They drove past the large fenced field where, countless harvests ago, the sacred fig tree had stood and where elder Wachera had built her new homestead—long before the white man came. The field had been cleared by the bwana for his game played on horses, but it had been neglected now for years. Mama Wachera saw, in satisfaction, the handiwork of vengeful Ngai in the weeds and creepers and dead grass.
The Benzi moved past the iron gateway of the mission, and in the flicker of an eye the decades fell away. Wachera saw the woods again as they had been in her girlhood, and she saw Memsaab Daktari's first little hut, which was only four posts and a thatch roof. Now there were big stone buildings and paved pathways, and the forest had long since vanished.
Mama Wachera had not at first wanted to have her grandchildren attend this school—it was owned and operated by a Treverton—but Wanjiru had argued convincingly in favor of enrolling Sarah and Christopher in the white mission school. Had not she herself, Wanjiru asked her motherin-law, gone to this school as a girl? And didn't David also study here and thereby go on to become an educated man? Besides, Wanjiru had added, all the teachers and pupils were African.
And so Christopher and Sarah attended the Grace Mission School, getting up every morning to eat maize porridge with their grandmother and then going off in their blue uniforms with their books tucked inside canvas bags.
"In the new Kenya," Wanjiru had assured her mother-in-law, "our children will be educated and free to pursue any career they wish. Christopher will make a fine doctor. He has his father's good mind and logic. And Sarah will have a future such as I could never even have dreamed of. When I went to school, girls were taught domestic service; we were trained to be wives. But my little Sarah can be anything she wants!"
The new Kenya, Mama Wachera thought in disdain. It was the old Kenya they must return to! Africans must look to the ways of the ancestors and reclaim the old customs and traditions, for there lay honor and pride, and the Children of Mumbi could be virtuous and righteous once again.
But there was no use arguing such matters with the headstrong Wanjiru. Seven years in prison, the medicine woman knew, had hardened her daughter-in-law, had planted an obsession in her heart, and had even made her forget how to show respect and deference to an elder!
Wachera knew what Wanjiru had gone through since her arrest nine years ago. She knew that Sarah had been conceived in rape and that she was therefore not a true Mathenge; Wachera knew also that Wanjiru had suffered other, unspoken abuses while in the detention camps and that these experiences had made her into an obstinate, intractable woman. And then, afterward, upon her release at last and suddenly out in an uncaring world, penniless and husbandless with two children, Wanjiru had endured the humiliation of begging for food, of doing menial labor for Europeans in order to feed her children. Wanjiru was a KRN—a Kenya registered nurse—a skilled and educated woman, but she could find no respectable jobs because the hospitals were run by whites who were afraid to hire ex-Mau Mau. For two years Wanjiru had lived in the Nairobi tenements with the thousands of other abandoned women, preserving her virtue and protecting her babies, until at last the Native Hospital had acquired an African administrator who not only was not afraid of an ex-Mau Mau but, in fact, admired Wanjiru for her activities as a freedom fighter. She was given a decent job at last.
That was when she had finally brought Christopher and Sarah to live with their grandmother. Wanjiru sent money every week, and food and clothing, and now, because of her recent promotion to senior matron, Wanjiru was making the intimate acquaintance of powerful, emerging men such as Dr. Mwai.
While Mama Wachera was overjoyed to have the children live with her and to know that her loneliness was at an end, and while she was grateful for the extra food Wanjiru sent—although she had no use for the shillings— Wachera was unhappy with the lack of harmony in their lives. They were never in agreement, the medicine woman and her son's wife, and Wanjiru insisted always on arguing to the bitter end. It would not have been so in the old days, when a grandmother's word was law!
The Benzi climbed the road that went up to the top of the ridge, and there Wachera saw the big house that had been built eighty-eight harvests ago. It was dark and boarded up now, and in a deplorable state.
