditions in the Pipeline and inspired more meaningful thought. “I forgot how exhausted and starved I was [while] learning with the other men in my compounds,” recalled one man from Nyeri District. “It was when we tried to sleep that I was tormented by my life in detention and not knowing what was happening to my wife and family. You see, our classes and our teachers kept me alive. They were as important as our miserable food rations.”53
To a certain degree the survival and resistance strategies adopted by the detainees are universal. One is struck by the similarities—across social organizations, communication networks, and camp personnel—between the Pipeline, the Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet gulag, and South Africa’s Robben Island. But the world that evolved inside the Pipeline was also different. Kikuyu culture and religion, and the colonial government’s response to the detainees’ indigenous ways of interpreting and organizing their world, were carried into the camps and made life there unique from that in other systems of detention.
While recalling their years in the Pipeline, detainees invariably ruminate about their belief system. They are not referring to the Christianity that was proffered by the colonial authority, but rather to their indigenous religion, which focused on the Kikuyu creator god Ngai and to their mythical ancestors Gikuyu and Mumbi. They looked to their own Kikuyu belief system to help explain the circumstances in which they were living, and to strengthen them in their resistance. Clandestine prayer sessions, where detainees drew upon their traditional beliefs and practices, paying homage to their ancestral gods and looking to them for answers to the conditions that had befallen them in the camps, were common. Prior to the Emergency, however, many of the detainees were, to varying degrees, practicing Christians.54 Most believed that the tenets of Mau Mau were not incompatible with the Christian faith as they interpreted it. This was particularly true for those who had been members of the Kikuyu independent churches that had broken away from the Western missionaries in the 1930s—churches which had been one of the hotbeds for the growth of Mau Mau. But in the camps there arose over time a resentment and even hatred of Christianity, particularly as it became associated more and more with British colonial oppression. For many detainees, Christianity was ineffective in explaining what was happening to them and was, in fact, partly responsible for their condition.
Imperial Reckoning Page 23