Mama Wachera knew that the memsaab named Mona had sold the ruined coffee farm to an Asian and had left Kenya for good. That had been wonderful news for the medicine woman, who saw in it part of her thahu being fulfilled; The whites were leaving Kikuyuland. It would only be a matter of time, she was certain, before the Asian gave up on the failed plantation and relinquished the land to the Children of Mumbi at last. But, to Wachera's chagrin, she learned that the memsaab had left her daughter, the grandchild of the cursed Bwana Lordy, in the care of Memsaab Daktari.
As the big house receded behind trees, Mama Wachera recalled when, for the first and last time in her life, she had visited Memsaab Daktari's house at the mission. It had been the morning after she had been told of her son's death. Wachera had gathered up the letters Memsaab Mona had been bringing to her and had delivered them at the feet of Memsaab Daktari. Wachera did not know what was in the letters, for she could not read, and she had no desire to know. With David's death, her bitterness toward and hatred of the whites had intensified. While the wazungu had gathered to mourn the killing of one of their own—the one called Bwana James—Wachera had retreated to her lonely hut to grieve by herself for the murder of her one and only child.
Then, when Christopher had come home one day with David's passbook and Wachera had seen the photograph, it had been like seeing David alive again and seeing also her beloved Kabiru Mathenge, who had died many years ago.
It was then that she had told her stunned daughter-in-law of David's part in Mau Mau, revealing that he was not, as Wanjiru had thought, a coward, but was, in fact, a hero of uhuru.
And it was to honor him, Mama Wachera decided now as the Benzi turned onto the main road and headed toward Nairobi, it was to pay homage to the spirits and memories of David Kabiru Mathenge and his father, Chief Kabiru Mathenge, that all Kenya was gathering today at Uhuru Stadium.
THE RECENTLY NAMED Kenyatta Avenue, formerly Lord Delamere Avenue, was lined with flags of all nations. For days prime ministers and heads of state from around the world had been arriving in Nairobi to attend the celebrations. The air was charged; roads were clogged with Kenyans of all tribes, who had walked for days from ancestral homelands to witness the birth of their new state. Two hundred and fifty thousand poured into Uhuru Stadium, trailing along wives and children and goats, their many dialects and tribal tongues creating a deafening babel. President Obote of Uganda got stuck in the mud and had to walk from his Rolls-Royce to the royal box. The Duke of Edinburgh arrived fifty minutes late and had to push his way through a wildly excited mob that had swept aside police barriers. A gentle rain fell steadily on ladies in evening gowns and Masai in red shukas. Beer and oranges were consumed as the masses in the stands cheered the tribal dancers down in the arena, who put on show after show with drums and spears and skins. All the peoples of Kenya were represented, and the mob howled with chauvinistic frenzy. When a handful of freedom fighters appeared—the last of the Mau Mau who had been holding out in the forests— Jomo Kenyatta embraced them and tried to introduce them to the Duke of Edinburgh, who politely shook his head no.
Finally the much anticipated moment arrived. Just before midnight, on December 11, 1963, the Union Jack was solemnly brought down while the military band played "God Save the Queen," and the new red, black, and green Kenya flag went up. It fluttered in the spotlight, proudly displaying the Kenya coat of arms—a shield with two crossed spears—and the crowd burst into wild cheering. A royal salute to the Duke of Edinburgh came next, followed by the official handing over of the colors from the King's African Rifles to the Kenya Rifles. The old maroon fez was replaced by a black peaked cap; Kenya now had its own modern army.
Then Jomo Kenyatta rose on the dais, and the stadium fell silent. T
he old man was impressive in his somber European suit and traditional beaded Kikuyu cap. His sharp, penetrating eyes swept over the thousands of Africans in the stands, and his voice rang out in the night. "Fellow countrymen, we must all work hard, with our hands, to save ourselves from poverty, ignorance, and disease. In the past we used to blame the Europeans for everything that went wrong. Now the government is ours.... You and I must work together to develop our country, to get education for our children, to have doctors, to build roads, to improve day-to-day essentials. This should be our work, in the spirit that I am going to ask you to echo, to shout aloud, to shatter the foundations of the past with the strength of our new purpose...."
He paused, surveyed the crowd, then held out his arms and cried, "Harambee! Harambee!"
"Harambee!" shouted the audience. "Harambee!" people chanted in one voice. "Pull together!"
Smiling, Kenyatta turned to the duke and said, "When you get back to England, take our greetings to the Queen and tell her that we are still friends. It will be a friendship from the heart, more than what was there before."
The crowd went insane. Hats and gourds flew up in the air; people embraced one another. It was a roar, they all thought, that was the roar of a lion, a roar, they were certain, that must have been heard around the world.
And then, at last, with great solemnity and dignity, the Kenya military band struck the first chords of the new national anthem, and two hundred and fifty thousand people rose as one body.
As the sad, sweet strains rose into the rainy night, filling everyone with a kind of melancholy pride and a sense, for the first time in anyone's memory, of real African unity, this final stronghold of British imperialism, the last colonial corner to break away from the no longer powerful British Empire, moved into the modern age.
From where she stood, in a privileged box with Geoffrey Donald and other prominent white Nairobi businessmen, Grace Treverton looked around the packed stadium and realized she had never before seen so many Africans gathered together in one place. It overwhelmed her. It also chilled her far more than the rain did. For the first time Grace received a true understanding of what the African fight had been all about. She looked at the black, pride-filled faces and thought about the cloudy, uncertain future. She knew that there was still much anger and resentment in these African hearts. Would they, she wondered, ever truly be able to forget their ignominious past and the humiliation suffered at the hands of the colonists? These hearts were barely fifty years away from the savage hearts of their warrior fathers. Would they revert to barbarism and bloodlust once the law of Britain was gone from Kenya? Grace knew that these people were drunk with their new power and that they lusted for luxuries they naively imagined self-rule would bring. Remembering Mau Mau, she wondered how the remaining Kenya whites would fare should a second emergency break out. The next time there would be no British troops to protect them.
She looked at Kenyatta down on the dais. To everyone's immense surprise, his European wife, whom he had married back in England years ago, had flown out to join him and his two Kenyan wives as a gesture of interracial goodwill. Kenyatta made impressive speeches about restraint and tolerance. But would he be able to control his volatile population of six million if a second revolution broke out?
What, Grace wondered anxiously, was the future going to be like, starting tomorrow?
As the national anthem came to a close and the crowds started cheering again, eight-year-old Deborah clapped her hands and laughed. This was better than Christmas! She stood shivering in the cold night between Aunt Grace and Uncle Geoffrey, and saw, across the arena, in another specially reserved box, Christopher Mathenge standing with his sister and mother and grandmother.
Deborah caught his eye. She smiled at him.
And he smiled back.
PART EIGHT
1973
56
A
RE YOU EXCITED ABOUT GOING TO CALIFORNIA?" SARAH asked as she stirred the pot of melted wax.
Deborah, sitting at the base of a Cape chestnut with her knees drawn up and her back against its trunk, was going through a fashion magazine—the Mademoiselle college issue, which showed the latest in campus wear. She paused at a page that showed models dressed in long skirts and platform shoes; then she looked up at her friend. "It scares me, in a way, Sarah. California is so foreign, so far away!"
Sarah bent to examine the consistency of her wax. She sniffed it, then added a small chunk of beeswax to the pot. As it melted, she said, "I can't believe you took so long to make up your mind! If that scholarship had been offered to me, I would have snapped it up like that!"
Looking back down at the models smiling in young American confidence, Deborah felt her fears rise again. How could she possibly fit in with these sophisticated girls?
It had been a big decision to make, accepting the Uhuru scholarship. It meant being away from Kenya for three years—away from all her friends, away from Aunt Grace and their home at the mission, and, most of all, away from Sarah, who was like a sister to her. Moreover, Christopher was returning today after four years of studying in England. Deborah would have just enough time to say hello to him and then would have to say good-bye again.
Deborah envied Sarah. She was so self-assured, so confident, just like the models in the magazine. Sarah had always been brave; it was because of having been born in a detention camp, Sarah always said. She wasn't afraid of anything, and she was always willing to take on any challenge. Her own school leaving, for example, had been typical of Sarah, a brave move that had so angered her mother, Wanjiru, that the two were not speaking. It had shocked Deborah, too, that Sarah should drop out of college after just one year. But her friend had explained with characteristic self-certainty, "Egerton has nothing more to offer me. I haven't the time to sit through its useless courses. I know what I want. Egerton can't give it to me, so by God, I'm going after it on my own.
Sarah had been referring to her ambition to be a fashion designer. Ever since she was a little girl, she had known that was what she was going to do. In secondary school Sarah had taken every art and design and sewing class offered. Then she had gone on to Egerton College at Njoro, where, under its home economics diploma program, one of the very few higher education courses open to Kenya women, she had studied the identification and care of fabrics, sewing by hand and by machine, pattern drafting, dressmaking, alterations, and finishing. When she saw that the second year of the course concentrated on nutrition and child rearing, she had left the school and come home to pursue her dream along another path.
She worked now for an Asian woman named Mrs. Dar in Nyeri, as an assistant seamstress. The pay was very low, the hours long, and the working conditions hard, but Mrs. Dar made exquisite dresses for the wives of wealthy businessmen in the district, and Sarah was learning everything she could from her. But that wasn't enough. Even though her hope was someday to own her own sewing machines, her own business with assistants of her own, Sarah dreamed of something greater: of designing a whole new look.
That was why she was down by the river with Deborah, stirring a pot of hot wax over a fire. Sarah had recently discovered batik, the art of dyeing cloth by using wax, and she had been experimenting with the process for days.
"I shall feel so out of place in California," Deborah said, laying aside the fashion magazine. "I shan't know anything. And I'm sure they all will be smarter than I."
Sarah straightened and put her hands on her hips. "What rot, Deb! How do you suppose you earned that scholarship? By being stupid? Out of fifteen hundred applicants, you won! And didn't Professor Muriuki say that California's gain was going to be Nairobi University's loss?"
Professor Muriuki, Deborah told herself, was just being kind. She had taken four courses with him in the past year at the University of Nairobi, and he liked her.
He had, however, gone on to concede that "I cannot deny that the level of education at the California university is superior to ours. You're wise to go there, Miss Treverton.
When you come back to Kenya and attend medical school here, you will be head and shoulders above your fellow students."
The eighteen-year-old girls were enjoying the warm August sun and the peace of the river. Through the trees they heard the cries of children playing rugby on the polo field which Deborah's mother had turned over to Grace Mission when she left Kenya ten years ago. Nearby, a hundred feet from where the two girls sat by the river, a familiar cluster of huts stood in a bucolic setting amid flourishing maize and bean plots, a healthy herd of goats, and a full granary. That was where Sarah lived, with her aged grandmother, Mama Wachera, but in her own hut, which she had made comfortable with a carpet and proper chairs. There was a hut, too, for Wanjiru, where she stayed when she drove up from Nairobi to visit. The fourth hut was Christopher's. It had once been his father's thingira, bachelor hut; Christopher was going to stay in it whenever he was on holiday from medical school.
Thinking of Christopher, Deborah looked at her watch. His flight from London was scheduled to arrive that morning, and he was to be met by his mother and come up with her in her car.
The hour seemed late to Deborah. Where were they?
She hadn't slept the night before, had only barely slept all week, anticipating Christopher's return. What was it going to be like after these past four years? Even now her heart raced to think of his being home again, to imagine the long talks they would have. Will he have changed much? she wondered.
Sarah left her wax pot and went to inspect the squares of cloth spread out on large boulders. Each was in a stage of the dyeing process; each had been prepared differently. She examined them closely. "I think I've finally conquered the problem of crackling," she said, holding up a piece. "What do you think, Deb?"
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